EDITORIAL

In Foolish Times, Read New Bay Crimes!

We couldn't resist.

Not that we wanted to. We've been waiting all our life (we turn six on April 22; you're invited to celebrate with us May 16 - but more about that later) for April 1 and our publication date to coincide.

Thus we bring you New Bay Crimes!

You won't want to believe quite everything you read in Vol. VII No. 13 of what we hope is your favorite weekly newspaper. On the other hand, there's a lot of truth in these pages. Especially this week, we're following in the footsteps of 14th century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, whose combination of "best sentence and moost solaas" we roughly translate as wisdom you want to read.

We've always thought wit the best solace, so it's the spoon we've used to stir the pot of truth this April Fools Day.

History is truth being stirred.

We took our subject, as well as our tone, from the calendar. Year after year, our calendar follows Maryland Day with April Fools Day. Since this is the season to celebrate folly, we gladly gave in to the old *Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy and let our minds wander.

Is the proximity of those dates really coincidental? Or is there some hidden truth in the realm of cause and effect?

Following those lines, we could, this year, have written about Maryland's latest folly, our big-bucks duping at the hands of Marriott Corporation.

We took a higher road, turning a joke to teach Maryland history. Trusting you to know the difference between fact and fancy, we hope you'll follow some of the paths we've marked to learn more about Mary's Land.

We also hope you'll join us in giving in to the spirit of folly. Haven't you been feeling prankish, in need of a good joke? We certainly have.

Our historic research hasn't explained why April Fools Day falls when it does ­ or why it's celebrated at all. Yet it pops up all over the world, in such whimsical varieties as Scotland's Taily Day, which we're told is dedicated to pranks involving the buttocks.

So we're free to believe what we want. Which is, as another poet says, that April is the cruelest month. Its favorite little joke is now you have warm spring (always on a work day); now you don't (naturally, it's the weekend). But a joke is a joke, and you laugh, even when it's on you. Laughter being contagious, you catch spring fever and break out in your own jokes.

That's what we've done with New Bay Crimes!

May your day, too, be filled with folly.

*Literally, after this must be because of this. In logic, the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy describes the particular kind of faulty thinking that supposes the first of two notable events in close sequence must have caused the second.

| Issue 13 |

Volume VII Number 13
April 1-7, 1999
New Bay Times

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