Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

...few things are so important you would risk your life for them, but all sorts of things are important enough to risk somebody else’s life.

Chapter 12

I always thought people like us needed people like Raphaëlle to cope with certain situations but it is way more complex than that.

The world is made up of our differences.    It needs people like us, who only see the coloured stains and not the landscape, and it needs people like Raphaëlle, who only see the landscape even if it sometimes leads them to lose their judgments.  It is only when we are together that we can see the entirety of the picture.    One cannot work without the other.

"Astrid Et Raphaelle" S02 E01

"Would I that he was not here now, but was then, than he never was here at all’"

Freya North

"I mean to say that the impulse towards good involves choice and is
complicated, and the impulse towards bad is hideously simple and easy"

Maeve Brennan; ‘Talk of the Town’ for New Yorker

“We need to dispel the myth that empathy is ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’ Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences..”

― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, 2021

“True is such a twentieth-century concept. The question is, can I get you to believe it, can I get it repeated enough times to make it as good as true.”

—? Salman Rushdie, The Golden House 2017

It matters because it involves standards, rules and integrity in public office. And once those values start to erode - can the public ever expect to get them back?

“Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides:
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.”
Cordelia; King Lear Act 1 Scene 1

—William Shakespeare

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
  That mark our place; and in the sky
  The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
  The torch; be yours to hold it high.
  If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.