Stephen D. Winick

It's true, I now blog about Music and Culture at the Huffington Post.  I may decide to mirror my HuffPo writings here at stevewinick.com, but until then, please follow me on HuffPo!

For those following posts about my various performances, how about me playing Bigfoot...in a Mummers Play...with a Squid...at the Library of Congress?  If you find this intriguing, please join the fun at this page!

Hello, gentle readers!

One month ago, your humble scribe Wynken De Worde had the honor of conducting an on-stage interview with the Grammy-winning folk band The Carolina Chocolate Drops!  Rather than write an extensive blog post on the experience, I've…

Years from now, my niece and nephew and once-removed cousins are apt to ask me: “Weird Uncle Steve, what’s it like to sing in a Great Big Rock Concert?”

Luckily, I will now be able to tell them,…

This year I once again adapted, directed, and performed in my office's Christmas Mummers play.  Mumming, or disguising oneself, going door to door, and performing in neighbors' homes and in public places, is a very old and widespread custom in…

The Green Man and Calendar Customs

From his earliest appearances among the characters of pageants, shows, and St. George’s Day observances, the Green Man has been associated with calendar customs, especially those of springtime. Yet, one of Richard Hayman’s…

The Green Man and the Foliate Head

In Part 2, I showed that the idea of a man covered with leaves, as well as the name for that man, “Green Man,” existed for a long time, in the same…

Part 2: What Was the Green Man?

So what DID the term “Green Man” refer to before 1930, and how did the term come down to modern times, to Lady Raglan’s day and beyond? To answer this, we can…

Introduction:

Both before and after Lady Raglan’s landmark 1939 essay "The Green Man in Church Architecture," in which she applied the term “Green Man” to a carving of a foliate head in her local church, much has been…