August

There came three men from out of the West,
Their fortune for to try
As they had sworn a solemn oath,
John Barleycorn should die
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in,
Throwed clods upon his head.
And these three men made a solemn vow,
John Barleycorn was dead.

Then they let him lie for a very long time
Till the rain from heaven did fall. Then little John sprung up his head,
And soon amazed them all.
They let him stand till midsummer
Till he looked both pale and wan,
And little Sir John he growed a long beard
And so became a man.

They hired men with scythes so sharp
To cut him off at the knee
They rolled him and tied him by the waist,
and served him barbarously…

This year’s full moon is on August 9th and is called the Corn Moon.

August begins with a festival called Lammas or Lughnasah to celebrate the Celtic sun god, Lugh. His spirit inhabits the growing grain. Once the grain is harvested, it gives life to humankind and their animals. The festival celebrates once more the pattern of death and resurrection.

Lammas is a cross-quarter day, falling halfway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox. It is the first of the harvest festivals. In Great Britain, the first grains of the season were baked in a loaf and brought to church for a special blessing, called “loaf mass.” Every member of the household was to take a bite of the blessed bread for good luck, health and prosperity in the coming year.

The Hindus celebrate the god Ganesha during the month of August. He was said to have been created by the goddess, Parvati. With his beautiful face and several arms, he looked like every other Hindu god. Unfortunately, he crossed the great god, Shiva, who decapitated him. Parvati was so furious with Shiva, she barred him from her bed chamber. He relented and promised her that he would restore Ganesha’s head with the head of the next animal who happened by. And that’s how Ganesha became the elephant-headed god. He’s the god of new beginnings, of arts and letters, and of good fortune. Make an altar for him and offer him a bowl of sweets or red flowers. His prayer is: Om Shri Ganeshaya Namah.

St. Bartholomew’s feast day falls on August 24th. He died by being skinned alive. He’s the patron saint of butchers, leatherworkers and bookbinders.

If Bartlemas Day be fine and clear
You may hope for a prosperous Autumn that year.

All the tears St Swithin can cry
St. Barthelmy’s mantle can wipe dry.
—If that makes no sense to you, see my almanac for July.

John the Baptist was beheaded at the request of King Herod’s niece, Salome, after she danced for him at his birthday feast. This leads us to Philip Stubbes, a culture critic of 16th century England in his The Anatomy of Abuses, 1573:

All mixed, effeminate, lascivious, amorous dancing is utterly unlawful to Christians, to chaste and sober persons. For if Herod with but seeing Salome dance was so inflamed by her love, that he promised to give her whatsoever she desired…what would he have promised, had he danced with her? And I have heard many impudently say, that they have chosen their Wives, and Wives their Husbands, by dancing. Which plainly proves the Wickedness of it.

With that admonishment we turn to writing—

Born August 1, 1819, Herman Melville, wrote: I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.—from his famous Moby Dick.

The renowned writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin was born on August 2nd 1924. He wrote: The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. He shares his birthday with novelist Isabel Allendale. She’s written many charming books, but her best and most memorable is House of Spirits.

Guy de Maupassant, considered the 19th century master of the short story, was born on August 5th, 1850—Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

Winner of the Golden Booker for In a Free State, V.S. Naipaul was born on August 17th, 1932.

Celebrated wit Ogden Nash was born on August 19th, 1902. He wrote: You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

H.P. Lovecraft was born on August 20th, 1890. His philosophy that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger intergalactic existence… informed his speculative fiction.

Beloved storyteller, Ray Bradbury was born on August 22nd, 1920. Best known for Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and The Illustrated Man, once said: If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.

Theodore Dreiser, born on August 27th, 1871 once wrote: The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions – none more so than the most capable. He’s best known for Sister Carrie.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, scientist, playwright, novelist, poet and philosopher, was born on August 28th, 1749. He wrote Faust, Part One and Two.

One of the greatest and most influential writer of all time, Leo Tolstoy, was also born on August 28, seventy-nine years after Goethe. His most famous novels are War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but he wrote many other novels and novellas and 56 short stories.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on August 30th, 1797. Her mother was a philosopher and well-known advocate for women’s rights. Mary is most known for her iconic novel, Frankenstein, and her marriage to poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Kurt Vonnegut said this of the writer William Saroyan: …the first and still the greatest of all American minimalists. Saroyan was born on August 31st, 1908.

Hot July brings cooling showers
Apricots and gillyflowers

In the Gaelic tradition, July is called the yellow month. The full moon on July 10th is called the Hay Moon.
For most of us in North America, the hot and humid Dog Days extend from July 3rd all the way to August 11th. They were named for the dawn rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star in our heavens, after our sun. Sirius stems from the Greek “seirios,” which means “scorching.” The ancient Romans and Greeks believed that it was the combined heat of Sirius and the sun that produced the sweltering weather causing times of drought, violence and bad luck. In these days of climate change, it’s prime season for wildfire, which has burned thousands of acres of forest in the last decade.

Carving of the ancient Egyptian warrior goddess Sekhmet. This carving is on the wall of the Temple of Kom Ombo, which dates from the Ptolemaic period of Ancient Egypt.

Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of ancient Egypt, roamed the earth during the hot days of July. Her breath was the hot desert wind, bringing plague. One story tells about the time Sekhmet was sent to earth by her father, Ra, the sun god, to destroy the mortals who had not offered him sufficient sacrifice. Once the slaughter started, Sekhmet was filled with bloodlust and killed men, women and children, nearly annihilating the population. She was so fierce and bloodthirsty that the gods were afraid she would kill all of humanity.

Her father joined the other gods and poured out a lake of beer and dyed it with red ochre. Mistaking it for blood, Sekhmet drank and drank until she was far too drunk to continue killing. She returned quietly to Ra and the rest of humanity was saved.

As we move to a different pantheon, July 15th is the feast day of St. Swithin’s. According to British weather lore, if it rains on the 15th, we’ll enjoy forty days of wet weather.

St. Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain
Full forty days it will remain.
St. Swithin’s Day, if thou be fair
For forty days, twill rain no mair.

St. Swithin was a 9th Century champion of the poor and a beloved bishop of Winchester. On his deathbed, he requested that his body be buried in the common churchyard beneath the feet of the passers-by and rain from the eaves. His grave was the site for so many miracles that the monks of Winchester exhumed his remains and buried them in a crypt within the cathedral. The saint was unhappy at the change of resting place. He wept for forty days and forty nights. The sodden monks returned St. Swithin to his former grave.

July 20th celebrates one of my favorites, the 14th Century St. Wilgefortis, or St. Uncumber as she is known by her followers. Her father promised her in marriage to the king of Sicily, and no amount of pleading would change his mind. The night before the wedding, Wilgefortis prayed to grow so ugly that the king would reject her. The next morning, she had grown a luxuriant mustache and beard. Her father was so furious he crucified her on the spot.

Wilgefortis promised her mourners that anyone who prayed to her would be free of the encumbrance of men. On July 20th, a woman unhappy in marriage can bring oats to her shrine to feed the horse that will carry her husband away.

In the literary firmament, we have William Strunk Jr., born on July 1, and author of the famous Elements of Style:
Place a comma before a conjunction introducing an independent clause…
The situation is perilous, but there is still one chance of escape.
Franz Kafka, whose novels and stories blended realism with a disturbing dreamscape. He’s best known for The Metamorphosis. He was born on July 3rd and died at age 40 from tuberculosis.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on Independence Day, most known by school children for The Scarlett Letter.
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, was born on July 7th.
Both born on July 10th, Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Marcel Proust did not.
Born on July 11th, EB White is best known for Charlotte’s Web, and Jhumpa Lahiri for Interpreter of Maladies.
The brilliant poet, Pablo Neruda shares his July 12th birthday with Henry David Thoreau, whose retreat from the world at Walden Pond was a half-mile from the road to town. His mother often brought him food.
Iconoclast Hunter S Thompson was born on July 18th.
Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21st. His minimalist style changed the way we write prose.
But then there’s the florid, hilarious prose of Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume, who was born on July 22nd and died this year at the ripe age of 92.
My hero, Raymond Chandler, was born on July 23rd. This is from his novel, Red Wind:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.

We close on July 30th, the birthday of Emily Bronte, author of the haunting novel Wuthering Heights.

A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune
—Coleridge

Welcome June!

June is the most beautiful month of the year in Portland. All the trees are leafed out, the dogwoods are still in bloom, as are the peonies, lilies, roses, black-eyed Susans, daisies, fuchsias, foxglove, and lavender. The night-blooming jasmine perfumes the air. Truly, the list of flowers is endless, and everything is new and bright and saturated with color.

June was named for the Roman goddess Juno. Juno was the patron of marriage, hearth and home, which is where the custom of June weddings originated. The full moon is called the Strawberry Moon, to honor the first fruit of the season.

The summer Solstice falls on June 21^st. It’s the longest day of the year and officially the beginning of summer. During a typical Portland winter, we can go for weeks without seeing the sun. Now that it’s June, the skies are violet-blue and the daylight lasts for nearly 17 hours.

My birthday falls in June. I do love birthdays. I adore birthday cake and birthday wishes. I love getting new books from friends and family on my birthday. Getting a nice stack in June can last me nearly until December’s Christmas books.