Looking at photos of trees in full, leafy green foliage and bugs flying through the air, sun shining, I wonder if the whole thing isn’t mythical. Was that photo really taken around here? C’mon. Really? That’s Photoshopped. Has to be.

Yes, folks, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but spring is a myth. It doesn’t really exist, it never really has and it never will. All your memories of neon green, fresh leaves were simply last night’s dreams. Those tulips and daffodils? You saw them in the grocery store, but they’ve never been known to grow here.

As a society we don’t need health care insurance. What we need is health care assurance, with or without insurance companies.

Insurance has been the biggest bane of our health care “system” in the United States. Admittedly, insurance is a very necessary evil if the primary source of payment for health care is the individual recipient. Also, insurance is necessary for smaller employers who provide insurance benefits for their employees. There, insurance serves to collect from many to pay for individuals when needed, thus spreading the burden when calamity occurs.

Toward the end of a particularly blah Monday, I came across a very fitting cartoon that said: “What a lovely winter we’re having this spring.”

It actually made me smile. Because it is so true.

I think many people can relate when I say smiles have been hard to come by for the past nearly two weeks as everyone has a major case of winter blahs.

Snowbanks are shrinking, but they’re still there. We had some sunny days for awhile, but the wind remained brisk and winterlike, not soft and springlike.

Wednesday and Thursday of every week I have a regular habit of looking up stories at pineandlakes.com. When we lay out the newspapers on Tuesdays I usually keep an eye out and choose which stories I will be looking at online.

Sometimes I start checking before they are even posted online, but I keep checking feverishly until they are there. This might be strange, considering I write at least a couple of the stories. I mean, what could I be looking for?