Joseph Wood Krutch

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.

From his 1949 book, The Twelve Seasons.

Krutch was born in Knoxville, TN, on this date in 1893.  He started out as a theater critic and literary biographer.  After moving to Arizona in 1952, he began to write about ecology in general and the desert environment in particular.

I spent three Februarys in New England, and they are grim -- perhaps grimmer than Puritanism.  But Krutch was wrong.  The most serious charge that can be brought against New England is the Boston Red Sox.