What Are the 'Dog Days of Summer?'

Did you ever wonder why they call these hot, humid, midsummer days the "dog days of summer?" Being the incurably curious person I am, I decided to look it up. As well as being incurably curious, I am also a literalist and relate a lot to images. So, naturally, when I hear those words, I immediately imagine some unfortunate canine, suffering in the sweltering heat of a hot summer afternoon. Thus, whenever I heard someone use that expression, I always just thought of dogs with their tongues hanging out, panting, saliva dripping, looking for some shade, or maybe jumping into a swimming pool or a pond to cool off. I had a kiddie pool for my dog who loved to jump in that, lie down and pant. How I miss my dear dog, especially in the "dog days of summer." The images I just described illustrate exactly how I feel at this time of year, and I have used that expression a couple of times today and heard it several times from the mouths of others around me. Some of these days are worse than others, some are almost unbearable, some tolerable, sometimes you even get a more springlike day, as if God is giving us a day off from suffering the feeling of being baked or steamed as soon as you step outside, but no matter what you call them, those days are here. I found out that the actual dates of the "dog days of summer" are from July 3 to August 11, and their main descriptive adjectives are hot and humid. One reference said these days occur in "late summer." I see that fall is not set to begin until September 22, so that would make these days more like "midsummer" than "late summer" for whatever that's worth. It's different in different parts of the continental United States, but in Kansas, we look forward to the idea of fall, when it's supposed to cool off, but, in reality, the cooler temperatures don't usually arrive until sometime in mid-October. Heat and humidity are the two main characteristics of summer in Kansas. I have visited and lived places where the heat and humidity are even worse than "Kansas in August," as the old song from "South Pacific" mentions, namely, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and New Orleans, Louisiana. I have felt the extreme heat of South Texas, but it seemed to lack the humidity of these other places. I'm sure you have experienced some of these same kinds of variations in different parts of the country. I'm thinking of that song, "Summertime," when "the livin' is easy. Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high." I guess what is meant by "livin' is easy" is that you can't do much because it's too hot, so you have to do less or die of the heat. I don't know if that's the right way to interpret that, probably not, but that's what it is like for me. Air conditioning is a blessing for sure, but it is expensive, plus I grew up a long time before everybody had air conditioning in their house. We used fans and drank ice water and iced tea and lemonade in the summer to cool off. For a long time in our ranch style house with no basement, we had an attic fan, which was a tremendous blessing. It pulled in the air from outside, and it cooled us off--somewhat miraculously, considering the air outside was still hot. It did sometimes cool off quite a bit at night, though, plus any kind of fan miraculously cools the air as it moves it around. Okay, so I just found out fans don't really cool the air off. What they do is move the hot air away from you and allow the cooler air of the room cool you. It's called the "wind chill effect." Just like everything else, you can always look up anything you want to know on the Almighty and Omniscient Internet. The breeze the fan creates actually "makes you feel cooler by enhancing sweat evaporation and creating a wind chill effect," says the AI summary. Fascinating. Learn something new every day. I didn't know that I was that sweaty, but that's okay. Now, back to the "Dog Days of Summer." The story, originating from Greece and Rome, is that the term relates to a constellation, Sirius (the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, or "Greater Dog"), which "was believed to add to the sun's heat when it rose with the sun in late July," according to the AI summary. Did you know that? Neither did I. So, now perhaps you can say you learned something new. I did, anyway. Learning something new always makes me feel like life is worth living. That may sound extreme to you, but you know that's how children stay interested in living. When you quit learning, you quit living, in my way of thinking, so never quit learning. As long as you're alive, there is something new to learn. I hope at least one person has enjoyed reading this little essay. I have enjoyed writing it, I have enjoyed learning something new, and I hope you have too.