To understand June in Minnesota, you have to understand late October and November and December and January and especially February and March in Minnesota, when winter won’t get up and move on, when winter gets depressed and stops combing its hair and washing its face, when you no longer think about how cool the geometry of snowflakes is or how cool the physics of skating is, and the air is essentially a psychopath you should not be spending a lot of time with, and then it’s February and the snow looks like an ashtray and then it’s March and you get more cold and blizzards so it seems that the forces of randomness and entropy are just showing off so you just shrug and show up for work and take your vitamins and try to work the rowing machine now and then and not be too much of a drag. And then around mid-April, which elides into May, this part of the planet starts to get it together; it starts to slowly warm and bloom; and then you have June and June is just so awesome and the world is green and the air is gentle. I like to think that happiness is the natural culmination of character building but sometimes it’s just “Hey, I’ve been let out of prison.” So as you park your car, and put your arm around your almost-fiancée, and approach the Minnisapa Days Midway, you chalk one up for photosynthesis as you step on the oxygenating grass and you thank the planet for tilting in such a way that you can roll up the sleeves on your oxford shirt and walk around at 9:00 at night in daylight.