A few days ago I started writing this with a blizzard outside my window. Over twelve inches of March snow, the kind that arrives without apology, canceling school, bending the lilacs flat against the fence. Today it is gone. Sixty degrees. The first day of spring.

That matters for what comes next.

 In the summer of 1415, a Czech priest named John Huss was burned alive in the city of Constance. He had been promised safe passage — a hearing before the church council, the chance to defend what he had preached for years. The promise was broken. He stood chained to a post in a meadow outside the city walls, wood stacked to his chin, and died singing.

Before the fire was lit, he made a prophecy.