JULY is the height of summer, the ideal of summer… the only month that is all summer, all the time. Spring creeps into early June, and by late August the geese are gathering, the green is going brown, the nights are growing chilly. But not in July.
Julius Caesar reformed the calendar (which sorely needed it) back in ancient Rome, and one of the reforms he felt SURE the calendar needed was a month named after him. So we still salute Julius, one-twelfth of every year, after two centuries and two millennia.
July celebrates our Independence Day, going back to 1776, with music and fireworks, just as John Adams predicted. On July 4, 1826, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died. July 4 of 1827 ended slavery in New York. James Monroe died on July 4, 1831. Two smashing Union victories in 1863 doomed the Confederacy. In 1876 it marked huge celebrations for the nation’s centennial, and again in 1976 for the BIcentennial.
In 1908 Glenn Curtiss spectacularly flew the airplane “June Bug” in Pleasant Valley. As a boy he had loved to have his grandmother read the poem “Darius Green and His Flying Machine,” which was set on the fourth of July. Glenn did much better with HIS flying machine than Darius had with his.
George M. Cohan, creator of “Over There,” “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag” was famously born on the fourth of July, though it was actually on the third. His was a show-business family, and his father saw the publicity potential in an Independence Day date.
July 1 is Canada Day. July 14 is Bastille Day, the French counterpart to our Fourth of July. On July 16, 1945 scientists, engineers, and military men exploded the first atomic bomb. Japan surrendered, and World War II ended, 29 days later.
July is part of hurricane season. It’s also a month where thunderstorms roll across the land, though it shares that “honor” with August. On July 8, 1935 drenching rainstorms suddenly spawned destructive and murderous floods, killing 44 people between the Hudson and Hornell.
Thurgood Marshall was born in July, and so were presidents Calvin Coolidge (on Independence Day!), George W. Bush, John Quincy Adams, and Gerald Ford. Beloved children’s writers E.B. White, Beatrix Potter, and J.K. Rowling first saw the light of day in July. So did P.T. Barnum, John Paul Jones, Robert A. Heinlein, Ringo Starr, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry David Thoreau, George Eastman, George Washington Carver, Rembrandt, John Glenn, Camilla Parker Bowes, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Onassis, Henry Ford, and Alexander the Great (before there even WAS a July!).
On the down side, we should mention Lizzie Borden and Mussolini. Also on the down side, Glenn Curtiss died unexpectedly on July 23, 1930, at the age of 52. He was buried in Pleasant Valley two days later. And a July 4, 1912 wreck involving THREE trains killed at least 39 people near Gibson, making Steuben County’s worst single-incident death toll.
The Summer Triangle is straight overhead – how I remember my father pointing it out to me, one night in our driveway! The Perseid meteor shower begins in July, although it peaks in August.
Though we don’t really notice it, and hardly believe it, the days are getting shorter. But we push that knowledge aside, and drop it from our minds. After all, it’s July. And summer will last forever.