Whatever Happened to August?

[question everything]

DAVID M. SHRIBMAN

It's the month when the summer nights have a consistent, delicious crispness to them unknown at any other time of the year. It's when the corn is sweet, the plums are purple and pungent, the baseball pennant races are mature, the ocean temperatures are warm. It is the very best month of the year. And we have ruined it.

Not so long ago—well within the memory of half the American population—August was the vacation month. It was a time, much anticipated and much appreciated, of leisure, languor, lassitude and lingering at the beach well into suppertime. Unlike July, it had no holiday disruption, no grocery-store rush.. Hardly anyone got married, and no one went to class. Congress barely met, and then it departed for most of the month, a great relief to them and an even bigger one for the nation. It was an idyll of idleness, a time of pure ease—and now it's gone.

(snip)

Summer is a lot shorter than it used to be. I began college classes on Sept. 25, 1972. This year freshmen at Rice University reported to campus 43 days earlier than that—on Aug. 12. (Average Houston humidity on that date: 95%.) Classes at the University of Missouri begin Aug. 20. (Average temperature for that period in Columbia, Mo.: 87 degrees) But that's nothing. For generations American children began their school years on the Wednesday after Labor Day, which meant that in some years the first school bell might ring as late as Sept. 9. This year public schools in Shelby County, Tenn., opened five weeks earlier than that, on Aug. 5. (Average daily high temperature in Memphis that date: 91 degrees.)

These calendar changes have a cascading effect. College students return to campus in mid-August, abandoning their positions as life guards and camp counselors. Without students to sit atop the pool towers or to supervise lakeside camp bunks, pools restrict their hours and camps wrap up early. Sleep-away camps used to end routinely around Aug. 24. Now the standard closing date is around Aug. 12.

(snip)

It's time to reclaim August for the purposes for which it was intended, beyond wiping the peach juice from your cheeks by the lakeside: to tramp in the hills before Labor Day, to enjoy a lobster roll by the shore when the evenings are cool, to walk through a beach town with an ice-cream cone as the skies go gray with night in the last few breaths of summer. August is America at its best. Let's take it back.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324085304579010883992581404.html

(If you cannot open by clicking, copy and paste the title onto google)

[grasswire]

1. beautifully written

He forgot to mention the retailers pushing school supplies on July 5 -- one of my pet peeves.

[RB TexLa]

2. That goes with July 15th being the end of summer. This story is nostalgic garbage.

Yes it's well written, but give it up.

[AZ Progressive]

3. When I went to school decades ago, school always started in September

I'm thinking how bad it must be for students going to P.E. on a hot summer day, with the summer sun scorching on them (not to mention the UV skin damage if they happened to forget the sunscreen.)

[Control-Z]

4. PE?

Unless you're in a formal sport, there is no PE these days.

[PasadenaTrudy]

10. Where I live,

Pasadena, CA, Sept. is usually much hotter than August

[freshwest]

5. Good for him. I never had an August like that in my whole life. Good luck anyway.

[HoneychildMooseMoss]

6. All of my Augusts were like that

At least when I was a kid (and substitute "pool" for "beach&quot . School didn't start until the 30th or 31st of August. And even then, not much was done the first week or so because it was too hot.

[B Calm]

7. School always started after Labor day when I was a kid. The kids around here

have been back to school a week ago.

[Brickbat]

11. This. In Minnesota, anyway, most schools start after Labor Day.

[question everything]

12. He does mention Minnesota

had to snip some of it..

A University of Minnesota Tourism Center study found that family trips of at least two nights fell by 50% in August or September in years in which schools opened before Labor Day.

"August has become less of a vacation month,'' says Elton Mykerezi, associate professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. "Reliable data show early school starts ranging into August do cause a drop in travel. But the bigger news is that all of summer travel—not just August travel—drops by 30% when school starts early. There are vacations that never occur as a result of August school openings."

[Brickbat]

15. Yes -- the tourism lobby is huge here and every time discussions start about moving the first day of

school into August, the discussion gets dropped pretty quickly. We also love our state fair, and an early start to school would disrupt that.

[question everything]

13. Huh? Rice Unviersity in in Texas

and he mentions Missouri.

And last week there was a story about going back to school in Oklahoma after last May devastating tornado. And I was thinking: going back to school in the middle of August?

Unless you live in the West Coast and all those flyover states don't matter...

[Igel]

9. Grew up in Maryland.

Don't really remember those crisp August nights. Dog days, sweltering at 80 degrees at 4 am without air conditioning. Crisp? No, not hot enough to fry. Not quite.

Population shift means we're not in August. I'm now in Houston, where we've had a bit of a cooling trend. Highs are 95 where I live, with humidity that you can drink, but I just went outside and thought, "What a wonderful temperature!" It's 73 outside. By comparison, I guess, it's a crisp, cool, morning.

When I lived in Rochester, New York, I'd have thought that a good high temperature for early summer.

Most kinds of peaches don't set here. Too warm last winter for my low-chill nectarine to do squat.

But the jujubes are ready to eat, and are sweet and crunchy. Not juicy.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

14. It does suck. Our college starts classes tomorrow. And the damn faculty have been back for a week.:)

We didn't always start this early.
Summer is too short and precious as it is. I don't understand the desire to abandon it so early and for no good reason.