Brooklyn, NY, June 19, 2020. Volume 62, Issue 1 SPRING FORWARD, FALL BACK. As mnemonics go, one of the best, as equipment for living, not the recipe we need. Though this issue hits the bookstands the day after we spin the clocks ahead, if springing forward is what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the wrong place. Many things must change, given where we’ve been, yet none of that will happen unless we come to terms with what we’ve learned. And it isn’t the lies, the self-dealing, the rancor, or even, at some level, the damage done, the lives ended, the fortunes ruined, the friends and family lost. All of that still burns, how could it not, and nothing will be forgotten, because how could it be? Yet what is truly essential, what must at last be confronted, was delivered to us drop by drop during this interminable succession of isolated days, a truth that 2020 hindsight cannot not reveal. Though elsewhere there will be other versions, in the US that truth is simple: this country is nothing like what we once believed it to be, nothing of what we too proudly pretended it was. This was a stress test, and we fractured, everywhere. Only by facing it down can we hope to mend anything at all, to earn back some sliver of credibility before ourselves and the world.