Summer, Day One

It’s deliciously, delightfully cool and almost chilly today! I’m sure there are plenty of folks around here grumbling a bit that the first full day of summer was so nippy. I am not among them. We started out breezy, dry and sunny, followed by a few rumbles of thunder and gentle rain. Now the temperature has dropped into the low 50s (@11 C). Considering my sister Karen has been in triple digits in Arizona for several days with a high today of 114 (@45 C), I’m happy to pull on a sweatshirt! (Yes, I know Karen. It’s a dry heat!) The meteorologists who like to make long range predictions are saying that we will have a pretty hot summer. So if I could bottle this I would.

Slight jump shift...

When I was a kid living in Rhode Island, we used to love to drive down to Sand Hill Cove on the south coast and spend the day at the beach. It was a beautiful sandy beach with a long, high pavilion complete with snack bars and changing rooms with showers. It wasn’t all that long a trip, although there is a tendency for Rhode Islanders to feel they should pack a lunch for any trip longer than 20 minutes! But because there could be very big differences in the weather between where we lived in Warwick and the shoreline in Narragansett, my Mom would always listen to the weather and beach reports on the TV and radio. One day, she was on the fence about whether it would be worth the trip down so she decided to call the beach headquarters. A young man with a deep, gruff voice answered. Mom asked him what the weather was like. He told her it was pretty cool and foggy. Mom then asked if he thought it would burn off later that morning. Pause. “I ain’t no weather prophet lady!!!” he barked back.
That’s how stories get born in a family!