• The Publisher’s Notebook •

It’s Time to Get Sirius in Malibu

BY ANNE SOBLE

You’ve heard and seen the same phrase ad nauseum for several weeks from nearly every newscaster and many print columnists—the dog days of summer. It usually means that the user is desperate to come up with something to speak or write about during the time of year when it seems that everyone is either on vacation, recuperating from just having returned from vacation, or preparing to go on vacation.
In journospeak, dog days often means that interesting news has ground to a halt, and there is a need to resort to the B-list of stories and features held in reserve for this kind of communications slowdown. Even though that doesn’t seem to happen very often in Malibu, as the recent parable of the mayor and the paparazzi would appear to illustrate, local newsrooms are not immune to the phenomenon.
When there are days that are too hot and too humid for most of us, many fall back on the tendency of the ancient Greeks to use celestial landmarks as a shorthand for just about everything. Because this weather often coincided with the time of year (mid-August) that the star Sirius, which appears in a constellation with the shape of a dog, rose with the sun, the time of year became known as the dog days.
Rather than it being the putdown of indolent animals that it seems in today’s parlance, connection to Sirius meant association with the brightest star in the sky after the Sun. It is a star that in reality is nearly 30 times brighter than the Sun, but it is located so much farther away from Earth that it seems smaller.
Whenever municipal political squabbles are in remission, Pacific Coast Highway is too crowded for unnecessary commuting and incoming emails are down to a point where they are almost manageable, everyone is able to change their pace accordingly.
The irony in the concept of dog days may be that most real canines have already figured out all of the hot and humid weather aspects and use them to their advantage. They have decided that a long afternoon nap is the best way to get through days too uncomfortable for business as usual.
If this editor thought about it, she would follow the lead of her canine companions, instead of sitting here and trying to come up with something different to write about this week. After all, scientists have recently documented the benefits of taking canine-like breaks during the day. Maybe we all should start to take Sirius more seriously.