“A long winter”

Connie Converse, May 3, 1950, from a folder labeled TRIES :

I cannot help this private pessimism. The sun shines in many places, but this continent seems to be declining into a long winter, and all our strength, all our warm tradition may not be enough to hold it back. We have become a nation of awful paradox: hysteria inlaid with unconcern, literacy woven with misconception, democracy wrapped up in tyranny, boldness nailed down by fear. I have no doubt of the outcome, but I dread the interval.

As found in Howard Fishman’s To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (Dutton, 2023).