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January, the Month of Endurance, the Full Wolf Moon, Maria Montessori starts her first Montessori school in 1907, Dr. Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Bear Cubs, Snow, Ice, Cold, and Increasingly Common Thaws

January 1st

New Years Day

Emancipation Proclamation “goes into effect” in 1863 (President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, announcing, “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious areas “are, and henceforward shall be free.”)

Haitian Independence (Haiti becomes a free republic after a revolution, declaring independence for ALL PEOPLE)

 

Last day of Kwanzaa,which is Swahili for “the first fruits of the harvest,” celebrates African and African American culture and serves as a counter to the crass materialism of some celebrations of Christmas. The specific virtue celebrated on the seventh day of Kwanzaa is “imani,” or faith in God, family, heritage, leaders, teachers and healers for people of African descent.

Birds that don’t migrate stay warm with special contour (or outer) feathers that they puff out and create a hot pocket and down feathers that provide direct insulation to their skin   

January 2

Snow Scorpion Flies active

 

Isaac Asimov, science fiction writer, scientist, atheist, cultural gadfly, b. 1920

January 3

Alma Flora Ada, outstanding writer, curator and educator, specializing in children’s literature and bilingual education, b. 1938

 

The Hamilton Electric 500 becomes the first electric watch available in 1958

Fisher cats leave resting beds at the foot of trees and usually poop before they move on

J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the RIngs, a vast allegory of power, good and evil, community, and different kinds of people fighting, adventuring, going on journey’s, protecting communal ways of life,  and getting along, b. 1892

January 4th

Samuel Colt, gun inventor and manufacturer, b. in Hartford CT, sells a 1000 of his Colt revolvers to the US government during the Mexican American War in 1847

Bears don’t hibernate just in caves: logs, fallen trees, and groves of tightly  packed spruce trees can all provide a safe, comfy warm bed

Jacob Grimm, one half of the Grimm Brothers, who collected all those classic European folktales, b. 1784

 

January 5

National Bird day ( learn about the birds where you live)

Lynne Cherry, nature children’s author, wrote A River Ran Wild and The Great Kapok Tree, https://www.lynnecherry.com/,  b. 1952

Louis Braille, invented braille script, b. 1809

Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in 1933

State of Emergency declared in Flint Michigan because of lead contamination of the water, in 2016

 

January 6

British mercenary/colonist John Smith captured by a Powhatan Native hunting party and later released under contested circumstances ( aka the role of Pocahantas)

US Capitol attacked by a mob of Trump supporters to contest the certification of the election results that voted in Joe Biden, 2020

Maria Montessori, with her revolutionary pedagogical approach, opened her first Montessori school in 1907

 

January 7

International Silly Walk Day ( Monty Python)

 

Zora Neale Hurston folklorist , anthropologist  and African American author, born in 1891

The first transatlantic telephone service was established in 1927. A three minute call cost about 45$ ( 550$ in today’s economy)

In early to mid winter, crows begin roosting at communal nocturnal roosting sites in large numbers

January 8th 

George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in 1790

Snowy Owl irruption, often the young owls of the year, fly further south outside of their typical range in their Artic range to Northern New England and even as far as CT

 

David Bowie, transcendent musician, producer, artist, fashionista, cultural icon, b. 1947

January 9

New Moon

Simone de Beauvoir, feminist philosopher and writer of The Second Sex, born 1908

Philip Astley, British equestrian, considered the father of the modern circus, opens the first circus at his riding school where he also performed tricks for an audience, in 1768

Aldo Leopold in his Sand County Almanac notes a January thaw where a “hibernating skunk, curled up in his deep den, uncurls himself, and ventures forth to prowl his wet world, dragging his belly across the snow.”

 

National Static Electricity Day

January 10

Francisco Ferrer Spanish educator and anarchist born in 1859. He founded the Barcelona Modern School, Escuela Moderna, which sought to provide a secular, libertarian curriculum as an alternative to the religious dogma and compulsory lessons common within Spanish schools. Ferrer’s pedagogy borrowed from a tradition of 18th century rationalism and 19th century romanticism. He held that children should wield freewheeling liberties at the expense of conformity, regulation, and discipline. His school eschewed punishments, rewards, and exams, and encouraged practical experience over academic study. The school hosted lectures for adults, a school for teacher training, and a radical printing press, which printed textbooks and the school’s journal.

 

In 1776, Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, setting forth the arguments for American independence from England

Thoreau notes in his nature journal, ” I cannot thaw out to life the snow fleas that cover the snow like pepper”

The first Adventures of Tintin comic book, is published in 1929

January 11th

Robert C. O’Brien, children’s author, farmer, nature lover, advocate for young people, author of Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, b. 1918

 

Aldo Leopold, writer of the Sand County Almanac, philosopher of some of the basic tenets of the environmental movement, fierce advocate for the rhythms of the nature, the wildness of the wilderness, and finding sustainable ways to live in harmony with the natural world, b. 1887

Insulin used for the first time to treat diabetes in a 14 year old boy, in 1922

Muskrats build lodges similar to, but smaller than, beavers, where the temperature is 36 degrees higher than outside. Muskrats that are usually aggressive with one another outside of small family units, huddle together in groups of up to ten individuals

January 12th

Jack London, writer of Call of the Wild and White Fang, journalist, socialist, chronicler of the  West Coast and Alaska and the relationship between human culture and the natural world, b. 1876

Bobcats hunt their prey through stealth and sneaking up on them ( as opposed to canids that chase down their prey)

Earthquake in Haiti kills between 160,00 and 300,000 people, in 2010

Charles Perrault, French author, reteller of classic fairy tales such Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella, b. 1628

 

First x-rays taken in the United States in 1896

January 13

Horatio Alger, author of young adult, rags to riches novels about boys who rise up out of poverty and find riches and renown, b. in 1839

George Gurdjieff, Armenien-American mystic, philosopher, teacher who developed a comprehensive metaphysical system out of several “Eastern” perspectives on human consciousness and evolution, that centered on doing “the work” to achieve human awareness and free oneself from fantasies about the self  b.1897

“Friday the 13th” supposed to be unlucky in the United States, and the name of a popular series of horror movies that introduced the hockey masked killer “Jason” to mass consciousness

Michael Bond, author of the Paddington Bear books, b. 1926

Common Loons begin showing up in Southern New England

 

January 14th

“Numerous cocoons attached to the twigs overhanging the stream in the still and biting winter day suggest a certain fertility in the river borders” (Thoreau)

“The Summer of Love” is launched in San Francisco with a human be-in and being  a “hippy” became a way of life

Ernestine Rose, was a suffragist, abolitionist and freethinker who has been called the “first Jewish feminist” b. 1810

Hugh Lofting, children’s author , writer of the Dr. Doolittle books, b.1886

 

January 15th

Black-Capped Chickadees singing “spring” mating song, two whistles, each about a half a second long, the second whistle a lower pitch than the first, that some people liken to “hey-sweetie”

Wikipedia goes online and becomes the single largest reference work on the internet, 2001

 

Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, 1929

January 16

Pierre Joseph Proudhon, French anarchist and philosopher, born in 1809. “Anarchy is order, government is civil war.”

Kate McMullen, author of the delightful I Stink, I’m Dirty, I’m …, books that personify trucks, cars, boats, trains and planes, b. 1947

Grey Squirrels dig up single acorns they buried in the Fall

 

January 17th

Queen Liliuokalani of Hawai’i is overthrown  and arrested by American marines in 1893

Muhammad Ali, American professional boxer and activist. Nicknamed “The Greatest”, regarded as one of the most significant sports figures of the 20th century, b. 1942

Benjamin Franklin, American statesman, polymath, saw that the Iroquois led, Haudenosaunee, people of the longhouse confederation, could/should be a model for the new United States union of the colonies, and author of Poor Richard’s Almanack, b. 1706

Robert Cormier, writer of young adult novels, many of which have been banned for their explicit explorations of sex, anarchy, drug use, abuse, mental illness, and conspiracies, including I am Cheese, The Chocolate War, and After the First Death, b. 1925

Bear cubs are born in the middle of the winter denning period, Cubs are born tiny, helpless, and hairless, weighing less than half a pound.

January 18th

A.A. Milne, author of the Winnie the Pooh books, b. in 1882

 

Baby Praying Mantis’s incubate in a frothy substance excreted by the female in the fall that gradually hardens over the winter

When asked at a White House luncheon about “juvenile delinquency,” Eartha Kitt responded by talking about the root causes of rebellion, including the Vietnam War and the draft, 1968

January 19th

Edgar Allen Poe, horror writer and author of “The Tell Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Imp of the Perverse,”  born in 1809

Premiere of Goethe’s Faust in 1829

Beavers and rabbits engage in autocoprophagy, eating one’s own poop, increasing protein intake and the digestion of cellulose on the “second pass” at its food

 

January 20th

Frances Willard, feminist educator, Christian temperance advocate, and bicycle activist, learns to ride a bike at age 53, b. 1894

 

Barack Obama sworn in as the first African-American president, in 2009

Tedd Arnold, children’s writer, author of Parts, and the Fly Guy books, b. 1949

Penguin Awareness Day

January 21st 

The first atomic submarine, the USS Nautilus, launched in 1954

Gray Squirrels begin breeding

January 22nd

Roe versus Wade Supreme Court strikes down state laws barring abortion and affirms every women’s right to choose or not choose an abortion in 1973 ( later reversed by the Trump Supreme Court)

Rafe Martin, writer and storyteller, well versed in the Buddhist traditional stories and the reframing of classic fairytale themes and motifs, b. 1946

 

Lotte Williams, walking through a park in Tulsa Oklahoma, becomes the first recorded person to be hit by space debris, in 1997

Beavers take advantage of a thaw in the ice to supplement the food cached in their lodge with fresh cambium from living trees

January 23rd

Antonio Gramsci, Italian communist  philosopher who introduced the notions of hegemony, counter hegemony and the class fraction, and argued that all people, by their very nature as human beings, are critical thinkers.   [L]earning takes place especially through a spontaneous and autonomous effort of the pupil, with the teacher only exercising a function of friendly guide—as happens or should happen in the university. “To discover a truth oneself, without external suggestions or assistance, is to create—even if the truth is an old one. It demonstrates a mastery of the method, and indicates that in any case one has entered the phase of intellectual maturity in which one may discover new truths.” b. 1891

White Tail deer conserve energy by following in the paths made by other animals in the snow

 

Katherine Holabird, children’s writer, author of a series of delightful, charming, “slow” in a good way, books about Angelina Ballerina, a mouse that many children will identify with, b. 1948

January 24th

Arturo Schomburg, a Puerto Rican of African and German descent, historian, writer, collector, and activist who championed African-Latin- American culture. “We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen, the story of our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. We should cling to them just as blood is thicker than water.” Born in 1874

Identifying trees in the winter involves looking at the bark and examining buds and leaf scars. Black Walnut trees have a dark deeply furrowed bark and the buds are fuzzy and lack scales.

 

The first canned beer, “Krueger Cream Ale,” was sold by the Kruger Brewing Company of Richmond, VA., in 1935

January 25th

Full Wolf Moon

Sojourner Truth  addresses first Black Women’s Rights Convention in Akron Ohio, 1851

Virgina Woolf, feminist author of “A Room of One’s Own” Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves, born in 1882

The world’s first solar power plant opened in Odeillo France, in 1977

Tree seeds dispersing

 

January 26th

Angela Davis, educator, scholar, activist and founder of Critical Resistance  which calls for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, born in 1944

Bessie Coleman, first African American woman and Native American to hold an aviator license and earn an international pilot’s license. She tragically died in 1921, at only 25 years old, when her plane had an engine failure. Coleman was born in 1896

Jules Feiffer, satirist, cartoonist and illustrator of The Phantom Tollbooth, b. 1929

 

Foxes have incredible ears and can hear mice moving underneath snow up to three feet. Once they hear them they jump high in the air and pounce into the snow to catch their prey

Native Americans (people from the Nisqually and Yakima tribal nations ) attack the city of Seattle in 1856

January 27th

Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Dodgson, author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and amateur photographer, born in 1832

 

Pete Seeger, folk singer and activist, died in 2014

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

January 28th

London’s Pall Mall became the first street lit by gaslight, 1807

Vera B. Williams, children’s writer, author of A Chair for My Mother, b. 1927

Opossums mate, and babies, the size of honeybees, are born 12 -13 days later.

The lego brick is patented in 1957

 

USA for Africa records “We Are the World”

January 29

National Seed Swap Day. Let this be a reminder that spring will follow winter and that today is an excellent day to to get together with other gardeners and farmers to swap seeds, talk gardening, and make big plans

France stops nuclear testing in 1996

Bald Eagles switch over to a diet of mostly carrion in the winter

January 30th

Porcupine dens obvious in the winter as they are made in the hollows of trees and rock ledges, and scat and urine accumulate inside until it spills on the ground outside

Polly Horvath, children’s and young adult writer, author of The Canning Season and Pine Island Home, b. 1957

 

James Ritty and John Birch receive a patent for the first cash register in 1897

January 31

Gerald Mcdermott, children’s picture book author and illustrator, interested in mythology and folklore from around the world, (not without his detractors!) b. 1941

 

Jackie Robinson, one of the greatest second basemen and baseball players of all time, first African American allowed to play outside the Negro League in Major League Baseball, b. in 1919

Some Red Tail Hawks migrate to more southerly regions and others overwinter

International Zebra Day