I was writing this week’s “Writers’ Mailbag,” and I mentioned being curious about the saying “dog days of summer,” so I looked it up and discovered it was in reference to the Ancient Greeks and the star Sirius. Evidently Sirius can be seen in the summer in Greece, and the name Sirius means “dog star.” The sighting of Sirius back in ancient times signaled the arrival of hot, miserable temperatures . . . thus our calling mid-summer the “dog days of summer.”
Which then got me thinking about the old 60’s band Three Dog Night, so off I went to find out the origin of that phrase . . . I was unable to find out exactly WHEN that phrase became an idiom in our language, and there is some dispute whether it originated with the Eskimos or the Aborigines, but its meaning is not disputed. Back in the old days, before central heating, a really cold night called for desperate measures, and one such measure was to have your family dog sleep with you. A cold night meant one dog; a very cold night meant two dogs, and an extremely bitter cold night was a three dog night.
And for those curious about such things, the lead singer of Three Dog Night was Chuck Negron, and the band hit stardom in 1967.
Speaking about summer, can you guess which Major League Baseball Team holds the record for most wins in a single season? It’s the Seattle Mariners, perennial losers and the only team in the Major Leagues to never play in a World Series. In 2001 the Mariners won 116 games.
Oh how the Mighty have fallen!
Life really is fascinating!
Random musings on a Friday morning . . .
My mind then went back to my first dog, Sugar, when I was four. Sugar ran off, and when I was five my parents got me a little rat terrier named Pixie, and Pixie was with me for the next seventeen years, a constant companion during my formative years and yes, she slept with me many nights whether it was cold or not.
And then we jump forward forty-seven years to my next dog, Maggie May, our new puppy, and hopefully Maggie and I will grow old together.
Random thoughts for sure, but I guarantee you that some of those thoughts will eventually be in short stories or a novel down the road.
The mind of a writer . . .
Bill
“Helping writers to spread their wings and fly.”
Billybuc
Artistry With Words 