The First Sunday of Spring: Hang In There Folk

Today is the first Sunday of spring. Somewhere spring is in the air and that joyous feeling of the warm southerly breeze caressing one restores one’s spirit. Alas, on Cape Cod the calendar lies – we have to wait until Memorial Day for spring to come with its smiling face and before we can get too used to it summer with its heat pushes it away.

Did you ever wonder why spring, summer, fall, autumn or winter are not capitalized? I always thought that they should be. I guess you could say I did not learn my English grammar too well for I am sure within one of my lessons it would have explained the reason why days and months are capitalized but grouping them together is not.

Did you ever wonder why we have four seasons? Some countries where it is hot or cold all the time only have one. Others have two. Then there are places like Cape Cod that really needed only to have three of different lengths with winter being the longest. I used t o tell myself “if winter is here can spring be far behind.” That offered me hope that the cold would end at some not too distant date so I would not get so down. For some reason when  I chanted that this year it offered little succor. The answer always came back telling me it was far, far off. Maybe that had something to do with the Covid-19 pandemic. Or, perhaps more likely aging when cold seems to strike with greater fury.

Does anyone use the word autumn anymore? Where  does that word come from. Some suggest the Latin autumnus but that’s like saying the word Boston comes from the Latin Bostonus. It seems no one knows. Prior to the word autumn being adopted in the English language the season was known by the prosaic “harvest” which seemed most appropriate.

Here’s an interesting article that speaks to all the seasons as it attempts to explain why we have two names for the season after summer: fall and autumn. It leans to the idea that fall is the American term while autumn is more British. I have a more simple explanation. Having just gone through a changing of the clocks the only way I knew what to do with the hour was to think of the rhyme “spring ahead and fall behind.”  I move the hour hand ahead in spring and back in fall.

Now imagine the confusion one would have if the saying were: “spring ahead and  autumn behind.” I’d suggest the Americanisation of the word wins out. Plus, who ever thinks of the word autumn when the leaves start to fall and the plants wither. As for spring how appropriate is it when we see the crocus spring up adding the first touches of color to the drabness of winter.

Unlike  last year when we faced an uncertain future as Covid stalked the land this spring we can look forward with hope. Yes, Virginia, there will be a time when we can shed our masks. But not quite yet. Let us stick to them and the distancing for a bit longer. We are almost to the finish line but have not crossed it yet.

2 Comments

  1. Matt
    Ed Tatro in Quincy Mass said to say hi to Matt.

    https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/the-devil-is-in-the-details-by-malcolm-blunt-with-alan-dale

    Saturday, 20 March 2021 17:04
    The Devil is in the Details: By Malcolm Blunt with Alan Dale
    Written by James DiEugenio

    Malcolm Blunt may, in fact, be the most important little-known JFK researcher of our generation. Jim DiEugenio uses this review of Alan Dale’s excellent new oral history, The Devil is in the Details, to survey Malcolm’s crucial contributions to the evidence that has been exposed today and to pay tribute to his tireless, selfless, and insightful work.

    This book is an oral history. The interviewer is Alan Dale and the interviewee is Malcolm Blunt—with minor appearances by authors Jefferson Morley and John Newman.

    Dale is the executive director of Jim Lesar’s Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC). He has worked with authors like Newman and Joan Mellen. He is a close friend and admirer of Malcolm Blunt, who is, by far, the major personage in the book. Unfortunately, many people, even in the critical community, do not know who Malcolm is. Why is that?

    That is because every once in awhile there comes a character in the JFK case who isn’t interested in doing interviews, starting a blog, writing books or articles, or getting on the radio. This type of person essentially wants to dig into those 2 million pages that were declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). He or she wants to find out what is and is not in that treasure trove. I was lucky enough to know someone like this back in the nineties. His name was Peter Vea. He was an American living in Japan at the time the ARRB was forming. He said he was returning to the USA, relocating to Virginia and planned on visiting the National Archives to see what had been declassified. He asked if I would be interested in him sending me some of these documents. I said, of course I would. Many of the articles in Probe magazine were based upon the discoveries that Peter made in the archives. And Bill Davy’s fine book, Let Justice be Done, owes much to Peter’s work. But yet, Peter is virtually unknown today.

  2. Matt
    Looking out our bedroom window at the raised wooden flower bed in our yard
    overtaken by 2 foot hard packed snow drifts with
    Kale plants, left over from last years vegetable garden poking thru the crust.
    Frozen in time from our sub zero weather here in the
    mountains of Industry Maine their leaves have turned
    muted camouflage greens and brown.

    Thoughts turn to rototilling , preparing glads and dahlia
    bulbs for spring planting, pruning the suckers on the apple trees in
    the orchard and picking up 3 or 4 truckloads of manure to work
    into our garden.

    We get that from our neighbor who runs a small horse farm.

    About two miles up the road lives our neighbor Will Bonsall.
    We will soon pay him a visit to acquire heirloom
    vegetable seeds for our garden this year.

    https://www.scatterseedproject.org/#scatterseed

    Reporting from the Industry Maine Whisper Stream
    called one of the silliest places in Maine

    https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/maine/10-towns-silliest-names-me/

    Elbows Wychulis