Staying cool these dog days of summer

During the Dog Days of summer, your best bet is to find a cool spot and avoid
all activity.  Do this preferably in the early morning or late afternoon.  In Florida
the very air is stifling hot. Sip a cool drink or eat a popsicle while you're out there.

    "Dog days" in the Northern hemisphere occur roughly from July 3 to August 11, the period with the hottest, most humid days of the year.  The Romans believed the days were an evil time "the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics and frenzies."
 ( Brady.  Clavis Calendaria. 1813)
     Why "dog days"?  Why pick on man's best friend?  The constellation Canis Major (large dog) contains Sirius, the dog star, the brightest star in the evening sky.  In ancient times, toward the end of summer, it rose and set at the same time as the sun.  (This is no longer  true because through time the constellations have drifted a bit from where they were in ancient days.) Because of its brilliance, the Romans thought it radiated heat which when added to the heat of the sun caused hot, muggy weather. 
     This summer has been extra hot, dry and humid.  The Romans would blame it on Sirius, the dog star.  Such hot weather does cause people to be grumpy and some a bit frenzied. The only solution for survival is to search out cool places and activities.  I've read of cities providing cool spaces for those without air-conditioning. In Jacksonville, FL where I live, the zoo did their part this weekend by holding the first ever Winter in July.  Snow was sprayed on the zoo great lawn and a slide was put up to represent a slippery slope.  Needless to say, throwing snowballs was immensely popular in the 95 degree heat.  
     Here are a few of my hot, Florida methods for staying somewhat comfortable:

• Go to an air-conditioned movie during the hot part of the day.
• Swim at a pool, lake, ocean, or river.
• Join the children under the lawn sprinkler.
• Eat spicy food.  It makes you sweat which cools you.
• Take a shower, but not a cold one, or your body will heat up to compensate for the cold water.
• Slow down your body movements.  Take it easy.
• Drink lots of water to stay hydrated.
• Don't drink much alcohol.  It heats you up.
• Don't over eat.  
• Do eat popsicles, sherbet and snow cones.
• Go to an indoor, air-conditioned mall.
• Browse for books in the air-conditioned library.
• As a last resort, if your car is air-conditioned, take a long drive. 

    

How can you tell it's fall in Florida?

The Jaguars,  high school games, and the Gators

football tell us it's fall in Northeast  Florida

(click on a photo to enlarge)

   This first week of October, it feels like fall in Northeast Florida.  At last we have cool mornings and pleasant days with low humidity.  It is not over 95 degrees anymore!!  We only hope the coolness is here to stay.  This is a first sign of a Florida autumn.  We don't have colorful leaves or apples ripening, but we do have some signs that the hot days are winding down.
    The greatest indication is that football has started.  It may feel like 100 degrees in the sun at Everbank Field when the Jaguars play, but we wear sunscreen and know that fall is here anyway.  The UF Gators and the FSU Seminoles are on their fields, and high school rivalries are re-established.  There are other signs and we observe them closely:

Oranges on the tree are beginning to change from green to orange.

Fig tree leaves have turned brown and are covering the

ground.  Most deciduous trees do this without much color

 between green and brown.

Wild beauty-berries, much loved by some birds, have turned

 purple and live up to their name.

We decorate our doors with artificial

autumn leaves.  

A sure sign of fall is displays of both Halloween and

Christmas decorations next to each other in stores.

And finally, the ducks have returned to the pond.

Another near miss

Surf was high at Jacksonville's beaches, but surfers

and a few daring souls got out there anyway.

                                               (Click on photos to make them larger)


       As I write this on the last Saturday of August, Hurricane Irene is swirling up the eastern coast about even with the northern shore of North Carolina.  We in Florida were spared yesterday as she passed us about 300 miles off shore.   We had rain and wind squalls off and on, but that was it.  We are thankful, but are worried about the eastern coast and New York City.   Fortunately, my daughter and her family in Raleigh had wind and rain, but nothing like what was on the coast.  
       I've lived most of my adult life in NE Florida and have seen only one hurricane make land here.  It was a Category 1, but did much damage to the beach and some to the inland areas.  At the beach, the ferris wheel looked as if it had folded in half.  Almost every house close to the water, fell into the water when the sand gave way underneath them.  All the creeks and the St. Johns River flooded several blocks.  At the time, I lived on a creek which over flowed its banks up to my door step.  When I opened the door to look out, there was a rabbit sitting on the step.  We just looked at each other until I closed the door.
      As with Irene, we've had a lot of near misses.  The hyped up weather reports get just about everybody into the stores to buy water, batteries, candles, masking tape for windows and plywood to board up windows.   The hardware and grocery stores do a great business.  Actually, this constant preparation for hurricanes that always bypass us has made most of us complacent.  I usually don't believe we'll be hit, but I go buy a few batteries and canned tuna just in case.  
   There is an element of excitement when a hurricane is out there.  Most of us are probably bored with our daily lives and a hurricane prediction stirs things up.  A few years ago, we at the beach were ordered to evacuate.  Because my elderly dad was living with us, we got out there on the highway with Dad and our two cats.  What a mess!!  I-95 was a parking lot.  There were so many cars no one was going anywhere.  We finally stopped at a hotel in town.  At least we weren't at the beach. That was another hurricane report that was much ado about nothing.  The hurricane took off out to sea.  That evacuation experience made me realize how awful it is to leave home with everything you have still in your house.  My sympathy goes out to those who lose their homes.  
    It is a helpless feeling to see the hurricane weather reports, know the winds and rain are on their way and be able to do nothing to stop it.  I think of Irene whirling towards New York City this very minute and the damage that will happen there.  Hurricanes are a metaphor for so much in life that is out of our control including illness and death that will affect us all eventually.  

Skies were dark even when the rain was gone.

Everybody and his dog came down to see the high surf.

             
    

Dog Days of Summer

                                                "Summer time and the livin' is easy"
                                                  (Click on photo to make it larger)


         We're smack in the middle of the dog days of summer, those hot, sultry days beginning in early July when Sirius the Dog Star rises and hangs around until sometime in September.  Here in Florida it is too hot to do much outside unless you're in or on the water.  We feel lazy and lethargic.  
         Here at my house, our vacation is over, company has come and gone, and we're not doing much.  Early mornings and late afternoon are great for walking on the beach.  Hot summer afternoons are ideal for going to the movies.  Yesterday, I took my grandson to see the two and a half hour "Transformers:  the Dark side of the Moon" in 3D.  Yikes!  I've never experienced such loud clashing and clanging.  He loved it, of course.  I got  a headache.  
       The stores are going into end-of-summer-sales mode, even though summer is only about half over, but school starts next month.  The Target near my house already has a huge school supplies display.  Since retiring from teaching school, I get a little nostalgic thinking about back-to-school, but the feeling doesn't last long.  Now my daughter is a teacher and starting to think about school clothes and lesson plans.  Life moves on.  
              Noblest of all dogs is the hot dog;  it feeds the hand that bites it. (Hot Dog Hut, Jacksonville Beach).  Well, that is the extent of my intellectual activity this day that  it is 93 degrees with high humidity.
            

Bogs and swamps and other lovely things

   Today, the third day of March,  a lovely spring day, temps in the mid-seventies, sunny, breezy, we decided to take a walk through the University of North Florida nature trails.  These trails are on the edge of campus and border a small lake.  The trail we took, the Golden Rod, wended through several environments, swamp to hardwood.
  A Florida swamp has wonderful diversity.  At first, you might think it is all the same, water, mud, and a tangle of trees, palmettos, and vines, but looking closely, you see small flowers, a great variety of ferns, fallen trees covered in lichen, cypress knees, water brown with tannin from the cypress.  It is enough to make you want to get out your notebook and write a poem.   Today, I took photos. Admitedly, they were taken with my iphone and may not be art quality, but here are a few.

                                                A pine needle path leads into the woodland.

A small stream runs out of the swamp.

One area of the swamp.  This is the way the early

                                             explorers must have first seen Florida.

Blue sky reflected in swamp water.

.

Cypress knees sprouting above ground look like gnomes.

A tiny blue violet hiding in the pine straw.

Wild yellow jasmine runs up the trees and

bushes.

Movies: A dilettante's delight: Jacksonville, FL, silent movie capital

The upcoming Academy Awards remind me that movies are a true dilettante's delight. Where else is there such variety as in the movies.  I've been a fan since elementary school when my family went to the drive-in theater several times every week.  Then television came along.  As an adult, I discovered that Jacksonville, FL my home residence was once a popular and exciting movie filming locale.  Conservative Jacksonville, FL a movie capital? Jacksonville producing more films than Los Angeles? Not possible, you say, but this was the case during the silent film era.          By 1916, movie making was Jacksonville's most important business. Between 1901 and 1921, more than 300 feature films were shot in and around the area. The very first Technicolor feature film,"The Gulf Between," was made in Jacksonville.       The Kalem Studio, looking for a place to film away from the wintry blasts of New York, was the first to arrive about 1908, and by 1914 had built the world's largest outdoor stage and a glass-roofed studio with a $20,000 lighting system. The studio's, "A Florida Feud," made in 1909 in Jacksonville was the first film shot in Florida. Kalem's films were very popular at the box office. After these successes, many other studios arrived in Jacksonville, among those named are the Edison Company, King Bee Film Company, Vim Comedy Company, Lubin Studios.                                                                                                                                                     The actress/script writer/ producer/critic, Gene Gauntier, who worked for Kalem Studios, has left wonderful descriptions of early filmmaking in Jacksonville in her autobiography, "Blazing the Trail: The Autobiography of Gene Gauntier" as they appeared in serialized versions in 1928-1929, Woman's Home Companion.          Jacksonville and Florida history buffs as well as film buffs will greatly enjoy her accounts.      The cast and crew of Kalem were housed in the Roseland, a big hotel on the St. John's River in Fairfield about fifteen minutes by trolley from Jacksonville. Rooms were also rented at the same time to the casts of variety acts playing at the Ostrich Farm, a block away on Talleyrand Avenue.       Most of the filming was done directly across the St. John's River from Fairfield at Strawberry Creek. The crew reached it by row boat. She describes the Jacksonville area as a "moving-picture paradise": "There were wonderful stretches of sand at Pablo and Manhattan Beach, facing the open sea, uninhabited and desolate, with their scrubby palmettos, which served as setting for many desert island scenes. There were fishing villages, primitive as even a picture company could wish, quaint old-time Florida houses with their 'galleries' of white Colonial columns, orange and grapefruit groves, pear and peach orchards which gave forth lovely scents when in full bloom; formal gardens and Spanish patios; the gorgeous Ponce de Leon hotel and gardens, and the picturesque old fort in St. Augustine."       She describes life at the Roseland and in Jacksonville as exciting and lively. What happened to the movie industry in Jacksonville? Many factors caused its demise. The local citizens did not approve of the free lifestyle of the movie people and the fact that they filmed on Sunday. Some of the movie companies were fly-by-night leaving stacks of unpaid bills when they hastily departed. Politics changed and those supporting the studios were not re-elected. Then World War I slowed the production of raw film to a trickle, and the influenza epidemic of 1918 closed theaters. When the dust cleared, the movie industry had moved to Hollywood.       The movie industry, however, has not entirely forgotten Jacksonville. Jacksonville has recently provided the background for many feature films and television shows. All those wonderful locales described by Gauntier are still excellent for filming. The City of Jacksonville Film and Television Office gives all the current information about making films in Jacksonville and Jacksonville film history.      The Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee has movies in Florida memorabilia: props, posters, lobby cards, advertising.