summer

Yesterday was the “longest day” of the year; the summer solstice. I didn’t see people dancing around naked or setting up altars to the setting sun, so I guess that holiday has seen its better days. You can say summer officially begins, though tomorrow the last day for public schools here in the Valley. Then Alice Cooper’s School’s Out for Summer can play once again.

Actually, summer is kind of weird here in California anyway. It is hard to discern when summer begins or ends. Is it heat? Is it blossoming trees? Actually the best test is the amount of traffic, in particular around local schools and colleges. We live by a local community college, Pierce College, and so I can tell summer has officially begun because I can turn left out onto the main thoroughfare from my neighborhood in the morning. Usually traffic is backed up the other direction just before the first classes begin at 8. A commuter college, indeed.

Summer is a time to wind down or wind up depending on your activity level. Going to the beach, picnics, vacations; it just seems a little less frazzled. We will be on a couple of family vacations this summer. I am ready to do my Clark Griswold act once more. “Just look out the window Rusty…” It’s a pleasure to just be together without, “who is going where when and what time will you be home?” Whoever called them the “lazy days of summer,” should also have added, “the renewing and reenergizing days of summer.” It shall be so.