May Day

"Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date."

- William Shakespeare

May arrives cloudless and cool in Manhattan this morning.

Ah, the first of May. Peg's favorite time of year, mine being the fall with all its orange and brown and gray mist. This isn't bad, however.

In one season of my life I loved May because it was the very best sailing month in Florida, with steady shore breezes shifting into Gulf breezes in the afternoon, and almost never a thunderstorm to mar the trip.

I memorably spent May 1, 1990 in Trier, Germany, where through pure coincidence I found myself standing in front of the house where Karl Marx was born.

By Stefan Kühn, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1382946

Imagine that--standing at the birthplace of the father of communism, on May Day.

Of course, in the spring of 1990 communism wasn't having the best run, was in retrospect in it death throes now that I look back on it. We celebrated, but after going on forty years of unfettered capitalism perhaps it's time to blow the dust off those old sensibilities. Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your jobs, once AI renders your existence obsolete.

But here we are.

Peg's always celebrated the entire month of May as her birth month, in fact treats May 1st as her birthday although it's not until Monday. I still have a couple days to sneak off and get a birthday card---over the last three months, when she's in town there's not a single day I've left this apartment without her. But Monday is my first exam, which gives me an excuse to slip into a drugstore and buy one.

Speaking of exams, I'm hopelessly behind already in my preparation for finals. Time to return to that 150 page behemoth of a partnership tax outline, and get started on international tax.