Early Cold Rediscovered

Update: 2024-01-05

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January 5 - 20

In the first Season by Season episode of the New Year, Alexis and Kit prepare for the upcoming year while discussing the season of keeping resolutions, visits from snow crows, windy winter weather, and early growing plants that herald the coming spring. Hiro's Corner takes a closer look at the Japanese calendar and the naming of the month of January.

Listen and subscribe on Apple and Spotify.

Early Cold Spotify Companion Playlist

Poems featured in this episode:

January, by Winifred C. Marshall

Little January
Tapped at my door today.
And said, "Put on your winter wraps,
And come outdoors to play."
Little January
Is always full of fun;
Until the set of sun.
Little January
Will stay a month with me
And we will have such jolly times -
Just come along and see.

***

The old calendar
Fills me with gratitude
Like a sutra

- Yosa Buson

***

First calendar sheet -
When I turn it I almost feel
The globe has moved

- Yaki Tsutomu

***

New Year’s Resolutions (excerpt), by Rudyard Kipling

I am resolved throughout the year
To lay my vices on the shelf;
A godly, sober course to steer
And love my neighbors as myself—
Excepting always two or three
Whom I detest as they hate me.

I am resolved—that vows like these,
Though lightly made, are hard to keep;
Wherefore I’ll take them by degrees,
Lest my back-slidings make me weep.

***

I went to the mountain
And found the fires burning
After the Coming of Age festival

— Koji Yoshida

***
On Coming of Age Day
The snow storm, too
Celebrates

— Kaga Hosokawa

***

Static electricity from my sweater
Coming of Age Day
Is here

— Keiichi Makino

***

Plough the land, plough the land;
Hold the handles with each hand;
Furrows keep straight and deep,
Firm and steady stand.
Quickly turn around we may,
Ploughing back the other way;
Plough the land, plough the land—
Farmers understand.

***

Snow by Adelaide Crapsey

Look up…
From bleakening hills
Blows down the light, first breath
Of wintry wind…look up, and scent
The snow!

***

Ode to the East Wind by C. Kingsley

“Welcome, wild nor-easter
Shame it is to see
Odes to every zephyr
Ne’er a verse to thee.

Welcome, black Nor-easer
Over the German foam
Over the Danish moorland
From thy frozen home

Sweep the golden reed-beds
Crisp the lazy dyke
Hunger into madness
Every plunging pike.

Through the black fir-forest
Thunder harsh and dry,
Shattering down the snow-flakes
Off the curdled sky

***

Gently Falling by Emma Louise Clapp

Softly from the sky is falling
Snowflakes white as lilies fair;
Gently to each other calling
As they float down through the air.
Softly, softly, oh so softly!
Do they come from dizzy heights;
Gently, gently, oh, so gently!
Do they lay a blanket white.
Over all the many housetops,
Over shrubs and tall, tall trees,
Over hills and field and meadows,
Hiding stones and restless leaves.

***

When Days Are Crisp and Bright by Annette Wynne

When days are crisp and bright
And flakes are downward hurled,
O, to wake up in the light
And find a white, white world!
O, to look out all around
On fence, and bush, and hill,
And see the snow piled on the ground
And on the window sill!
It's hard to sit in school all day
And work and study hard,
'Twould be such fun to go and play
At soldiers in the yard.
And build a fort just like the one
The picture has with flag unfurled;
The summer's good, but O, the fun
To have a white, white world!

***

“A Year’s Windfalls” by Christina Rosetti (excerpt)

On the wind of January
Down flits the snow,
Travelling from the frozen North
As cold as it can blow.
Poor robin redbreast,
Look where he comes;
Let him in to feel your fire,
And toss him of your crumbs.

***

A crow
Which I'd usually hate
So beautiful in morning snow.

— Basho

***

Pounding the seven herbs
Doesn't drown him out...
Crow

— Issa

***

Shepherd’s Purse by Cecily Mary Barker

Though I’m poor to human eyes
Really I am rich and wise.
Every tiny flower I shed
Leaves a heart-shaped purse instead.
In each purse is wealth indeed—
Every coin a living seed.
Sow the seed upon the earth—
Living plants shall spring to birth.
Silly people’s purses hold
Lifeless silver, clinking gold;
But you cannot grow a pound
From a farthing in the ground.
Money may become a curse:
Give me then my Shepherd’s Purse.

***

To a Snowdrop, by William Wordsworth

Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

Music Featured in this Podcast

Béla Bartók - Romanian Folk Dances
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Marriage of Figaro Overture
Johann Sebastian Bach - Pythagorean Tuning, Prelude 1
Lobo Loco - Dear Happy New Year
Claude Debussy - Toccata for Piano
Gabriel Faure - Fantasie
Franz Schubert - Octet No. 2
Unheard Music Concepts - Dakota
Robert Schumann - A Tale of Distant Lands
Johann Strauss II - Tales from the Vienna Woods