That month, again.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

Happy Tax Day.

Tax Day -- usually April 15th but April 17th this year -- is but one of the disagreeable occasions that occur or have occurred in the fourth month of the year.  April is a dangerous time.

April 1 is of course April Fool's Day. That is not the only "holiday": April 22 is Earth Day, the third Monday is the Boston Marathon, April 13 is New Year's in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, and the Conch Republic Independence Celebration in Key West is April 23d. 

And, very importantly, Yuri's Night, April 12, celebrating mankind's first trembling steps into the cosmos.

A few other good things have also happened in April -- Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball on April 15, 1947, and Daffy Duck first appeared onscreen on April 17, 1937.  Apple Computer was founded, as was Microsoft. And same-sex marriage became legal in the Netherlands, the first country where it was.

On the other hand (in no particular order)...

Abraham Lincoln's death. April 15.

Adolf Hitler's birth. April 20.

The sinking of the Titanic. April 14.

Tiananmen Square, April 21.

The 1927 floods in Louisiana.
The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. April 18.

The 2010 West Virginia coal mine explosion. April 5.

The Virginia Polytech shootings. April 16.

The FBI raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. April 19.

Oklahoma City bombing. April 19.

Columbine. April 20.

The Bay of Pigs invasion. April 17

The last has significance for me, as I was born at roughly the same time the counterrevolutionaries were hitting the beach in Cuba. So today is my 51st birthday.

You can make of that last paragraph what you will.   

I am pleased that I share a birthday with Daffy Duck.  As for the rest.... eh.

As I said, Happy Tax Day.