You are currently viewing August 2023 Nature, Culture, Childhood Calendar

August 2023 Nature, Culture, Childhood Calendar

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). As the director of a nursery school it is tempting, and somewhat necessary, to begin to think about the new school year. 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 savor that glass of cold water, lemonade or whatever your favorite summer beverage is.

 

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 of eggs laid in the Spring. 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. Beneath the long hot summer sun, nature has done its work and we are privy to its abundance. Some ways to appreciate this abundance is 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, starting in the middle of August and continuing on into September (one of my favorites is the Goshen Fair in Litchfield County (https://goshenfair.org/)  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.

https://davidsuzuki.org/

August 1st

Full Sturgeon Moon

Atlantic Sturgeon can grow up to 16 feet long and weigh 800 lbs

 

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

A Sperm Whale, the kind of whale Captain Ahab is chasing in Herman Melville’s, Moby Dick

 

MTV or Music Television is launched in 1981

Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist and educational theorist 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

Jesse Owens receiving one of his 4 gold medals at the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany

 

Hermit Thrushes are singing

National Watermelon Day

August 4th

White-Tailed Deer fawns are still nursing

Lovely doe and fawn in East Rock woods. Seen earlier nursing in the Mill River

 

National Conference in Rimini, Italy,  gives birth to the Anarchistic Federation of Italy

Louis Armstrong , jazz pioneer, trumpeter, singer, 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, b. 1901

August 6th

US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima killing 130,000, 1945

Barbara Cooney, author of such classics as Miss Rumphius, Roxaboxen and the Chanticleer and the Fox, deep respect for children, 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 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

I Love Lucy

 

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, b. 1903

Love Canal in upper New York State declared toxic disaster area,1977

Phillipe Petit walks between Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, eight times, in 45 minutes, 1974

Philippe Petit tight wire walks between the Twin Towers

 

August 8th

Juvenile Eastern Newts emerge from ponds  and transform into Red Efts

Red Eft

 

Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary, leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, b. 1879

Freedom Schools Convention held in Mississippi in 1964

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/freedom-schools/

 

International Moon Bear Day

August 9th

Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden in 1854

Seymour Simon, prodigious children’s author of captivating non-fiction books, including Pets in a Jar, The Solar System, Animals Nobody Loves, b. 1931

Unarmed Michael Brown shot by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. The people’s response began the Black Lives Matter movement, 2014

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

“The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover.”

 

US drops second atomic bomb on Nagasaki killing around 74,000 people, 1945

US drops nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing over 200,000 people

 

Whitney Houston, singer, b. 1963

International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples

August 10th

Sundews are carnivorous plants that live in acidic bogs and cedar forests that eat insects

Pueblo Independence Day, Pueblo Indians in “New Mexico” revolt against Spanish in 1680

Statue of Po’pay of Ohkay Owingeh who organized and led the Pueblo Revolt against Spanish colonizers. https://indianpueblo.org/a-brief-history-of-the-pueblo-revolt/

 

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

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 who 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

In August in New England baby beavers begin to leave the lodge and explore their surroundings

 

Fidel Castro, Cuban revolutionary leader and longtime president of Cuba, b. 1926

Lucy Stone, abolitionist, suffragette, orator, 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

Foldout from Our Animal Friends at Maple Farm

 

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

Magic Johnson, transformative basketball player, b. 1959

The Social Security Act passes as one of the results of the strength of organized labor and other mass movements in 1930

What Every Woman Wants pamphlet supporting a national insurance plan for American workers

 

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, b. 1886

Edith Nesbitt, writer of amazing 8-12 old children’s novels such as Five Children and It, in danger of being forgotten, political activist, 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

Keith Henry, founding member of Food Not Bombs being arrested while distributing food

 

National Honey Bee Day

August 16th

New Moon

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 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 of 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 built and installed in Coney Island

August 17th

Marcus Garvey Black Nationalist, Pan Africanist, b. 1887

Emmett Till murdered for “talking with a white woman”, 1955

New movie on the life, death, and the aftermath of Emmett Till’s murder

 

August 18th

Brian Pinkney, 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

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, b. 1890

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, currently working on a “theatre of sound,” and is currently opening an opera, Fall of the House of Usher, with Phillip Glass at the Lincoln theatre 8/25, 27, 28th, b. 1953

https://www.arthuryorinks.com/

 

Aubrey Beardsley, 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, 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

The Battle for Palm Tree Hill by January Suchodolski, 1845 (Wikimedia Commons)

 

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 ever get a sense of the interiority and exteriority of a culture, that is a 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, b. 1922

Ukraine gains its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991

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 labyrinth writer extraordinaire,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, led 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 books that are full of decisive choices and action, such as The Gardner, 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

https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/the-1963-march-on-washington/

 

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 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, b. 1797

August 31st

Second Full Moon of August and thus a “Blue Moon”

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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