It was drizzling rain the morning of March 5. We’d hoped for more than a drizzle, considering the pond is 20 inches low and we’re in a severe drought. But the heaviest precipitation stayed south and we were left with clouds and a few sprinkles. We took what we could get.
With the teasing rain came southern winds and unseasonable warmth. Honeybees stirred from their hives, the first snowdrops opened, and sandhill cranes caught a tailwind as they winged north. It was a solid promise of spring. Too early, but nobody was complaining because spring is the season of hope, new life, another chance to get things right. And in 2026 there is so much to get right.
—A man in the White House who claims to be the president of peace just started a war without congressional approval and without an endgame. The conflict is costing lives and upwards of two billion dollars a day.
—Artificial Intelligence, used wisely, promises massive benefits for humanity, but it seems to be advancing helter-skelter as world powers vie to use it as their ticket to dominance.
—Data centers, which demand massive amounts of energy and water, are springing up as if those resources are limitless.
—Government policy to support renewable green fuels has abruptly stopped. Oil and coal are king again and pollution control mandates have been retracted.
—Immigrants, following every legal requirement to become US citizens, are finding the goal posts moved and are living with the very real threat of being sent to detention centers or places unknown.
I try to imagine living in a war-torn country, where air-raid sirens are routine, where power and water are knocked out, where uncertainty shadows every minute of the day. I saw photos of the sky over Tehran blackened by toxic fumes from bombed oil refineries. Rain passing through the thick layer is acidic enough to burn human skin. A film of oil covers windows, cars, even floors.
I think about Iranians, how they loathed the perpetrators before the conflict, how their contempt is amplified by the confusion they see in the eyes of kids too young and innocent to comprehend what’s going on.
The people of Iran are divided like we are, and some welcomed a disruption that might remove existing leadership. But it’s evident that a few strategic missiles didn’t end the regime and the war continues with worldwide implications, none of them good.
It’s spring in Iran. The doves are singing courtship songs. The ruddy shell ducks have returned to nest. Persian gardens, tended and celebrated over thousands of years, are trying to come to life in spite of the chaos around them. Iranians have seed potatoes and onion sets in hand, tomato seeds have sprouted under grow lights. In the north, fields of wheat and barley are greening, the buds of pomegranates and figs are swelling, the season for planting rice is fast approaching.
But there’s a war, with all the usual objectives of killing and spreading misery with no regard for traditions or traumatized children or, least of all, ecological damage. According to a report on NPR, we’re targeting health facilities, taking out buildings and the medical professionals in them. At least 175 kids were killed when a missile struck a primary school. The internet in Iran is sporadic at best and carefully monitored. Residents are in the dark. Our Secretary of Defense said, “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” The man in the Oval Office announced we may continue to bomb oil facilities on the island of Khard “just for fun.”
In 2023 Illinois Governor JB Pritzker gave a commencement speech at Northwestern University. The topic was recognizing idiots. He warned that idiots can be intelligent and dazzle us with words and misdirection, but what defines them is their cruelty.
He said if someone doesn’t look like us or act, think, and love like us, we have a primal instinct to fear or judge them. It’s a reaction that had value in our evolution. But giving in to acts of cruelty is failing the test of an advanced society. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being that require us to look beyond our animal instincts and see that the smartest people in the room are often the kindest.
And a kind idiot is as rare as a snowman in the desert.
John Mearsheimer, international relations scholar at the University of Chicago, referencing a 2025 article in the scientific journal Lancet, said that US sanctions on mideastern countries resulted in the deaths of 38 million people between 1971 and 2022. The intent was to inflict massive punishment so the people would rise up against their government. It didn’t work, but the cruelty was stunning.
The world spins, seasons change, bombs drop. Idiots stroke their egos while the compassionate show how an advanced society behaves. It’s my tendency, given our history of warring and social and environmental woes, to give in to pessimism, but it’s an attitude that gets in the way of goodness. Empathy and calling out cruelty are behaviors befitting spring—a fresh start, and another chance to get things right.
