It’s a beautiful morning, and there’s something galling about it, how suddenly, just like that, the winter ends and springtime begins—rivulets of snowmelt and twists of green grass pushing up from under the rapidly thinning layer of snow in the farmland outside my kitchen window. This is going to be trouble, just in terms of law enforcement. It will work like black magic on the public spirit, this new season, the dawn of the last springtime we’re going to get. We can expect a ratcheting up of desperation, fresh waves of anxiety and terror and anticipatory grief.
