Today’s post is brief.

I start every day making my way through three different e-mail news digests as I nurse cups of coffee. Today’s installment of The Morning, from The New York Times, included this photograph by Brendan Hoffman.

I tried to enlarge it, but the quality of the image suffered. I was so taken with it that I searched for it on other web sites. I wasn’t able to find the exact same picture, but did find these two additional shots from Hoffman’s Instagram.

I mean no disrespect by posting photos taken in a war zone, of a funeral no less, on a blog that focuses on beauty. And what’s happening in Ukraine is the antithesis of beauty. The actions of Vladimir Putin couldn’t be any more twisted and ugly and reprehensible.

What immediately struck me, though, was the contrast between the dark clothing of those gathered to mourn and the vivid colors of the flowers offered in remembrance. I may be naive, but I’ve chosen to experience that contrast as something positive…a foretelling that the humanity of the Ukrainian citizenry will prevail…as if color, perhaps, can be a kind of defiance.

And here’s another photo in the same vein.

And speaking of color, a Connecticut bagel shop, whose owner is Ukrainian, is offering blue and yellow bagels…