bone of contention...

"Let the long contention cease!
    Geese are swans, and swans are geese."
Matthew Arnold

(swans or geese? you decide... )


"GOOSE, n. A bird that supplies quills for writing. These, by some occult process of nature, are penetrated and suffused with various degrees of the bird's intellectual energies and emotional character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very great geese indeed."
Ambrose Bierce

(hmm...doesn't sound like it. let's just say "bird" then..)


"A bird , so vehement and intense his life... The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds  -  how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives  -  and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!"
John Burroughs Birds and Poets, 1887

(yes!!)

"One swallow does not make a summer."
Aristotle

(possibly not...)

"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring."
Aldo Leopold

i was going to say that, Aldo!
so spring is here - where? - it's now official...fingers crossed!?