FIELD NOTES: Now that it is long past, I can write about it...

…the month of August that is. It is not the Ides of March the soothsayer warns to me, but the Ides of August!...and perhaps the Kalends and the Nones of August as well. I do not approach its advent with predictions of calamity like a horoscope, omen or phase of the moon…I am naturally optimistic and hopelessly hopeful…but yet it comes. What used to be a month full of weddings, births, a summer fling squeezed out before going back to school, is now pock-marked with deaths of friends, parents, emergencies and the destruction of property from hurricanes and floods. But I cannot stay angry long at nature. It is human nature that assigns to us our curses.