August in New England and the North East of North America can get very hot as we enter into the “dog days” of summer ( see https://www.almanac.com/content/what-are-dog-days-summer). And we have experienced some extremely hot days already this July. Children can be especially prone to heat exhaustion and sunburn but a few basic practices–drinking water, staying out of the sun ( a forest is great for this), applying suntan lotion, and finding water they can play in– can allow children to have fun outside on all but the hottest days.
As the director of a nursery school ( and as a parent or teacher) it is tempting, and somewhat necessary, to begin to think about the new school year. But it is also important to remember to luxuriate in the special qualities of this time of year. Find the water near you whether it be a river, lake, pond, ocean, or city splash pad park to play in. Use the tree canopy of a nearby forest, a tree lined street, or a large shade tree to cool things off. Appreciate and learn about both the water cycle that provides us with the same water that the dinosaurs drank, and the watershed that gives life to your town and community. Get to know your local river and bodies of water and do everything you can as an individual and a community to learn about, appreciate, and care for your local rivers and other bodies of water. And make sure to savor that glass of cold water, lemonade or whatever your favorite summer beverage is. When we were kids my dad, to get us excited about drinking water, would tell us there was a specific way to drink it. Take a big sip, drink it down, and then release a big “Aahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” to celebrate that water is life. Still works today!
According to Mary Holland the month of August in New England is a month of dispersal. Most of the baby birds have left their nests, some shore birds have already started South, and baby turtles and snakes are making their way out into the world. Tadpoles have turned into full fledged frogs and while there are less songbirds singing, cicadas, crickets, grasshoppers and katydids are making a holy ruckus. Fruit is growing on the trees and bushes, and many plants are beginning to drop their seeds. Ripe, black walnuts, protected in their thick, green husks, are falling from the Black Walnut trees ( or sometimes seemingly “hurled” by mischievous squirrels). Beneath the long hot summer sun, nature has done its work and we are privy to its abundance. Some ways to appreciate this abundance are to harvest the fruits of your own garden, visit a local farmstand, or experience one of the many country fairs that are common in Connecticut and throughout New England through the middle of August and continuing on into September (one of my favorites is the Bethlehem Fair in Litchfield County, https://bethlehemfair.com/). Here is a fair schedule for 2025 in Connecticut https://ctvisit.com/articles/connecticuts-country-fairs
Increasingly, we worry/reflect on forest fires out of control, tornadoes popping up in unexpected places, increasing temperatures, food and water shortages, health issues, and the other cumulative effects of global warming and climate change. As we learn to better appreciate the interconnections between the water cycle, the emission of greenhouse gases that erode the ozone layer, and global warming, we will be in a better position to reconstruct communities around sustainable practices in transportation, food production, liveable cities, care for the earth, the transformation of the economic system, and the education of our children. Increasingly the paradox of these long, hot summer days is that we have to relax, luxuriate in, and appreciate these last days of summer, indeed rejuvenate and refresh body, mind and soul, AND we have to get up off our asses, wake up, rise up, and turn things around so that our children can continue the work of building truly liveable, sustainable, happy, healthy and free communities.
https://davidsuzuki.org/ OUR WORK: Always grounded in sound evidence, the David Suzuki Foundation empowers people to take action in their communities on the environmental challenges we collectively face. We’re One Nature.
Maria Montessori’s birthday is August 31, 1870. Don’t get me started on a rant about how I feel Montessori’s educational genius has been diluted and abandoned in favor of brightly colored and commodified children’s toys, Montessori shelves, and an unhealthy obesession with order. We need to go back to her books, her teaching practice (of both children and adults), and her conception of the child. With everything she did she fiercely honored childhood by honoring their intelligence, creativity, resilience, ability to bring new things into the world (and clean up after themselves!). She wrote “the child is endowed with unknown powers which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world , then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities.” She was a master observer of children and she could see in each individual child possibilities that others could not. She understood that she needed to change the roles of the teacher from filling up children’s minds with useless knowledge and rule governed behavior, to respecting the natality, or uniqueness of each child, supporting the the child’s desire to participate in the world through play, to remake a common world through work, by connecting children with the world and helping them do stuff. As she turned her attention to older children she was intensely interested in helping children figure out how to work on farms and participate in the work of a community. It is in this context that she developed the conception of Erdkinde ( or earth children), children capable of living off the land. So let’s honor Maria Montessori by honoring childhood and children
August 1st
National Convention of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association opens in Harlem, 1920
Stinkhorn mushrooms are fruiting
Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, b. 1819
MTV or Music Television is launched in 1981
Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist and educational theorist, extremely important in theorizing how children through the education system do or don’t acquire “cultural capital,” and construct a habitus that both fits into and changes the social order, b. 1930
Britain passes slavery abolition act in 1834
August 2nd
Holling C. Holling, author of many beautiful children’s books,especially about nature, culture, journeys, water and the sea, b. 1900
Frederic Bartholdi, French sculptor who designed the Statue of Liberty, b. 1834
James Baldwin, writer, public intellectual, polemicist, b.1919
The first subway was opened beneath the Thames River in London, 1870
August 3rd
Jesse Owens, African-American athlete, wins the 100m dash Gold Medal in Nazi Germany, and leaves with a total of 4 gold medals. Hmmmnn?
Hermit Thrushes are singing
National Watermelon Day
August 4th
White-Tailed Deer fawns are still nursing
National Conference in Rimini, Italy, gives birth to the Anarchistic Federation of Italy, 1872
Louis Armstrong , jazz pioneer, trumpeter, singer, b. 1901
Barack Obama 44th President of the United States, 1st African American president, b. 1961
August 5th
Goldenrod, a crucial late summer pollinator plant for bees, flowering
Partial nuclear test ban treaty signed by England, the Soviet Union and the United States in 1963
John Huston, movie director of of such wonderful movies as Night of the Iguana, Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Misfits among many others; his work in so many different genres and his ability to use narrative to explore poeple’s characters in depth, give his work a breadth and scope in exploring human nature that is astonishing, b. 1901
August 6th
US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima killing at least 70,000 civilians in the explosion and the immediate aftermath, 1945
Barbara Cooney, author of such classics as Miss Rumphius, Roxaboxen and The Chanticleer and the Fox that show a deep respect for children’s creativity, imagination and desire to play, b. 1917
Great Blue Herons and Cormorants are cooling off by the avian strategy of panting or gular fluttering, where they open their mouths and flutter their neck muscles
Andy Warhol, inventor of Pop Art, flaneur, and the doyen of the Factory (a cultural powerhouse in Manhattan in the 60s, 70s, and 80s), b. 1928
Scott Nearing, radical economist, educator, writer, political activist, pacifist and advocate of simple living, b. 1883
Voting Rights Act becomes law in the United States, 1965
Lucille Ball, American actress and comedian, b. 1911
August 7th
Wild Turkeys specially adapted for explosive, short distant flight to escape predators. They squat and use their powerful hind legs to jump, and then their cupped wings and strong breast muscles allow it to fly up to 55 miles an hour for short distances
Louis Leakey, famous anthropologist, especially important in establishing that human beings evolved in Africa, b. 1903
Love Canal in upper New York State declared toxic disaster area, when may of residents suffered extreme health problems including death caused by toxic chemicals illegally dumped into the canal by the Hooker Chemical Compan, 1977
Phillipe Petit walks between Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, eight times, in 45 minutes, 1974
August 8th
The Full Sturgeon Moon or Full Green Corn Moon according to the Mohegan tribe of Connecticut ( check out this incredible video exploring all 13 Full Moons of the Pequot and Sister Nations turtle calendar–https://www.pequotmuseum.org/thirteen-moons/, or better yet visit the Pequot Museum and check it out in person)
Juvenile Eastern Newts emerge from ponds and transform into Red Efts
Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary, leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, b. 1879
Freedom Schools Convention held in Mississippi in 1964
International Moon Bear Day
August 9th
Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden, a key text in the transcendentalist movement, the environmental movement, and an affirmation that human beings could find better ways to live in harmony with earth, each other, and their own symphony/cacophony of drives, impulses, needs and desires, in 1854
Seymour Simon, prodigious children’s author of captivating non-fiction books, including Pets in a Jar, The Solar System, and Animals Nobody Loves, b. 1931
Unarmed Michael Brown shot by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, 2014. The people’s response began the Black Lives Matter movement.
Pamela Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books, b. 1899
Jean Piaget, towering figure in our collective understanding of childhood, educator, developmental child psychologist, play theorist, b. 1896
US drops second atomic bomb on Nagasaki killing around 74,000 people, within the immediate aftermath,1945
Whitney Houston, singer, b. 1963
International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
August 10th
Sundews are carnivorous plants that eat insects and live in acidic bogs and cedar forests
Pueblo Independence Day, Pueblo Indians in “New Mexico” revolt against the Spanish in 1680
World Lion Day
August 11th
Joanna Cole, author of the Magic School Bus books that take children on a myriad of adventures in the natural and human world, and finds magic doors to exploration and discovery everywhere, b. 1944
Alex Haley author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, b. 1921
Don Freeman, author of Corduroy the story of a beloved bear that gets lost, and is found, b. 1908
Mall of America, largest mall in the United States, opens its doors to shoppers in 1992
Hip Hop is “born” when Dj Kool Herc uses two turntables to create a break beat at a dance party in the Bronx, in 1973
August 12th
Peak of the Perseid Meteor shower (https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-perseid-meteor-shower/)
The last Quagga, a kind of Zebra with stripes only on in the front of their bodies, dies in captivity at the Amsterdam Zoo, 1883
Heather Heyer run over and killed by James Alex Fields at a protest against white nationalists, Charlottesville, VA, 2017
Ruth Stiles Gannett, author of the My Father’s Dragon books, b. 1923
Walter Dean Myers, pioneer in young adult children’s fiction and nonfiction, such as Fallen Angels, Hoops, Scorpion, and Monster, explicitly addresses the young person’s need to understand their relationships with the world, each other and adults, b. 1937
Female dragonflies have a sharp tipped egg or ovipositor that they use to slit cattails and lay their eggs
World Elephant Day
August 13th
Opha May Johnson, first woman to enlist in the United States Marines, promptly assigned to desk duty, 1918
India becomes independent from Britain in 1947
Baby beavers are out and about, learning how to fend for themselves as they move out of the orbit of the family lodge they were born in
Fidel Castro, Cuban revolutionary leader and longtime president of Cuba, b. 1926
Lucy Stone, abolitionist, suffragette, orator. In keeping her “maiden” name on getting married she said, “My name is my identity it must not be lost,” b. 1918
International Wolf Day
August 14th
India becomes independent from Britain in 1947
Alice Provenson, along with her partner, created, wrote and crafted gorgeous, enchanting children’s picture books including The Book of Seasons, A Year at Maple Farm, Our Animal Friends, The Glorious Flight, and many classic fairy and folk tales, b. 1918
Stanford prison experiments begin to explore the effects of authority on decision making in a prison setting, begin only to be shut down six days later because of the adverse effects on the subjects, 1971. New documentary–https://tribecafilm.com/films/stanford-prison-experiment-unlocking-the-truth-2024
Magic Johnson, transformative basketball player, with a smile that could beat you down, b. 1959
The Social Security Act passes as one of the results of the strength of organized labor and other mass movements in 1930
August 15th
Katydids clean their antennae so they can maintain their acute olfactory reception
US official involvement in Vietnam ends in 1973
Karl Korsch, Marxist-anarchist philosopher, laid the groundwork for Western Marxism with Lukacs, and wrote Marxism and Philosophy, (https://jacobin.com/2025/06/karl-korsche-marxism-philosophy-communism) b. 1886
Edith Nesbitt, writer of 8-12 old children’s novels such as Five Children and It that explore desire in an interesting way and are in danger of being forgotten, political activist, co-founder of the socialist Fabian Society, b. 1858
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, considered a key moment in the counterculture movement, opens its doors to over 400,000 people in 1969
Food Not Bombs volunteers arrested for sharing food and literature in 1988
National Honey Bee Day
August 16th
Dianna Wynne Jones, unique fantasy writer for tweeners, author of Castle in the Air and Howls Moving Castle, b. 1934
Waterfowl, unlike most other birds that molt their flight feathers one at time and are able to to continue flying, molt all their flight feathers at once, so they are unable to fly and are vulnerable to predators
First day of what was called the Harmonic Convergence involved the world’s first synchronized global peace meditation event which occurred at 200 sites around the United States and the world in 1987
Patent for the loop-the-loop roller coaster is awarded in 1858 and first one actually built was in Coney Island in 1901
August 17th
Marcus Garvey Black Nationalist, Pan Africanist, orator, activist, “The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself; but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you even into eternity.” b. 1887
Emmett Till murdered for “talking with a white woman”, 1955
August 18th
Brian Pinkney, son of Jerry Pinkney who is also a wonderful children’s book illustrator, is an amazing illustrator and author of children’s books including, Max Found Two Sticks, Martin and Mahalia: His Words, Her Songs, Thumbelina, and many, many others, b.1961
Caddisflies lay their eggs at the bottom of cattail plants just above the water which ignites one of of the most intense hatches on trout rivers like the Housatonic and the Farmington rivers in Connecticut.
August 19th
Mary Ellen Pleasant,19th-century entrepreneur, financier, real estate magnate, underground railroad supporter, abolitionist, and “the mother” of the California Civil Rights Movement, b. 1814
Double-crested Cormorants begin to migrate south
Douglas Crimp, art theorist, Act-Up activist, b. 1944
Race riots break out in Crown Heights Brooklyn between African Americans and Orthodox Jewish residents after two children were accidentally run over by the motorcade of Menachem Mendel Schneerson in 1991
U.S. and Britain topple democratically elected government of Iran in 1953
International Orangutan Day
August 20th
First group of 20 African slaves land at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619
Jeff Brown, author of the Flat Stanley series, b. 1926
Philo Farnsworth patented the television in 1930
H.P. Lovecraft, fantasist, horror writer, racist, creator of the Cthulhu universe, b. 1890
This Brown University exhibition grapples with how his racism, his cultural imagination and his art all come together https://library.brown.edu/create/lovecraftracialimaginaries/
August 21st
Nat Turner leads slave revolt in Virginia, 1831
Arthur Yorinks, playwright, choreographer, author of unique, bizarre children’s books like Hi Al and Louis the Fish, collaborator with some of the great illustrators in children’s literature, opened an opera, Fall of the House of Usher, with Phillip Glass at the Lincoln Theatre, and whose current project is a “theatre of sound,” https://www.arthuryorinks.com/a-new-theater-of-sound, b. 1953
Aubrey Beardsley, English illustrator, used black ink drawings to explore the grotesque, decadent and the erotic, founder and editor of the Yellow Book, and was a leading figure in the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movement, b. 1872
Melvin Van Peebles, Black iconoclast filmmaker, champion of the New Black Cinema Movement, director of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassssss Song b. 1932
Limnic eruption ( underwater volcanic eruption) in Lake Nyos in Cameroon kills about 1700 people when a large amount of carbon dioxide is released into the air in 1986
Joe Strummer, singer-songwriter guitarist for The Clash who transformed punk music sonically and with acerbic political criticism, b. 1952
August 22nd
Revolt of enslaved people begins Haitian revolution, 1791
Spiders molt their exoskeletons as their bodies grow bigger
August 23rd
Timber Rattlesnakes giving birth to 5-17 live young
Clifford Geertz, important anthropologist and ethnographer who described culture as a system of symbols and practices that convey meaning, which required “thick descriptions” and insider informants to in order to get a sense of the interiority and exteriority of a culture, that is culture as both a subject and an object, b. 1926
Sacco and Vanzetti executed in Boston, in the midst of great protests against the travesty of the trial and the anti-immigrant ideology that fueled it, in 1927 (https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/ProtestaperSaccoeVanzetti.pdf)
International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition
Snow chains patent awarded to Harry Weed in 1904
August 24th
Eisenhower signs the Communist Control Act, outlawing Communist Party in US, 1954
Green Herons are hunting and are one of the few birds known to drop bits of feather, insects, twigs or earthworms to attract to fish which it eats
Howard Zinn, American radical historian, author of A People’s History of the United States, force behind the Zinn education project, https://www.zinnedproject.org/, b. 1922
Ukraine gains its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and is currently in a life and death struggle with Russia as they struggle to protect their borders and their sovereignty as a political state
Cornelius Swartwout of Troy, New York awarded a patent for the waffle iron in 1869
British burn down Washington in 1814
August 25th
Lane Smith, unique children’s illustrator of such stand out books, The Stinky Cheese Man, The Math Curse, Squids will be Squids, James and the Giant Peach, and Lulu and the Brontosaurus, b. 1959
Coyotes howl both to call the family group back together or to warn other packs against crossing territorial boundaries
Jorge-Louis Borges , Argentinian metaphysical poet and labyrinthian writer extraordinaire,my favorite being the Library of Babel, https://interestingliterature.com/2021/06/best-jorge-luis-borges-stories/, b. 1899
August 26th
Quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneels in protest to bring attention to police brutality and structural racism, 2016
World African Wild Dog Day
The Amistad, piloted by African slaves who had revolted and taken control of the ship, captured off Long Island—Supreme Court eventually freed them, 1839
Antoine Lavoisier, French scientist who invented the term oxygen, b. 1743
Mud Dauber Wasps make nests that they stuff with spiders as the food for the larvae that will eventually emerge from their eggs and eat the dead spiders
Women’s Equality Day, 19th Amendment guaranteeing a woman’s right to vote, passed in 1920
Daphne Galicia, investigative journalist based in Malta, released the Panama Papers revealing the corruption of a vast web of politicians and business owners, assassinated with a car bomb, b. 1964
August 27th
Suzy Cline, long time teacher, author of the Horrible Harry books, b. 1943
Sarah Stewart writes remarkably contemplative, meditative children’s books that are full of decisive choices and action, such as The Gardener, The Quiet Place, the Library, and The Friend, b. 1938
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher, writer of the Phenomenology of the Spirit, leading figure in German Idealism, b. 1770
Joel Kovel, American early eco-socialist activist, b. 1936
August 28th
Martin Luther King Jr. leads 250,000 in Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom DC ( I have a dream speech), 1963
Robert Duvoisin, Swiss transplant to the US, children’s author of delightful, charming books like Veronica the Conspicuous Hippopotamus, and Petunia the Silly Goose, b. 1904
Allen Say, artist and children’s author who works in ink and is famous for his tender, heart breaking and opening, love giving stories like, The Boy of the Three Year Nap, Lost Lake, El Chino, Allison, and Grandfather’s Journey, b. 1937
Tasha Tudor, a throwback to another era and a harbinger of environmental consciousness, wrote exquisitely illustrated children’s books such as Pumpkin Moonshine, A is for Annabelle, A Doll’s Alphabet, and The Great Corgiville Kidnapping, b. 1915
Jack Kirby, cartoonist who co-invented the X-Men, Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Fantastic Four, and Thor, b. 1917
Johann Goethe, polymath, writer, humanist, author of Faust, A Theory of Colors, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, Elective Affinities, The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Metamorphosis of Plants among many others b. 1749
First issue of Scientific American published in 1845
August 29th
International Day Against Nuclear Tests
Beginning of Shays Rebellion—armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers vs. debt and taxes, 1786
Ladybugs, walking sticks, paper wasps, bald-faced hornets, yellow jackets, crickets, katydids, grasshoppers and praying mantises are all mating
First “Indian Reservation” established in New Jersey in 1758 ( several smaller, less formal reservations had already been established in Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut)
Michael Faraday demonstrates that changing the magnetic field can carry a voltage in a conductor,thus discovering electromagnetic induction in 1831
August 30th
Thurgood Marshall 1st African-American confirmed to the United States Supreme Court, 1967
Virginia Lee Burton, wrote such classics as Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, Katy and the Big Snow, Life Story, and The Little House, b. 1909
Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, with its classic concerns around life creation, science, art, wisdom, care, and community, b. 1797
August 31st
Eldridge Cleaver, writer of Soul on Ice, Minster of Information for Black Panther Party, b. 1935
Kenneth Oppel, writer who opens up vast fields of the imagination in his young adult fantasy novels like Airborn, and The Nest, This Dark Endeavor among many others, b. 1967
Black Swallowtail larvae, with a green, yellow and black pattern feed off parsley, dill, carrot and Queen Anne’s lace, where they are overwinter as a chrysalis and emerge as adult butterflies the following spring
Eat Outside Day
Maria Montessori, Italian educator, inventor of the Montessori Method, educational theorist, conceptualized the notion of the “earth children,” b. 1870
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