, too late.

There’s a theory that no one reads these editorials. (It’s mine.) Maybe it’s because many of them are haphazard word floods undammed by deadline. Too little, too late.T

Maybe no one cares. Note that I’m not clutching my tear-soaked hanky as I write this. Just wondering.

Well, if my surreal rants about town meetings and flamboyantly flaccid arguments for higher ed. funding aren’t reaching anyone, let alone gripping them, let me be myself.

And let myself offer you a few solutions to March Melancholy, that hopeless, almost inescapable affliction that leaps out from the shadows of late March and throws ice water on our spiritual flames.

4. Go to a cafe.

Bring a pencil, a pen, a notepad, and cash. Phone and music device optional. Write. Doesn’t matter if you like writing or don’t. If you don’t like writing, write your thoughts. Don’t think them. Write them instead.

Best performed with a base of donuts and coffee courage.

3. Listen to the New York Dolls.

They started punk. Pre-Sex Pistols, pre-Clash, they were the bridge between Chuck Berry’s rock ‘n’ roll and punk rock. But they rock more than they thrash.

Their lyrics are full of 25-cent vocab and humanistic philosophy in the midst of Berry-style straightforwardness and simplicity. The blend’s intoxicating. Their first two albums might get you revved up, but if you got March Melancholy, they might rev a bit too hard and slide you out of gear. Better to start with “One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This,” their third album, which came out in 2006–32 years after their first.

2. Jump in a stream.

Crazy? You bet. Comfortable? Hardly. But nothing snaps you out of everything like frigid water.

Clothes? Not optional. Get rid of them.

Where to find a stream in which you can be publicly nude? I’d suggest the one right under the covered bridge. It’s Johnson. No one cares. We’ve all taken the stream cure once or twice.

1. Fall in love.

Easier said than done, I know. But March and April are the first prime love-falling times of the year. Just keep your eyes wide shut. That’s when it finds you. And if it stays or if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter. It’ll still get you over the March Melancholy. But for all our sake, I hope it stays.

— Thomas Benton

Editor-in-Chief