AUGUST is a magnificent month. It’s also a bronze-faced, unforgiving month. It pours out many beauties and joys, but can also bring either droughts or floods, hurricanes or hammering heat waves. August may usher in thunderstorms and tornadoes. Or beauty, clement climes, and the very best of summer. The thing is, you never know. And August doesn’t care.
Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar’s heir and grand-nephew, had finally conquered the Roman world by 30 B.C.E. Just as his great predecessor had named a month for himself, Augustus figured that he was entitled to do the same.
In August the Summer Triangle beams down on us from directly overhead. You can spot it without excessive effort, because it’s formed from three of the brightest stars. They’re among the first to appear on an August night. They’re old friends, and they visit every summer of our lives.
Sirius, the brightest star of all, is getting higher night by night. The ancient Egyptians figured it was SO bright that its rays must be adding to those of the sun, making August extra hot. Since it’s in the constellation Canis Major (“Big Dog”), we have the expression “dog days of summer.”
Also speaking astronomically, August brings us the perseid meteor shower, almost always the biggest of the year. At their peak, the perseids average a meteor a minute, so it’s not high-tech sound-and-light show. But if you’re happy to be still and wait, it’s one of nature’s glories.
One very sad note – an August 30 train crash in Wayland killed 30 people in 1943. It was the second-worst single-incident disaster in Steuben County.
Hiroshima was atom-bombed on August 6, 1945, Nagasaki on August 9. Japan announced its surrender on August 15, or V.-J. Day. Only Hawaii and my native Rhode Island still celebrate it, now called Victory Day, on the second Monday of the month.
Even with Victory Day, August is curiously bereft of any major holidays, though Britain has “August Bank Holidays,” two Mondays on which businesses are closed, and millions of Britons head for the beach. Other than that you can enjoy National Immunization Awareness Month, National Milkshake Day (8/1), Coast Guard Day (8/4), or, if in Vermont, Battle of Bennington Day (8/15), though the fighting actually happened in New York.
The fact that August is big in thunderstorms means that it’s also big on rainbows, maybe rivalling only April in that regard.
Marcus Garvey was born in August. So were movie people Jason Momoa, Peter O’Toole, Lucille Ball, Alfred Hitchcock, and Sean Connery. Orville Wright and Neil Armstrong were born in August, making a GREAT juxtaposition – the first man to fly an airplane, and the first man to step on the moon, not quite 66 years apart. WOW!
Napoleon and Mother Teresa, avatars of sharply different world views, were born in August. So were literary types Herman Melville and Francis Scott Key. Other August birthdays come to presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Most of the birds have raised their young, but the monarchs are still struggling northward, laying eggs in the milkweed as they pass. The geese are not gathering QUITE yet, but hidden in the woods, you can see the leaves starting to turn, and the season with them. In the last week of the month, even if the weather’s still summery, the sky takes on a slightly different shade of blue. It takes a LITTLE longer for the morning air to warm up, and darkness comes just a LITTLE earlier.
August is the month for swimming, beach parties, clambakes, blueberries, corn on the cob. And suddenly – back-to-school sales. Displays change in the stores. Mothers start stocking up on school supplies, and checking how much the children have grown since they last wore their “school clothes.” If you’re a kid, it seems horribly unfair. But even so, it’s not September YET! The water’s still warm. Another swim would be great.