Word: frosts
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...season in itself. First comes a slow drip. Then a tentative trickle. Then the melt begins in earnest: a rush, a gurgle, a cascade. The earth squirts, muck and mire suck at boots, downhill becomes a torrent, uphill becomes a bog. Snowbanks dissolve, flowing over ground already saturated. The frost comes out of the earth, and a normally flat, hard roadbed melts into mud three feet and four feet deep...
Here, prices are substantially lower than those for 19th century works, making them ideal entry points for the new collector, but not for jittery investors. Consider these risks: Robert Frost brings 25% less than he did a decade ago, Hemingway is barely holding, and Faulkner is sluggish. On the other hand, Wallace Stevens' rare first volume, Harmonium, $2 when published in 1923, can bring $800. The far more recent works of John Updike, John Cheever and Saul Bellow have done nearly as well. Some sharp collectors bought John Gardner's first novel, The Resurrection (1972), for cut-rate...
...never mentioned to the control tower their concern about the ice each saw building up on the wings. Pettit said only to his pilot: "This one's got about a quarter to half an inch [of ice] on it." Despite the unequivocal federal regulation against flying with snow, frost or ice on the wings or engines, they taxied out to take off. Pettit was at the controls. "Slushy runway. Do you want me to do anything special for it or just go for it?" he asked. Wheaton: "Unless you got anything special you'd like to do." Pettit...
Mistletoe: Considered sacred by the ancient Druids, mistletoe was gathered in elaborate winter solstice ceremonies and distributed to all in attendance. The sprays hung over house entrances, signalled a propitiation and an offer of shelter to deities during the season of frost and cold. The plant was regarded as a symbol of future hope and peace, and whenever enemies met beneath it they would drop their weapons and embrace. Kissing under the mistletoe probably grew out of this practice. Originally used to deck churches, mistletoe was abandoned in favor of holly and ivy because as one chronicier reports...
...Julia Tuttle, who moved to Miami in the 1870s. The city then was a makeshift village of shacks and sand trails hacked out of palmetto groves. When a freeze destroyed the citrus crop of central Florida in 1894, Tuttle picked a bouquet of orange blossoms untouched by the frost and sent it to Financier Henry Flagler as proof that South Florida was worth a look. Flagler, who was already building up St. Augustine, came, saw and was conquered; he built a railway to Miami and beyond, all the way to Key West.* During World War I, the Government...