Editorial: Midsummer dreaming

The Dog Days of Summer descended on us July 3 and will last the Biblical length of 40 days, or until Aug. 11.

Why Dog Days? Some have said this period of especially hot and sticky weather is the kind not fit for a dog. Other folk wisdom holds that in the depths of summer, dogs go mad with the heat. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, these explanations, to give them their scientific term, are hooey.

The name that designates the spell of hot midsummer weather comes (like most things) from the Greeks, who named the brightest star in the sky Sirius, or the “Dog Star.” It rose with the sun and, Greek stargazers believed, added to the hot days.

EarthSky.org reports that, “As part of the constellation Canis Major, the Greater Dog, Sirius also earns the nickname of the Dog Star.” The Greeks weren’t right about Sirius causing wickedly hot weather, or that Fido was not altogether there because of the star.

The Romans, more practical and much more brutal, “tried to appease Sirius by sacrificing a brown dog at the start of the Dog Days,” according to those Old Farmers. (No word that Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is a student of Roman religious rites.)

If you’re up early some of these mornings, you can find Sirius easily, since it’s still the brightest star, in the east just before dawn.

Dog days or not, we’ve been blessed this summer, even when the air we breathed was like molasses, or if hot rain fell nonstop. Patience has its rewards, when we’ve had some summer days that we seem to remember from our childhoods — warm, soft mornings, bright breezy days and evenings that are easy on the eyes. (Funny we don’t remember the horrendously hot days of childhood, but then, memory is imagination, a ghost telling halftruths, as someone once said.)

We’re not just lucky for endless beach days, or long morning and evening walks, or families and friends joining together for outdoor cooking and meals, but for business people in our community, who have brought us delights of an East End summer.

August arrives Friday morning, and soon enough, August will turn to September, when school and work and rigid routines beckon, and all the other responsibilities that come with the change of season.

But not yet, not now, when August will light our way.