Now that it’s 100˚ every day with no relief in sight, I guess it’s summer. I don’t like it much. I’m a rainy day guy or even better yet a cool drizzly day guy. A blazing sun and a cloudless sky just makes me feel like hiding inside somewhere until it goes away. Tedious. I’m suffering.
Meanwhile, Sydney Australia is hit with it’s fourth major flood in 18 months. Now I know where all the rain went. It landed in Sydney. It sure as heck didn’t hit here.
I could climb on the climate bandwagon at this point and point out all the extreme weather events and how they’re connected to climate change. Also tedious. If you missed that news bulletin I’m sure you’ll get it soon. Wherever you live. So what is this post about then? Summer!
School’s out. The beach beckons. Travel time. Road trip with the family. Flights to Europe. Flights to Australia where they’re having winter, if they’re not underwater.
In the olden days summer was the time of ripening fruits and grains in the fields and orchards. Looking forward to the harvest if there was enough rain to carry you through.
We’ve just passed the Solstice on June 21 and technically the days are getting shorter. A few minutes each day is subtracted from day and added to night. The Solstice was a major event for our forebears. They liked to celebrate whenever they could otherwise it was just a lot of farming. Not too exciting. Summer solstice was a beer bash, at least in Europe. The farmers could cut loose and get out of the field and into the pub where all their friends were.
And ok, if you listen to the podcast, I admit I like House music. My heart beats with that. It’s like a tribal feeling. We are all brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters and you can feel it when that beat starts beating. Oh boom, boom, boom goes my heart, the metronomic trance-like repetition, so poetic. So entrancing. So yeah I feel the community of humanity when I hear House music. I love the drop. I love you. What a neat feeling. Boom it starts again.
We are one tribe, one species among many, brothers and sisters, one people living on a planet. For the European peasants celebrating Summer Solstice back in the medieval days it was a communal celebration. As much as they knew of it, the world was of one accord and drinking in their pub. And they had their House Music, drum and flute, lute and lyre, singers, everybody singing, filling the House.
Beer was widely imbibed back in the Middle Ages, being cheaper than wine and safer than water. I’m sure they had a good stock ready for the Summer Solstice. So here’s to that.
It’s summer, hot as hell. Maybe hotter, I haven’t been to hell yet. I might go there yet according to my righteous siblings who pray for me religiously, I suspect. It can’t be hotter than this though. That would be ridiculous.
music :: 1:00:50-1:08:29
7/7/22 summer