Tag Archives: V-J Day

Bronze-Faced August

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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.

Forgotten (or Repurposed) Holidays

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A week or so back I had to call a town office in my home state of Rhode Island, but wound up leaving a recorded message, because I’d forgotten it was V-J Day.

That may perplex some people, and stir vague memories for others. It’s the anniversary of Victory over Japan, and Rhode Island is now the only state where it’s still an official observance (second Monday in August, rather than the historical August 14). It’s a curious little holiday, late in a seaside summer. It used to be widely celebrated, but faded with memory of the war, pushed along no doubt by proximity to Labor Day.

Another holiday from my youth is Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12), which itself was overshadowed by Washington’s Birthday, ten days later. This meant two days off school in two weeks, possibly plus snow days as a bonus. George has long had an official national holiday but Abe hasn’t, and some places cram them together as “Presidents’ Day,” but eight states still celebrate Lincoln. This incudes New York, which I have somehow managed to miss in 25 years of living here. I speculate that it’s limited to closing government offices.

Thanksgiving goes back to a proclamation by Lincoln more clearly than it goes back to the Pilgrims, but Franklin D. Roosevelt shaped our modern celebration. It was traditionally the last Thursday in November, and also traditionally kicked off the Christmas shopping season. Some years November has five Thursdays, and the last one comes pretty late, so during the Depression FDR proclaimed it the FOURTH Thursday, to stimulate an extra week of retail business.

New Englanders and Republicans furiously celebrated on the fifth Thursday, and a mini-cartoon in the Bing Crosby movie “Holiday Inn” showed a confused turkey running back and forth between the two dates on a calendar. We’re all used to it now.

November has a second holiday, formerly called Armistice Day, celebrating the 11th day of the 11th month, when World War I ended. As memory faded, and as 17 million Americans went into uniform for the SECOND World War, this became Veterans’ Day, to honor all those who served.

Much to the exasperation of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (combat veteran and P.O.W.), who said “Armistice Day was a hallowed anniversary because it was supposed to protect future life from future wars. Veterans Day, instead, celebrates ‘heroes’ and encourages others to dream of playing the hero themselves, covering themselves in valor.”

Memorial Day started out as Decoration Day, to place flowers on the graves of the Union dead from the Civil War. (Waterloo claims the honor of initiating the holiday.) Former Confederate states fiercely ignored it, but… once again… as memory faded, and as two world wars brought hundreds of thousands of deaths, the day became Memorial Day for ALL the dead, and moved to the last Monday in May.

Believe it or not, the “Pennsylvania Dutch” used to be the about only Americans who paid any particular attention to Christmas, and even into the 20th century it was a normal work day for many people. Even as a gift-giving holiday, it had to compete with New Year’s.

Columbus Day has rightly come into scorn for celebrating a guy who, whatever his virtues, initiated an age of horror, with bigotry, imperialism, mass murder, and enslavement, all on scales such as the world had never seen. But holidays and statues, however much they purport to be about the past, are mostly about the times in which they are created. Columbus Day proclaimed the acceptance (at last!) of Italian-Americans (and by extension, other “new immigrant” groups) as full-fledged members of the American community. Maybe we should change it to Marconi Day.