What is better than the summer arriving in a beach city like ours?
We wait for it all winter.
We wonder about it and what it will be like – and then it comes, and passes, just like that. Like the snap of a finger.
Tuesday was the first day of summer, a moment in time marking the earth’s exact position with the sun on its axis, which is ever changing.
In other words – the summer is here. The light lasts longer during the day. Until almost 8:30 p.m. there is light.
There is also heat and the warmth that we waited for all winter. As we think about it at the newspaper, there aren’t nearly enough long days and warm nights or hot days and fun at the beach.
It is hard to know what awaits us at the beginning of a New England summer. History can’t be predicted.
The summer is for romance and the end of romance. It is for joy and for anger. It is also for soaring hope and for dreams that don’t come true. Everything happens to us during the summer. It isn’t just about going down to the beach and hiding our heads in the sand.
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens great work on the French Revolution – which by the way took place in July – he points out brilliantly where we are at in our history and what is awaiting all of us as this Summer of 2011 gets officially underway
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.â€
