A friend writes from the French countryside: These are strange times. I’m not finding it comfortable for lots of reasons. The invisible threat casts a shadow over an otherwise idyllic springtime. When normally one’s own sorrows are cast aside, albeit temporarily, by the blossoming of nature and its infectious sense of hope, this year comes with a malaise which seems to leach all sense of renewal; and so I find myself hesitant in all I do. So I try to educate myself with Dostoevsky (never read the Russians) and with Nietzche (lectures on Youtube by a prof who has a sort of Woody Allen delivery!!!) Exhausting but interesting . . . And so we go on. — Siobhan Tucker
