Now what, you darling buds?

The Jewish Standard goes into production on Tuesday. By the time you get a physical copy of this newspaper, dear reader, Tuesday’s storm will be just a distant, vaguely embarrassing memory, but for us, right now, it is all too real.

Or perhaps all too unreal.

We all are scrabbling away in our own homes right now, using a sprawling network of our own computers, hauled-home work computers, cobbled together slow networks, ebbing patience, and sheer disbelief to get the paper out.

Storm of the century! Ten inches of snow an hour! A blizzard of epic proportions! Or, well, not. Not so much. Not at all.

So here’s the irony. First, we are told to turn our clocks forward an hour — on erev Purim, of course, as if we’re masking or unmasking time itself — even though it’s only been four months since we went through the same miserable exercise in reverse. As if we can trick time. As if time has anything to do with what we decide to call it.

It’s still winter. Yes, the crocuses are up. Yes, there is green fuzz on some trees, and yes, there are buds. But it’s still winter. For another week! But no! We have to spring ahead.

And then it gets bitterly cold, soul-chillingly cold, crocus-slaying cold. If rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, what, then, of the foolhardy buds of March? Gone! And then, with Daylight Savings Time making the early mornings dim, it snows!

And then it doesn’t snow! Or at least not as much as it was predicted, and here we are, feeling foolish, with stockpiled reserves of food and Pesach on its way. We plan, and God laughs? Maybe one last Purim jest after all?