I sometimes picture the peak of Northeast winters, from the season’s first snowfall until about late February, as a hearth beside which friends and family inevitably nest.  You’d think you’d see less of these people in cruel weather, but I find it to be the opposite: we come together to huddle for warmth and get a bit fatter in dark and stormy conditions. Unlike me, the season’s cold rain caused Flaubert’s heart to “crumble into ruins”. But Flaubert seems to […]