Shelter Island Reporter editorial: August days

Well, we made it.

Last Sunday, Aug. 11, we came through “The Dog Days of Summer,” which descended on us on July 3 and lasted the Biblical length of 40 days.

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 handed down is 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 mid-summer weather comes from the Greeks (like most things) who named the brightest star in the sky Sirius, or the “Dog Star,” which rose with the sun and, the 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.

If you’re up early these August 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 August, even when the air we breathed was like molasses, or hot rain fell, it seemed, nonstop. Patience has its rewards, when we’ve had summer days this week 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 half-truths, 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 people in our community who have brought us other delights of a Shelter Island summer.

We’re thinking of the great run by the Bucks, who thrilled fans at Fiske Field,  Illumination Night in the Heights, the weekly Historical Society Farmers Market, and this weekend’s ArtSi Studio tour, to name just a few.

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

But not yet, not now, when mid-August is still lighting our way.