Splendor in the grass: The 5-Second Mile-High Club

A rite of spring played out in my front yard last week: robin kama sutra. At first I thought these two were fighting. Then it continued, ad nauseum. Now I get where “round robin” comes from. And baby robins, of course.

Oh, the red, red robin goes bob-bob-bobbin’ … (needle scriiiiiiatch). No. Rockin’ robins don’t dig rock ‘n’ roll. Their dish is ballet.

UPDATE: Turns out these two WERE fighting. An ornithological expert has since contacted me to set me straight on the territorial behaviors of male robins. Sigh.

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Signs from God at the Reason Rally

This was the photo used on the cover of the National Atheist Party’s newsletter … and there we are! Me, proud in my Northwestern U purple T-shirt, hands on my hips and smiling, with my husband midsentence behind me. Our redheaded girl is to the right in photo — you can see just part of her head, standing in front of her tall friend Andrew (black hair and sideburns).

A popular — rather, prolific — sign at the Reason Rally read: “God Hates Bags.”

Upon arriving at the National Mall, we overheard someone explaining that sign, meekly saying they couldn’t get away with writing the word that rhymes with “bags,” blah, blah, blah.

Well, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, as I wasn’t sure where they were coming from or who was mocking whom. We are so trained to try to put people with signs in boxes before deciding what to think.

One of the speakers saved me the trouble, giving it the right context: “I see there’s a typo on your sign. Should say: ‘God Hates Facts.’ ”

(And I have removed the entertainment I’d posted here previously, because it seems a certain madcap genius is also litigious. Sorry, Tim Minchin fans. )