Tag Archives: The god Mars was nasty and so is his month

March comes in like a Lion and leaves like a Lamb

“Like many proverbs for the month of March, it can be traced back to Thomas Fuller’s 1732 compendium, “Gnomologia; Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British.”

Fuller compiled numerous proverbs and studied weather lore across many countries through the late 1600s and early 1700s.” 

Tom Sater, CNN, 3/2/21

 

 

This is definitely one of my least favorite months.

I don’t worry so much about “Beware the ides of March” – – it’s the whole month that’s unreliable and treacherous.  It lulls us with brief interludes of spring weather – –  so you let your guard down and start putting away the heavy coats, hats, gloves, scarves and boots – –  before stabbing you with ice storms and never-ending sniffles.

I just took a look at that scene in Shakespeare’s play.  Cassius is telling Brutus that “we can both endure the winter’s cold” as well as Caesar – – but I noticed, none of those guys lived in Milwaukee.

Try walking around here in a toga during the winter and you’ll start losing body parts pretty quickly.

The freezing-and-thawing breaks up the roads and often leaves an icy glaze on the sidewalks, so walking around is really less a matter of marching and more of a dangerous schlep.  I recently ran across the term “footslog,” another good term for getting through this month.  I looked it up, it’s new to me but found it’s been in use since 1897, I guess it just took a long slog to get here.

March can be bad news, as when the “warming trend” sometimes turned out to be nuclear meltdowns and radioactive leakage — Fukushima and Three Mile Island ( March 11, 2011 and March 28, 1979 respectively) — or the Iraq War, which began in March 2003.   John Philip Sousa, the March King, died in March.

One of my grandmothers lived in the Genesee Valley, south of Rochester, NY and would talk about the ice storm of March 1991, which brought down thousands of trees and left her without electricity for two weeks.  There were chainsaws, chippers and stump-grinders roaring for weeks.  Parking lots all over town had huge piles of wood chips and sawdust, which began fermenting and steaming like little volcanoes and sometimes would begin smoldering through spontaneous combustion.

She was sad about the loss of trees, but otherwise had a pretty good time.  She refused to leave her house, cooked meals in the fireplace and ate by candlelight.  When a utility crew finally showed up on her street, to clear fallen limbs and reconnect the electric lines, she went out to bring them coffee and was delighted to find that they were from her hometown in northeast Pennsylvania.

 

 

March Comes In Like a Lion?

Yeah, it was a typo.

Not like a lion, 

it was meant as a warning,

March comes in, lying.

A nasty flimflam man,

Selling ice to the Eskimos.

Shows up every year here in River City

with a Spring in his step

Talking of green pastures and lambs

Just spinning yarns and waving arms

Full of wind and promises

 

March is a thug named for the god of war

And just like his dad,

A blustering blowhard

Always running with a chill goon squad

Ready to ice somebody,

All hail!  and sleet.

The Sun tries to smile, get a look in

But March just bares his gray teeth

And pulls the clouds shut again.

 

 

 

Frostbite, milwaukee, snow, Socks, steam radiators, Sweaters, Things to Do When Your Water Crystallizes on You, Uncategorized, Winter, wisconsin

Not so much Marching as Trudging

Image
Arrant Nonsense, Holidays, Sweaters, United States, Winter

A New Holiday. Happy Equinox Day

 

In the northern U.S., March is often miserable.  Muddy, mucky, mildewy.  It is the Monday morning of months.

Even the mud-caked mutts I meet, mooching along the murky, meandering Milwaukee River, look a little morose.

People are tired of wearing boots, gloves, all these layers of clothing.  Not much spring in our step, as we march along –  fleeced, booted, scarved – outfitted in the Full Milwookie.

And scratchy hats.  As I’m sure you know, the expressions “shock of hair” and “Mad as March hair” are based on the deranged, staticky mops we get in northern climates, after wearing knitted wool hats, nonstop, for five months.

It’s a month named for Mars, who was kind of an idiot, even by the low standards of Roman gods. The god of war, and his quagmire month, when they kicked off the Vietnam and Iraq wars.  I noticed the Mars Bar is being sold in the U.S. again – why don’t we name the month after that, instead – it’s gooey,  brown, and full of nuts – perfect for the season.

Winter seems to be eating up more than its share of the year, and keeps dropping in, uninvited, for another bite.

During the brief thaws, soggy gloves and decaying mittens emerge from the gritty snowbanks, looking like pathetic squirrel carcasses.  Sometimes they actually are squirrel carcasses.

Shivering and pale, we curse as we wade through icy puddles of semi-congealed brine.

Dehydrated from freezer burn, feeling a bit testy, even unbalanced some days.

Everything we see and hear, heck the whole darn planet, feels tilted.

I’m inclined to believe, everyone could use a holiday in March.

How about we hatch a new one – – Spring Equinox Day.

We’d focus on balance in our lives, personal and public.

On a day when light and dark are held in balance.

A day to spend with friends and family, and not at work.

Spring Equinox Day wouldn’t improve the weather, but it could take our minds off it, restore our equilibrium a bit.

A celebration of normalcy, stability, and reasonableness.

Crack open a thesaurus, and just look at all those rare and wonderful qualities:

Fair.  Equitable.  Even-handed. Rational.

Lucid.  Clearheaded.  Sensible.

Even-keeled.

Equinox Day would have no sporting events, no car races, no sales, no politicians.  No windbags are allowed to go politicking – – gassy blimps would be allowed, but only for parades, and not making speeches.

The pundits, professional mouthpieces, and talk show hosts should take the day off, too, and give their mouths a rest.  And citizens would be invited to speak instead, in a reasonable way, about “Reasonableness.”

Schoolkids would earn medals for the best essays and speeches on these qualities.  The adults can join them, feeling well-rested after sleeping in, and from our naps during the speeches, and we’ll all turn out for a day of service to our communities.

We have, in theory, a Women’s Equality Day (August 26) marking adoption of the 19th Amendment, and Equal Pay Day, which changes each year, based on the wage gap between men and women.  (Germany also has that observance, since 1988, but fixes it on March 18th.)   International Women’s Day also came and went, on the 8th, without too much press.  A couple of states have transformed Columbus Day into Native Americans Day.  Juneteenth (“Freedom Day,” “Emancipation Day”) is now observed in 47 states and may be finally gaining traction to become a federal holiday.

I haven’t thought all this out yet, so Equinox Day is still pretty vague and Pollyanna-ish, but it actually seems like a decent idea.   It seems politically neutral, even in the seven states which don’t believe the Earth revolves around the sun.

And it seems fair and reasonable to ask people for suggestions – –  post as many as you like, you can stuff the ballot box like a Chicago alderman.   They’ll be reviewed in a dispassionate, reasonable,  even-handed manner… and then I’ll just chuck out the ones I don’t like.  No!  just kidding, I’ll be glad to hear what you think.

 

 

I broke my last eggcup, and had to hire these guys. They’re in the union, but luckily, work for scale.

 

Standard