The Weekly Essay

It’s Another Story.

Tainted Love.

Author: October 11, 2024 4 Comments

Source: Wikipedia

I have mixed feelings about a new Creature From The Black Lagoon movie. On the one hand it seems like everything these days is a reboot, remake, or remix. On the other hand there’s a belief that there are a limited number of stories to be told and that everything already is a reboot, remake, or remix, the prime example being Shakespeare’s plays which were based on other sources, and he didn’t even pay royalties. And on the third hand, since we’re talking about monsters and anything’s possible, because I’ve always loved all things aquatic and went through a long phase of wanting to be a marine biologist like Jacques Cousteau, before I realized that job was already taken by this guy named Jacques Cousteau, I grew up fascinated by The Creature, even before I saw the original movies. Because the Saturday matinee on the UHF station mostly stuck to various versions of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster, with occasional appearances by The Wolf Man and a few disappearances of The Invisible Man, I even wrote my own Creature story. It was loosely based on Jaws, although when one of the crew says, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” they actually go back to land and get a bigger boat, which just gives The Creature more time to wreak havoc, though it’s good because it’s ultimately discovered he’s going after polluters. I was an environmentally conscious kid, and also influenced by Namor Of Atlantis, but that’s another story.

There’s also already been a modern retelling of The Creature From The Black Lagoon: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape Of Water. Not only did I really enjoy it for its lovely, strange, and dark story but, in spite of only being inspired by, not connected to, the original three films, it seemed to pick up where the original three films left off. Although only very loosely connected the three Creature films still, taken together, tell a story of first love, maturity and marriage, and finally love turned toxic.

The first in the series, the 1954 The Creature From The Black Lagoon, has The Creature as the villain, but there’s also a side story of scientist David Reed and his girlfriend and fellow scientist Kay Lawrence. She’s the one who’s kidnapped by The Creature after he sees her swimming above him. Like a lot of classic monster films there wasn’t any interest in exploring why The Creature would find a human attractive, or even interesting, but what stands out for me is she’s resisted David’s pressure to marry because she wants a career of her own. The Creature is a not-so-subtle metaphor for the pressure put on women to be dragged down.

The sequel, coming out just a year later, was Revenge Of The Creature, with a whole new couple, animal psychologist Clete Ferguson, and his assistant, ichthyology student Helen Dobson. Clete and Helen fall in love and The Creature becomes a surrogate child. Clete is the father figure, disciplining The Creature with a cattle prod while Helen is more nurturing. And because they thought it would be a good idea to keep The Creature in an oceanarium open to the public it escapes and goes on a rampage. Things turn Oedipal—another story thrown into the mix—when The Creature kidnaps Helen and Clete has to come to the rescue.

The last of the original films, The Creature Walks Among Us, gets a lot of hate, and, I admit, deserves it for the ridiculousness of the Creature miraculously developing lungs so it can breathe air, but I like how dark it gets. Also it’s the only one that makes The Creature sympathetic. Finally it’s the humans who are the villains. We get a whole new couple. This time it’s Dr. William Barton—no relation to the real life engineer Otis Barton who designed the first bathysphere—and his trophy wife Marcia. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia is willful, independent, and enjoys shooting at sharks. She attracts The Creature’s attentions when she accompanies the men on a dive. That’s the extent of its interest in her, though. The reduced budget of the third film created a story focusing mainly on the human relationships, and making them more complicated than ever. Barton murders another man who made a pass at Marcia, not caring that she wasn’t interested, then tries to blame The Creature. Somehow aware of the danger it’s in The Creature escapes its cage, kills Barton, and goes to the sea, never to return.

There were plans for at least one more film that would introduce a female Creature, which could have been interesting, but it never made it past the early stages and it would take sixty-one years for The Shape Of Water to make romance central to the story, keeping the third film’s sympathy, and even love for, something not human.

Del Toro’s film seems like a fitting end, and yet relationships are as strange and ever-changing as the sea itself, and if there is a new Creature From The Black Lagoon, I’d like to find out what it says about who, and what, we love, and how love connects us to all life.

Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Time And Tides.

Author: October 4, 2024 6 Comments

The Moon is finally getting a time zone. This is exciting because, though there still aren’t any residents there, giving it a time zone seems like part of a long-term plan to eventually establish lunar bases. Time zones are also very important. My wife and I realized this once when we drove three hours to a concert. The whole trip was almost due north but time zones have jagged edges, as though time cares about geography, and we ended up being an hour late. This worked out perfectly because we didn’t want to see the opening act anyway, but that’s another story. For most of human history time zones didn’t matter because going from one place to another, especially crossing oceans, was such a slow process no one noticed the time difference. Faster ships and, more importantly, trains created a need for standardized timekeeping, which is at least one thing most of the world can agree on. Trains also created word problems, which is at least one thing most of the world can agree are terrible.

A specific time zone for the Moon also addresses a big problem I’ve had with most science fiction. I’m willing to suspend a lot of my disbelief but in most science fiction shows and movies that involve people traveling from one planet to another how is it they almost always manage to arrive during daylight hours and when everyone’s awake? I can accept that somehow ships that are able to travel vast intergalactic distances in a matter of hours, or even days, have somehow found a way to deal with the time distortions that would be caused by traveling at or even faster than the speed of light, but statistically someone who’s on the run from space pirates or aliens or trying to get a shipment of cargo delivered has got to arrive at a spaceport at two a.m. on a Tuesday and sit in a holding pattern until the planetary rotation moves it into a reasonable hour. I’ve gone to parties and because I’m very concerned about being on time I’ve ended up circling the block because three hours is stretching the idea of “fashionably early”.

Star Trek, especially The Next Generation, did address this occasionally. Less experienced officers got the graveyard watch, and on at least one occasion an important message from Starfleet arrived in the middle of the night so Admiral Narrative Device had to start by saying to Captain Picard, “I’m sorry to wake you.” Although that just made me wonder how a ship on a long-term space voyage, where there is no “day” or “night” determines what time it is. No matter what the ship’s standard time was they’d eventually show up at a planetary bases or space stations at odd times. Shore leave always goes in shifts and it would be inevitable that at some point Yeoman Smith would have to beam down at two a.m. on a Tuesday after the bars were all closed and he’d be wearing a red shirt.

At least Doctor Who never had this problem. When your hero is a Time Lord they never have to circle the block waiting for the right time to show up at a party. A Time Lord is always right on time. And there is some science fiction that does deal with time zones. At the start of Larry Niven’s novel Ringworld Louis Wu is celebrating his birthday and starts hopping into transporters so he can go from time zone to time zone, extending the day until he hits the International Dateline. Imagine having a day so amazing you wanted to keep it going as long as possible and had the potential to do it by bouncing around the globe. Alternatively if you were having a really bad day you could use the same technology to head in the other direction, making your day shorter. That’s what I’d do if I had a math test with a bunch of word problems.

Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Someday Never Comes.

Author: September 27, 2024 4 Comments

Source: FromOldBooks.org

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Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Big Ten.

Author: September 20, 2024 8 Comments

September 23rd, 2014.

It’s been almost ten years since I had my last day of chemotherapy which I mark as the end of my battle with cancer. The doctors might say I didn’t fully get the all-clear until December when they unzipped me from my nipples to my navel and ripped out a bunch of lymph nodes, which was even more fun than it sounds, but I’m the one who had cancer. I get to decide when, and if, I want to celebrate.

When I was diagnosed with cancer I thought my life would never be the same. Ten years on and, well, my life pretty much returned to what it was before cancer, with a few changes. I’m not as casual about my health as I used to be but I’m also not one of those people who, having been through cancer, decided to quit their job, sell their house, move to Suriname, take up skydiving, become professional jugglers, and never wear shoes again. I’ve heard of people doing things like that but how many really do? I suspect there are a lot more people who, like me, go through cancer and then go back to normal life but with a deeper sense of gratitude for what we have.

Growing up in the 1980’s I remember cancer being a terrifying thing. It didn’t have the same social stigma as AIDS—which was unnecessary and made a terrible disease even worse—but it was still something people whispered about. Childhood cancer was the subject of after school specials I saw on TV meant to teach kids how to cope with their own morality, or the loss of someone they loved, because in those specials cancer was always a death sentence. And I’ve had real friends who had cancer, who went into remission then had it come back.

In spite of all that I really didn’t know much about cancer. I wasn’t prepared for the fact that “cancer” is a pretty general term for a whole group of diseases, some of which are easier to treat than others. Being told I had cancer was a shock; a few days later a doctor whom I’d only see once, very briefly, came into my hospital room to tell me the test results showed what I had was very treatable and had a good chance of being cured. Then he left and I sat there thinking about how “cured” was never a term I’d heard applied to cancer.

Ten years later it would be easy to think I am cured, but the truth is it’s easier to think that there’s no such thing. After I finished chemotherapy I was seeing my oncologist every few months. Then it was twice every year. Now it’s down to once a year. At this point we may go to every other year, though I don’t know if I’m ready for that just yet.

Ten years without cancer is a big deal. It’s big enough that I could move on, and perhaps going back to life pretty much as it was, not making any dramatic changes, is bigger than completely changing everything. I didn’t let cancer change me, at least not entirely. But it’s also not something I’ll forget. I’m the one who had cancer. I get to decide when, and if, I want to really let it go.  

The Weekly Essay

Notes On Camp.

Author: September 13, 2024 4 Comments

Source: Friday The 13th Wiki

In honor of Friday The 13th I offer this overview of the infamous film series:

Friday The 13th: A sleeper hit made on a shoestring budget this little horror film is one of the most well-known examples of the slasher genre. Years after a camper named Jason Vorhees drowned while two counselors were having sex a group of young people get together to reopen Camp Crystal Lake. One by one they’re murdered by a mysterious figure. While an undead and supernaturally powerful Jason would be the central figure in the sequels the first film’s shocking twist is that the murderer turns out to be a coffee pot.  

Friday The 13th, Part 2: A whole new group of young people return to reopen Camp Crystal Lake because so many parents are clamoring for the chance to send their children to the site of a series of gruesome murders. Jason Vorhees, now a bulked-up adult, wreaks havoc on the camp after being fired from his job as goalie for the Washington Capitals.

Friday The 13th, Part 3: A plucky group of young people ignore the warnings of a bizarre old man with two eyes in his head and a spare in his hand and decide to stay at Camp Crystal Lake, certain that nothing could possibly go wrong. Jason savagely murders each one. Approximately a third of the film’s runtime is taken up by Alice making coffee.

Friday The 13th, Part 4, The Final Chapter: Much lighter in tone the fourth installment focuses primarily on a love triangle between three plucky young people, Sam, Tina, and Paul. The film received special recognition at the Toronto Film Festival for its recreation of the scene from the 1947 romantic comedy Here’s Looking At You in which Katharine Hepburn harpoons Cary Grant in the groin.

Friday The 13th, Part 5, A New Beginning: While this installment brings back both Jason and survivor Tommy Jarvis from the previous film much of the plot is centered on a wayward but plucky group of young people who, as a community service project, are tasked with cleaning up Camp Crystal Lake, now renamed Crystal Lake Recreational Center And Memorial. Each one is murdered in a series of montages with music by The Bangles, A-Ha, Debbie Gibson, The Pet Shop Boys, Culture Club, Duran Duran, and John Cage.

Friday The 13th, Part 6, Jason Lives: Tommy Jarvis returns to Camp Crystal Lake, now renamed Camp Crystal Lake And Golf Course, and digs up Jason’s corpse under the thirteenth green. Jason is revived when lightning strikes a putter which fell into his grave. In the final battle Tommy sends Jason to the bottom of Crystal Lake by chaining an espresso machine around his neck.

Friday The 13th, Part 7, The New Blood: Troubled but plucky young Tina is traumatized the accidental death of her father at Crystal Lake, now renamed Club Med Crystal Lake. Years later she returns and her telekinetic powers revive Jason. When a group of young people have a party at the clubhouse Jason murders several of them before being confronted by the powerfully psychic Tina. She summons her father’s ghost who drags Jason into the depths of Crystal Lake.

Friday The 13th, Part 8, Jason Takes Manhattan: Together with pals Fozzie and Gonzo Jason falls in love with Miss Piggy and must save her from being framed for a series of high profile jewel thefts carried out by Kevin Bacon.

Friday The 13th, Part 9, Jason Goes To Hell: A bounty hunter discovers that only blood relatives of Jason can kill him permanently and arranges a Vorhees family reunion at Crystal Lake Shopping Plaza. Plucky young Jessica, Jason’s third cousin twice removed on his uncle’s side, stabs Jason with a magical dagger. In a tearful moment just before he’s pulled into the underworld Jason tells Jessica he loves her. She replies, “Ditto.”

Friday The 13th, Part 10, Jason Resurrected: Federal agents corner mass murderer and undead monster Jason at Six Flags Over Crystal Lake. Unable to kill him they cryogenically freeze his body. A thousand years later he’s discovered and revived and becomes an interplanetary delivery boy, having a series of wacky space-themed adventures.

Friday The 13th, Part 11, A Whole New Jason: Environmentalists set out to save Crystal Lake which is discovered to be the site of the largest oil deposit in North America. Jason leads the group, collecting signatures and developing strong ties to people in the community, whom he then kills. This is the only installment in the series based on a true story.

Friday The 13th, Part 12, Jason, Jason, Jason: A billionaire creates a theme park on Cystal Lake Island filled with cloned Jasons. A small group of scientists are invited to a preview of the new park but, when a disgruntled employee shuts down the electrified fencing that protects visitors from the Jasons, it’s up to a plucky young girl who’s an expert in Linux to save the day.

Friday The 13th, Part 13: The final installment pits Jason against Halloween’s Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare On Elm Street before forcing them to unite to stop the aliens from Predator who are unleashing the xenomorphs from Alien at Camp Crystal Lake, now renamed Time Warner Cable And AT&T Stadium. In the end they’re all destroyed in a final gigantic battle. The only survivor is a plucky young barista named Norman Bates.

Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Ciao, Baby, Part 2: They’re Back.

Author: September 6, 2024 4 Comments

When I said hornets hold a grudge I thought I was kidding. Insects having the memory to recognize and target an individual, to make deliberate attacks, sounds like something out of a horror film. If it hadn’t happened I wouldn’t believe it. I’m still not entirely sure I believe it.

When bugs first started appearing in horror films they were mostly solitary giants: the titular monsters in Tarantula (1955), The Deadly Mantis (1957), which deliver exactly what they say on the can, and Mothra (1961), though one of the earliest bug films, Them! (1954), did something different with a horde of giant ants who are somehow really hard to find in Los Angeles. Both The Beginning Of The End (1957) and Five Million Years To Earth (1967) gave us giant grasshoppers, though in the later film they’re from Mars and use psychic powers to summon the Devil. As audiences evolved horror did too. More people realized that, although there were once eight-foot millipedes and two-foot dragonflies, the Earth they roamed was a very different place, and giant insects now are biologically impossible. And bugs are so much more terrifying, and plausible, in quantity, which led to films like the still disturbing and atmospheric Phase IV (1974) with hyper-intelligent ants, Bug (1975), and Kingdom Of The Spiders (1977). And I remember when I was a kid the threat of killer bees being a hot news item for a hot second, probably because of the movie The Swarm (1978). And while bug films tapered off through the slasher-minded ’80’s there was a little bit of a resurgence with Arachnophobia (1990)—I’m ashamed to admit a friend and I threw handfuls of plastic spiders into the audience of a screening of that one—and Eight Legged Freaks (2002).

The hornets, each one no bigger than the end of my pinky finger, didn’t need numbers to frighten me. It’s been a long time since I was stung by anything and while I was never allergic before my body then was a very different place, and anaphylaxis is no joke, though Anna Phylaxis would be a great name for a Drag Queen, but that’s another story.

I’d put off dealing with the hornets because I only saw one or two at a time, and they didn’t seem interested in me. When one followed me into the house, however, I knew we couldn’t continue to coexist in such close quarters.

First I tried an organic solution. I plugged the hole they’d been using to go in and out of the crawlspace under the house and where, I assumed, they were building a nest. I hoped maybe the ones stuck outside would bivouac elsewhere and if any were inside, well, time would take care of them. Instead of going away a whole squadron hovered around the plugged hole like paparazzi outside a Hollywood nightclub. At least they ignored me, for the moment, but I felt I had to take drastic measures before they went into attack formation. The bug and hornet killer delivered exactly what it said on the can. A quick, well-placed spray of foul-smelling foam took down hornets clinging to the wall and in flight. They fell into piles of dead leaves and disappeared. I could only hope the end was mercifully quick.  

I only had to knock out a few. The horde disbanded. But the next day a couple came back. I was a dead-eye with the spray, and soon they were dead too. That would be all, I thought. Then, the day after, I was out in the yard when one grazed the back of my neck and buzzed by my ear. “Clever girl,” I muttered as it sailed up over the house before I could arm myself. After that every whisper of wind, every falling leaf, even the buzz of a fly made me jump. One last hornet was out there and it knew me. I saw it by the plugged hole about an hour later; I grabbed the spray can from the basement and aimed. I missed, and the hornet flew right at me, making cold eye-contact before it disappeared.

That night it went to the patio light, buzzing around the bulb inside the glass case. With the spray ready I waited until it came out and hit it. The hornet fell, struggled, curled and uncurled, then stopped. All I could do was stand there and watch it die. Then I got some water and washed away the spray, like tears in the rain.  

Except that wasn’t the end. There was another one clinging to the brickwork in the shadows, and the next morning another. There will always be another one. They know it’s not size that matters but numbers.

Nature Talks., Submitted For Your Approval., The Vault, The Weekly Essay

Ciao, Baby.

Author: August 30, 2024 6 Comments

There are hornets under the house, in the crawlspace. I only know this because I’ve seen them going in and out of a hole in the bricks next to the patio. They’ve kept to themselves which is the only reason I haven’t convinced my wife to pack up the dogs and all our belongings and set the house on fire as we drive away. I’ve thought about getting one of those bug bombs that sprays a cloud of insecticide and throwing it into the crawl space, then packing up the dogs and all our belongings and setting the house on fire as we drive away, but, as I said, they’ve kept to themselves.

Still they need to go. I believe I was stung by a hornet once at camp. I can’t be absolutely certain—it was some kind of flying insect that landed on the ground near where I was collecting firewood. I’ve also been stung by honeybees, bumblebees, yellowjackets, and paper wasps and this was a pain more intense than any of those. Luckily I’m not allergic and though it felt like hours the pain dissipated in about fifteen minutes, even without any treatment. When I was a kid and got stung by bees my mother would make a compress out of tobacco and a wet paper towel which helped draw out the poison, and that’s why cigarettes are better than vaping, but that’s another story.

Hornets are also just scary looking beasts. Around the time I got stung by a hornet I was writing stories about a character named Nighthawk. He was sort of a futuristic Robin Hood, going up against an evil king with a robot army in a neo-medieval world. At one point, having infiltrated the castle, Nighthawk had to battle a giant mutant hornet, the scariest thing I could imagine, created by the king’s mad scientist. I believe this is why one stung me; hornets carry grudges.

Wasps are also another matter entirely, giving their kids names like Aldrich and Margeaux, and droning on about how they summered in the Hamptons. When I was a kid a neighbor showed me a mud dauber nest, a cluster of tubes built out of dried mud. He showed me how, like bees, they’re clever and industrious creatures. Then he broke open the tubes and dozens of spider corpses spilled out. As someone who’s always been fascinated by the beauty and wonder of the natural world, who appreciates that there is death as well as life in the grand cycle, that’s when I wanted the neighbor to pack up all his belongings and leave so I could set his house on fire. You come for the spiders you come for me.

The hornets, on the other hand, eat bugs like grasshoppers, and they also drink nectar, so they’re even beneficial. The ones we have are also not, as far as I can tell, the infamous murder hornets that caused widespread panic a few years ago; they’re more likely European hornets. In fact they belong to the genus Vespa so I think they’ll be cool as long as I pass by them and say “Ciao”.

Nature Talks., The Weekly Essay

Summer’s End.

Author: August 23, 2024 7 Comments

Schools are starting to go back into session but for me, even when I was a student, summer isn’t really over until the end of August. The days are already getting shorter. Just a few weeks ago if I woke up in the dark I could roll over and eventually go back to sleep. Now when I wake in the dark it’s because the alarm has gone off and it’s time to get up. But it still feels like summer, or it did until earlier this week when I went outside and was shocked by how cold it was. Overnight the temperature dropped almost thirty degrees. It climbed back up with the sun but the change was still a reminder that summer is ending.

The trees haven’t started to change yet. They’re still full of bright green leaves. The hickory tree in the front yard is still forming its nuts; it’ll be a while before their deluge drives us nuts. The insects, though, have gotten the message. Even in the morning cold I could hear crickets calling to each other, katydids in the trees, and a few late season cicadas ratcheting away, desperate for one last chance. The end of summer always brings an urgency. Those who sing away most of the season in the dark continue to do so even after dawn; their lives are so compressed an hour must pass like a year.

Once I was lucky enough to start school after Labor Day. It was the start of seventh grade, the start of a new school for me, which was intimidating. I’d gone to the same school from kindergarten through sixth grade and most of my classes were in the same room, or adjacent to each other, and even by second grade I’d gotten to know the layout of the whole school, which was all one level. Seventh grade was a complete change; classes were held in different rooms, on different floors. We were given cards with our teachers’ names and their room numbers and expected to find our way. The first day everybody was allowed some leeway; there was a lot of ducking in and out of wrong rooms and teachers were patient. The second day everything changed. We were all expected to have the schedules and locations of everything down.

In the night between the second and third day a miracle happened: the air conditioning for the entire building broke. An emergency notice went out to parents that summer break would be extended just a little longer. In the end that meant over a week. It was September before we were able to go back in cool comfort, which, I think, meant more to the teachers than it did to any of us. Even though I wasn’t able to go back to the building during that time it did allow me to accept how much things had changed.

The only downside was having to wake up in the dark, but that too would have come no matter what.

The Weekly Essay

The Root Canal Of The Problem.

Author: August 16, 2024 8 Comments

Source: makeagif

I don’t mind going to the dentist. Oh no. I hate going to the dentist. This is in spite of all the hygienists, and, for that matter, all the dentists I’ve ever dealt with being really nice people who make me feel guilty for laughing so hard at Little Shop Of Horrors—both versions—but then I start thinking about what led them into dentistry as a profession and I stop feeling guilty and start getting worried. I’m always uncomfortable with visits to the doctor, and the gray walls and sterile exam rooms and bland art don’t help, but most of the time the doctor gives me a quick exam, asks me how I feel, and that’s it. A dental appointment is always going to be long and drawn out and uncomfortable because there’s always got to be the scraping, the gouging, the hammering—that’s just the parking lot. Then I get into the dentist’s office and in the waiting room they’ve got a nice coffee maker with a dozen different flavored creamers and a big jar of chocolate chip cookies. I try not to be cynical—when the hygienist suggests the four-hundred dollar gum cleans I believe it’s because she believes it’s really needed, not because there’s a significant markup on it. At least at one time my dentist had pictures of hockey players on the walls of her office, because she was the official dentists of the Nashville hockey team, and I could distract myself by thinking about how their checkups must either be really long, because they’d had so many teeth knocked out, or really short, because they’d had so many teeth knocked out. But the coffee and chocolate chip cookies there in the waiting room just sit there taunting me. For weeks before a dental appointment I become even more conscious of my brushing, flossing, and general tooth care. I stop eating Oreos and drinking apple cider vinegar straight from the bottle. And I understand the importance of dental hygiene. It’s been pressed on me since I was a kid; my first grade teacher poured a Coke into a jar and then put a nail in it. A week later the nail had dissolved. I said, “That’s it, I’m never storing my nails in Coke ever again.”

At my last dental appointment the hygienist told me I was past due to have my teeth X-rayed. I said okay and she took about fifty-seven pictures. Then she said, “I’m a little concerned about your teeth.” I was too—my mouth had just been hit with more radiation than Chernobyl. But then she said I might need a root canal. Separately the words “root” and “canal” generally conjure up pleasant images in my mind, but put them together and I feel like I’ve just had an icicle driven through my heart.

“I know it’s probably unavoidable,” I said, “but it would be nice if during the procedure I could just be knocked unconscious with my mouth propped open.”

“Oh, we can definitely do that,” she said.

That is a relief. I won’t even ask how they plan to knock me out.

The Weekly Essay

Morning Star.

Author: August 9, 2024 2 Comments

Source: Wikipedia

Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is just starting to appear just over the horizon right before dawn, a few degrees from East. Below Orion it slips back below the rim of the Earth before the sun swallows it up, but in the coming days it will start to rise earlier and earlier, and rising higher and higher. The rise of Sirius marks the time when the Nile rises so it was extremely important to the ancient Egyptians. It was a way to keep track of when planting season began. And it’s thanks to the Romans that we refer to this time of year got its name. Originally they called this period “the days of the dog star”, but that was eventually shortened to “the dog days”. This is when summer is supposed to be the hottest, and the last chance to have fun before school started. According to folklore the dog days are supposed one of the times when ghosts are most active, maybe because, like snakes, they’re cold-blooded. Some folklore also warns this is when the morning dew can poison open wounds, and it was believed to be a time when snakes go blind. That last one at least may have a little bit of truth to it; snakes get milky-eyed just before they shed and it’s probably not a coincidence many start sloughing off their old skins at the end of a long and active summer. Being cold-blooded the warmer days are a good time for them as well as when their predators are less likely to be active.     

Sirius is one of our closest stellar neighbors, at just 8.6 light years away. If we could travel at the speed of light we could get there and back in under eighteen years, with plenty of time to stop and look around and maybe see if there any dogs around there. Some stars are so large and so bright their light reaches us from hundreds, even thousands of light years away. They could have burned out long ago but we still see them, afterimages of a fiery life. Sirius is so close what we see may not be that different from the way it is now. It’s also actually two stars. Sirius A is about twice the size of our sun while Sirius B is a white dwarf roughly the size of Earth. Canis Major, the constellation Sirius is in, has its own companion, Canis Minor, and they’re both companions to the hunter Orion.

These days I usually wake up just before dawn because the dog who sleeps between me and my wife thinks that’s when he should have breakfast, so we’re all up and about while Sirius is still poised just above the horizon. There are hills to the east of where I stand, and so many trees I won’t be able to see Sirius until late winter when it will be high in the evening sky. I only know it’s there thanks to star charts. It’s as much of a morning companion as the sun itself, and the dog who stands next to me out in the yard, marking a tree.

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