Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In “The Wasteland”, T. S. Eliot writes: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land… I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. April 24 fell a month and a few days after Governor Ned Lamont, perhaps in consultation with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, announced on March 20 that many businesses in Connecticut would be shuttered owing to the onset of Coronavirus. To people whose stricken relatives abide in Connecticut nursing homes, that month must seem like an eternity.