Summer Wanes
Yesterday the high school football team held its first scrimmage. I sat in the stands with friends—right next to Pitch and just in front of Ellie, and all three of our boys had been in school together since kindergarten. The sky was cloudless, with that particular look of pale, glowing luminescence specific, in my experience, to California. My son? After a summer during which he had worked out twice a day, dropping ten pounds, taking an eighth of a second off his time in the forty, and adding five inches to his vertical jump, my son was looking pretty good out there. I don’t know why—maybe because I’d overheard someone describe the weather as “paradise”—but for a moment my mind engaged in a brief speculation about heaven. And do you know what I discovered? That I couldn’t imagine—literally, I simply could not imagine—any way in which heaven could improve on that very moment.
The thought has no bearing on politics, history, or culture. I know. But every so often—and particularly on the last real summer weekend (school starts on Tuesday) there’s no harm in pausing to note the sweetness of American life.
A moment ago, come to think of it, Bill McGurn and I exchanged emails. Returning by train to New Jersey after a family vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Bill was in much the same mood I’m in. “Very old-fashioned,” Bill wrote. “Hardly spent any money, save for a game of putt-putt one day and a few ice creams. Just a lot of beach time….I do like going out at the end of the day and enjoying the waning sun.”
If anyone else is in the mood to offer a postcard, so to speak, from the summer of 2010, I'm sure in the mood to read it.
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Re: Summer Wanes
Peter, your beautiful description calls to mind not a postcard from this summer, but one of four summers ago--during sophomore summer in college. A small group of friends and I ventured out from Hanover on a mini adventure to the "ledges," a crystal blue inlet studded with mossy boulders and slick rocks. We spent the day there swimming, chatting, reading--watching the sun move from one side of the sky to the other, and as twilight approached, we packed up our things and headed back to campus. On the way back, I sat lazily in the back seat of the car, feeling perfectly whole and relaxed and happy. I remember thinking then: I can't imagine a more perfect moment than this--and I remember feeling sad for that, sad that the ecstasy of that moment would soon slip away forever.
May '10
Re: Summer Wanes
I well remember taking my German co-worker to a Cubs game. Germans are not allowed to be patriotic, or wave flags, for obvious reasons. This was shortly after 9/11. Sammy Sosa broke the homerun record, there were fireworks, patriotic songs with the NYFD, jets flying overhead. Dude said "I've never seen anything like this" in a happily astonished way.
A lot of great memories are built at ballparks. On the playing fields of Eton...
Edited on Aug 22, 2010 at 7:56pmMay '10
Re: Summer Wanes
We didn't get to travel much this summer for various reasons, but my boys and I spent a lot of time at our fitness center's outdoor pool. Even the most intolerably hot days were enjoyable. This summer will be the one I remember that my boys (2 and 4 years old) learned to swim. I guess I should qualify it by saying that they both are comfortable holding their breaths underwater and propelling themselves for a few feet. Even so, they had so much fun taking swim lessons and playing in the water, and I had so much fun watching them progress and playing with them. I just wish the time wouldn't go by so fast.
Jun '10
Re: Summer Wanes
How Summer ends in Minneapolis/St.Paul:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzL5YsRrIvc
Jul '10
Re: Summer Wanes
That's first rate improvement by your boy. I'm betting on a steady dose of plyometric workouts combined with traditional calisthenic stuff. Or am I wrong? Is it all yoga all the time, out west? Either way, I'd like to extend congratulations. Those are really impressive accomplishments.
.
Jul '10
Re: Summer Wanes
I spent most of my summers during college in Washington DC working either as a researcher or a counselor for a youth leadership conference. About four times a summer we would take the kids on a one-evening tour of some of the monuments around the Tidal Basin including the Lincoln Memorial, the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Korean War Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial. However, my favorite was the FDR Memorial, as the memorial itself is set apart from the edge of the Tidal Basin, and while the teenagers were running around trying to take pictures in the darkness, I would sit under the cherry trees, dangle my feet over the water's edge and take in the peace of seeing the reflections of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial on the calm waters during those sticky Washington summers at dusk.
Jul '10
Re: Summer Wanes
Peter Robinson
That I couldn’t imagine—literally, I simply could not imagine—any way in which heaven could improve on that very moment.
In heaven, you wouldn't bring your son to practice in a Suburban.
You'd drive a Chevy Volt, like everyone else.
Except St. Gore.
Jun '10
Re: Summer Wanes
Einstein proved the relativity of time: it slows with motion and it slows when subjected to gravity. I liken the present to lazing down a river on a raft, for us time is the raft that never stops it just flows with the current to the sea. So technically there is no such thing as the present for the raft never stops running on the current and time never stops. Yet, we do know, for Einstein proved it, that time is not constant. But, to write that Einstein had anything to say about eternity would be to overreach his theories. Still, our science holds that time can stop completely which would leave only an eternal present. What you glimpsed today, Peter, is that eternal present, may that flash stay with you forever.
May '10
Re: Summer Wanes
A few weeks ago, I went to Mobile, Alabama to visit my brother (also cousins, uncles, grandparents, etc) and help him install an aluminum fence in his large back yard. As we slaved in the 100-degree heat and humidity like a sauna, my brother's two-year-old son strolled by to say, "You all are doing a good job." Later, we lost a wrench. As we searched, my nephew stopped, put a finger to his lips and exclaimed, "That's the mystery!" Toddlers are tiring, but fun.
Up through my teenage years, my family always spent two or three weeks at my grandparents' beachhouse in Perdido Key, Florida (on the Alabama state line). My cousin and I spent a whole summer there once, when I was thirteen or so. That is my Heaven on Earth. Taxes forced us to sell the land to a man who wanted to build a condo (and couldn't, because the survey discovered an endangered species -- the Perdido Key Beach Mouse), but we still try to meet at that beach every year.
Jul '10
Re: Summer Wanes
My most heavenly moment occurred under a parachute, at 3,000 feet above the ground.
Another skydiver, who had no business being anywhere near me, plunged through my parachute at 135 miles per hour, destroying my 'chute, fracturing my skull and several cervical vertebrae and rupturing my femoral artery.
Suddenly, I sensed a golden glow all around me, with the Virgin Mary smiling at the center (and I'm not even a Catholic).
Apparently, Heaven had determined that I had no way of getting out of this mess, but I did. Most people would have panicked and died, but somehow that brief, heavenly vision gave me the serenity and clarity to do what had to be done.
No one who was present that day can understand how I managed to survive. And given that skydivers are a hard-bitten, profane lot, I never shared that vision.
Until now.
May '10
Re: Summer Wanes
It's August in America.
Jul '10
Re: Summer Wanes
Superb interview with Thomas Sowell. I bought the book and started reading it yesterday. Not nearly as optimistic as Dr. Rahe, but remarkably cogent. I start back to work next week. Won't have as much time to keep up with your reading list. :-( Retirement looks more and more attractive.
May '10
Re: Summer Wanes
As you know, Peter, this is not the point of "summer's wane" in the Bay Area, but it's much anticipated start! For the first time in...well this whole summer, the sun rose over the SF Bay area this morning unhidden by gray overcast and fog. This week we will finally warm up into the 70's or even 80's.The kids returning to school find this especially cruel, but we have hope for the next few weekends.
We didn't travel this summer, at least not as a family, but we did spend a lot of time out on the bay. Even in the cold and fog that is a "heavenly" place to be. But I'm looking forward to a trip to the beach without sweaters and windbreakers. Let the summer begin!
Re: Summer Wanes
Peter, I can't resist posting this response. It was in the funny pages yesterday and cracked me up - you get it full-sized if you click on it:
Aug '10
Re: Summer Wanes
16 days in a forest, no phones, no tvs, no radios, the only papers are ones you wouldn't line a birdcage with. No cars, no requests to take anything in or out, no garbage, no feeding dogs, the list of nos goes on. Concerns: was that an osprey ? enough logs on the fire ? do you bring a corkscrew ? do you have a pick ?
Jun '10
Re: Summer Wanes
Peter, you’re absolutely right, the weather was ideal yesterday, with a gorgeous full moon as the cherry on top. I too savored it while watching the first football scrimmage of the season, but on a slightly larger stage: the Niners-Vikings preseason game at the ‘Stick.
Re: Summer Wanes
Ah, Drew, too, too true. By the way, do you find that you're becoming your father--and that your son is becoming you?
I can see now, for example, why my father took such pleasure in small, domestic moments that at the time meant nothing to me.
Teaching me to build a fire in the fireplace--if I did a good job, he explained, we'd only need a single match. Or talking my mother and me into getting up early--very early--to join him in kayaking around the little Pennsylvania lake on which we used to vacation before the kinds of people who drove motorboats had climbed out of bed. Mist serenely swirling on the water. Distant birdsong. My mother and me entirely in his care as he paddled. Life just didn't get any better. I can see that now.
Re: Summer Wanes
I made a mistake, Paleologus: My son only took three-tenths of a second off his time in the forty, not eight-tenths. But I'm proud of him all the same--good and proud. He ran a lot of stadium steps, lifted a lot of weights, and--a supreme sacrifice in the summer--denied himself candy, chewing gum, and ice cream, instead mixing himself a couple of protein shakes each day. (And I was right about the vertical jump--five inches of improvement.)
Jul '10
Re: Summer Wanes
Sandbagging? No of course you aren't, stupid question. Nevertheless, you undersold your son's improvement. You didn't say he took 8/10 sec off his time. You wrote that he took "an eighth of a second off his time in the forty" which is 1.25 tenths. A three-tenths of a second improvement is 2.4 times more impressive.
For a baseline, it's roughly the difference between a very fast defensive end (say Bruce Smith, or Chris Doleman) and a big safety (e.g. David Fulcher or Steve Atwater).
To say the least, "impressive, most impressive."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4uC4UcfiTg
May '10
Re: Summer Wanes
Call me provincial, but I identify with Andrew's cartoon. Sitting on our patio after grilling some steaks for dinner. It's dark now on the east side of the Great Valley, It's 77 degrees and there's no delta breeze tonight. The humidity is around 30%. The full moon and the garden lights are reflecting off the ripples in the pool. I'm serenaded by the soothing sounds of a couple waterfalls. it is supremely relaxing and very, very pleasant.