The Story of Ireland. Neil Hegarty, author (Thomas Dunne, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press). Ireland has an extensive literary tradition. On the bio page of my website, the second photo shows me at the Dublin Writers Museum. It’s a bit small and stodgy, but I enjoyed going there to read about the Emerald Isle’s famous writers. Who hasn’t read Swift, Yeats, Joyce, Wilde, Shaw, Synge, and the other Irish greats? Just from that sample, you’d think there’d be more good histories of Ireland written. But this small island’s history is so vast and its influence on England so important that it’s hard to imagine one book doing it justice. This is one, but it does it at the cost of emphasizing the political over the literary history. It probably should have been called A Political History of Ireland. (There’s a relation with a BBC documentary series I couldn’t quite understand.)

It covers a lot of that political history, though, from ancient Ireland with its Viking and Anglo-Norman influences to nearly the present day (it stops at 2011, so it can’t cover the effects of BREXIT, for example). For much of the book, it appropriately treatd the entire island as one, so it doesn’t distinguish Northern Ireland from the Irish Republic until the end, and that gives the reader a much better understanding of all the political currents that over centuries gave rise to the Troubles.

I learned some new facts too. Palladius brought Christianity to Ireland before Patrick, although the latter’s political astuteness and influence made him most remembered. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was Irish (is Wellesley, a town in Massachusetts with a famous college—Hillary Clinton went there—named after him?). James Collins, of the Easter Uprising, faced the British firing squad sitting down—he’d crushed his leg in battle. And that other Collins, Michael, was killed near Cork at thirty-one. I have to wonder if social reforms would have come sooner if he’d lived as long as Éamon de Valera—this Collins was a Social Democrat in the style of many current leaders in Europe, at least in those countries differing from Hungary, Italy, and Poland, which are essentially fascist states now.

The author does as good a job as can be expected in condensing Irish political history into one book. The prose flows like a novel. It was more entertaining than a lot of the fiction I’ve perused in these days of pandemic too, and if the associated documentary ever made it to PBS, I’m sure it was better than that stuffy, silly Downton Abbey.

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Comments are always welcome.

Prequel cameos. Sometimes characters from already existing novels clamor for their own…and my muses (really banshees with Tasers) listen to them! Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series are examples, in this case thanks to “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco.”

Esther appeared in The Collector and Bastiann appeared in both Aristocrats and Assassins and Gaia and the Goliaths. Esther’s prequel cameo is part of the story of how stolen art can be used to finance other evil activities, in this case porn videos. Bastiann’s first prequel cameo occurs when Castilblanco, on vacation with his wife, gets involved with a terrorist who’s kidnapping European royals. His second occurs when he’s helping track down the murdering head of an energy conglomerate.

You don’t need these cameos to understand Esther’s series, but they’re evergreen books you will have fun reading. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor’s, Gardners, etc.). “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.”—Mason Cooley.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

The US is huge and probably has the most diverse population among all industrialized nations. We should all understand and embrace the different currents and eddies coursing through the American cultural ocean, but they’re just that, parts of an American cultural experience. “Black culture,” “Irish culture,” “Italian culture,” “Jewish culture,” and many others belong to the past and are part of American culture now. To dwell on these ingredients thrown into our grand melting pot is to live in a past, one that has often been full of social injustice, hatred, and violence. We should get past the past and move on to discover a better future.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, massive emigrations from Europe to the US led to many atrocities like those committed against Irish and Italians, but now we seem to have grouped them all together as “white culture,” and now too many pit that against “black culture.” I suppose there’s some historical logic to this because of the slave trade, although historically African tribes enslaving members of other African tribes was at least as common as white men enslaving other vanquished white men if they didn’t wipe out all the males on the losing side. Human beings had a habit of doing horrible things to other human beings, and still do.

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The most glaring difference between traditional and self-publishing resides in the delays ubiquitous in the former. As a mongrel (both a traditionally and self-published author), I have the experience to support my opinion: Traditional publishing is painfully slow! Some might argue with me (especially the publishers!), countering with something like, “Well, Steve, there are a lot of books, and each author’s work goes into a long queue.” Yes, that’s true. But if a self-published author isn’t 100% DIY (they should contract out editing, formatting, and cover art at the very least), there are still queues among those offering those services. The difference still remains. It’s due to the bureaucracy involved in traditional publishing.

For a traditional publisher, a book is produced by a committee formed from the publisher’s staff members. Each step in the process is handled by a few people, and the managing editor washes his hands of the process once they start the book through the gantlet, i.e. no one really guides a book through that publishing gantlet. In self-publishing, the author guides the book through to publication. As the most interested party for getting their book published, they can keep on top of things. Traditional means hands off; self- means hands on. And the differences in results are quite significant.

I’ve had traditionally published books take as long as two years after a contract was signed. (Even more if we count the time between submission and contract; for the author, that’s often a long duration too.) I’ve had self-published books take as little as two months between finished MS and publication (which reinforces the point that I should count the time between submission, i.e. finished MS, and contract, for traditional publishing). Traditional moves like a snail crawling in molasses; self-publishing can move at lightning speed.

Another reason for delays is that so many publishers don’t want authors to concurrently submit queries for an MS. When they often say at the same time that authors must give them six months to reply, how many months does this stupid policy add to the process? Agents do this too, only the run-around publishers give them adds to the run-around they give their clients. To avoid these added delays, authors should query small presses who don’t require submissions by agents and allow concurrent queries, but all the delays mentioned above are still there.

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While Margaret Atwood would lump both of these genres under her catch-all category “Speculative Fiction,” they’re really very different, even though a bookstore might ignorantly shelve them in the same section. Sci-fi peers into the realm of the possible and is often an extrapolation of current science and technology; fantasy peers into the realm of magic and the impossible and generally ignores all science and technology. Many scientists read sci-fi but eschew fantasy; many authors who are ex-scientists write in many genres but usually not fantasy.

I personally think many authors who write fantasy are often just lazy at best (they don’t want to learn the science) and anti-science at worst (they hate science). The good ones at least make sure their fantasy universes have a consistent set of rules, and sometimes their stories can be literary masterpieces; the bad ones don’t seem to care. (J. K Rowling fails miserably at consistency, and her work is filled with deus ex machina situations as a result.) Many young writers don’t like science or understand it, so they’d rather invent an impossible tale that stirs up emotions and excludes logic and reason. It’s better to do both: create a story that celebrates humanity with its interesting mix of both emotions and logic and reason…even if it’s a fantasy story.

Of course, the boundary between sci-fi and fantasy is fuzzy. Always has been. One can even see them overlap in one novel. For sci-fi, it often comes down to how well the extrapolation of current science and technology is done. The farther one moves into futuristic settings, the more the science seems like magic. Clarke said that any really advanced technology can seem like magic for that reason. Just think of the cellphone, that little rectangular device that seems like a human appendage now, and how it would seem to a caveman. Hell, even in the original Star Trek, “communicators” seemed so futuristic, yet they’re ubiquitous today; and some of Bones’ diagnostic devices are incorporated in Apple watches!

Fantasy doesn’t even bother to explain how things work. You might want a wand like Harry Potter’s, but Rowling can’t tell you how to make one or how it works without a bunch of fantastic mumbo-jumbo verbiage. And good luck in getting one…or finding that train station in London. Really?

I’ve heard people complain that sci-fi is pure escapism. Maybe. It shares that quality with most fiction. We often read to experience things we can’t experience in everyday life. And that escapist criticism applies in spades with fantasy, where mythical creatures and absurd situations abound.

I don’t know where the border between sci-fi and fantasy lies. I just know I can determine if a novel is mostly sci-fi (some have fantasy elements) or if it’s mostly fantasy (some pretend to be more science-oriented). I like to read the former but not the latter, in general. Your reading choices might be different.

I do know that I don’t like online or brick-and-mortar bookstores to conflate sci-fi and fantasy—they should know better. I also know they both shouldn’t be considered part of speculative fiction, which is such a large category that it’s completely meaningless.

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Comments are always welcome.

“Mary Jo Melendez Mysteries.” This mystery/suspense/thriller trilogy follows the adventures of ex-USN Master-at-Arms Mary Jo Melendez. InMuddlin’ Through, she leaves the Navy and gets a new job working in security in a company that makes MECHs (“Mechanically Enhanced Cybernetic Humans”), mechanized warriors for a secret Pentagon project. The MECHs are stolen, and Mary Jo is framed for her sister and brother-in-law’s murders. After some time in prison, she escapes and begins an odyssey to clear her name, but a secret government group is after her; they want her to get the MECHs back. In Silicon Slummin’…and Just Getting’ By, she starts a new life in Silicon Valley, this time as security head for a computer games outfit. Two teams, one US and the other Russian, now want the MECHs, and they think she knows where they are. And she also is pursued by a stalker. An autistic kid helps her. In Goin’ the Extra Mile, she now has Chinese agents after her. They kidnap her family, and she has to go to Beijing to save them.

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” Mason Cooley. Here’s lots of reading entertainment available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker&Taylor’s, Gardners, etc.). Enjoy!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Trump’s administration is the worst in American history…and like all fascist-inspired executive institutions, it is also incompetent and perfidious. The NY Times seems to have problems calling Trump and his administration fascist; I’ve been doing so since the 2016 campaign. I guess people like Robert Reich have finally decided that word describes Trump. I suppose I should feel vindicated.

Allow me to ignore the many tweets from this narcissistic ignoramus where he displays autocratic behavior and stupidity. I’ll be nice and just make a list of some his recent gaffes and sins where he shoots himself in the foot:

Stimulus program for individuals. His economics team, all of them Ayn Rand-supply-side-trickle-down con artists, Mighty Mouse Munchkin in the lead, convinced this man who takes credit for every NYSE good day to “save the economy” with this stimulus. Hard to do, because he only likes government largesse if it’s directed at him! Even GOP members of Congress got onboard in a rare instance of bipartisan agreement (Ayn Rand Paul was probably the exception—he doesn’t even want to prevent lynching), knowing they could co-opt the program to their one-percenter constituents’ benefit.

Not only was the stimulus too little and too late, there had to be a work-around for people who don’t declare electronically and people who had not yet declared their 2020 taxes. Checks and debit cards were sent out to the latter two groups. But people who never declare because they make too little, the nation’s poor who need the money more, were left out. Checks were stolen. The debit cards looked like those credit cards people receive as spam mail, so many cut them up. And carnivorous scammers preyed on everyone.

Complete incompetence.

Stimulus program for businesses. Another egregious gaffe occurred in sending funds to help businesses in COVID distress: (1) Some didn’t ask for it; and (2) others didn’t deserve it. But the policy disaster didn’t stop there. Small businesses who did need help, and lots of it, couldn’t get it. They had no relationships with the mega-banks in charge of distributing the funds, who naturally favored their privileged clients. And so many conditions were placed on the funding, many small businesses were afraid to apply.

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To show how illogical book taxonomy is, horror is often considered part of speculative fiction. Most of it isn’t sci-fi, which I think Ms. Atwood equates to speculative fiction in her mind, so there is a question of how to classify it. And it often has a lot in common with fantasy, but even non-fiction can contain a lot of horror. We often think of Stephen King as the horror-master, but Misery is a fairly standard thriller, albeit containing a lot of horror…especially for authors! And is it always speculative? Does that word just mean “imaginative”? If it does, “speculative” isn’t needed in “speculative fiction” because all fiction is a product of an author’s imagination…and therefore imaginative!

But I digress. The question today is whether horror should be a subcategory of speculative fiction. Let’s dig deeper. First, let’s analyze this question: Is horror horrible? My theory is that we’ve become blasé about horror. Real life is often more horrible than anything Stephen King can imagine or write. And what authors sometimes do in the horror genre now, looking to horrify readers more than the other authors, often seems campy and laughable. King’s Misery is a good thriller story; it’s not in the horror genre, but it portrays how life can become horrible. His It is just a bad story unless we take is as YA, in which case It becomes a parody of child abuse and kids’ fear of clowns.

Perhaps the problem is to distinguish between horrifying and terrifying. Books in the horror genre are perhaps best when they’re also terrifying. That’s what distinguishes Misery from It; the former is terrifying because it seems real—as Clancy said, fiction must seem real to be of value; the latter is just clownish horror, pardon the pun. This happens a lot, and King isn’t the only guilty author. Monsters, vampires, werewolves? I don’t find them terrifying, but they’re the clownish staples of many horror books and movies.

Maybe I’m inured to horror and more terrified by what occurs in real life, even if it’s described in fiction. For a long time, the most terrifying movie I’d ever seen was Alien. It has a monster more monstrous than the one in It, a much better monster because it didn’t make me laugh at the campiness. King’s monster is just a humorous parody. Most of his stories are laughable fantasies in that sense, completely out of touch with reality. They’re well written, I suppose, and much better than stories about vampires and werewolves, which I can’t even begin to consider real creatures.

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Margaret Atwood likes to use “speculative fiction” as a catch-all category for her work and others’, everything from paranormal stories to hard sci-fi. Somewhere in that broad category you’ll find fantasy too. I prefer to be a bit more refined in my taxonomy—that’s “refined” in the sense of a more precise categorization of what a story is about. There’s nothing refined about a zombie in the sense of “refined gentleman”! Speculative fiction is just too general. Apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, ghost stories, zombie stories, fantasy, psi-fi—Ms. Atwood would cram all those into her speculative fiction genre. And probably make those who must shelve books in brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries go completely insane!

Genres, subgenres, and sub-subgenres are needed within speculative fiction. And don’t forget all the cross-genres—how would Ms. Atwood handle A.B. Carolan’s YA sci-fi mysteries? YA, sci-fi, and mystery are all major genres, and A.B.’s Mind Games could be classified as psi-fi too.

Of course, Margaret isn’t to blame for all this confusion and chaos. She has a following. Between them and the anti-cultural appropriation crowd, it often seems like a war between authors. Can someone wave the white flag, please?

Why don’t we just put everything into the categories of fiction and non-fiction? All fiction is speculative by definition, after all…i.e. not real. Nope, that doesn’t work either. What does one do with historical fiction? A lot of that type of novel isn’t fiction. For example, my Son of Thunder, which I classify as a mystery/thriller, could also be classified as historical fiction—a fictional tale is woven into real history, although some of the history is filled in a bit. (It could also be classified as Christian lit, which is another catch-all genre like speculative fiction.)

The Dewey decimal system was invented to help sort out this chaos. (I’m dating myself. I’m not sure millennials know what that system is. They tend to do their “research,” i.e. search for background material, on the internet now.) It just created more chaos, but it makes computer sorting and cataloging easier, even with non-fiction books, assuming the number given to a book makes some sense. It and all other single-item taxonomy systems fail with books.

A book is better categorized using key words. YA, sci-fi, and mystery can be key words. So can hard sci-fi, psi-fi, fantasy, cyber and steam punk, and so forth. But who determines the key words? This is like all data-retrieval efforts: they succeed only to the extent that the humans categorizing the data are competent.

In answering that question, the book’s publisher has a thorny problem, and the solutions often don’t smell like roses. For self-published books, the author might be the publisher, but, even in that case, and certainly for traditionally published books, the problem still exists. Take Amazon, for example. Their search algorithms use key words (smart move), but only the publisher can set them (dumb move). The author usually knows best what key words apply (or can figure it out easily enough by comparing the book to already existing books), but most publishers often fail miserably because the publishing execs and their minions determining the key words don’t read the books they publish. Readers have to fall back on title and author, the first a poor guide to content and the second useless if the author writes in many genres.

This is definitely detrimental to browsing, especially if that depends on a computer. By shelving in brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries often works against browsing too—I’ve found Rembrandt’s Angel among the art books at B&N! (I’m guessing that the knucklehead doing the shelving completely focused on Rembrandt in the title.)

To their credit, though, people doing the shelving, and even publishers, pay no attention to Atwood. I for one have never seen her category Speculative Fiction when I’m buying books. But I’ll give her credit: Readers could find Rembrandt’s Angel a lot better if it were shelved under that category. They would only find it by accident at that B&N.

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Comments are always welcome.

The creation of ITUIP. The “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” my celebration of and homage to Asimov’s Foundation series, tracks how the Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets (ITUIP…pronounced “eye-tweep”) came into existence, and a lot more. In Survivors of the Chaos, you’ll travel from a dystopian Earth dominated by multinational corporations and policed by their mercenaries, to a starship’s arrival at the distant planet New Haven in the 82 Eridani star system. In Sing a Zamba Galactica, you’ll begin with first encounter at New Haven and end with humanity saving Swarm, a strange collective intelligence. In Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, you’ll meet a psychotic human industrialist who wants to control all of Near-Earth space—he’s my version of Asimov’s Mule…and a lot scarier!

I’m proud of The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection and its extrapolation from current to futuristic science. Here’s what Pulitzer-nominated author David W. Menefee said about the first novel: “Readers steeped in current literature will appreciate the brevity of scenes that burst in front of you with a blinding flash of startling detail and then exit as quickly as a comet streaking through the night sky…ensnares you aboard a mental roller coaster catapulting over the hills and valleys of a world gone mad…a disquieted galaxy peppered with a roster of characters that would make a casting director envious, highly detailed space scenes, and an inspiring plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat.”

Many centuries of the galaxy’s future history await you in this ebook bundle of all three novels. Only $5.99 at Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor’s, Gardners, etc.), this bargain bundle will give you many hours of reading entertainment.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note from Steve: Everyone seems to be addicted to knee-jerk reactions these days. Here’s mine, although it’s a call for sanity.]

I hope sanity prevails, but the subtitle here is a statement made by a protester in Minneapolis; it indicates temporary insanity, at the very least. “Defund the Police” is the new mantra, although its real meaning is often unclear. When the mayor of Minneapolis was asked if he would end the the MPD, yes or no, his answer was the only sane one: “No!” The protesters then booed him as he left the angry mob.

This isn’t a productive discussion, folks. Let’s look at it logically (I know that’s hard for many people who are drunk on adrenalin): Who would run toward and not away from the action when a mass killer like the one in Las Vegas opens fire? Not that woman on the stage in Minneapolis, that’s for sure! Who would pursue a man who raped and killed his victim? Maybe those people who booed the mayor, forming a lynch mob. Who would arrest the DUI driver who just killed your kid? Not anyone in that Minneapolis crowd. And who would protect cities from terrorist attacks? Those dead after the 9/11 attack and other terrorist incidents would see no justice.

A few bad cops doesn’t make a whole organization bad. We’ve seen cops marching and embracing protesters of George Floyd’s murder. Good people watch that video and are horrified. But good people also know that police departments are necessary…and it’s better that they’re local police departments instead of something like the Nazi SS, East German Stasi, and so forth. We need more community policing, not federal policing, but we’re likely to get the latter if anarchy rules the day.

If you think an ordinary citizen is trained to do all I mentioned above, you’re an idiot. Period. I saw that someone even suggested social workers should assume policing duties. Huh? If true, that’s more insane than asking school teachers to carry guns so they can stop school shooters. People must be trained to perform the tasks mentioned above. Policing is a profession, and local police departments are filled with well-trained and caring professionals for the most part. Ever heard the expression “You’re throwing out the baby with the bath water.” It applies here.

Whatever the status of your local police department, it is the product of an evolution over centuries. If you know the history of Ireland, where you were only fined if you shot a local Irishman but beheaded if you shot an English occupier (around the thirteenth century, if I remember correctly), you’d think the Irish wouldn’t want cops around either. But they do. Their Garda is an excellent deterrent for all the crimes mentioned above. A similar evolution exists in most democracies. A corrupt and oppressive police force characterizes autocratic states.

A well-equipped and well-trained police force is an absolute necessity in a sane, modern, and democratic society. Otherwise, you have anarchy and chaos. Or maybe those who cry “Defund the police!” want to see looting and destruction of property continue. Most people aren’t criminals; we have to protect them from those who are.

Ending police departments, or even slashing their budgets, will just cause a huge backlash. People’s stupidity is all too often rewarded. We got Trump in 2016 that way. We’ll get him again in 2020 if we give him a “Law and Order” platform. Defunding police departments is not a liberal cause: It’s human stupidity in action, but Trump loves it! Defunding police departments will lead to a police state with Trump as dictator. Is that what you want?

I’m on the side of that Minneapolis mayor, no matter how much Trump says he’s weak. There are no simple yes or no answers here. But at least that mayor’s smart enough to know that without a local police force, we’d first have anarchy and then a backlash to that leading to a police state. Sane people ignore the Hobson’s choice the protesting woman gave the mayor. They fix what’s broken and keep what works. And the City Council in Minneapolis should know better. How did they ever get elected?

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Comments are always welcome, even if you disagree (just keep it clean).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

The lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic are many. Unfortunately some are about scurrilous human behavior. As much as we say “Be smart…stay apart” and “Don’t be an ass…wear a mask,” there are knuckleheads and jerks who can’t seem to follow that advice, creating danger for others as well as themselves. One young man in California stated, “It’s so good to see people out here [on the beach] breaking quarantine.” It seems partying is more important than keeping people alive for some.

The most scurrilous behavior comes from young people who think it’s okay that older people die. Another party goer might say, “You have to die of something,” but “those people in nursing homes were going to die anyway,” or “They’ve lived a long life; I need to live mine.” These pronouncements show a lack of respect for elders shown by too many Gen-Xers on down who are selfish and arrogant. These people are basically condoning viral euthanasia: Get the old-timers out of our way now! is their mantra.

What are these people thinking? Every COVID-19 death, all 100,000-plus of them as I write this, is tragic. What gives these people the right to steal a woman or man’s remaining days so they can go out and play, eat, drink, and be merry in some bar or at some other event packed with fellow party-goers? “Irresponsible actions” isn’t a fit description of this attitude. These people don’t even deserve to be called human!

It seems that working together to defeat this virus is just too much trouble for some idiots. While it’s true that the Trump administration isn’t showing much moral leadership in this regard, these knuckleheads—many of them with red MAGA hats—don’t care about nursing home patients dying, they don’t care that little kids’ hearts are stopping, and they don’t even care that persons their own age get sick and die. It’s time these people become more responsible and less stupid. Frankly, I wouldn’t care so much if the virus only killed the irresponsible people—we could eliminate some of the stupidity genes from the gene pool—but they’re probably in contact with responsible people who do their civic duty but will die as these knuckleheads spread the contagion. That’s how the virus spreads! Through knucklehead behavior. It loves ignorant and selfish people.

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Ah, spring!

The flowers sprinkled around this post prove spring has sprung. I hope they improve your mood. They improved mine, which has been slapped around a bit after the pandemics caused by COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd. That first pandemic is dwindling here in the NYC area, which is no longer the world’s epicenter—Brazil is. That second pandemic is still going on as I write this.

Spring always makes us feel good. The changes in the sun’s angle causing the dark days of winter to morph into bright spring days are exhilarating. Leaves come back on the trees; flowers start popping. (There are three kinds in the pics. Can you name them?) There’s a pleasant buzz to life as Gaia takes her perennial bow.

From ancient times forward, human beings have celebrated the coming of spring. What’s more, the plants and animals seem to join in that celebration…or even lead it. Hazel, the groundhog who lives under our shed every spring, uses our yard to feed, preparing for the little groundhogs who are on their way. (I’m sorry I don’t have a pic of Hazel. She’s a shy critter.)

As a kid, I often wondered why the ancients didn’t celebrate New Year in spring…and I grew up in California where winters aren’t that bad. I learned why that wouldn’t work for both the northern and southern hemispheres even before I started in school, but it was still a nice thought because spring seems to make the world seem better.

These are good thoughts to have in these troubled times. Spring is full of hope. We called it an Arab spring because there was hope for democracy in the Middle East; we now call what’s happening there the Arab winter. Darkness and despair are associated with winter; lightness and hope with spring.

Of course, spring is really the opposite of fall, summer of winter. Those oppositions don’t detract from my belief that spring is the real beginning of the year. It just occurs at different times in the northern and southern hemispheres, but it’s still a beginning. Life seems to rev up again each spring for all of us.

I’m sorry that victims of COVID and Mr. Floyd can’t see another spring. Or maybe they can…somewhere it’s eternal spring?