Hey guys!
You know how the year begins in January and ends in December? Well, as far as American culture is concerned, that's really not true. From what I have observed, the year begins anew around now, at the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. But why do I think this? I'm glad I pretended that you asked.
My reasons are quite simple. First, the American school system is based around summer and fall, and while the home schooled, private schooled, and contradictory people may say that school doesn't follow that system, I have to say shut up it does. If you don't believe me, look at the cultural aspect know as Summer Break, or look at the vast number of public schools and institutes of higher learning that follow the fall to summer system. This means that all of the students, parents, teachers, faculty, board of education people, and office supply companies base their lives around the school year, and when it starts back up again, everything begins anew. This also translates into the working world, because college students typically graduate in the spring, and then start up work in the fall, which means that there is distinct change from year to year.
School isn't the only thing in America to take a hiatus during the summer. Look at television. No, not at the television. I meant figuratively. As in consider the system for seasons for television programs. They start up in the fall, and they run until late spring or early summer, at which point they shut down for several months. Now, I know that there are those people (we all know at least one of those people) who don't own a TV, or don't watch TV (which is fine), and you can ignore them for that right now, because they are such a minority compared to the number of people who watch, write, shoot, edit, produce, direct, perform, critic, and host television shows. TV is a massive part of American culture, just like the radio used to be, and before that shoddily built apartments built for 4 people that can (somehow) fit 20. It is the pop cultural glue that holds us together, and have memorable moments that affect us all, like The Wizard of Oz, or the lunar landing of Apollo 11, or the ending of MASH, or any of the various disasters that happened between 2000 and 2010? Whether you watch it or not, it's a part of America, and one of the reasons why the year really starts in fall.
Finally (I'd give you more but they'd get redundant and boring), there is a much more distinct feeling of change at the end of summer. If you're in school, the people who graduated last year are gone, and there are new people to take their place. The weather takes a much more dramatic switch going into fall then is does in January (winter to winter doesn't do too much). Because of summer traveling or something similar, people you normally see have changed, both physically and mentally, so you're almost meeting them for the first time again. You notice when it changes from summer to fall, but if we didn't make a bunch of fuss about it being a new year, most people wouldn't notice anything except the lack of a nasty headache striking in the late afternoon of January 1st and the fact that they'll need a new calendar. Even though there are calenders that go September to August.
Well, that's all I've got this week. See you guys next time, and Happy New Year (kinda)!
Year's End
by Richard Wilbur
You know how the year begins in January and ends in December? Well, as far as American culture is concerned, that's really not true. From what I have observed, the year begins anew around now, at the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. But why do I think this? I'm glad I pretended that you asked.
My reasons are quite simple. First, the American school system is based around summer and fall, and while the home schooled, private schooled, and contradictory people may say that school doesn't follow that system, I have to say shut up it does. If you don't believe me, look at the cultural aspect know as Summer Break, or look at the vast number of public schools and institutes of higher learning that follow the fall to summer system. This means that all of the students, parents, teachers, faculty, board of education people, and office supply companies base their lives around the school year, and when it starts back up again, everything begins anew. This also translates into the working world, because college students typically graduate in the spring, and then start up work in the fall, which means that there is distinct change from year to year.
School isn't the only thing in America to take a hiatus during the summer. Look at television. No, not at the television. I meant figuratively. As in consider the system for seasons for television programs. They start up in the fall, and they run until late spring or early summer, at which point they shut down for several months. Now, I know that there are those people (we all know at least one of those people) who don't own a TV, or don't watch TV (which is fine), and you can ignore them for that right now, because they are such a minority compared to the number of people who watch, write, shoot, edit, produce, direct, perform, critic, and host television shows. TV is a massive part of American culture, just like the radio used to be, and before that shoddily built apartments built for 4 people that can (somehow) fit 20. It is the pop cultural glue that holds us together, and have memorable moments that affect us all, like The Wizard of Oz, or the lunar landing of Apollo 11, or the ending of MASH, or any of the various disasters that happened between 2000 and 2010? Whether you watch it or not, it's a part of America, and one of the reasons why the year really starts in fall.
Finally (I'd give you more but they'd get redundant and boring), there is a much more distinct feeling of change at the end of summer. If you're in school, the people who graduated last year are gone, and there are new people to take their place. The weather takes a much more dramatic switch going into fall then is does in January (winter to winter doesn't do too much). Because of summer traveling or something similar, people you normally see have changed, both physically and mentally, so you're almost meeting them for the first time again. You notice when it changes from summer to fall, but if we didn't make a bunch of fuss about it being a new year, most people wouldn't notice anything except the lack of a nasty headache striking in the late afternoon of January 1st and the fact that they'll need a new calendar. Even though there are calenders that go September to August.
Well, that's all I've got this week. See you guys next time, and Happy New Year (kinda)!
Year's End
by Richard Wilbur
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.
There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii
The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.
"Let us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready." Theodore Roosevelt
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