How does the blog date what it calls the Winter-Spring Shoulder Season?

Our blog’s Winter Season runs from Jan2 to Feb13.
Jan 2, after the last of the holidays that serve to distract us from the colding season, to before Valentine’s Day.

Why Valentine’s Day?

Because the daylight hours are then noticeably and hearteningly longer than at the beginning of the winter season and because after February 14 we have a mere three weeks of deep winter left, definitely a short enough segment with which our emotions may deal.

Taking us to the blog’s Winter-Spring Shoulder Season, February 14 to April 7, eighteen days after the Vernal Equinox.

(An equinox is the instant the plane of Earth's equator passes through the center of the Sun;
or the moment at which the center of the visible Sun is directly above the Equator.
This occurs twice each year: around 21 March, the Vernal Equinox, and 22–23 September, the Autumnal Equinox.)

Why not end the segment on the Vernal Equinox or the end of March?

Because we in the Northeast know this: in our region, winter will not admit defeat.
Long after it should have gracefully left us, it claws and clambers to prolong its stay, knowing full well that nothing depresses Northeasterners more than the winter that lingers.
Additionally, we want to include in the next countdown a good chunk of Mud Season, the period in late winter/early spring when dirt paths such as roads and hiking trails become muddy from melting snow and rain.

So comes this invention to group the last weeks of official winter, the changing of the clocks to Daylight Savings Time, the Vernal Equinox, a good chunk of Mud Season, and, most importantly, the first two and a half weeks of our early, frustrating, reluctant spring.

Our first two calendars, as we developed them, combine the natural calendar, the human calendar, and our emotional calendar, that is, our responses to the weather patterns we find ourselves immersed in at various times of the year.

So the thinking perhaps a bit premature, but what harm does it do?

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Tagging Today
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
My 285th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
Time is 12.01am.
On Tuesday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 28* with a feels-like temperature of 12*.

Winter is predictably unpredictable. The next four days following will be perfectly acceptable winter days, taking us to Sunday when we will have only 18 days left of the blog’s Winter Calendar.

We can get through this short period.

Dinner is  Linguini and White Clam Sauce.

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Question of the Day:
What are the Neapolitan Novels?

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Love your notes.
Contact me at existentialautotrip@hotmail.com 

From Tommie, on the post that included “When first noted, the Christmas vacation seemed endless – December 21 to January 15. It wasn’t.”

Dom,
I found that when Leigh and Jake left for college that meant they spent time with their friends upon arrival back home.
Leigh and her girlfriends would cook and have a formal dinner party at our house in the dining room.
It was great to have them in the house and to hear their voices and laughter.

Jake, on the other hand, spent time out of the house with his friends.

Needless to say, neither spent much time with us. . . they were out and about.
I always tell my friends who have since had teens and complained, "Cherish the moments with them because once they leave for college, they are gone."
They become children of the world.
And that is as it should be. 
tommie

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Answer to Question of the Day:
What are the Neapolitan Novels?
The third book?
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014)

Before her marriage, Elena sees Lila briefly and learns that she has been working in a sausage factory where she is constantly brutalized and sexually harassed.
She has also fallen in love with Enzo, with the two of them studying computer programming, but she refuses to let their relationship turn sexual as she does not want to become pregnant again. After Elena helps her obtain the pill, Lila does consummate her relationship with Enzo.

Meanwhile, Elena, who did not want to have children until after writing a second book, becomes pregnant right away.
A few years go by, and Elena does manage to write another book before the birth of her second daughter, but after Lila and Adele tell her it is no good, she decides to abandon the project and devote herself to being a wife and mother.

Elena runs into Nino again, after her husband Pietro brings him home.
She discovers she is still attracted to him, despite the fact that he abandoned her friend after their love affair.
Inspired by his attention, she writes a feminist text which Adele deems worthy of publication. She and Nino also start an affair, which causes Elena to realize she is unhappy in her marriage and to finally leave Pietro.

Elena shares her plans with Lila, who is horrified.
Although she now realizes that her son, whom she believed was Nino's, is actually biologically Stefano's, she still harbors resentment towards Nino and views him as an empty, wasteful person. Lila's fortunes are on the rise: she and Enzo now work successfully as computer programmers. Lila is tempted to work for Michele Solara, who remains so obsessed with her, that he is willing to pay her an exorbitant amount of money.
Elena also learns that her younger sister is currently sleeping with Marcello Solara.

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Good morning on this Tuesday, January 22
We had a great discussion of the next seasonal calendar, the Winter/Spring Shoulder Season.
A nice comment from Tommie regarding a milestone.
And a summary of the third book in the Neapolitan Novel series.

Time to go.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Love

Dom