Welcome To August

Welcome to August, and the story of why TigerBlog never became a farmer.

First, though, his is the definitive backstory for August:

It was originally named Sextilis in Latin because it was the sixth month in the original 10-month Roman calendar under Romulus in 753 BC, with March the first month of the year. About 700 BC, it became the eighth month when January and February were added to the year before March by King Numa Pompilius, who also gave it 29 days. Julius Caesar added two days when he created the Juliun Calendar in 46 BC, giving it its modern length of 31 days. In 8 BC, it was renamed in honor of Emperor Augustus. Commonly repeated lore has it that August has 31 days because Augustus wanted his month to match the length of Julius Caesar's July, but this is an invention of the 13th century scholar Johannes de Sacrobosco.

At least that's what it says on Wikipedia. 

TigerBlog wonders why those ancient emperors decided to add months and change the length of months. Does that make January and February expansion months? Can people today randomly change the calendar? If someone named June became President, could she add two months to the sixth month and delete one each from the seventh and eighth? 

Also on Wikipedia it says that there are 23 separate month-long observances, ranging from the quite serious (Children's Eye Health and Safety Month, Neurosurgery Outreach Month, National Black Business Month) to the rather amusing (National Happiness Happens Month, National Panini Month, National Dippin' Dots Month).

For the record, TigerBlog does not like Dippin' Dots.

While not listed on Wikipedia, it's also National College Athletics Return month. This month starts out quiet and peaceful on college campuses. By the end of the month, there will have been hundreds of college athletic events involving thousands of athletes.

Before TB looks ahead to the rest of August, it's worth a quick shout-out to July, the only only month of the year where there are no scheduled Princeton Athletic events. 

The 2021-22 athletic year ended for Princeton with the NCAA track and field championships, which ended on June 11. The first athletic event of the 2022-23 year for Princeton will be a women's soccer home game against Colgate on Aug. 26 at 7 pm, followed by a home game against Fairfield two days later, also at seven.

That's 25 days away. The gap between the end of last year and the start of this year will be 77 days, which means the halfway point was Day 39, or July 19.

The average Princeton Athletic year has around 700 total events. This year, there will be 38 sports, as women's rugby makes its varsity debut. 

If you work in college athletics, you have to be excited when you get to this time of year. If you're not, you're probably in the wrong business. 

You have to be excited by the coming year, with its endless possibilities and eventual storylines. You have to love the games and knowing that what you're doing is helping the experience of those who participate in them.

You have to be okay knowing that your job won't be 9-5, Monday through Friday. Not everyone is okay with that. Not everyone is okay with doing that kind of job for an entire career.

For TB, he's never even considered anything else. 

It will be 39 years since he first came to the newspaper business. He remembers how he felt clearly: This is fun. Do this for a few years. Get a real job.

It's like Pop said as he looked back on a lifetime in baseball in "The Natural": "I always meant to be a farmer."

Maybe TB never meant to be a farmer, but he did not back in the mid-1980s think that he'd still be doing this all these years later. And yet here he is. 

Why? It's because of how much he loves August 1st, knowing that the campus will be coming back to life this month and that the games are going to be starting soon. 

And that is why he never became a farmer.