February is the month of survival in New England, as animals struggle to find food and hold out until the first signs of Spring. Animals adapt in many ways to follow the fundamental biological laws Beavers, red foxes and raccoons mate, and river otters give birth to their babies. Watch for the Snow Full Moon on February 24th. February is designated Black History Month and it is a good time to take advantage of the many exhibitions, programs and happenings around African-American and African culture and history. Or explore African American culture on your own in relation to whatever is of particular interest to you. I am a teacher and and it always behooves me to revisit James Baldwin’s Talk to Teachers (https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/baldwin-talk-to-teachers). I am also engaging in a mini -inquiry project around the African American illustrator and puppeteer Ashley Bryan ( https://ashleybryancenter.org/) In a general sense we can see the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and the ascension of rap and hip-hop in popular culture, as part of larger trends and social movements toward social justice and the reconstruction of society and culture. The Lunar New year is celebrated on February 10th, by many different cultures, including Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Buddhist, Islamic, and Tibetan cultures, with many different names, and in many different ways. Even as people struggle with the wintery cold in the North East, people are celebrating the Mardi Gras Carnival down in New Orleans, bringing love, light, music, joy, resilience, food, drink and merriment to make it through the tough times and laissez le bon temps rouller, or letting the good times roll. Perhaps we can use February to reflect on the necessary bridge between surviving, striving and thriving.
February 1st
First Day of Black History Month
Four African-American North Carolina A&T University students, began a sit-in protest at a Woolworth’s whites-only lunch counter, in 1960 https://socialistworker.org/2010/02/01/sit-ins-that-ignited-a-movement
Jerry Spinelli, author of Maniac Magee, a story about racial inequality, a racially divided community, and a white kid who finds a home with a Black family, b. 1941
Coyotes are mating and they often howl in a duet before consummating the act
February 2nd
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian, plotted to kill Hitler, b. 1906
Ground Hog Day
World Wetlands Day
Judith Viorst, children’s writer, author of the classic “James Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” and many other notable titles, b. 1931
February 3rd
First paper money issued in America in the colony of Massachusetts, in 1690
More than 450,000 New York City school children boycotted school as part of a protest for quality schools for Black and Latino students in 1964
Marlon Riggs, black, gay film maker, Black Is ..Black Ain’t, b. 1957
Female foxes issue a prolonged rasping scream/call that can be heard at great distances to call a mate
Gertrude Stein, lesbian expatriate, post-modern writer, art collector, b. 1874
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the U.S. Mexico War and extending the boundaries of the United States west to the Pacific Ocean in 1848
February 4th
Russell Hoban, author of the charming Francis books about a strong willed, girl badger, and a writer of fantasy and experimental literature, http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/ b. 1925
Black bears give birth to between one and five, usually two, blind, almost hairless, half-pound cubs, about the size of a chipmunk
Roy Plunkett received a patent for teflon in 1941
Rosa Parks, Civil Rights Activist, b. 1904
Walter H. Williams was the first Black teacher appointed to a Freedmen’s Bureau School in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana during Reconstruction in 1868
February 5th
David Wiesner, author and illustrator, of often wordless, magical books, my favorite being Flotsam, b. 1957
Wild turkeys make burdock balls by turning the burdock fruits inside out, eating the seeds, and leaving the empty husks in a ball
Congressman Thaddeus Stevens offered an amendment to the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill to authorize the distribution of public land in 1866
February 6th
Great horned owls are the earliest species of birds to nest in the North East
Bob Marley, leading reggae musician, b. 1945
Mary Leakey, British paleoanthropologist who studied human origins, b. 1913
First microchip, integrated circuit, patented by Jack Kilby in 1959
” I see the track of a cottontail…there are hollows in the snow on the tops of the rock, shaped like a milk pan and as large, where he squatted or whirled around.” Thoreau’s Animals
February 7th
Flying Squirrels huddle together in tree cavities in groups of up to two dozen
February 8th
Jules Verne, writer of Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in 80 Days and considered a key figure in the literary avant garde, surrealism, science fiction, and children’s literature b. 1828
Boy Scouts of America founded in 1910
Two years before the Kent State murders, 28 students were injured and three were killed in Orangeburg, South Carolina — most shot in the back by the state police while involved in a peaceful protest, in 1968
National Kite Flying Day
Donna Jo Napoli, children’s writer, author of We Are Starlings: Inside the Mesmerizing Magic of a Murmuration, b. 1948
February 9th
Porcupines eat the the tasty buds of hemlock branches dropping “nip twigs” on the ground that hungry deer snap up
In one of the more spectacular demonstrations for women’s voting rights, the National Woman’s Party burned President Woodrow Wilson in effigy in front of the White House during the campaign for the 19th Amendment, in 1919
Satchel Paige becomes the first Negro League player elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971
Joseph McCarthy launches his anti-communist campaign in 1950
Robert Fulton granted a patent for a “practical steamboat” in 1811
New Moon
February 10th
Lunar (solar) New Year
Alister Hardy, British scientist , expert on marine ecosystems from zooplankton to whales, invented the continuous plankton recorder, b. 1896
Bob Dylan’s Album The Times They Are A-Changin” is released in 1964
E.L. Konigsberg, children’s writer and author of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler, about two siblings who runaway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, b. 1930
February 11th
Jane Yolen, prolific children’s writer of fun picture books like “Owl Moon,” “Plymouth Rocks,” and “Crow Not Crow” and hundreds more, b. 1939
Short tailed shrew survives February by living on food cached in the Fall. Shrews have very poor eyesight and find find food and move around by echolocation
Nelson Mandela is freed from jail after 27 years as a political prisoner in 1990
Russian Jewish anarchist, Emma Goldman, famous for her radical activism, and saying ” If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” arrested for distributing materials about birth control in violation of the Comstock Act, in 1916
“Longest Walk” begins, 300 Native Americans march from San Francisco to Washington, DC, in 1978
February 12th
Charles Darwin, scientist who developed the theory of evolution and wrote “The Origin of the Species,” b. 1809
National Association of the Advancement of Colored People founded in NYC in 1909
Jacqueline Woodson, prolific writer of young adult novels, the author of two beautiful essential picture books, On The Day You Were Born and The Year We Learned to Fly, b. 1964
Judy Blume, writer of young adult novels, author of Are You There God, It”s Me Margaret, b. 1938
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was first publicly performed by 500 school children in Jacksonville, Florida. Later, the NAACP adopted the song as the Black National Anthem. The lyrics spoke out against racism and Jim Crow laws, in 1900
February 13th
Simms Tayback, children’s book illustrator of some classic nursery rhymes like I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly, There Was A Crooked Man, the biblical story Joseph Had A Little Overcoat, and designed the first Mcdonald’s Happy Meal in 1977, b. 1932
Activists circled the White House to protest the Keystone Pipeline, an oil system that transports crude oil from Canada to various locations in the U.S. in 2013
Snowy Owls, the heaviest owls in North America at over 4 lbs, need lots of energy, sometimes eating up to 1,600 lemmings in one year and spitting up the indigestible parts in a pellet
Two ” smart bombs” kill 408 civilians in Iraq in Operation Desert Storm, in 1991
Mardi Gras
February 14th
Margaret Knight, invented a machine that made flat bottomed paper bags, b. 1838
Valentine’s Day
Frederick Douglass, ex-slave,author,abolitionist, feminist, politician, b. 1817
Bark, silhouettes, and buds are three characteristics that help identify trees in winter. American basswood’s plump, oval, asymmetrical red buds are unmistakable.
Paul O. Zelinsky, children’s book illustrator of classic fairytales, zany, surreal, fun, modern stories, and an over the top version of Wheels on the Bus, b. 1953
A telephone patent is granted to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876
February 15
Nirvana Day Parinirvana: Buddhist celebration of the day the historical Buddha died and achieved Nirvana, a time for reflection on impermanence, death, and life
Largest peace demonstration in the history of the world, 30 million people in 600 cities, takes place protesting the Iraq War, in 2003
Benjamin Roberts, African American, filed the first school desegregation suit after his daughter Sarah was barred from a public school because of her race in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1858
Norman Birdwell, author and cartoonist of the Clifford the Dog books,b. 1928
Jan Spivey Gilchrist, African-American artist and children’s book author, known for spectacular mixed media illustrations, in such books as In the Land of Words, The Great Migration, Journey to the North, My America, and many others, https://janspiveygilchrist.com/ b. 1949
Northern Saw-Whet Owls courting with a monotonous toot,toot,toot that can travel over 300 yards
First draft of the human genome is published in 2001
February 16th
Honeybees will take advantage of a thaw to clean out their hives, and black capped chickadees will help themselves to a meal
Beavers, who are monogamous, are mating
“What we call wildness, is a civilization other than our own. The henhawk shuns the farmer but it seeks the friendly shelter of the pine.” Thoreau’s Animals
Max Wolf Valerio, transgendered writer, actor, author of The Testosterone Files, b. 1957
The Kyoto Protocol, in an attempt to address climate change, goes into effect in 2005, ratified by 180 countries to date, excluding the United States
Leonora O’Reilly, union leader and co-founder of the NAACP, b. 1870
Levar Burton, host and executive producer of Reading Rainbow, one of the longest running and celebrated children’s series on tv, the inscrutable Geordi La FOrge on Star Trek the Next Generation, Kunta Kinte on the American TV series Roots, b. 1957
February 17th
Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher, astronomer, and freethinker, b. in 1600
Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, b. 1942
Old Egyptian festival of Neteret Bastet celebrating Maat the cat goddess who fosters domestic harmony
Deer mice resort to short periods of torpor during the day, 4-9 hours, to preserve their energy, where there temperature drops from 98 to 55 degrees.
February 18th
Audre Lorde, feminist, teacher, lesbian poet, wrote Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches ( including “The transformation of silence into language and action”), The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, and Zami: A New Spelling of My Name–a Biomythography, b. 1934
Hercules, the head cook at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate and slave labor camp, escaped to freedom in Pennsylvania, in 1797
Pluto is discovered by Clyde Tombaugh looking at celestial photographs in 1930
February 19th
Andre Breton, French writer, poet and principal founder of Surrealism, b. 1896
Minnesota Chippewa people win right to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice in 1972 https://www.cmich.edu/research/clarke-historical-library/explore-collection/explore-online/native-american-material/native-american-treaty-rights/contemporary-issues/treaty-rights-and-the-great-lakes-fishery
Fruit eating birds like robins, waxwings, and starlings have been found dangerously drunk or dead after consuming lots of fermented fruit in the winter
February 20th
“J. Farmer tells me that his grandfather …. found a striped squirrel [Chipmunk?]frozen stiff. He put him in his pocket, and when he got home laid him on the hearth–….and was surprised to see him running about the room as lively as ever.” Rousseau’s animals
February 21
Malcolm X assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom , NYC, in 1965
Presidents Day
Coyotes, when they rest, leave a round depression in the snow, since they sleep in a perfect circle with their tails covering their noses
February 22
Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Boy Scouts and the Girl Guides, b. 1857
Steve Irwin, the Australian biologist, zoologist, and nature TV show host, b. 1962
Snowshoe Hares hiding out and resting in “forms,” shallow depressions, sheltered areas under low conifer branches and other dense cover
Student activists Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst were executed for urging students to rise up and overthrow the Nazi government, in 1943 https://whiteroseinternational.com/
February 23
Loris Malaguzzi visionary behind the Reggio Emilia schools, b. 1920
Walter Wick, artist, photographer, creator of two series of children’s picture puzzle books, I SPY and CAN YOU SEE WHAT I SEE, b. 1953
Winter stoneflies emerge from their larval stage out onto the river bank and the males drum on stones and earth to attract a mate
February 24
Judith Butler, philosopher, gender, queer theorist, author of Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, b. 1956
The Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” 1969
W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist, historian, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor, was one of the most important scholars and critical theorists of the 20th century, b. 1868
Wilhelm Karl Grimm one half of the brothers Grimm, b. 1786
Russia invades Ukraine in 2022
February 25th
Rudolf Steiner, educator, philosopher of freedom and anthroposophy, prophet of the non-denominational spiritual growth of the child, curator of the Goethe Archives, and architect of the Waldorf School model of education, b. 1861
The “romantic” call of the unmated male Mourning Dove is one of the first songs heard in early spring and is sometimes heard even in late February
Hundreds of thousands of students boycott Chicago schools to protest segregation
February 26th
John Harvey Kellogg, creator of the flaked-cereal industry and founder of Kellogg Cereal, b. 1852
Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, was murdered. The death of Martin and acquittal of the man who shot him sparked the national and global Movement for Black Lives Matter, 2012
The world’s first web browser, the WorldWideWeb, later known as Nexus, was presented to the world by Tim Berners-Lee, in 1991
Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Company’s Nazi war efforts revealed in Senate Report, 1974
Beavers groom their fur with oil from inverted oil glands on either side of their cloaca without which they would not be able to stand the cold water
February 27th
American Indian Movement protest at Wounded Knee SD, begins in 1973
Uri Shulevitz, illustrator of many children’s picture books including Snow, The Golem, How I Learned Geography, and Chance: Escape from the Holocaust, https://www.urishulevitz.com/ b. 1935
John Steinbeck, man of the land and water, champion of the poor, the migrant laborer, and downtrodden, writer of Mice and Men, In Dubious Battle, Tortilla Flats, and Grapes of Wrath, b. 1902
N. Scott Momaday, Native American author, key figure in the Native American Literary Renaissance, b. 1936
Male Turkeys are “strutting” around, by fanning their tails, lowering their primary wings so they scrape the ground and make lines in the snow, throwing their heads back, and inflating their crops, in preparation for the mating season in March
February 28th
Red Wing Blackbirds can return from their southerly migrations before the spring thaw because they are able to forage in diverse habitats for food and find enough seeds to get through the end of winter
John Tenniel,illustrator, cartoonist, most well known for illustrating Alice in Wonderland and Through the looking Glass, b. 1820
