Dog Days

My daughter doesn’t understand how we can be so backwards as not to have an air conditioner. I admit it has been warm here in Wisconsin (!) this summer; the lack of rain troubles my farmer friends (though I acknowledge it has kept the grass from growing and needing mowing). Temperatures over the past week have often exceeded ninety degrees, and there seems little relief in sight. I inform my daughter that in about five months she will urge me to turn up the heat, and complain that our house is always so cold, but she doesn’t appreciate the irony.

I relish the heat. All winter, in the absence of positive degrees, I wait for these days, and I will not let any air conditioner deny me the comfort of every sun-baked degree. I move more slowly, but I move; I run earlier, but I run. I eat less, and I drink more. I am privileged to appreciate without too much discomfort these dog days of summer.

The dog dogs of summer derive their name not from the lethargy of the furred four legged canine, but from the ancient Romans, who named a certain constellation of stars Canis Major and Minor, and who thought the brightest star in Canis Major was Sirius. The star was so bright that the ancient Romans believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun. Hence, the stretch of heat during July and August, when Sirius rises and sets with the sun, are referred to as the dog days of summer.

I told that story to my daughter. Ugh, she said, can’t we get an air conditioner.