Schools and Summer Break

Summer vacation has been an integral part of American family life for more than a hundred years. That is primarily due to one thing: school’s out. 

In my New Jersey childhood, school ended around mid-June, but varied based on how many "snow days" had closed school and extended the year to the required 180 days. I knew that in other parts of the country, school opened in August (not September) and closed in May (not June).

But why is there no school in summer? Most people assume it’s a holdover from a time when the country was more agrarian, and children were required to help out on the family farm. I heard that as a kid. That is a factor, but the summer break or vacation we know today actually had more to do with urban health concerns and public policy than farming. 

This may sound backwards to you, but rural schools in the 1800s did build calendars around farming, but they did it by holding school in winter and summer and taking off spring and fall which are the busiest farm months. 

I didn't learn this until I took a graduate education course. Historian Kenneth Gold explains it in School’s In: The History of Summer Education in American Public Schools that summer was actually the slowest agricultural season compared to planting and harvest. So if the calendar was designed purely for farm labor, summer would be the worst time to take off.

So why did we ditch spring/fall breaks for summer break?

City schools in the 1800s were overcrowded brick ovens with no AC and bad ventilation. Summer heat combined with large classes (often 50 kids) in one room led to disease outbreaks. Cholera, typhoid, and other illnesses spiked in summer. Health officials literally recommended shutting schools down in July and August.

Most major renovations could only happen with kids out of the way. Summer became the maintenance window by default.

Wealthy urban families fled cities every summer to escape the heat. That left schools half-empty and split along class lines. Reformers like Horace Mann wanted standardized, equal schools for everyone. A common summer break fixed the “rich kids gone, poor kids sweltering” problem.

There was also a weird medical theory amongst 19th-century doctors that genuinely believed too much studying in summer heat caused “brain fever” or mental exhaustion in children. Summer rest was prescribed like medicine.

Horace Mann and the Common School Movement thought rural schedules were too short and inconsistent. Many farm-area schools only ran 60-80 days per year. Reformers wanted longer, standardized school years — closer to 180 days — and they modeled it after urban systems and Prussia’s age-graded schools.

To make age-graded classrooms work across districts, you needed everyone on the same calendar. The farm-driven spring/fall breaks had to go.

Between 1880-1920, states started tying school funding to minimum instructional days. The 180-day calendar won out, running from late summer to late spring. By then, most Americans lived in cities or towns, not on farms. The calendar standardized around urban needs, not agricultural ones.

The Evolution of Mirrors

 

The Mirror of Venus, or L'Art et Vie (Art and Life)
 ca. 1890 by Walter Crane

Mirrors have a long history, from natural reflection to carefully engineered objects. The very first “mirrors” weren’t objects at all—they were surfaces like still water. Early humans likely noticed their reflections in ponds or pools long before they tried to reproduce the effect. 

Polished stone seems to be the earliest manmade mirrors (c. 6000–4000 BCE). They come from places like Anatolia. People there polished dark volcanic glass (obsidian) into reflective surfaces. These were small, slightly distorted, but recognizable as mirrors. 

Next came metal mirrors (c. 3000 BCE onward). Ancient civilizations improved on this idea by polishing metals. In Ancient Egypt, mirrors were made from polished copper. In Mesopotamia and later Ancient China, bronze mirrors became common. These were often beautifully decorated on the back and used not just for grooming but also for ritual and symbolic purposes. 

Glass mirrors appeared during the Roman period. In the Roman Empire, artisans began backing glass with metals like lead or tin. These early glass mirrors were still dim and imperfect, but closer to what we recognize today. 

High-quality mirrors really emerged in Renaissance Europe, especially in Venice. Venetian craftsmen developed a technique of coating glass with a tin–mercury amalgam, producing clearer reflections. These mirrors were expensive luxury items — often more valuable than paintings. 

Modern mirrors (19th century–today) use a process that was invented in 1835 by Justus von Liebig. he developed a method for applying a thin layer of silver to glass using chemical reduction. This is the basis of today’s mirrors, though aluminum is now often used instead of silver.

Mirrors also carry symbolic meaning in art, literature, and film. This scene from Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai works as both a film effect and with symbolic meanings in the scene and the film overall.

Is There a Seasonal Blue Moon This Month?

This month, we have a "Blue Moon" on May 31, now popularly defined as a second Full Moon in a calendar month.  But there is also the traditional "Seasonal Blue Moon." 

To understand the complexities of the seasonal variety, you have to step away from our standard 12-month calendar and look at the year the way early astronomers, farmers, and religious officials did. They calculated by a year that was divided strictly by the solstices and equinoxes.

A true astronomical season is the three months between these celestial markers. For example, from the Summer Solstice in June to the Autumnal Equinox in September is the season of Summer.

Because a calendar season is three months long, it naturally contains three full moons. Each of these Full Moons historically had specific names based on folklore and agriculture—like the Harvest Moon, Hunter’s Moon, or Snow Moon—which helped people track planting, harvesting, and seasonal changes.

The lunar cycle (the time from one Full Moon to the next) lasts roughly 29.5 days. If you multiply that by three, a typical season takes about 88.5 days to complete. However, a calendar season is slightly longer, lasting roughly 91 to 92 days. Because of that small 3-day gap, the Full Moons slowly drift backward against the solar calendar. Every 2 to 3 years, the gap catches up, and four full moons manage to squeeze into a single season instead of the usual three.

Well, when a season contained four Full Moons, it created a major naming problem. If you just named them in order, the traditional names would get pushed out of sync with the actual seasons. For example, the "Harvest Moon" might suddenly occur too early, before the crops were actually ready to be brought in. 

To fix this, the Maine Farmers' Almanac introduced a clever rule: the third Full Moon in a four-moon season is designated the Blue Moon. By making the third one a wild card "Blue Moon," the fourth and final full moon of that season could keep its proper traditional name, keeping the rest of the calendar perfectly aligned for the upcoming year.

Complicated, right? 

Because this phenomenon relies on the alignment of the solar year and the lunar cycle, it follows a strict cosmic rhythm known as the Metonic Cycle. The Moon's phases repeat on the exact same calendar days every 19 years. During those 19 years, there are exactly 235 full moons but only 76 seasons. Do the math and you're left with 7 extra Full Moons. Therefore, a Seasonal Blue Moon occurs precisely 7 times every 19 years, making it a true astronomical rarity that perfectly embodies the phrase "once in a Blue Moon."

That Mythological River That You Forgot

I wrote on another blog about forgetfulness in old age and referenced a poem by Billy Collins on the subject. In the poem, he alludes to 

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,

I linked that allusion to this post, hoping that a reader there might come here if they also have forgotten that river.

The mythological river starting with L is Lethe from Greek mythology. It is the perfect river to choose because it is known as the "River of Forgetfulness".

It is one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld. The newly dead were required to drink its waters to completely wash away their memories and earthly life before entering the afterlife or being reincarnated.

The name comes from the Greek word lethe, which translates to "forgetfulness" or "oblivion".

In philosophical traditions like Orphism and Plato's Republic, the river was contrasted with Mnemosyne, the "River of Memory". Initiates were taught to drink from the latter to retain their wisdom and identity.

Did you once know the other 4 rivers of the underworld?
Styx (shuddering/hatred), Acheron (woe), Cocytus (lamentation), and Phlegethon (fire).