Monday sunrise, 7:15.

1. The actual sunrise time was 7:11. I didn't pick that photograph because I was late for the sun, but because it struck me the hardest when I got home and uploaded my collection of snaps.

2. In fact, I was out there, halfway into my morning run, at 7:02, when it looked like this:



3. I liked that, but I had thought, based on the configuration of clouds, that it would be one of the most spectacular sunrises in the series (which began on September 9th). I was surprised by the mild yellow orange. Where were the pinks and purples?

4. Does the sunrise know it will be a pleasant day and not one about which fishermen should "take warning"?

5. I say "fishermen," because that's what I heard growing up, perhaps from my Uncle Henry, who was a fisherman (in his leisure time). But I see the most common form of the rhyme is "Red sky at night, sailors' delight/Red sky at morning, sailors take warning." The couplet has its own Wikipedia page, and that includes numerous variations — "pink" for "red" and "shepherds" for "sailors" — but none of the variations has "fishermen."

6. Matthew 16:1-4: "The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired [Jesus] that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed."

7. That's the King James Version, which says "Jonas." Jonas is Jonah. Why Jonah? Back in Matthew 12, Jesus gave the same answer to the Pharisees when they asked for a sign — "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas" — but with more of an explanation: "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here."

8. "It's a Beautiful Morning" — a Young Rascals song that played in my earphones during today's run. "There will be children with robins and flowers/Sunshine caresses each new waking hour/Seems to me that the people keep seeing/More and more each day...."

9. See more today.

"Since marriage is a partnership, I’d like to know who I am and what I’m able to offer financially and how stable I am, before I’m committed legally to someone."

"My mom says I’m removing all the romance from the equation, but I know there’s more to marriage than just love. If it’s just love, I’m not sure it would work."

Says one millennial — a 24-year-old woman — quoted in "Put a Ring on It? Millennial Couples Are in No Hurry/Young adults not only marry and have children later than previous generations, they take more time to get to know each other before tying the knot" (NYT).

If it’s just love, I’m not sure it would work... But if it's also not just love, but includes all of those things you've consumed youthful years sorting out, you still won't be sure it will work. The question isn't how can I be sure...



... it's how sure do I need to be before I merge my fate, in these few short years I have on earth, with another human being? All of life is a leap into the unknown, and life sweeps by, leaping all around you, even if you stand back, unleaping. Everyone is getting older, and those who hold back, seeking security and hoping somehow eventually to find themselves, may find a lonely, inflexible self that never truly loved.

IN THE COMMENTS: Darrell said:

Luckily, you can run away at the first sign of trouble.

Mr. D said:

The only thing you can know is that your circumstances will change, so make sure the person you're with can adapt to the changes.

Is the incoherence intended as humor? As a sympathetic reader, I'll assume yes.
Darrell said:

Want to be sure? Find a beautiful 60-year-old then go back in time and grab her at twenty. That'll give you forty good years.

Eleanor said:

We're raising kids who are not allowed to take risks. Failure is not an option we give them. They've grown up risk-adverse. It should come as no surprise they're very cautious about getting married. Marriage is a leap of faith. Whether one makes lists and tallies up all the pros and cons, or just jumps off the cliff, it's a big risk. We've been married 45 years, and it was the best return on any investment either of us has ever made, but we didn't think about it that way at the time. We were just two kids who held hands and leaped.

If you're ever going to jump, you might want to jump young. Not jumping is taking a different risk.

"The very idea of cooking up opinions in conclave begets suspicions," said President Thomas Jefferson, criticizing the Supreme Court.

Quoted in a New Yorker article (by Jill Lepore) about the theft of 1000+ pages of the Felix Frankfurter papers from the Library of Congress. Context:

The secrecy surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court derives from a policy set by the fourth Chief Justice, John Marshall, who wanted the Court to issue single, unanimous decisions and to conceal all evidence of disagreement. His critics considered this policy to be incompatible with a government accountable to the people. "The very idea of cooking up opinions in conclave begets suspicions," Thomas Jefferson complained. This criticism has never entirely quieted, but every time things get noisy the Court simply brazens it out. To historians and journalists who are keen to have the Court’s papers saved and unsealed, advocates of judicial secrecy insist that the ordinary claims of history and of public interest do not apply to the papers of U.S. Supreme Court Justices; the only claim on the Justices is justice itself.

Jefferson is suspicious of the very device that makes the Court look politically neutral and bound by the strictures of legal analysis.

By the way, I like Lepore's use of the verb "to brazen it out." "Brazen" means "Made of brass" — literally or figuratively — including "Hardened in effrontery; shameless." The OED has, among its quotes for the adjective "brazen," the Jonathan Swift poem "An Epistle to Mr. Gay" (1731)

I knew a brazen minister of state,
Who bore for twice ten years the public hate.
In every mouth the question most in vogue
Was, when will they turn out this odious rogue? 

The verb "to brazen out" means "to face impudently or as with a face of brass." We see this usage in John Arbuthnot's 1712 work: "Lewis Baboon turned honest, and John Bull politician. Being the fourth part of Law is a bottomless-pit":

"When I us'd to reprimand him for his Tricks, he would talk saucily, lye, and brazen it out, as if he had done nothing amiss. Will nothing cure thee of thy Pranks Nic. (quoth I?) I shall be forced, some time or another, to chastise thee... After I have beggar'd myself with his troublesome Law-Suit..."

This is a book about a lawsuit, presented as a metaphor for war. "Lewis Baboon" = the king of France, Louis Bourbon. John Bull = England:



Looks a little like Scalia, no?

A song by men in knickers, searched out because Meade just said "Quit It" like that.

"I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore" — the first single by the Young Rascals. That clip is their first TV appearance (in 1965). I remember when their 2d single — "Good Lovin'" — came out: the radio DJ expressed relief that the band had improved the moral level of their music, as if "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore" was rather smutty. I was 14 at the time, and it was only much later that I was able to imagine that the DJ had disaggregated the words "eat out" from the idiomatic expression "eat your heart out."

The lyric at 1:11 prompts a search for that Prince song... what is it? It's one of the "Purple Rain" songs. Ah! Here.

Was Prince influenced by The Rascals? Did Prince misconstrue the 1965 lyric like that DJ maybe did? We all know Prince got terribly smutty. It upset Tipper Gore so much:



MORE: On the great lyrics scare of 1984: