UNDERCURRENTS

July is well underway.

A summer heat wave is buffeting the US Middle West and we hunker down and go about our business as well as we can.

In the 1950’s, as a youngin’, I well remember hot summers in Toronto, Canada.
Dear Gramma’s house was a two story in a pleasant neighborhood, a neighborhood where all the neighbors watched out for each other, and when the heat hit we laid low.

Definitely no AC, anywhere but maybe a movie theatre.
Stores were ovens.

After chores, and there were chores, we would luxuriate in the coolness of the old house or play monopoly or canasta or cribbage on the large front porch.

Neat!

And English Gramma assured us that hot tea would cool you off on a hot day, as would running cold water on your wrists if it really got hot.
She mopped her brow whilst she told us these bits English lore.

Oh boy.

Breakfast would be toast and jelly and tea and fruit.
Lunch was milk and thick slices of cheese with bread and butter and cookies.
Dinner would be roast beef and potatoes and veggies – with bread and gravy.

Apple slices would be dipped in sugar, as was sliced grapefruit.
It is only sugar, Son, Dear Gramma would say.

And of course, salt on the cantaloupe.

And the toaster was a two-door fold down which was anything but automatic.
We still have it in our library.
With our manual portable Royal typewriter.

But my point is not to go into all of that good stuff…but I would love to…the memories are so sweet.

But we at The Study are so aware right now of some of the undercurrents at play as we go about our daily lives.

Weddings and funerals.

And tomorrow is a burial at a new National Military Cemetery in Holly, Michigan.
We understand the burial schedule is every half hour on the half hour, during business hours.

Processions were lined up for us the last three times at a civilian cemetery.

And there are the weddings, joyous occasions.

And I just read text from an npr program regarding the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, arranged in 1938 the article said, for thousands of Vets in their 80’s and 90’s.

So much life, passion, memory, devotion, consciousness.
And then gone.

And then gone.

All that humanity.

Anyway, it is late, and Dear Wife and Dear Sophie are fast asleep and tomorrow is a day of witnessing another undercurrent and lots of ‘overcurrents’.

More later.