July 31, Monday — St. Ignatius of Loyola. Secret of patience: do something else.
Aug. 1, Tuesday — Lammas Day. Anne Frank's last diary entry, this day, 1944.
Aug. 2, Wednesday— First Lincoln penny issued, 1909. New England hurricane, 1867.
Aug. 3, Thursday — First Viking I images of Mars beamed back to Earth, 1976.
Aug. 4, Friday — Moon on Equator. Chautauqua Organization formed, N.Y., 1874.
Aug. 5, Saturday — Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed Newfoundland, 1583.
Aug. 6, Sunday —Transfiguration. People who aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves seldom lose their shirts.
Ask the Old Farmer's Almanac: We've installed our first beehive, this summer. Any lore we should know? — H. P., Walpole, N.H.
Answer:All sorts! For weatherlore, it is said that when bees remain in their hives, or fly just a short distance away, you can expect showers and rain. If they return hastily to their hive, bad weather is just approaching. "Bees will not swarm before a storm" is the (almost) rhyming version. If bees start the day early, they will not perform a full day's work, it is rumored, but "When bees to distance wing their flight, days are warm and the skies are bright."
Of August bees, Elizabeth Lawrence wrote, "The hum of bees is the voice of the garden, a sound that lends new meaning to the flowers and the silence, music that has not changed since Virgil heard it and wrote of Heaven's gift, honey from the skies. First, Virgil says, you must choose for your bees a place where the hive will be sheltered from the wind. Water must be nearby, clear springs and mossy ponds, and a little stream threading its way through the grass. Let a (tree) shade the entrance to the hive and let shadows of willows lie on the water. Plant violet-banks all about, with carpets of savory and wild thyme; and there must be crocuses and hyacinths, arbutus from the mountains, laurustinus and linden trees." ("Through the Garden Gate," University of North Carolina Press, 1990)
Symbolically, bees are used to represent diligence, hard work, industry or organization. A dream of bees may be a fearful dream, because of their sting, or may suggest over-activity or being overwhelmed by work or obligations. Being "busy as a bee" may be the road to success, but being the drone will get you nowhere. Some see bees as a symbol of conformity. In ancient legends, bees were messengers of the gods. Ireland and Scotland confer wisdom on their bees, and countrymen begin any new venture by "telling it to the bees" in a hope for divine intervention. A bee in the house suggests a visitor is coming, but a bee that dies in the house brings bad luck. Likewise, bee swarms have been considered bad luck.
Ask The Old Farmer's Almanac: Are the Australian "willy-willies" the same as a hurricane? — G. P., Kimball, Neb.
Answer: The Australians' phrase willy-willies derives from the word, whirlwind. If its winds surpass a sustained force of over 74 miles per hour, then, yes, it would be considered a hurricane. Typically, though, hurricanes refer to storms in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico. The word hurricane is a Carib Indian term for big wind. East of the international dateline, in the Pacific, they may still be called hurricanes, but west of that dateline they are more commonly referred to as typhoons. Like the word hurricane, typhoon also means great wind, in Chinese.
In the Indian Ocean, cyclone is the word used, this time meaning coil, as in the coil of a snake, because of the spiraling winds that seem to funnel within them. Whirlwinds, waterspouts, funnel clouds, tornadoes or twisters all refer to various degrees of violently rotating air (or water pulled up into the air) that may or may not be accompanied by thunderstorms. Tropical storms may also have counterclockwise, cyclonic winds with minimum pressure at the center, but these are, by definition, under 75 miles per hour in speed.
Faithful readers of The Old Farmer's Almanac sometimes ask us why we don't predict the hurricanes and other major storms that come our way. Benjamin Watson, editor of "Acts of God: The Old Farmer's Almanac Unpredictable Guide to Weather and Natural Disasters" (Random House, 1993), explained our reluctance this way: "If you think forecasting 'normal' weather is tricky, though, try predicting a natural disaster. No one wants to look like a prophet of doom, so on the rare occasions when The Old Farmer's Almanac predicts a severe storm (as it did in forecasting Hurricane Andrew in 1992), it does so in the same spirit as the National Weather Service — simply to serve notice that a big storm may be coming. The difference, of course, is that the Almanac has to stick its neck out more than a year in advance."
Ask The Old Farmer's Almanac: What does it mean that Lammas Day was a quarter day?— E. W., Bloomington Springs, Tenn.
Answer: Lammas Day (sometimes called Loaf Mass) and celebrated on August 1 was a Christian celebration of the harvest in ancient England. By some definitions, the Christian celebration was said to coincide with St. Peter's deliverance from prison. That it was considered one of the quarter days meant that it was also time to pay rents due your landlord, something you did four times a year. Harvest time was an especially propitious time for paying, of course, assuming the harvest had been decent.
In Celtic traditions, it was the Lugnasaid, or the beginning of the wheat harvest. Loaves made from the new wheat might be handed out at Mass. (The word Lammas comes from the Old English hlaf (loaf) and Mass. Later etymology confused it with lamb-mass, because of the custom of blessing the lambs at Mass on this day.) In Scotland, it was traditional to eat oat cakes on this day. In England, toffee and seaweed pudding were common fare, while in Ireland it was customary to offer blueberries in baskets for your sweetheart. This was an offshoot of the pagan fertility rituals, but the custom of celebrating the seasonal bounty was the same.
Send your questions to: Ask the Almanac, The Old Farmer's Almanac, Main St., Dublin, NH 03444. Every day the editors of The Old Farmer's Almanac answer a question on the Internet. web site: www.almanac.com © United Feature Syndicate