Are really only a bit more than halfway through February? Really?
God.
For the shortest month on the calendar, this little bit of a placeholder between the frigid deep winter of January and the oncoming spring of March sure does take its sweet time passing. Maybe a few thoughts are in order about this endless, snowbound beast of a month...
According to wikipedia,
February was named after the Latin term februum, which means purification
so I assume that the blizzards that assaulted most of the nation a couple of weeks ago were nature's Purification Plant. (My yard may need half the summer to recover from how incredibly pure it has become.) At the time, February was the last month of the year because "the Romans originally considered winter a monthless period" (proving that they had at least
something right). The month sometimes had as few as 23 days.
Oh please!
Alas, the Julian calendar came along and changed all of that, and February was moved to its current spot and given its now-standard 28 days (with that silly added 29th in Leap Years just to make it even longer). Because it has 28 days, it is the only month that can pass without a full moon. It's also possible for February to go by in exactly four regular Sunday to Saturday weeks. (Thanks, wikipedia , for the fun Feb facts.)
Everyone knows that February contains four national holidays: Presidents' Day, Valentine's Day, Groundhog Day, and the Super Bowl. (Sorry: "The Big Game." I have no licensing permit.) Of course, the former of these used to be Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays. And somewhere in there is Chinese New Year. And the whole darned month is Black History Month. Busy times.
Among people born in February: James Joyce, Langston Hughes, Jascha Heifitz, Felix Mendelssohn, Horace Greeley, Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Ronald Reagan, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Darwin, George Washington, Grant Wood, John Barrymore, Galileo, Susan B. Anthony, Winslow Homer, Victor Hugo, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The month got longer in the time it took to write all those names.
Random February Quotes:
I miss everything about Chicago, except January and February.
“The most serious charge that can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February.”
(Joseph Wood Krutch)
“February is a suitable month for dying.”
(Anna Quindlen)
Basically, Folks, it just plain is not a great month. Judging from some of the pie fights in the past couple of days, kos might have been better off waiting until March to bring out his dK4 baby. Too many people are feeling too damn February.
I'll leave you with a poem I wrote last year about this month. I think it expresses my feelings reasonably well.
The Longest Month
The children will tell you
it's December,
the days crawling by like years
as new snow beckons
outdoor thrills
and Christmas looms
always justthisclose
but never
close
enough
or perhaps, if they considered,
they'd argue for May,
when the browngrey dullness
of winterscapes have
exploded
into blooms of color
and sunlight
and the warmth calls to them
to run
leap
play
but only
through schoolroom windows.
Children will tell you
and children are sure,
but there are matters in this world
beyond childish comprehension:
months into the seasonal gloom
when the memory of first flakes
has lost all of its charm
and cantankerous rodents
dream peacefully
of spring
after condemning the rest of us
to waking worlds of winter,
when bitter chill and
blasting snow
keep crocuses sleeping
past expiration dates,
when false lovers' holidays
foist pretend fire
into the silent kilns of
empty hearts,
ever-growing snowbanks
remind us of
what we learn each year
what melts away with the banks
each spring:
hell is not a place
of fire
and searing burning crackling
pain
hell is a landscape
endless, frozen,
cold
barren--
those whose eyes are open
are vouchsafed
a vision of it each year
if they choose to see.
February will end
and color return to the world,
but the wise
the adults
the seeing
know that it is the warmth and colors
that are the illusion,
as much as the
prognostications of
that weary woodchuck
and the flimsy arrows of
the churlish cherub,
and the chill of the
longest month
lives within us
waiting
waiting to freeze
to restrain
to pierce
the hearts of
those who believe in
spring
and joy
and love.
They do not exist.
They are cruel fabrications
thrust into the mind
by the devilish
interminable
monotonous
lonely
empty
snowbound
longest
longest
longest
l o n g e s t
[sigh]
longest month.