Monday Morning

I like to wake up in sunlight but Daylight Saving Time returns me to arising in the dark and today has been especially gray. I like the quiet of the mornings and I speak in a whisper when I speak at all. Spring arrives formally next week, the days do grow longer and I know that soon the morning sun will start my too-early days. I suppose I could sleep later, to remain asleep at least until the sun appears, but all of my life I have had to be at school early; sleeping late was never an option. I learned not to sleep late. When I lived in New York Spring seemed to arrive exactly on time—March 21—and in the City parks crocus blossoms could be seen breaking through the softening ground. Here, in Minnesota, now as the temperatures rise the snow melts to reveal not crocuses but masks that have been discarded. They do not look like flowers.

The war in Ukraine threatens everyone: the specter of full-fledged war in Europe and the existence of vast arsenals of nuclear weapons frightens me. This must be what the world felt like in 1939 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland and brought World War II onto the stage. The people I talk to admit to following the events in Ukraine obsessively and somewhat helplessly. I, too, am tied to the reports of the fighting and sitting quietly reading I pick up my devices and monitor the fighting. The headline font in the New York Times grows larger daily.

The sky begins now to lighten into a deep blue. I have a sweater the shade of the sky now. I do not know if the sun will shine: the meteorologists (whose batting averages would not get them a contract in the Major Leagues) predict a mostly cloudy day with some snow. At the moment feathery snow falls heavily covering the ground and trees. I suspect it will melt by afternoon. because temperatures are predicted to rise above freezing for the week. By afternoon today 40 degree temperatures are predicted. I know that there will be at least one more snow storm before winter honestly (and finally) ends. When I lived in Western Wisconsin twelve inches of snow fell on May 12 and was gone in just a few days. Nature asserting its authority! And as Tom Lehrer wrote, “What Nature doesn’t do to us/Will be done by our fellow man!”

William Hurt died yesterday. Body Heat (1981); The Big Chill (1983); Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985); Children of a Lesser God (1986); Broadcast News (1987); The Accidental Tourist (1988). The last film introduced me happily to the work of Anne Tyler. I guess William Hurt was an actor that helped define my 1980s. I did not follow his career after that decade, but I believe he represents important moments of a decade in my life when I spent a great deal of time in the movie theaters. I have sorely missed the movie theaters during the pandemic.