June 21: Lilacs Bloom, Summer Solstice, Julie Cadwallader-Staub, "Reverence," New Cartoon

The early summer days on a farm are the happiest and fairest days of the year.  Lilacs bloom and make the air sweet, and then fade.  Apple blossoms come with the lilacs, and the bees visit around among the apple trees.  The days grow warm and soft.  School ends, and children have time to play and to fish for trouts in the brook.  Avery often brought a trout home in his pocket, warm and stiff and ready to be fried for supper.

E. B. White's descriptions of the seasons are beautiful, little poems.  Lilacs and apple blossoms, trout and bees.  In a few simple words, White is able to capture the essence of childhood summers.  Long days filled with bug hunting and frogs, and long nights filled with full moons and cricket song.

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.  Tomorrow, the planet starts tilting toward winter.  However, the lilacs are in full bloom in my backyard, and tomorrow morning, when I leave for church, there will probably be a rabbit chewing dandelions on my front lawn.  Summer is here.  Finally.

It was fairly dreary for the solstice.  The sun remained behind the clouds.  Fog and rain pretty much dominated the day.  I didn't do a whole lot.  I cleaned my parents' house, drew some cartoons, and went to church.  At Stonehenge, I'm sure some ancient Celt wannabes did something weird, like get naked, paint themselves with mud, and dance around the stones singing, "Summer Lovin'" from Grease.  Or something like that.

I have a solstice poem for you guys tonight.  It's from the Garrison Keillor collection Good Poems:  American Places.  The poem reminds me of being a kid, just out of school, the entire summer ahead of me.

Saint Marty might go outside tonight and pee in his backyard.  That's something he also used to do when he was a kid.

Reverence

by:  Julie Cadwallader-Staub

The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown 
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat

and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admitting their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.

In all the days and years that have followed,
I don't know that I've ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:

my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups' voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.

Confessions of Saint Marty