Think April is “the cruelest month?” E.E. Cummings will cure your despair.

wholly to be a fool

 while Spring is in the world

Ma Rainey sang, lived, and became the blues. But there was more to her than that “Slow, Drivin’ Moan.” (As seen in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”)

Gertrude Ederle not only swam the English Channel. She swam it faster than anyone — man or woman. (As seen in “Young Woman and the Sea.”)

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H.L. Mencken

“There’s no secret to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.”

Silent film was dead. Scandal tainted his career. His mother died. The Depression began. And Charlie Chaplin made “City Lights.”

A refrigerator note. A spark of genius. A classic poem and the senders it inspired.