caniculares dies

Well it really is the dog days of summer, isn’t it?  My motivation to blog has dissipated with the dissipating rains.  The heat is one possible culprit.  Then, too, the various controversies that have been drummed up around the interwebs, from inter-bloggy feuds to this nonsensical birther madness, to the Gates-gate story – well it all leaves, after a while, a rather bad (or sad?) taste in one’s mouth.

The health care debates we had recently were quite a lot of fun.  I hope to pick that ball back up again soon.  And I’ve felt an itch to get back into education blogging, though perhaps summer is prohibitive (or ought to be prohibitive) of any school-related blogging.  School’s out for summer and such.

Then again, I’m no longer in school.  Perhaps out of solidarity with those who still are, I will postpone any edu-blogging until late August when the patter of small feet rushing gleefully to their desks will usher in a renewed sense of urgency to the debate.

All told, though, the site and the sphere at large feels a little drowsy.

I know my League brothers are all busy with their various pursuits, as am I, and the dearth of interesting news (Henry Louis Gates and Sonya Sotomayor have still not faced one another in a Celebrity Boxing Match, alas…) and the heat and the summeriness of it all takes its toll (and Will, of course, is off playing pirate games…).

Thus the lull, if it can be called that.  And just as well.  It’s July, and almost August.  Summer is in full swing.  The willows are fat and weeping, the aspens still green-leafed, reluctant to shed their green for gold.  The sun is brittle.  The sky blue.  The Caribbean awaits another season of pleasantly named hurricanes and tropical storms.  Californians, amidst their many other woes, dream fiery dreams of Santa Anas and ill-funded fire departments.  In Alaska they are still befuddled, and the long days and short nights only add to their befuddlement.

Arizona, my own stomping grounds, is hot as hell now that the monsoons have drifted off elsewhere.  Abandoned  thus, we pray for rain.  Ever more so since there is talk of a water-bottle facility being built here to sap us of what little ground-water we have so that it can be sold to yuppies in California who are willing to pay for water in little plastic bottles, but not, it appears, for schools and teachers.

It is not the hottest year on record, nor the coolest.

And now I see the approach of rainclouds.  Could thunder be in the offing?  Could rain?

Oh for a poem and a cold beer….well, we can have one if not the other….

Hot Summer Nights, by Mary Hamrick

It haunts me so
those summer nights
in dim lit homes

where music flows
and tempers flare
and lullabies fill the air.

I while away the hours
under the electric swell of light,
(pulse—scorched out).

Bone-idle and coral pink,
this dry spell grills,
but Southern nights do fill me.

Spider-blue legs peddle tales
as gossips-a-brewing
and roaming by my streets.

Scuttling through like marsh rabbit,
neighbors wave their charmed hellos.
Feverish and swollen together,

they inhale the blossoms,
riding high, and move through summer
as the lake declines.

It haunts me so
those summer nights
in dim lit homes

where music flows
and tempers flare
and lullabies fill the air.

ALSO:

I meant to post about this, and here’s as good a spot as any…

We’ve concocted a new way to go about doing our series by the way.  We tried the series-as-organic approach and it never quite materialized the way we wanted, save for a handful of times.  One thought we had was to pick specific articles or events and write a series on that idea; to ecshew the “organic” for the solicited or symposium-style series.  Another thought was to take reader-suggestions into consideration.  And, of course, to keep posting as we have always, sporadically and as we see fit about what sparks our various interests.  Any other thoughts are, as always, welcome….