Happy Summer Solstice!

Well, we have many hours to go before the true solstice, which I think arrives at nine minutes after 10 p.m., if I'm reading the chart on Wikipedia correctly.  Still, it's a great day to think about summer pleasures, which are all too fleeting, as are the pleasures of any season.

I'm sure that some of my more literary friends will be reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, but that won't be me.  Or you could read Chris Adrian's The Great Night, a fun riff on Shakespeare's play, which I read at the Autumnal Equinox, but it's stayed with me.  Will there be time for reading today?  If so, I'll probably return to Colson Whitehead's tale of zombie apocalypse, Zone One.

We could eat summer food:  grilled meats, melons, mangoes (oh, how I wish I could give you my extra mangoes), corn on the cob, and homemade ice cream for dessert.

We could celebrate summer by moving our bodies.  We could go for a morning walk or an evening stroll.  We could schedule an extra yoga session.  What would summer be without a swim?

It looks to be a rainy Summer Solstice here.  Maybe it will be a great afternoon for a nap while thunder rumbles in the distance.  At least we don't have to worry about Tropical Storm Chris, which rumbles very far in the distance.  May all our tropical storms this season pose a threat only to shipping--and may it be an easily avoided threat.

Or maybe we'll think about art projects.  I'm trying not to panic about the fact that Vacation Bible School starts on Monday.  I think I'm ready.  I've gotten good tips from people who teach very little children, tips about breaking projects into parts so that they don't zoom through too quickly.  I have a variety of ideas.  We'll have fun!

Maybe I'll make a collage this first day of summer (or is tomorrow really the first day of summer?).  Maybe I'll make a blueberry mango bread pudding with my surplus of mangoes and stale bread.  I'll work on my blog piece for the Living Lutheran site that's due tomorrow, the blog piece that considers John the Baptist, whose feast day we celebrate on Sunday--but maybe I'll also have time to play with a poem idea.

Tomorrow there will be time to send some poetry packets off in the mail.  Time to think about summer submissions!  But today is the day to think about summer pleasures and to make sure we take some time this summer to enjoy them.