It has been a horrible spring season in Chicago. Last week was cold and we had snow. It stayed cold all week and this just after our first squirt of warm had fattened the buds on the trees. Many had already begun to split open, showing slivers of white flower or pink, and I studied them every morning to see if they had been killed yet. The hyacinth turned brown, the water in their capillary tubes frozen solid. The tulips wilted and fell. My hopes for a glorious spring faded. It snowed on Easter Sunday, the day the Sun is supposed to come back to the earth, to bring the green. A week later, on my birthday, Sunday, April 15th, I paid out $1,500 in taxes, the freelancer's curse. The Lakota say that there are four universal hardships in life. When your mother dies. When someone in your family dies out of order of age. When you are surrounded by your enemy. And when there is a long winter...