“April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot wrote in his “Wasteland.”
It’s Adolph Hitler’s birthday. But you knew it, right? Go on, I would bet a tooth extraction you didn’t.
April was big for John Wilkes Booth (now, don’t tell me you remember him) who decided to go to the Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on a cold night in April 1865 and assassinate Abe Lincoln. John Wilkes, who envied his actor brother Edwin, hated the play “Our American Cousin.” (It was a flop.) Some think he just wanted to shout, “Sic semper tyrannis” — a great closing line he couldn’t resist.
I would like to see April change its name, but you just don’t mess around with a month that features Good Friday, Easter, Passover AND Eid al Fitr. Whew!
Sorry, it’s hard to be funny when April’s usual annoying showers suddenly become dark twisting clouds of hurt that bring down hundreds of tornados to rip up all the small towns of the South and Midwest.
It’s as if Shakespeare looked at the calendar on his wall, pointed his quill at the month of April, and wrote: “Something wicked this way comes.”
I see that you’ve all tossed your masks. Keep one for June weddings. Pink would be nice. It really ain’t over.
Weren’t we saddened to hear that our troubled governor came down with it again?
April — the sad, unlucky, disreputable month — is everywhere, and just beginning.
Florida’s grouchy governor, Ronald Dion DeSantis, began April by crippling Mickey and Minnie, and locking Goofy into his doghouse.
Meanwhile, Florida’s aging sunburned voters were stunned to see the King of Mar-A-Lago with the wind of the law blowing his bottle blond hair askew.
On this ninth day of April, our beloved “snowbirds” still cling to their trailer parks in Naples. I get it. I hate winter too.
How many times have I called winter “dangerous, expensive, mean, snarling and dark?” No, not DeSantis — January, which I’ve called “the rattlesnake of winter.”
April is here. Didn’t the old folks get the word about spring? Why don’t they come home and share April with us?
Is it because after we painted and hid the $6 eggs, we’re still paying $411 bucks for oil?
April still has a comedic twinkle. Even on this ninth day, I am delighted to see the twirling House debutante George Santos dancing about in the aisles. VP for Trump?
Good for George; I don’t really blame him. Have any of you noticed how much mascara has gone up?
Stop it. I’m not homophobic. Outside my doors I have only two good friends, and one of them is a lesbian. Oh, don’t clutch your pearls; she’s a highly paid member of an Eastern tech giant. I’m lucky to have her.
It’s hard to stay funny when the poor of Trump’s South and Midwest are at this moment standing in the debris of their dreams, trying once again to rebuild their lives. If you have prayers, send them one.
April, so far, is showing mercy — a temperature of 75 is promised for the end of this week. (I’ll believe it when I feel it.)
So April, you see, has shed her devil’s cloak, and borrowed some spring taffeta from George. Bless her.
Your mother used to sing of April’s showers bringing May’s flowers. For America’s poor, those lyrics bring small comfort. Pass the eggs.
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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