Counting Crows
on the Feast of St. Luke
"In the fullness of time,
educated people will believe
there is no soul
independent of the body,
and hence no life after death."
— Francis Crick, who was awarded
a Nobel Prize on this date in 1962
"She went to the men on the ground and looked at them and then she found Inman apart from them. She sat and held him in her lap. He tried to talk, but she hushed him. He drifted in and out and dreamed a bright dream of a home. It had a coldwater spring rising out of a rock, black dirt fields, old trees. In his dream, the year seemed to be happening all at one time, all the seasons blending together. Apple trees hanging heavy with fruit but yet unaccountably blossoming, ice rimming the spring, okra plants blooming yellow and maroon, maple leaves red as October, corn crops tasseling, a stuffed chair pulled up to the glowing parlor hearth, pumpkins shining in the fields, laurels blooming on the hillsides, ditch banks full of orange jewelweed, white blossoms on dogwood, purple on redbud. Everything coming around at once. And there were white oaks, and a great number of crows, or at least the spirits of crows, dancing and singing in the upper limbs. There was something he wanted to say."
— Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain