Dog days

First day of August.  A strange month, to my way of thinking.  Still summer, but pointing the way toward fall. 

Sextilis, the Romans called it.  The sixth month in the Roman calendar.  But then Caesar Augustus came along,   He noted that the Senate had honored his non-imperial predecessor, Julius Caesar, by converting Quintilis into July.  What's an emperor to do?  August it had to be, especially since Julius Caesar's Julian calendar had already increased Sextilis's days from 29 to 31, making it a worthy choice for honoring the first emperor. 

Luckily, this re-naming fad didn't continue, or our October would now be known as Caligula.

As a boy, I found that the first day of August inspired both anticipation and alarm.  Anticipation for the next school year, because the joys of a small town summer had already begun to pale; alarm for the same reason, because my relationship with school was one of love-hate.  My brother was far less ambivalent.  I could provoke him into a tantrum merely by pointing out, in early August, that the stores were carrying "Back to School" fashions.

August 1st is well past the summer solstice, and the days are already perceptively shorter.  My bedroom's no longer flooded with sunlight at 5 a.m., and the twilight is deepening by 9 p.m.  And yet, the weather always lags behind the length of days.  August, along with July, is a hot month.

I type this post in early afternoon, as the house is beginning to heat up.  Outside, the temperature will reach a predicted 86 degrees today, 91 tomorrow, and 95 the next two days.  The highs will not dip below 85 for any of the next ten days.  We are told that the temperature this week may reach the three digit mark.  Only three times in the past 120 years -- the period during which records have been kept -- have we reached 100 degrees or higher in Seattle.

So 100 means nothing to you folks in Phoenix or Las Vegas?  Well, bless your fevered little hearts, but we in the Northwest Corner don't live in Phoenix or Vegas -- or aspire to.  But in August?  In August, sometimes, we begin to understand what you feel.  Except we don't have residential air conditioning.

In my home town, it wasn't only the "Back to School" sales that prompted thoughts of waning summer, of school days, of the coming of the autumn rains.  There was also the mint.  Large mint farms lay between our town and the Columbia.  About this time of year, the mint ripened, or whatever mint does when it's ready for harvest.  A breeze off the river brought whiffs of the mint tang into town.  "A hint of mint," we called it.  For my brother, another treasonous harbinger of school days to come.

The dog days of August.  These days now projected to lie ahead -- with temperatures in the 90s or higher -- were the dog days that we envisioned as kids.  Days fit only for lying in the shade, hoping for a breath of a breeze, staggering into the house hoping to find some Kool-Aid to quench our thirsts.  We felt like dogs -- tongues lolling out of our mouths and panting. 

But "dog days" -- however appropriate to describe the heat of August -- actually gets its name from the fact that Sirius, the "dog star" is first seen each year in August rising above the horizon just before dawn.  Sirius is part of the constellation "Canis Majoris" -- the big dog -- which follows Orion the hunter across the sky.

 Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky
On summer nights, star of stars,
Orion's Dog they call it, brightest
Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat
And fevers to suffering humanity.

--Homer, The Iliad

Surely Augustus knew his Homer, and knew of the "evil portent" of the dog days?  And yet, he recklessly chose Sextilis as his month.  As reckless and unheeding, I suppose, as making a wild call to a New Yorker reporter and assuming nothing bad would come of it. 

For Augustus himself, nothing much bad did come of it.   But it augured poorly for Rome -- his family, by descent or adoption, gave the world Caligula and Nero.

But all that is history.  Today's dog days, uncomfortable as their heat may feel, have little cosmic meaning.  They merely suggest -- especially when combined with a hint of mint -- that school days, while not yet upon us, are peeking, like Sirius the dog star, over the horizon.