Summertime!

Muir Woods

...from San Francisco

The tour is over--has been over for some while now--and it was wonderful!  Now let the catching up commence... Pictures galore to come in the future...

But first, for this week, here's a short meditation on my favorite season of the year: summertime....  What makes me love summer so much?

• The air is warm, even when there's fog and wind (unless, of course you are in San Francisco... Mark Twain is said to have quipped that the coldest winter he ever spent was July in SF. While  this may be apocryphal, as there's no good attribution to be found, it certainly sounds like something he might have said.)  Today it's gorgeous in San Francisco, though.

• The character of the sunshine in the summer. It shines a brighter bright than the winter sun, at least in northern climes, when one almost feels like rooting for it, much like the "Little Engine That Could": I think you can (shine), I think you can, I think you can...

• The quality of the color of the light (related to but different from the above).  The blue is more blue; the light is...well, more light.  The hues sparkle and make my eyes smile.

One of San Francisco's many claims to fame

• The sense that anything is possible...Who knows where you'll go?  You might travel anywhere or do anything. It's summer--school vacation for kids and teachers--and all bets are off...or maybe they're on?

• The long summer days, where the light doesn't fade until laaate in the evening and where dining outside at 9 feels balmy, sensible, relaxed and just right.

• As Clara sings in her lullaby from Porgy and Bess--which I've loved singing for years--in  summertime, the living is easy.  Everyone knows Gershwin wrote the music, and yet we tend to forget all about DuBose Heyward, who wrote the opera's unforgettable lyrics. Here's a picture of one of the amazing American soprano Leontyne Price--probably my favorite soprano of all time, among a wide field of fabulous singers--when she played the role of Bess in 1952:

Leontyne Price

• The lovely feeling that mañana will do just fine for most anything...because, of course, it's summertime.

Which is your favorite season?  Why?

What I'm reading: Just finished Rachel Caine's Paper and Fire (the sequel to her dystopian steampunk Ink and Bone, from her Great Library Series).  When's the 3rd book coming out?!

What I'm listening to: electro-acoustic music by the wonderful Diane Thome. Her Palaces of Memory Cd arrived this week.

What I'm working on: a fabulous, but little-known "Ave Maria" by Franz Schreker