September is a time of preparation in the natural world as animals and plants make the transition between Summer and Fall. We are right on the cusp of summer and fall, so some of the things that are happening are dramatic changes in the weather, a grand dispersion of seeds ( acorns, nuts, other seeds), and the harvesting of the summer’s bounty. Cicadas drone throughout the day and Katydids and Crickets fill the night with music. Songbirds, butterflies and dragonflies are beginning their long fall migrations. Many insects are laying their eggs before colder temperatures set in. And all animals, with a keener sense of the imminent change of the seasons, make various preparations for fall and winter.
In the human world children are going back to school, or going to a new school, or going to school for the first time, the late county and country fairs are still going on, there is an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables in the farm stands, farm markets and the big food stores, and people try to squeeze out a few “last days” of summer before and after Labor Day. The work of parents and teachers is to help children enthusiastically embrace these big changes in their lives. A change is gonna come and the people better get ready.
September 1st
Nursery Spiders lash leaves together with their silk to protect their babies until they can fend for themselves
Leslie Feinberg, writer, who identified as an anti-racist, white, working class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female revolutionary communist, who wrote Stone Butch Blues that gave the word “transgender” legs in 1993, b. 1949
Jim Arnosky, legendary children’s nature author, whose books address the natural world in all its grandeur and specificity, with books on trees, tracking, ecosystems, drawing, hiking and much much more, http://www.jimarnosky.com/bookhome.html, b. 1946
Gail Gibbons, prodigious author of concise, captivating nonfiction books for young children ( she has written countless books, but she does have a few stinkers like her Thanksgiving book filled with some egregious stereotypes)
The White Citizens Council and Klan launched full scale rioting in Clinton Tennessee in response to school desegregation
International Vulture Awareness Day
The wreck of the sunk ship Titanic discovered in 1985
Last Passenger Pigeon dies in a Cincinnati Zoo, in 1914
Ibn Abdur Rehman, Pakastani peace and human right’s activist advocate, protege of the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, communist, and staunch child labor opponent
September 2nd
Yellowjackets can be very active as their nests slow down growing and they are looking for sugar wherever they can get it
John Bierhorst, storyteller, retailer of tales, collector of South and North American folklore and mythology, b. 1936
Demi, or Charlotte Dumaresque Hunt, has authored and illustrated over 300 children’s books books usually about children and spirituality like The Boy who Painted Dragons, Talking to God: Prayers for Children from the Worlds Religions, and Hildegard of Bingen: Scientist, Composer, Healer and Saint
Ellen Walsh author and illustrator of the simple and vibrant Mouse Shapes, Mouse Paints and Mouse Magic books, b. 1942
Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France in 1945
White coal miners in Rock Springs Wyoming brutally attack Chinese workers killing 28 , wounding 15, and driving hundreds of Chinese people out of town, in 1885
September 3rd
Frederick Douglas escapes from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland in 1838
Pokeweed fruiting
Aliki writes simple, delightful books with beautifully drawn children, about things that are interesting to kids, and also tackles issues like manners, feelings and the five senses, b. 1929
September 4th
Syd Hoff, New Yorker cartoonist, author of such old time classics and early readers like Danny the Dinosaur and Sammy the Seal, and wrote the Ruling Clawss for the Daily Worker, a communist newspaper, b. 1912
National Wildlife Day
Legendary Apache leader Geronimo surrenders to the US government at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, in 1886
The Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest example of class war in the US between West Virginia mine workers and capitalist owners, hired mercenaries and three regiments of federal troops, comes to an end, in 1921
Ivan Illyich, anarchist, anti-institutionalist, author of Deschooling Society, b. 1926
Turkey Tail Mushrooms fruiting
George Eastman patented the roll film camera for Kodak
Google founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998
Beyonce Knowles, singer, songwriter, African American feminist icon, b. 1981
Richard Wright, African American writer author of Native Son, Black Boy, The Man Who Lived Underground, and many other great novels, b. 1908
Labor Day
September 5th
AIDS activists inflate a 15 foot condom on the roof of Jesse Helms’ house, 1991
Tomie dePaola, endlessly inventive author illustrator with stylized folk-art illustrations, famous for his Strega Nona stories, and the Look and Be Grateful Book b. 1934
Tasunka Witko ( Chief Crazy Horse) murdered by US military in 1877
Black Walnuts ripening
September 6th
Monarch Butterflies migrating
Paul Fleischman, unique, children’s writer, author of Seedfolks, Whirligig and Weslandia, b. 1952
National Read a Book Day
Werner Herzog, documentarian, arthouse, polymath film maker extraordinaire, b. 1942
Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, social activist, b. 1860
Jews in Nazi Germany are required to wear yellow star of David badges, 1941
General Gordon Baker, labor organizer and activist in Detroit Michigan whose legacy is carried on by the General Baker Institute, b. 1941
September 7th
Painted Turtle Eggs hatching
Two abortion clinics firebombed in in Fayetteville, NC, in 1998
Alexandra Day, children’s author who is famous for her books about Carl the good natured Rottweiler, b. 1941
The last Tasmanian Tiger, a carnivorous marsupial, dies in captivity, in 1936
Ronnie Gilbert, folksinger with the Weavers, clinical psychologist and collaborator with Holly Near, b.1926
September 8th
Michael Hague, author and illustrator of gorgeous fantasy picture books about dragons, unicorns and fairies, b. 1948
Adela “Adelita” Velarde Perez, nurse, soldier, in the Mexican revolution, died in poverty in United States, b.
Snapping turtle eggs hatching
International Literacy Day
Star Trek appears on TV for the first time in 1966
Jack Prelutsky, writer of children’s poetry and the Poetry Foundations Children’s Poet Laureate from 2006-2008, b. 1940
John Scieszka, long time send grade teacher, he was written three funny, odd, modern day classics, The Stinky Cheeseman, Math Curse, and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, b. 1954
September 9th
Dogwood trees fruiting
Sonia Sanchez Black Radical poet, b. 1934
Jack Prelutsky, writer of children’s poetry and the Poetry Foundations Children’s Poet Laureate from 2006-2008, b. 1940
Attica Prison Uprising begins in 1971
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History established by Carter G. Woodson ( author of The Miseducation of the Negro) and Jesse E. Moorland, in 1915
Leo Tolstoy, Christian, anarchist, Russian writer, b. 1828
September 10th
Chipmunks can be heard clucking, thought to be a warning to other chipmunks of aerial predators
First patent for a sewing machine awarded to Elias Howe who had little success marketing it, whereas Isaac Singer’s sewing machine, a copy of Howes, was a wild success
Stephen Jay Gould, American, Marxist, paleontologist and theorist of “punctuated equilibrium” evolution, b. 1941
Charles Sanders Pierce, American pragmatist philosopher, mathematician , scientist and “father” of modern semiotics ( see the three types of sign: index, symbol, and abstract sign)
Georges Bataille, French anthropologist, sociologist, writer, philosopher of extremes, excess, eroticism, mysticism, social sacrifice, and violence, b. 1897
September 11th
Bald Eagles Migrating
Mryna Mack, Guatemalan anthropologist, critiqued the treatment of Indigenous Mayans, murdered by the Guatamalan military police, funded by the United States government, 1990
Terrorist attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda, using hijacked planes, killing over 3000 people in the US
Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street District of New York City, 2011
Margo St. James, sex-worker rights organizer, sex rights activist, founder of COYOTE (Call off your Tired Old Ethics) , b. 1937
Jackson Mac Low, American Fluxus poet, activist, whose calm and abiding interest in Buddhism led him to a life-long interest in prices-driven composition as a way of eliminating the ego for the creative process, b. 1922
September 12th
National Arts in Education Week
Eastern Gray Squirrels Collecting and Catching Nuts
D.H. Lawrence, author of erotic novels who explored power, desire, and human relationships, b. 1885
Mae C Jemison, first American American Woman to go into space in 1992
September 13th
Grasshoppers mating, with males courting females with a polyphony of sounds
Roald Dahl, incomparable storyteller, author of Charlie and Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, among many others, b. 1916
First recorded automobile fatality recorded when Henry Bliss was struck by a taxi cab while crossing a street in New York City
September 14th
New Moon
Destroying Angels, highly toxic mushrooms, are fruiting, and as the mushroom decomposes it begins to smell like rotting meat
William Armstrong, author of the much beloved story Sounder, a story about courage, faith, racism and the love of a dog, that won a Newbury Award Medal in 1969, b. 1914
Alexander Von Humboldt, polymath, nature researcher, explorer, geographer, theorizer of the great interconnectedness of all things, and the subject of Andrea Wulf’s extraordinary book, The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World, b. 1769
Margaret Sanger, reproductive rights activist, b. 1883
Humberto Maturana, Chilean biologist, theorist of “autopoesis,” cybernetics, open-ended systems theory, and the biology of cognition, b. 1928
September 15th
Rosh Hashanah, Jewish Holiday celebrating the beginning of the Jewish New Year
Four children killed in KKK bombing of a black church in Montgomery, AL, in 1963
Broadwing hawks migrating
Lummi Nation begins the “Kwel hoy” (we draw the line” Totem Pole Journey), a 1,700-mile, 16 day trip, to protest fossil fuel extraction and the transport of tar sands through tribal land, in 2013
World Clean Up Day
Marco Polo, Italian Explorer, namesake of the children’s swimming game, b. 1254
Victor Jara, Chilean folk musician, martyr, killed in a massacre following the overthrow and killing of Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist in South America, in 1973
September 16th
American Ginseng fruiting. Used by Native Americans and Chinese and herbal medicine for a variety of ailments.
Mexican Independence Day
Collect rocks day
International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer
Puritan Separatists sail on the Mayflower for a “New World” in 1620
September 17th
Black bears begin to gorge on food getting ready for winter
Bjorn Berg is a children’s author who wrote the other-worldly, The Tomten, and the Pippie Longstocking stories, b. 1923
Paul Goble, children’s author and illustrator of beautifully illustrated books about the American landscape, nature, and Native American culture, but has come under increasing criticism for misappropriating and misrepresenting Native culture and making serious errors in his representation of Native people, b. 1945
H. A. Rey, author of the Curious George books, b. 1898
Respect for aged people day (in Japan)
The U.S. Constitution is signed in 1787 ( https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/us-constitution/)
William Carlos Williams, physician, poet, b. 1883
September 18th
Anne Hutchinson, spiritual freethinker, arrives in Boston, 1634
False Albacore start to show up at the mouth of the CT River
World Water Monitoring Day
Samuel Johnson, English author, lexicographer, who conceived the dictionary as a type of literary work, b. 1709
September 19th
National Keep Kids Creative Week
Paolo Freire, Brazilian philosopher, educator, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, foremost theorist of critical, liberatory pedagogy, b. 1921
Talk Like a Pirate Day
Beechnuts begin to ripen
Considered one of the worst accidents in the oil and gas industry, oil rig Deepwater Horizon is declared sealed after a 5-month long spill into the Gulf of Mexico, 2010
William Golding, English author, poet, playwright, Nobel Prize Winner , and author of Lord of the Flies
Steamboat Willy, the first talking cartoon, released by Disney, 1921
September 20th
Juvenile Great Egrets dispersing from their southerly birth places
Arthur Geisert, author illustrator of the delicious pig books, Oink, Oink Oink, and Pigs A to the Z, as well as fascinating unique books like Ice, The Ark, The Thunderstorm, and The Giant Seed, b. 1941
Leo Strauss, German/American political philosopher, who studied the history of political philosophy and how it conceptualized its own task, particularly interested in the theories of natural right b. 1899
Upton Sinclair’s expose of the meat industry, The Jungle, published in 1908
Jelly Roll Morton, one of the first progenitors of jazz music, b. in New Orleans, in 1886
September 21st
United Nations International Day of Peace
J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is published for the first time in 1937
Stephen King, American horror writer, b. 1947
Leonard Cohen, Canadian songwriter, poet, visionary, with a deep haunting voice, b.1934
Hurricane strikes Long Island, killing 700 people, 1938
Following years of revolution, the French abolish the monarchy, 1791
September 22nd
World Rhino Day
Huntington Library makes the Dead Sea Scrolls public for the first time in 1991
September 23rd
Fall Equinox
Victoria Woodhull, unconventional reformer who championed women’s suffrage, free love, mystical socialism, and was the first woman to run for president ( with Frederick Douglass as her running mate), b. 1838
John Coltrane, greatest jazz saxophone player of all time, b. 1926
Spring Peepers heard again ( scientists call this the fall echo, since they believe Spring Peepers are calling again because light and temperature conditions are similar to Spring)
Nine Black students attempting to integrate Little Rock Central High School, sent home due to a white mob
Led by a street activist named Cha Cha Jimenez, the Young Lords were established in Chicago to fight gentrification, racism, and police brutality and became a national human rights organization, in 1967
Mary Church Terrell, one of the first African American woman earn a college degree, became a national activist for Civil Rights and taught at the first African American public high school in the nation, b. 1863
Ray Charles and Bruce Springsteen born in 1930 and 1949 respectively
September 24th
Guinness Book of World Record for longest kiss, 17 days and 10 and a half hours set in 1984
World Gorilla Day
Jim Henson American puppeteer, director, produced inventor of the Muppets, b. 1936
September 25th
Norman O. Brown, radical psychoanalytic thinker, author of Life Against Death: the Psychoanalytic Meaning of History, and Love’s Body, b. 1913
Sequoia National Park is established in California by the United States Congress, in 1890
Young Common Garter Snakes feeding
James Ransome, is a children’s illustrator, especially known for his moving and inspiring paintings and drawings in autobiographies of African American artists, athletes, and political visionaries, b. 1961
World Rivers Day
William Faulkner, author , Nobel Prize Laureate, author of The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom Absalom, among many others, b.
September 26th
Banned Books Week
White Tailed Bucks Rubbing Their Antlers
Gloria Anzaldua, Chicana writer who wove English, Spanish and Nahuatl together into a new glorious “mestiza rhetoric”, b. 1942
The Studio Museum of Harlem opens in New York City in 1968
Serena Williams, the most dominant player in women’s tennis of all time, b. 1981
Martin Heidegger, famous for his thoroughgoing critique of the history of Western philosophy, the intellectual tenacity which he pursued the question of the meaning of being, and for being a dues paying member of the Nazi party and inciting students against “reactionary” professors, b. 1889
September 27th
Milk Snakes basking, soaking ups the sun before they will retreat to their hibernicula
Textile workers in Fall River MA strike to demand bread for starving children, 1875
Martin Handforth, author and illustrator of the Where’s Waldo books, b. In 1956
Bernard Waber, author and illustrator of many charming delightful stories like Lyle, Lyle the Crocodile, The House on East 88th Street, Nobody is Perfick, Courage, and Ira Sleeps Over, b. 1927
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson laying out the devastating effects of pesticides on the natural world, published in 1962
September 28th
Harvest Full Moon
Chicken of the Woods Mushroom Fruiting
Kate Douglas Wiggin, author of Rebecca of Sunybrook Farm, started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco in 1878, established a training school for kindergarten teachers, ended up establishing over 60 kindergartens for children, composed collections of children’s songs, and devoted her adult life to the welfare of children, b. 1856
Tuli Kupferberg, counterculture poet, author, singer, cartoonist, publisher and co-founder of the Fugs, b. 1923
David Walker publishes “An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World” denouncing racism and demanding the immediate end to slavery in 1829
Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage ,“ one of the most popular science television documentaries of all time, makes its debut on PBS, in 1980
Victor Jara, Chilean folksinger, martyr, b. 1938
September 29th
Miguel Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, b.1526
Striped Skunks digging for insect larvae
September 30th
Gutenberg Bible, first printed book, published in 1452
Rumi, Sufi mystic poet, b. 1207
Caesar Chavez founds the National Farmworkers Association (later the UFW)
The animated cartoon The Flintstones premiers on television in 1960 and ran for 6 years
Elie Wiesel, Romanian/American author, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Prize Laureate, b. 1928
