Beltane \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Early Growth Moon<\/p>\n
In a long ago time I took a group of youngsters from Brooklyn Center United Methodist Church on an outing. \u00a0Wherever it was we ended up, there was a beanbag toss game that featured Howdydoody characters. \u00a0The kids, as kids always do, said, “What’s that?” \u00a0And I, as unsuspecting aging adults always do, said, “Why, that’s Howdydoody.” \u00a0The blank stares gave me my first frisson of growing old though I was only 27 at the time.<\/p>\n
On this now very outdated program there was a character whose name describes for me the season we’ve been passing through since, oh, March or so: \u00a0Winterspringsummerfall.<\/p>\n
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This is not a new phenomenon, though, as James Russell Lowell’s poem shows:<\/p>\n
by James Russell Lowell<\/p>\n
May is a pious fraud of the almanac,\r\nA ghastly parody of real Spring\r\nShaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;\r\nOr if, o'er-confident, she trust the date,\r\nAnd, with her handful of anemones,\r\nHerself as shivery, steal into the sun,\r\nThe season need but turn his hourglass round,\r\nAnd Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear,\r\nReels back, and brings the dead May in his arms,\r\nHer budding breasts and wan dislustred front\r\nWith frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard\r\nAll overblown. Then, warmly walled with books,\r\nWhile my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect,\r\nWhispering old forest-sagas in its dreams,\r\nI take my May down from the happy shelf\r\nWhere perch the world's rare song-birds in a row,\r\nWaiting my choice to open with full breast,\r\nAnd beg an alms of springtime, ne'er denied\r\nIndoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods\r\nThrob thick with merle and mavis all the year.<\/pre>\n– See more at: http:\/\/www.poets.org\/viewmedia.php\/prmMID\/22956?utm_source=PAD%3A+Spring+Song+by+Sherwood+Anderson&utm_campaign=poemaday_051813&utm_medium=email#sthash.6TuB0x7D.dpuf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beltane \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Early Growth Moon In a long ago time I took a group of youngsters from Brooklyn Center United … Continue reading The Howdydoody Season: Winterspringsummerfall<\/span>