Ragged Climax

Monday

• Like many gardeners, nature itself seems to have given up on the weeding.  Whatever vegetation has survived this far extends out of control, taking over every vacant bit of light and moisture, yet hardly making a dent in the survival of any nearby plants.  A glance at any exposed space would convince a neutral observer that this land is well on its way to becoming jungle.  Unchecked, this growth would quickly return fields and towns to primal wilderness.  But the season grows late ….
• Oppressive heat and humidity has many of us longing for the cooler breezes of autumn, of which we will tire of in turn.  It is easy to forget how not long ago weather was a local matter of life and death, rather than a seasonal entertainment.  Blizzards and floods could kill on vast scales; drought, heat, and cold could bring starvation;  any extreme condition represented misery.  Technological civilization insulates us from such intimate connections, which is on the whole better for everyone.  I know it may all collapse, wilderness triumphing after all, but at this moment I am very content to be able to experience any meteorological inconveniences innocuously.

Tuesday

Streams of sweat drip sting my eyes.

I’m thirsty, heated, happy, slow

Watch gentle waves in absent wind

Nowhere to be, nothing to know

An empty bottle cast on shore

Residues of memory

Phantom dreams drift of our past

My contemplative lazy me

This cannot last, no worries, cares

Soon worlds of problems must appear

Tomorrow will _ but this is now

Sunshine seas erase my fears.

Beach nirvana, is it wise?

Or lotus-eater melody?

A stream of lassitude allowed

A moment to be fully free

Wednesday

• Exercising an innate capacity for appreciating beauty is a constant joy.  Some approach it with exclusivity, as if true beauty is perfection in an imperfect world _ and consequently rare.  Their primary ability becomes locating flaws great or small which mar that which they wish to experience.  Others claim beauty is everywhere, even in trash and tragedy.  They seek to adjust their perception to cast an enchantment on whatever exists.
• I am obviously prone to the latter.  A glass of cool clear water is as satisfying and wonderful as a perfectly prepared cup of coffee or tea, although coffee and tea (however prepared) are also fine.  Of course, I understand some things should be changed _ a house on fire may be majestically beautiful, but it should be extinguished.  Trash on a beach may add ironic visual highlights, but should be removed.  Overall, however, I exist in an environment much of which I cannot control nor modify except within myself.  I prefer to find most of what I encounter there an echo of the harmony of the spheres.

Thursday

Joan waves another fly into the onshore wind, as the muffled sound of a distant speedboat blends with thunder from an overhead low jet heading for landing thirty miles away.  Waves sparkle below tree-greened horizons as families splash in bathtub-warm mid-tide.

“Not too many people, for such a hot day,” I break our silence.

“Well, it’s starting to get low and a little dirty.  They probably don’t want to get an infection,” she replies.

“Oh, people like you are afraid of everything,” I chuckle.  “I swim in all the tides, head under water, and nothing ever happened to me.”

“It will, sometime,” she notes darkly.  “I heard on the news …”

“That’s the problem!” I break in.  “That stupid news.  Someone somewhere got an earache, someone somewhere drowned, someone somewhere always something.  Zika, skin cancer, West Nile, paralyzing jellyfish, cataracts, and probably food poisoning from eating a popsicle from the ice-cream truck.”

“Well, things do happen to people, all the time,” she says in a reasonable tone.  “We need to be careful.”

“Compared to our ancestors, we are about as safe as it is possible to be,” I look around at well-fed folks lying half naked, protected by life guards, help a phone call away.  “And yet everyone still worries.  What if one of those backpacks explodes …”

“Don’t even think about it,” she grimaces.

“Fear of fear itself,” I mutter.  More loudly, “Ready for another dip?”  She nod’s agreement and we head down to water’s edge, challenging fate once again.

Friday

• Deep drought continues at lower soil levels, but the surface has been periodically refreshed with frequent thunderstorms and short downpours.  Grass remains green, everything continues to grow.  Nevertheless, the blooms of summer are quickly turning to seed, autumn flowers are showing, and all vacant areas have been overrun with massive bunches of ragweed and crabgrass.  Summer remains in force, but is beginning to strain with the effort.
• I’ve already heard folks complaining about our protracted spell of sun and heat.   What seems a perfect month or two to a few of us is wretched for others.  Isn’t that too true about an awful lot of things these days, from food to entertainment to future hopes and fears?  Such diversity of opinion is wonderful, as long as we can somehow manage to hold common ground, which is one thing that sometimes seems in question lately.

Saturday

• “Let a thousand flowers bloom” is a nice sentiment, but ignores the fact that in the real world over 900 or so of those will be crowded out, withered, eaten or killed off in some other manner.  What is left is magnificent, but nature remains ruthless. 
• Since at least the time of the ancient Romans, each generation has produced a few people who miss the “good old days” of their fevered imaginations.   According to them, the golden era has passed and these are degenerate and wretched times, with everyone (except them) too lazy, too coddled, too ignorant.   I’ve been hearing a lot of this claptrap lately, starting with making us “great” again.
• I’m the first to admit I’ve led a fortunate life, and there are others who do live in eternal misery.  I would never have chosen to be alive in any other era.  Discoveries are happening daily, but there remains mystery in the world.  We are overpopulating the planet, but there is still enough for most. 
• As for purpose, which is frequently said to be missing, we’ve been doing all right.  There have been no major wars for over fifty years, whole populations which would formerly have been starving are now fed and clothed.  Everyone everywhere has hopes of a better future.  All we need is to decide to clean up the environment and spread the wealth and that would provide purpose enough for quite a while.
• Glass half full?  More like almost overflowing.  And yet there are angry folks everywhere, and agitators who stir the pot, and even those who are obscenely wealthy think they are god’s gift to the world and why couldn’t everyone else just work hard like they did.  I’ve gotten to the point where it is almost painful to listen to the news or read editorials.

Sunday

• Days of brutal humid heat have kept much of the population safely hidden into air conditioning.  No such luck for the outdoor flora and fauna.  Lack of rain, air pollution, all the usual complaints of late summer.  Meanwhile, everyone frantically realizes that regardless of how it feels, the season is drawing to a close.  Panic to enjoy the last weeks has set in for boaters and other vacationers.
• I’ve been more or less confined to the house, not wishing to run into big box stores for relief.  In some ways it is worse than cabin fever when blizzard-bound.  Even the few times the temperature let me venture out to read on the patio, mosquitoes have quickly driven me back in.  So I too am trying to throw off my recent lethargy and low spirits in a final summer fling of activity.  

Nervously Normal

Monday

• Sometimes the mood is that of an approaching hurricane.  Calm now, nothing anyone can do here except make futile preparations, and wait to see what exact track it takes and how severely it hits the neighborhood.  Everywhere in the world, which attained an all-time high in average warmth last year, there seem to be 100-year droughts, 1000-year floods, massive devastation both directly from weather and as a result of its anomalies (vast forest fires, immense insect infestation, death of species.)  An apocalyptic outlook is fairly easy to feed in such times, even though locally everything remains as it has always been.
• We tend to forget exactly how bad some local and even regional events used to be for the people living through them.  The year without a summer in 1816 causing starvation in New England, famine in France in 1787, widespread deep snow killing crops and hastening the black plague in 13^th century Italy.  Middle Eastern ancient religious texts speak of vast floods, as do Chinese chronicles.  From an individual standpoint, the past was just as bad _ and often far worse _ than what we are experiencing.  And we should not forget that through everything there were always people who blamed themselves, their neighbors, or their society for what was going wrong.  But will “think globally, act locally” be enough this time around?

Tuesday

On the beach _ a summer glory

On The Beach _ a frightful story

Doomed insects dancing in the wind

No gods to care if they have sinned

Fish flashing, brightly wild and free

‘Til swallowed whole when they can’t flee

Birds growing fat on bugs and seed

Triumphant conquest by the weeds

I see it all, I simply pray

I’ll watch again another day

Wednesday

• Long Island has large parks in addition to vast stretches of sand and wetlands shoreline.  So for those fortunate enough to have time and leisure, shady lanes wind through forests, and dirt paths wander surrounded by ferns.  This year there is a minor drought, so insects are less annoying than usual for August _ not good for swallows or bats, nice for someone striding along trying to flick gnats out of their eyes.  In such moments the world seems benign and well.
• I used to take these hour or two strolls with improvement in mind.  Although that is still true as an exercise and a mental contemplation, I often no longer fill my moments with attempts to identify trees and flowers, nor to visualize scenes “as an artist,” nor to follow deep and often futile trains of thought concerning philosophy or the cosmos.  I am, finally, content to not know so much, to just enjoy the experience, and to be grateful for a sense of well-being.  I recognize that we must preserve wilderness and rain forests and coral reefs, but truthfully for myself what must really be fought for are these nearby refuges that can be reached and experienced without great preparation.

Thursday

Only our heads show above the waves as we notice Harry and June plopping down their beach chairs next to ours.  Temperature in high eighties, so they are soon along side, June and Joan pairing off to discuss offspring and other social gossip. 

Harry comes up dripping and smiles.  “Ah, global warming.  Good for something, anyway.”

“Right,” I agree.  “Water really beautiful this time of year.”

“I wonder what we’d do if a tsunami happened right now?”  Harry likes the oddball and even ridiculous non-sequitur in his conversation.

We both glance at the narrow inlet a half mile away through which all the tides must ceaselessly flow.  “Outrun it, I suppose,” I say, figuring not much would get in very quickly and would dissipate as it spread.

“Probably right.” Harry agrees.  “But there’s so much concentration on catastrophes that I find them almost interesting to imagine.”

“Black swan events don’t need global warming,” I note.  “That’s the trouble with projections.  A hundred years before the big asteroid, any intelligent being would assume dinosaurs would still be ruling the Earth today.  And nobody still knows where the ice ages came from, or when they might return.”

“Don’t forget the Black Plague,” he added.  “And the Huns and ….”

“Oh, I know, there’s enough to go around.  What’s that got to do with the price of bread, anyway?”

“Well, it’s one way to avoid guilt.”

“Ah, guilt,” I ponder.  “Well, I don’t feel all that guilty about all that.  Our generation worked out a few problems, as did generations before us.  The next ones will just have to do the same.  But I’ll tell you one thing…”

Harry ducks his head again and looks at me expectantly.  I continue “I doubt if we have any idea what those problems will really be.”

Friday

• Sticky hot thunderstorm weather has settled in for the week.  Peeking outside the door causes sweat to break out.  Taking a walk will lose a few pounds of water.  Any moment, tropical downpours may empty buckets on the unsuspecting, then stop as quickly as they began, almost without warning.  Nevertheless work must be done, often outdoors, and humans are surprisingly well adapted to such conditions.  Well, people did come out of Africa, after all.
• Generally, those who can avoid going out in such conditions do so.  For the last hundred years or we’ve been able to fully control internal temperatures, and the use of those has spread.  Many folks seem to rush from air conditioned home to (pre-) air conditioned car to air conditioned store or office.  Soon, no doubt, they will be wearing air-conditioned suits as well.  Maybe it is nature evolving us to finally move off-planet.  In the meantime, I enjoy the hot and sticky, at least for moderate amounts of time, although I admit I also hide away in my burrow a good part of some days.

Saturday

• Little doubt of climate change any more.  The world has not only hit record highs on average the last few years, but the immediate consequences of energy-activated weather are too prevalent and destructive to be ignored.  The acceptance is odd, in that only a decade or so ago there were fierce protestations of how silly the idea was, massive counter-examples being utilized to prove nothing was happening. 
• But prevailing wisdom has changed, just as the arguments against air and water pollution control eventually fell into disuse in the sixties and seventies.  Anyone with half a brain now knows the biosphere is heating up, and those without half a brain don’t matter anyway.  The only remaining question is what can be done about it, if anything.  More importantly, what adjustments and preparations are appropriate _ individually, locally, and globally.
• Some say nothing.  I think they are wrong.  I lived through the times when we were reliably informed that dense smoke in Pittsburgh, toxic smog in Los Angeles, fires on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland  were simply necessary adjuncts to our consumer lifestyle, and of little consequence.  DDT was the only way we could manage insect-borne diseases _ what’s a bird’s life against a child’s? they asked.   But somehow, civilization moved on, and all that has become almost a forgotten past and prelude to new challenges.
• Consensus does eventually filter up from accepted common sense in the masses to those in power.  In spite of our predilection to see the worst in humanity, most people do care about their immediate environment and want the world to remain habitable for their children.  I suspect in the next few years, climate change will become one of the driving forces of political decision-making, if only for how to handle its increasingly devastating effects and increasingly costly preparations.  Putting New York under a bubble will not come cheap.
• I have faith in our technology.  With will, we can still find a way.  An easy start is a large carbon tax.  I believe that once we all start to act for real  _ just like the pollution crises _ significant solutions will arrive in a decade or so. 
• Until then, we have the opportunity to swelter, watch historic fires and floods and winds, and imagine catastrophe around every corner.  In the meantime, I will poke my head out the door yet again and maybe even venture out on a short stroll to warm my bones.

Sunday

• Dew-drenched air forms a light haze in early morning.  Soon enough, sharp low sunbeams will slash that into sparkling clarity.  By this afternoon, only distant features will be dimmed, the Connecticut shoreline across the sound a vague blue ribbon, if it can be seen at all.   Fish are leaping frantically, spoiling calm reflections.  It seems a summer moment from forever.
• Forever, we have learned, is a scientific fiction.  We swim in change, for better or worse.  It once seemed cruel that we are born, age, and die _ some cosmic joke in an eternal universe.  Although it is hardly comforting that the universe itself shares our fate, we can no longer complain about being singled out.  Like the universe, we just have to deal with things as they are _ and at this particular moment, right here, they are lovely indeed.

Livin' Easy

Monday

• Residual industrial residue along the great falls of the Genessee.  At one  point this water _ diminished now due to a moderate summer drought _ provided enough energy that the millstones grinding western wheat renamed Rochester the “flour city.”  Later it drove machinery for the largest button factory in the world,  generated electricity, and was tapped for countless other uses, not least of all several large breweries that still exist on the high cliffs alongside the river gorge.  Maybe in the future it will once be utilized for renewable energy, not so great for the scenic view.
• Industrial architecture and ruins in North America only go back a few centuries, hardly touching the older debris of Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Yet they too insinuate tales of rise and fall, great commercial empires, individual struggle and triumph.  Weaving such reminders into the fabric of our cities’ revitalization is one of the supreme architectural challenges of this age.

Tuesday

Summer half gone

Half to go

Shimmering afternoons, endless

(but growing shorter)

Slowly transient paradise

Wednesday

• Huntington home, back by the beautiful bay.  Salt water instead of fresh.  Anxious people following anxious activities, afraid of missing something or losing a possible future option.  Long Island is marvelous, but laid-back it is not.  Quite a contrast with some other places, although not quite as hassled as New York City proper.
• People everywhere have worries.  But certain places emanate cultural tension, and others are more laid-back.  Of course, I’m only looking at summertime _ it’s quite likely that come the cold season everyone buckles down to business at the same pace.  I remain amazed that in relatively short distances, attitudes can so differ.  George M. Cohan immortalized that idea in “Only 45 Minutes from Broadway …”

Thursday

George was as usual reading his paper with half an eye on the activities on the boat launch.  “Hey, Mr. Lazy, ain’tcha got anything better to do?” I call.

“Nope,” he replies.  “Done my time, back when.  This here is now my work, my passion, and my purpose all rolled into one now.  Enjoying my life, appreciating the world, artistically shaping each day as I want.”

“My, my, a deep philosopher.  You should have a long white beard, toga, and sandals.”

“Maybe next week.  Anyway, I’m well glad to be out of the rat race.  It seems to be even less fun today than when I remember.”

“I think,” I muse, sitting down on the wooden bench next to him, “or at least I remember it being pretty nasty when we were working.”

“Well, I didn’t get calls all times of day or night.  I didn’t worry about losing my job any given month or day.  I still had a life of my own, with my family.  And nobody tried to tell me that selling communications equipment was the justification for my being alive.”

“I don’t know,” I begin to argue, “there were long hours, and homework, and …”

“For those who have jobs now,” he points out, “your work is everything.  Twenty hours a day, no letup, no relief.  For those without, finding work seems to be just about everything.  No time for much else ….”

“Sourpuss.  Too many papers …”

“Hey!  I’m happy!  Look at that blue sky, those lovely hills!  Whatever the problems of the world may be, at least they are no longer mine.”

We spend a little more time watching nautical activities.  My legs finally well rested, I nod goodbye and continue on my way, mind filled with new thoughts, senses telling me to ignore them.

Friday

• Almost all late bloomers are now in action.  These spartina grass blades prepare seeds for next year, even though as perennials the same patch should return next year.  Depending, of course, on tides, storms, sand shifts, and grinding ice floes.  Birds relax a bit, fattening up either to survive the rigors of winter or to migrate elsewhere.  Birdsong is notably less melodic, restricted largely to shrieked warnings of nearby predators.  There are even occasional hints of the final act of summer opera _ a few yellow goldenrods, rose of sharon.  Numerous fish jump and skip the surface, disturbing lightly riffled harbor waters.
• I could dwell on what may come, worry about snow and cold, regret the missed chances of July.  Or I could glory in the heat and bursting vitality of this morning.  Or I might ignore it all and be disturbed by events in faraway places, or by intellectual and social actions “of great pitch and moment.”  I believe, however, I shall settle for what I usually do, which is to sample many things in due measure and occasionally let my thoughts fly off into meditation or fantasy, occasionally swoop down to fully sample my engaged senses, occasionally pursue some fleeting chain of logic.  Seems like a good season to become unfocused and simply accept enchantment as it arrives.

Saturday

• Retirement and aging in general are often compared to autumn.  That may well be, as time goes by.  But for the more fortunate it is more like perpetual late summer.  Crops are planted and taking care of themselves, harvest and preparation for winter is indefinitely delayed into the future.
• One major fault of our culture, I believe, is to try to ignore differences in age.  We see “ageism” even in relation to how we consider ourselves as some kind of deep sin.  An old person, we chant, is just as good as a young person.  Elders themselves are encouraged to see themselves as young. 
• A consequence is that ages of man _ which should be encouraged and celebrated _ are mushed together and afflicted with insipid constant philosophy.  Childhood, instead of a being a time of exploration and carefree play, is increasingly a nasty directed mini- adulthood.  Youth is chained and restrained and encouraged to think like an old miser saving for an improbable future.  Middle age is filled with achievement, limits, triumph and despair _ as always _ but has incorrectly become the only true standard of who one really is.  And those who manage to grow old are seen as hedonistic freeloaders who ought to be working and playing as hard as anyone else.
• Hedonism, laziness, accomplishment, and all the other good and bad attributes society assigns to individuals, especially those outside norms, must be placed in relation to one’s situation to have any meaning.  An essential part of that situation is age. 
• Retirement, like late summer, is a time of reflection and wise contemplation.  The frozen past resolves itself into meaning, and a more gentle purpose can seize each ambition of each day.   Livin’ easy, perhaps, but eliminating nagging guilt for doing so is sometimes a challenge.

Sunday

• Green dominates the natural world pervasively.  Only sky and water manage to compete, if an open view emerges.  Patches or points of color from flower or fruit are lost unless one observes closely.  As always the unnatural world _ if human activity is so termed _ remains an exception.  Houses, cars, clothing, trash, roads, anything may be any hue at all, and as large as conceivable.  But in late summer, even those stalwart standouts or eyesores get a run for their money from the verdant vegetation.
• Leaves are as varied as snowflakes are supposed to be, if I bother to examine them closely.  Every glance through vines and branches presents a unique picture of our universe.  I am not willing to believe that each miracle of creation is striving to match some universal perfect form.  Each of these bits of life is in itself its own perfection, unique in all time and space.  But _ well admittedly, it is all just green and more green endlessly, and just a little boring as well.

  

Good Ol’ Summertime

Monday

• Right here, right now, is “the good old summertime” for some people .  Those who can find it _ by no means everyone in this 24x7x365 world, even on Sunday _ enjoy the bliss of leisure.  Children playing on the beach, swimming in salt tide will remember hot afternoons of sand and sun fondly.  Teenagers flirt, old folks lie for hours remembering or trying to forget.  Nostalgia, past and future, ripples like heat waves off the parking lot asphalt. 
• These may be the last decades that July is to be treasured so fondly.  Future generations may yearn for the “good old wintertime,” when it is cool and children are allowed outdoors.  Already much of the nation is beset with record heat, huge fires, extreme droughts, “thousand-year” floods.  For that matter, not too long from now, there may not be many sandy beaches from which to dream.  But this year, this summer, this month _ I see “good old days” forming before my eyes.  

Tuesday

Celebrating summer too easy

Takes a real poet

To charm with snow, freeze, ice, flu.

Wednesday

• Kids at summer camp catching (or at least trying to catch) things in nets above and in a pond.  Seems timeless, but of course childhoods like these are a relatively recent invention.  Always amazing that in suburbs and even urban areas dragonflies, tadpoles, minnows, butterflies and so forth are still managing to survive _ and even to surprisingly thrive.  Like catching glimpses of dense schools of bait fish in the harbor, or frequent flights of hawks and ospreys overhead.  The natural world is damaged, but still vital.
• Most astounding to me locally is how many fish can be caught, how many berries can be seen on bushes.  In the world, how vast quantities of seafood are still caught in the wild _ even in the presumably heavily polluted Mediterranean.  I sometimes wonder how distorted a view of our environment those of us who live in urban or suburban enclaves may be receiving.  But I also know that the truly horrible wreckage of nature goes on away from most people _ on chemical-drenched factory farms, on remote wasteland coal and oil fields, in endless pits dug to retrieve industrial minerals, and everywhere in the pollution of air and water where no one can see.  No dragonflies, tadpoles, or hawks are likely to be sighted in such places, nor groups of children to complain at their absence.

Thursday

I sit back, surveying the end of the harbor with a happy sigh.  Boats are being set into the water, kayaks explore alcoves, stand-up paddle boats threaten to dump their rowers any moment.  Once in a while a noisy jet-ski putters towards open space, or a sailboat under motor power arrives to tie up at the dock.  An egret struts on low-tide mudflats. “Just like I remember over fifty years ago, when I was a boy,” I remark to Bill, reading a paper on the bench alongside.

“A lot has changed,” he responds, sourly.  “The similarities may be deceiving.  You know, I grew up here, and back in 1955 or so this was nearly wilderness.”

“Not so,” I protest.  “I’ve read the local histories.  This place has been civilized for a few hundred years, cleared, farmed, built up, polluted, industrialized, decayed, repopulated.  You just caught a fragment in the grand mix that looked less civilized.”

“Wrong,” he states.  “My perception counts.  It was more wilderness back then.  This clutter” he waves at the bulkhead, the dock, the busy street behind us, the marine stores lining the shore “this garbage was not here.”

“OK,” I agree reluctantly.  “Maybe you’re right.  Was it better?”

“Ah,” he takes a deep breath.  “That’s a hard question.  So much has changed, on the surface anyway.  But so much remains the same underneath.  People were people, I suppose.”

“What will the kids today grow up to think?  How will they remember this?”

“Oh, for them I guess it will be recalled as a different kind of golden age.”  He watches a gull swoop by just over our hats.  “Depending on what kind of dystopia they end up with in fifty years, of course.”

“Cheery, aren’t we?” I laugh.

“A lot of good things are happening, I suppose.  A lot of good has happened.  I can’t complain much.  But I wonder,” he pauses.

“You wonder?” I coax him, curious.

“I wonder how fragile this web of wonderful stuff really is, and how close we are to losing it all.”  An extra-loud low jet bound for Kennedy cuts off conversation, as a wail rises from the fire station and an insanely thundering helicopter swoops towards the hospital.

Friday

• Annual trip upstate to visit our son in Rochester.  This is some 400 miles of expressway driving, through farms and mountains and old cities, along rivers and railroads.  An hour in the tangled infrastructure of New York City, and days of strolling sidewalks and visiting areas of what is supposedly a devastated upstate economy.  From listening to news, one expects to see something similar to the pictures coming out of the Mideast tragedies.  Not so.
• The roads, even in NYC, are well maintained and being more so.  Traffic, both pleasure and commercial, is everywhere _ trucks loaded with wares fill the roads.  Fields are fat with corn and cows, barns and houses sparkle in the sun, fantastic local artisanal produce fills the public market.  Mountains are blanketed in dense green forest, rivers are full flowing, lakes are plentifully supplied with power and sailboats as masses of people watch from restaurants and bars along the shore.  Rochester itself seems to be gentrifying older areas and rapidly building newer ones, and few of the people I passed _ day or evening _ seemed terrified by their environment and clinging to guns for protection against looming menace.  All in all, I decided perhaps I was better to trust the evidence of my own eyes than the words of politicians, journalists, and editorial writings.  Not a surprise, but I sometimes need to be reminded.   

Saturday

• Like all our memories, nostalgia is unique for each of us.  We recall different moments in different ways.  Some we blank out, some we enhance, some we even invent.  And each is a special mélange of sight, sound, taste, smell, visceral physicality, emotions, thoughts, and layers we have embroidered in afterwards.
• By definition, nostalgia indicates some positive connection with the past.  Nobody is nostalgic for the horrors of war or the ravages of disease, although there may be certain elements of such (the comradery of fighting units, or triumph over adversity) that can be polished to a warmer glow.  Since most nostalgic recollections imply some distance in the past, their very foundational truth is questionable, as is often obvious by comparing stories with those of others who were present at the same events.
• For my baby-boomer peers who grew up in the fifties, summer remains one of the finest nostalgic periods.  Back then there were few demands once away from school, except for perhaps some “good for you” summer reading that, if done, was often accomplished less than a week before new classes started.  Many parents could truly relax for a weekend or a week or so, getting away to some quiet and inexpensive resort, doing nothing but what happened to be around, never interrupted by calls from work.  Was it true?  I don’t know, that’s how we experienced it.  At least, in my own nostalgia, that’s how I remember experiencing it.
• As Proust noted to such grand effect, a scent can trigger an unconscious tumble into a nostalgic fugue.  My own nudges seem to be more visual and kinesthetic.  Walking in humid heat, sweat beginning to drench my shirt, hot sun glaring all about, easily pushes my deeper consciousness back to childhood, and to the happiness of innocence when the who world was available for the taking, and all the time in that world to accomplish whatever I wanted.

Sunday

• Surprised to find so many people lining parkland shores of Lake Ontario on a bright Sunday morning.  Turned out there was a colorful regatta offshore in strong winds _ here boats return to the “Port of Rochester” through the rock jetties lining the mouth of the Genesee river.  On the other side, an official beach-volleyball tournament was in progress, families swam in waves that were almost surf, and barbeques were being prepared in huge smokers under leafy canopies alongside numerous picnic shelters. 
• None of this appears in national news, rarely enough on local media.  We learn of each fire, each car accident, each criminal event.   I think we start to think that the only sanity that exists is some magical bubble around us, that the rest of the world is a hellish expanse of horror (a favorite cliché word of the moment.)  But evidence remains that this is a happy and fat land filled with pretty good times for most of the people, most of the time.   The world has never seen its like before.