Has anybody seen summer?

Keypoints:

Where did summer go? I don't mean only the summer just past. I mean the feel of summer. Some summertime features have not changed much. It is still warm enough that we are grateful for air conditioning; the days are long enough to allow for outdoor evening walks and gatherings with friends; and the garden still needs watering from time to time. But didn't life slow down a little in the summer not very many years ago?

In the past, monthly meetings were cancelled during the summer-all summer-which reminds me that I always thought summer included June, July, and August. Lately it seems that only August is left to shoulder the burden of catching up, getting away, and slowing down. There was a time when lazy was the adjective often paired with the word, "summer." Nowadays school children in our area remain in school through the third week in June and return to school in the third week in August. About the time they begin to feel they know what it would be like to feel lazy, it is time to go shopping for back-to-school books and clothing.

There is some evidence that things are actually getting done faster in this hurried-up, year-round world. Plans and decisions are more likely to be made all year round, rather than only during the nine non-summer months, but there must be a limit to the speed with which we can carry out those plans and decisions. And maybe the plans and decisions aren't as well thought out as they were when we took more time to deliberate, and gave ourselves a few months of relative freedom from productivity.