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“If you’re ever going to love, love me now while I can know / All the sweet and tender feelings which from real affection flow. / Love me now, while I am living; do not wait till I am gone / And then chisel it in marble–warm love words on ice-cold stone. / If you’ve dear, sweet thoughts about me, why not whisper them to me? / Don’t you know ‘t’would make me happy and as glad as glad can be? / If you wait till I am sleeping–ne’er to waken here again, / There’ll be walls of earth between us and I couldn’t hear you then. / If you knew someone was thirsting for a drop of water sweet / Would you be so slow to bring it? Would you step with laggard feet? / There are tender hearts all around us who are thirsting for our love; / Why withhold from them what nature makes them crave all else above? / I won’t need your kind caresses when the grass grows o’er my face; / I won’t crave your love or kisses in my last low resting place. / So-then-if you love me any, if it’s but a little bit, / Let me know it while living; I can own and treasure it.”

A very powerful writing from the collection Best Loved Poems of The American People published in 1936 by Doubleday.

Isn’t that what Valentine’s Day is all about? Telling those we love how much they mean to us. In turn, the love is reciprocated. It may be the one day of the year when love is freely given voice to.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was probably the most eloquent…

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. / I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight / For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. / I love thee to the level of everyday’s / Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. / I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; / I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. /I love thee with the passion put to use / In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. / I love thee with a love I seemed to lose / With my lost saints. -I love thee with the breath, / Smiles, tears, of all my life! -and, if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death.”

I wanted to share some of my favorite writings with you on the most romantic day of the year, the day of the heart…

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

***

Don Jackson

“I believe flowers have souls. I have known roses that I expect to meet in heaven.”–Lucy Maud Montgomery.

The French writer Collette takes that thought to another level altogether. “All of us wince when a rose–falling apart in a tepid room–lets go of one of its shell-like petals, and sends it adrift into its own reflection on a smooth, marble surface. The sound of its fall–very soft, distinct–is like a syllable of silence, and enough to move a poet.” Maybe it does have a soul to elicit such a response in us…

At my family home, where I grew up, there was a climbing rosebush that survived for more than fifty years. My grandmother, on my father’s side, had planted it. Every year, for as long as I can remember, the rosebush was filled with deep red blooms. It would probably still be blooming had it not been for the fact that a major supermarket chain now stands where I spent the early years of my life. Its demise had a helping hand, though. A neighbourhood prowler tried to break into the house back in the mid-90s. Close to the bush was the oil tank for the home’s oil furnace. The prowler tried to get access into a side window by stepping up onto the tank. He broke the spigot and oil came gushing out, drowning the roots of the old rosebush. The rose that had survived brutal winters and dry summers finally gave up its will to survive, and died. It was heartbreaking when I tried to dig up its roots after the incident. That August plant, that had scented the air for so many years, would never flower again. Its blooms would never again fill the vases in our family home.

I’ve mentioned this legend in a past program. A hideous creature was the subject of one of Aesop’s fables. The creature offered shelter from the bitterly cold winter night to a man was lost and alone. The creature offered a place to stay and a warm bowl of soup for the man who was suffering from the effects of the elements. The creature ended up putting the man back out into the cold, when he learned that the man could blow hot and cold with his breath. He observed the man blowing into his hands to keep them warm on the journey to the creature’s dwelling, and then using his breath to cool the steaming bowl of soup set before him. The creature’s intentions were honorable in the beginning. He was willing to provide the man food and shelter for the night, and promised to act as a guide to lead the man out of the forest at dawn. He did more than the beast did in Beauty and The Beast. During last night’s snowstorm, I would have accepted any help offered to make it into the studio on time…

That fable had an important moral. There is, however, a legend about another man lost in the woods that has a basis in truth. The legend is about the cathedral at Hildesheim, the location of the world’s oldest rosebush. Emperor Louis was separated from his men while out hunting for deer. Night fell, it was snowing and the brutally cold wind had sapped most of his strength. He hung his crucifix on a thorn tree and prayed for help. He fell asleep in the deep snow, which is a dangerous thing to do on a cold winter’s night. He did survive the night and woke with the dawn to find the thorn bush filled with blooming roses. His companions were seen in the distance coming to his rescue. In Louis’ case it was better to battle the elements than receive the help of some unsightly creature worried about breath that could blow warm and cold.

They say the rosebush has bloomed for over 1,000 years…

The roses we receive as gifts generally last a week. A rosebush in the garden may survive for many years if properly cared for during the growing months and protected against the Canadian winter. The only way we can try to preserve their beauty is to dry them and make a potpourri. My wife has saved many of the roses I have bought her over the years. On one kitchen wall, she has hung a few roses on their stems that dried perfectly. It is a small but beautiful arrangement. There is another arrangement in the house that really shows her creative spirit.

Some years back, a client, who was considering advertising on CHFI, sent me an arrangement featuring absolutely stunning Ecuadorian roses. There is so much fragrance to roses that begin their lives in the teeming tropical jungles. In a past issue of Victoria magazine, I read about a florist in California who was marketing the large-petaled varieties of roses that are grown in the Amazon rain forest. She was also involved in helping to re-cultivate the depleted rain forest there with these roses. Last night, while I was struggling through the snowstorm to get here to do my show, my wife was photographing the topiary she created with the Ecuadorian roses we received so many years ago. If you look carefully at the photo included in this blog, you will see they have not lost their original beauty. They may be a little faded, but something of their essence has continued to survive through my wife’s creative vision. She seems to have been able to capture  and preserve some of the “soul” that Lucy Maud Montgomery referred to at the beginning of this blog.

They certainly won’t last a thousand years, but they have been the source of so much beauty in our home that I wanted to share a little bit of it with you tonight, on this the eve of St. Valentine’s Day.

I hope you have a wonderfully romantic day tomorrow. Be listening throughout the day to Erin and Mike, Michelle and Bob, as they play some of the most romantic love songs of all time. And be sure to join me tomorrow night between 9 and 11pm for a most romantic celebration of love with Lovers and Other Strangers…

***

Don Jackson

“Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds. Let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place.” - Apocrypha, and featured in the February 1997 issue of Victoria Magazine.

I mention the fairytale Beauty and the Beast in my radio program tonight. Whenever I think of this very simple love story with its powerful message, I’m reminded of the production that played here in Toronto for an extended run. It also reminds me of a memory I will always cherish.

One night during that winter, my wife and I hosted a group of my radio listeners to dinner and an evening presentation of Beauty and the Beast. If my memory serves me correctly, it was also a night of blowing snow. These were contest winners who were out on the town with us that night. We all had a wonderful dinner together and conversation around the table concerning my evening radio program. It was one of the rare opportunities I’ve had  to meet my very loyal radio audience, welcome them in to the warmth from out of the cold, and treat them to an evening on the town.

The presentation was like a fairytale come to life. The magic was so real that night as we sat in the darkened theatre to see a story we remember so well brought to life on the stage. The special effects were so convincing, especially the rose under the glass.

As a special treat, we were invited backstage following the performance to see how some of the magic was made. Just enough was left a mystery to pique my interest even more.

It was one of those rare occurrences in winter when a rose was made to bloom for a captive audience - even if the rose was only theatrical magic. If you were one of the lucky winners who accompanied us on that long ago winter night, I hope you still have fond memories of the romance of this very simple love story that was made to come to life for us.

To conclude this companion writing, an excerpt from the book, Diary of a Rose Lover, by the French rosarian Henri Delbard with watercolors by Fabrice Moireau, published by Harry N. Abrams. This excerpt was also featured in the February 1997 issue of Victoria Magazine.

“The rose has been offered to us to open our sensibility, our hearts, our imagination, the rose to which the gardener…has added soul…”

The rose eventually opened up the heart of the Beast, and continues to warm those hearts made cold by a winter that has overstayed its welcome.

Tomorrow night’s radio program will feature a little more romantic valentine myth and magic….

And, by the way, the name of the rose….Belle.

***

Don Jackson

“Landor’s cook displeased his master one day by serving an indifferent meal. Landor in a passion threw him through an open window. Landor cried out, “I forgot the violets!’” An anecdote concerning Walter Savage Landor (17775-1864) British poet, essayist and critic from Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes.

When my wife and I want to send flowers to her relatives and our friends in Montreal, we call one florist there. It is a little shop just a few blocks away from my in-laws. We could go online and order flowers but we know the work that this florist does and, most importantly, the florist knows us.

It is not a huge shop, but it’s been around for quite a few years. It is this small florist that local people go to when a wedding is planned. It is also the person they see when flowers are needed when a family member or friend passes away. The person behind the counter knows the customers and their families, and knows the arrangement that would be perfect for the occasion. Being in business in one location for such a long time, the owner knows the store’s clientele and knows what flowers or plants they prefer. Buying flowers for any special occasion is a purchase which is very personal in nature.

In the past, people knew who the local grocer was and the grocer knew his customers by name. If there ever was a time when the family was in need, the store owner might have allowed credit until his customer was back on his feet again. The same was true for the local variety store and the beat officer. It is a changed world we live in today. To be successful in anything we must sometimes look back to see how far we’ve come, and what was left behind in our race to move onward. Some large businesses are trying to bring back that personal touch. In a very impersonal world I think it is the right step forward.

***

Don Jackson

“Duckweed flourishes in the wells / And brambles block the roads. / Skunks and snakes dwell on sacred altars . While muskdeer and squirrels quarrel on marble steps. / In rain and wind, / Wood elves, mountain ghosts / Wild rats and foxes / Yawp and scream from dusk to dawn.” An excerpt from The Ruined City by Chinese writer Pao Chao who lived between 414 and 466. The poem was translated into English by C. J. Chen and Michael Bullock and featured in the collection World Poetry: An Anthology Of Verse From Antiquity To Our Time, edited by Katharine Washburn and John S. Major and published by the Quality Paperback Book Club, New York.

The “rat” was mentioned in that brief excerpt from the poem by Pao Chao. I’ve often featured ancient Chinese poetry in my radio program that airs at night on CHFI. I once read an interesting comment on the poetry written in China. “Chinese poetry is of all poetry I know the most human and the least symbolic or romantic. It contemplates life just as it presents itself, without any veil of ideas, any rhetoric or sentiment; it simply clears away the obstruction which habit has built up between us and the beauty of things.” An excerpt from An Essay on The Civilization of India, China and Japan written in 1914 by Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson who lived between 1862 and 1932.

I don’t necessarily agree with his comment that it is the least “romantic.” I’d like to give you a few examples contained in the collection mentioned above. You be the judge.

“Snowy coats and snowy crests and beaks of blue jade / Flock above the fish in the brook and dart at their own shadows, / In startled flight show up far back against the green hills, / The blossoms of a whole pear-tree shed by the evening wind.” Egrets by Tu Mu who lived between 803 and 853, translated by A. C. Graham.

This is another example.

“The night creeps in, / And every sound of human life is hushed. / Even the tinkle of the camel bells / Comes muted through the dusk. / In the faint, dying light / Of the waning moon / The first hibiscus flower, falls.” Ch’en Yun, who lived between 1886 and 1910 and translated by Henry H. Hart.

…I can almost hear that delicate hibiscus flower as it gently falls to earth.

“I have moved to this home of Immortals. / Wild shrubs bloom everywhere. / In the front garden, trees / Spread their branches for clothes racks. / I sit on a mat and float wine cups / In the cool spring. / Beyond the window railing / A hidden path leads away / Into the dense bamboo grove. / I take a leisurely ride / In the painted boat, / And chant poems to the moon. / I drift at ease, for I know / The soft wind will blow me home.” Living In The Summer Mountains by Yu Hsuan-Chi who lived between 843 and 868, and translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung.

We seem more concerned about our horoscope at the beginning of each Chinese New Year. We might want to take a few moments to immerse ourselves in the beautiful words and images that immediately transport us to a different time and place…

I envision some of these writers sitting at a desk lit by the light of a single candle, and with pen and ink, documenting a moment in time. It reminds me of a scene from the film Hero that starred Jet Li. There are many scenes that seem to be awash in color. The extravagant calligraphy in elaborate swirls of sand by a master calligrapher and the servant who uses a long-handled wooden slat to erase what the master creates. It is said in the film that one Chinese character can be written 19 ways. I’m also reminded of the scene where the artist grabs an arrow in flight, breaks off the end and uses it to draw in the sand.

One of my favorite movies was the Ang Lee masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It is a film that, at times, gives the impression of a dreamlike state. The concluding sequence when Jen jumps off the mountaintop and floats like a butterfly through the clouds and mist gives me even more pause to consider a thought by Chang Tzu.

“I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.”

***

Don Jackson

Ow! My aching back and arms…

I mentioned in last night’s program that yesterday I felt like I had pitched at least a hundred shovel-fulls of snow. I said I was exaggerating. Tonight, I’m not….By this morning, I had…

Before heading out into the storm last night, I shoveled the driveway for a third time that day. Last night, it took me twice as long to get home due to the storm. Upon arrival, I found a driveway that desperately needed attention. So there I was shoveling again, trying to be quiet so as not to disturb my neighbours across the street.

A friend passed by walking his dog. This was the friend who played “Auld Lang Syne” on the accordion for us on New Year’s Eve. He saw me struggling with the snow left behind by one of the snow plows at the end of my driveway. I was grumbling about its weight and how many times I has cleared the same area. He said I had the right idea to try to keep ahead of the storm. He said the plow was on his street, which is only a few blocks away. I’m hoping it will pass again tonight to clear up the tonne of snow that is still on the street in front of my boulevard.

Eyes are the main focus of my program tonight. I also feel like I’m suffering the effects of snow blindness. That sun was so bright this morning that I was seeing spots for the longest time after I finally came back into the house. I’m thankful for the glasses that I wear. They darken in the bight sunlight, but it still wasn’t enough to keep the glare out of my eyes.

Sometimes our blindness has nothing to do with the glare of the sun on a field of snow…

“A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye, and it puts everything out of focus. Hold it at proper viewing distance and it can be examined and classified. Throw it at your feet, and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway to eternity.” Celia Luce featured in The Points To Ponder column of the May 2001 issue of The Reader’s Digest.

I think we’re all a little snowblind tonight. We may have set a record for snowfall on yesterday’s date. My aching back and the spots before my eyes can attest to that fact.

***

Don Jackson 

Shrove Tuesday… Mardi Gras

“…If one eats a pancake on this day one will have money all the year.” An excerpt from Superstition and The Superstitious by Eric Maple published in 1971 by A. S. Barnes and Co., Inc., in New Jersey.

It’s the day before Lent, and because of that there will be wild parties in places like Venice, Rio and New Orleans. Mardi Gras, or Carnival as it’s also known, will attract thousands. New Orleans is still recovering from the effects of that devastating hurricane, but there will still be huge crowds of people on the streets and in the nightclubs and bars. The crowds will come spilling out onto Bourbon Street for parades and merriment. Beads will be the currency that will be more precious than anything else today. My wife and I visited New Orleans some years before the hurricane. We saw the long, dusty strands of beads hanging in souvenir shops. They were basically worthless when we visited the city in the high heat of summer. But there would come a day when they would be the most coveted and sought-after prize of Mardi Gras revelers. Today is that day.

As it said in the Reader’s Digest edition Why In The World? All You Ever Wanted To Know About The World Around You But May Never Have Thought To Ask! was this about Pancake Tuesday. “Shrove Tuesday, the last day before the austerity of Lent, was once in some countries a day for schoolboy pranks. Teachers were stopped from entering schools. If they did get in, they were expected to take part in the day’s fun and games. … The day, known sometimes as Goody Tuesday, was also one for great feasting. The last chance before the forty-day period of Lenten abstinence. Pancakes made a convenient way of using stores of fat, particularly beef and mutton dripping, which were forbidden on Ash Wednesday and after. Often, pancakes were cooked at monastery gates and distributed to the poor. In some parts of Britain, the feast was always signalled by the ringing of a bell, which became known locally as the Pancake Bell.

“The Pancake Bell also summoned families to church for their ’shriving’ or confession. Some households gave their pancakes rich fillings in preparation for hours of waiting in church. Ringers of the Pancake Bell were traditionally entitled to a gift of pancakes, provided these were eaten before eight in the evening, when a curfew came down on all merriment and, in medieval times, all fires and lights were put out.”

Accompanying this article is a dated photograph of women in the small town of Onley in England with ‘frypans in hand and pancakes ready for tossing.’ These residents took part in a pancake race every year on Shrove Tuesday. There were even races of this type in this country in the past.

All this talk of pancakes is making me hungry, so why don’t we give a helping hand to this little fellow in the kitchen. He seems to need all the help he can get making pancakes for his parents. This is a writing called Pancakes. It is Author Unknown and was sent to me via e-mail by a few listeners in the past.

“Six-year-old Brady decided one Saturday morning to fix his parents pancakes. He found a big bowl and spoon, and pulled out the heavy flour canister, spilling it on the floor. He scooped some of the flour into the bowl with his hands, mixed in most of a cup of milk and added some sugar, leaving a floury trail on the floor–which by now had a few tracks left by his kitten. Brady was covered in flour and getting frustrated. He wanted this to be something very good for Mom and Dad, but it was getting very bad. He didn’t know what to do next, whether to put it all into the oven or on the stove (and he didn’t know how the stove worked!) Suddenly, he saw his kitten licking from the bowl of mix and reached to push her away, knocking the egg carton on the floor. Frantically, he tried to clean up this monumental mess but slipped on the eggs, getting his pajamas white and sticky. And just then he saw Dad standing at the door. Big crocodile tears welled up in Brady’s eyes. All he’d wanted to do was something good, but he’d made a terrible mess. He was sure a scolding was coming. But his father just watched him. Then, walking through the mess, he picked up his crying son, and hugged him.

“We try to do something good in life, but it turns into a mess. Our marriage gets all sticky or we insult a friend or we can’t stand our job or our health goes sour. Sometimes we just stand there in tears because we can’t think of anything else to do.” This writer goes on to say, “That’s when God picks us up and loves us and forgives us–even though some of our mess gets all over Him. But just because we might mess up, we can’t stop trying to ‘make pancakes.’ .. Sooner or later we’ll get it right, and then they’ll be glad we tried.”

***

Don Jackson 

“The nineteenth-century Rothschild family kept great state in, among other places, their home in Waddesdon, where Alfred Rothschild lived. One day Prime Minister [Herbert Henry] Asquith, who was staying from Friday till Monday, was waited on at teatime by the butler. The following conversation ensued: ‘Tea, coffee or a peach from off the wall, sir?’ ’Tea, please.’ ’China, Indian or Ceylon, sir?’ ‘China, please.’ ‘Lemon, milk or cream, sir?’ ‘Milk, please.’ ‘Jersey, Hereford or Shorthorn, sir? …’” An excerpt from Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes published in 2000 by Little, Brown and Company.

This is a rather curious superstition included in the book Superstition and The Superstitious by Eric Maple published in 1971 by A. S. Barnes and Co., Inc., New Jersey. “In a curious and rather pleasing little rite associated with twentieth-century tea table a girl who takes the last piece of bread and butter is often told that she will now acquire ‘a handsome husband or ten thousand a year’. Until the last war the sum was a tenth of this amount, but it has apparently increased with the rise in the cost of living. Incredible as it might now appear, this superstition is a direct heritage of the old-time ritualism of the harvest field when the last sheaf of wheat or corn was often plaited into a ‘dolly’ or ‘kern baby’ and presented to one of the unmarried girls, who was then expected to acquire both a husband and money before the year was out. Thus the old magic of the peasant cornfield continues to survive disguised as a fanciful modern afternoon tea-rite.

“Stirring the tea in the pot … from right to left, it goes without saying can cause a quarrel …”

When I first arrived at CHFI, my Program Director, at the time, once invited me to afternoon tea to discuss the show. We met at a hotel in downtown Toronto and enjoyed scones with our tea while discussing the show. I will always remember the flavour of the tea, its aroma and how fresh the scones were. Appropriately, it was exactly tea-time in the late afternoon. We never quarreled, so the tea must have been stirred correctly…

Have you ever had your tea-leaves read? My wife has. It was done by a someone she knew and was more a pleasant distraction than actually trying to divine the future. Eric Maple goes on to write: “Sometimes clairvoyance takes place behind a facade of ritualism, as in the minor sorcery of teacup reading. In several cases it was discovered that the symbolism of the tea-leaves had very little, if anything, to do with the actual process of prediction, the eyes of the teacup reader being tightly closed throughout the process while the ‘future’ presented itself in the form of a mental picture. It is obvious that in this type of ‘prediction’ the tea-leaves themselves merely provide a focal point for the concentration of the seer, and a framework for the visionary process.”

Any time I’ve ever looked at what lies at the bottom of the pot or the cup, I see only wet, soggy tea-leaves. I wonder what that says?

This is an excerpt from an article about coffee in the November 2002 issue of Chatelaine. “In Turkey fortunes are told using coffee grounds. After the coffee has been drunk, the cup is covered with an inverted saucer and swirled three times clockwise. The fortune teller then interprets the settled grounds.” How my future can be determined by the dregs of my coffee I will never understand. It’s something I’ve never quite been able to figure out. I guess it’s the same principle as reading tea-leaves…

It was Groundhog Day over the weekend. I thought this would make a nice little tie-in. Do you know what was one of the most popular in the series of 150 porcelain figurines included in packages of Red Rose tea in the 1960s and 1970s? It was the hedgehog, of course. Jude Isabella in enRoute magazine, and featured in the RD Relationships column of the November 2002 issue of the Reader’s Digest magazine, said: “Canadian collectors scour the Internet for some of the 200 million figurines scattered across North America. Trade is brisk. The post-accident Jack and Jill now fetches $120.” She doesn’t mention what the hedgehog is worth, though. The figurines were discontinued in the 1980s when the company changed hands. Jude Isabella mentions the fact that window ledges became “figurine museums.” I remember my mother collecting them and displaying them on her kitchen windowsill. She also had quite a collection of teacups and saucers, too. They were proudly displayed in her china cabinet on special stands. A very good friend of ours also collects beautiful teacups and saucers. Some are very old and very fragile. When she met my mother, she commented on my mother’s wonderful collection. Shortly before my mother died, she carefully packaged up some of her more precious cups and saucers and presented them as a gift to our friend. In hindsight, I think my mother knew they were going to a good home. My mother made sure to give my wife a few. They are now in our china cabinet. They are truly a very precious keepsake from a past generation.

“To be allowed, no, invited, into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the southern bitter worm-wood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist.” Maya Angelou from I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, published in 1970. I think most of us enjoy brewing a pot of tea and enjoying it with a good book. Maya Angelou also writes: “All I cared about was that she had made tea cookies for me and read to me from her favorite book. It was enough to prove that she liked me.”

Valentine’s Day is just over the horizon. This poem from the past was featured in Roberta B. Etter’s book Tokens of Love published in 1990 by Abbeville Press. It also suggests a way to see the future. ”On Valentine Eve while / Drinking tea, / Be sure the cat your friend / Will be; / For then your future will / Be bright, / Your true love you will see / That night.”

To conclude, another anecdote from Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes. “Just after acquiring his first set of dentures, W. H. Auden attended a tea party given by some ladies in Boston. When his hostess asked him to blow out the flame under the teapot, Auden did so with gusto. ‘My dear,’ he later said, ‘My uppers went crashing into my neighbor’s empty teacup!’”

Be careful when you blow out the flame beneath a teapot.

***

Don Jackson

William Cullen Bryant wrote: “Come when the rains / Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice, / While the slant sun of February pours / Into the bowers–a flood of light.”

I have shoveled the snow four times already today. Not only do I do my own driveway and sidewalk, I also clear out a neighbor’s driveway. Four times since early this morning. I feel like I’ve cleared a ton of snow, and I probably have. This was not a light fall. The snow is very heavy. The trick is to remove it in small amounts when the snow weighs so much. Don’t try to overload the shovel.  …And keep the number of the chiropractor at hand..

While out shoveling today, I reminded myself that I will need to ensure my wooden bridge over the pond is cleared off. It’s not that the bridge is flimsy by any stretch of the imagination. A neighbour and I built it from scratch and reinforced it many times over. It can hold the weight of at least three grown adults at its midpoint. That said, I  still don’t want to take any chances. Three years ago I had a problem in the pond and needed to plunge my arms into the frigid water to correct the problem. I know how cold that water is. Jane Goodwin Austin wrote: “Deep down within the frozen brook / I hear a murmur faint and sweet, / And Lo! The ice breaks as I look, / And living waters touch my feet.” I wonder if she shivered.. I know I did when I reached below the surface.

Ellye Howel Glover in “Dame Vurtsey’s” Book of Novel Entertainments for Every Day in the Year, published in 1907, featured this wedding rhyme: “When February birds do mate / You may wed, nor dread your fate.” In the program tonight, I mention some superstitions concerning the snows of February. I also mention a few superstitions concerning marriage and the month of February. Personally, I don’t believe there is any unlucky month for a wedding. The ancients, however, were a very superstitious lot. If you want to ward off any bad luck then consider this. For those born in this month, “If the February-born shall find / Sincerity and peace of mind, / Freedom from passion and from care, / If she the amethyst will wear.” That ancient rhyme was included in the book, The Pagan Book of Days: A Guide To The Festivals, Traditions, and Sacred Days of The Year by Nigel Pennick, published in 1992 by Destiny Books, in Rochester, Vermont. Pennickgoes on to say: “This is a time of clear vision into other worlds, expressed by festivals of purification.” And for those who are tired of the snow, Nigel Pennick writes: “It is thought that a snowy month means that the spring will be fine…”

Capricious February has that effect on those with cabin fever…

In the 1984 edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac was this quote: “Marrying for love is risky, but God smiles on it.” In most editions of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, it is said that the fourth of February is auspicious for marriage and the repair of ships. That from the 1991 edition of the Old Farmer’s Almanac. I can’t think of anything more romantic than a Valentine wedding - except, maybe, scrapping the barnacles off a hull… I’m  kidding, of course…So, if you’re  marrying this month, I hope it will be a very romantic day for you both. After this storm, you’ll enjoy the honeymoon even more in the hot sunshine of some romantic Caribbean island where snow never comes in February…

***

Don Jackson