I'm going to have to depart from my usual political, educational, and social commentary today. I just returned from a day in Michigan City, Indiana over by the Indiana Dunes. A friend has one of those 32 foot boats that sleep 4 comfortably and 6 or 8 if they're really close friends. Cruised the lake. Grilled out. Enjoyed good company, good food, good wine. Drove home down wooded 2 lane highways through the Indiana Dunes State Park. A cooler, drier air mass moved through bringing temperatures in the low 80's and a very manageable degree of humidity. (Thank you Canada.)
My pleasantometer is reading off the charts just now. Speaking of which, if you plan on buying a pleasantometer, don't be fooled by some fast talking salesman who wants to sell you a European pleasantometer. Those things are metric and for most Americans they're a major pain in the butt. Every time you read it, you end up having to do a lot of complicated mathematical conversions which inevitably lower your pleasantry reading. The other option is buying an adaptor, and European-American pleasantometer adaptors will end up costing you more than you paid for the original pleasantometer, resulting in, you guessed it, lower pleasantry readings.
This afternoon, after having caught up on errands that went undone over the weekend, I went for a little Monday afternoon run along the lake, soaking up the warm but not too warm temperatures, the pleasant humidity levels, and the let's get some last beach time in before school starts up again and the weather gets too cold crowd. It was overall quite pleasant, but somewhere in the back of my head there was something nagging at me, intruding on all of the pleasantry.
I had to think very hard about what it was, but then I realized what it was. It was wistfulness. If I had a wistometer, it would have been reading about 9.75 on a 10 point scale. Why? Chicago's annual Air and Water Show is over. This is an annual signal that summer is almost gone and return to the working world of educators is imminent. Running under the trees between the Chess Pavilion and the North Avenue Boat House, the sound of cicadas in the trees gave me another clear signal that summer is in its waning days. The very fact that a Canadian air mass had brought cooler, dryer temperatures in itself revealed itself as a signal of the end of The Dog Days, if not summer itself.
Looking out my window, the water is a pleasant blue, reflecting the color of a cloudless sky above. The slanting rays of the afternoon sun have begun to color Navy Pier and the water crib in the distance in late afternoon yellow. A few stray boats are anchored in The Playpen. A couple of kayakers are paddling their way across the water. Further out, in the deep water a barge plies the waters southward to the steel mills in Indiana. The entire picture is off the charts pleasant, but the overriding wistfulness makes it clear that everyone and everything involved is trying desperately to wring that last bit of pleasantry possible from the few remaining days of summer.
What are these last remaining days, these pleasant but wistful days, but the last opportunity for sitting outdoors and enjoying a glass of wine while weather permits, the last opportunity for watching a symphony under the stars, the last opportunity for a long weekend of wine tours, bicycling, and staying in a nice hotel on the water. It is time to make hay while the sun shines, assuming one does not suffer from hay fever.
Personally, I have two weeks of this pleasantry offset by the intersection of wistfulness. It is a time of year to embrace. All too soon it will be gone. Then it will be time to plunge into autumn with a sense of abandon that will make one forget the pleasantries of summer, and indulge in sweaters, football games, warm drinks, and crisp temperatures. For now, though, the cicadas are singing to me.
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