(no subject)

A couple of thousand years ago:

On seeing certain wealthy foreigners in Rome carrying puppies and young monkeys about in their bosoms and fondling them, Caesar asked, we are told, if the women in their country did not bear children, thus in right princely fashion rebuking those who squander on animals that proneness to love and loving affection which is ours by nature, and which is due only to our fellow-men.
...
A colour is suited to the eye if its freshness, and its pleasantness as well, stimulates and p5 nourishes the vision; and so our intellectual vision must be applied to such objects as, by their very charm, invite it onward to its own proper good.

Such objects are to be found in virtuous deeds; these implant in those who search them out a great and zealous eagerness which leads to imitation.


--- Plutarch, Lives.
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Pericles*.html

Our neighbors have chickens now! Every day I hear their clucking and in the middle of an epidemic it sounds quite life-affirming.