summer

     yep.........summer's here for sure. "but wait," somebody says, "it ain't june 21 is it?"

     nope........it ain't june 21; not that june 21 has anything whatsoever to do with the first day of summer, at least not in my part of the world........to me, summer begins when the first locust sings; and that happened this morning (24 may)...........a lone locust, admittedly sounding kinda rusty, piped up from just behind lydia's wild yellow azalea there in the northwest corner of the backyard................umm-hunh...........yessir........summer's here.

     personally, i think (i'm gonna rant a little bit, here) it's pretty arrogant for some human to up and decide when the first day of summer is.........arrogant and stupid........and misinformed.........and certainly out-of-touch, y'know? like here's some weather dude or almanac dude or some committee thereof declaring, "yep let's put the first day of summer here, and.........what about spring? oh yeah.........uhm......spring can go here. uhm-hmm........yeah, perfect..........winter? oh yes, let's put it....etc etc etc.

     not long ago i remember spending the "first day of summer" up in western new york.........awesomely beautiful place...........trout lillies & mayapples blooming away (like they do in "spring" here in LA), mourning warblers singin'..................fresh new leaves on all the maples, hickories, oaks, etc (again, just like "spring" down here)...........and the weather? overcast and 50F..........all day. summer?? uhhhhh.......perhaps......for arrogant misinformed folk, anyway.

     ditto for denver........i was there on 21 june 1995.............cloudy and cold............even the birds were sitting tight that day..............no 'trah-la-la farethewell' business to be sure.........................

     i guess what i'm getting at is, more and more i'm noting the symptoms of a terminally arrogant, irreverent society, dictating stuff like when the seasons change. look out the window? what??!!???? step outside???? are you kiddin'?? naw..........just declare it, and it's a done deal............yul brenner in 'the king and i' : "SO LET IT BE SAID; SO LET IT BE DONE......."

   no no..............summer comes when summer comes.............rejoice, relax, let go, humanity...........summer'll let us know when it's here.

     is it really too late for us? has the chasm between humanity and Reality finally grown so wide that there's no turning back?  has the real world -- you know the one....aka "our life support system" -- finally been reduced to nothing more than an object for us humans to alternately rape and poison?

     presently, the majority of humanity fears contact with Nature. the only place where it's tolerated is on the television.

     back when i had just begun a career in environmental education, jim whelan gave me a book, 'spaceship earth,' or something to that effect...........it provided a sort of new groundwork for teaching environmental ed, at one point, it suggested this parable: imagine that the earth is actually a spaceship (and of course it really is one....a totally-sustainable, solar-powered spaceship, at that)...........imagine that we on the spaceship have somehow learned how to grow our food, create our breatheable air, and create and recycle our water. now imagine we catch a crew member or two poisoning this fine, shiny/new life support system we've created....

     what happens next? do we congratulate the perpertrators? buy their stock? allow them to become so powerful that they eventually control the ship by paying off the captain and his policy-makers, administrators,  etc.?