69\u00a0 bar rises 29.80 0mph NNW dew-point 57\u00a0\u00a0 Summer night<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Last Quarter of the\u00a0 Flower Moon<\/p>\n
A soft summer night has fallen.\u00a0 As age piles on, the magic of summer nights seems to disappear, like the Other World of the Celts disappeared long ago from this world.\u00a0 As a boy, there was always hide and seek, army, watching and catching fireflys, sitting on the steps of other kids in our kid dense neighborhood on Monroe Street.\u00a0 The night time in those days did not end the day’s play; it provided another arena, one of darkness and stealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hiding behind bushes, creeping along on your belly to get close enough\u00a0to run and kick the can before being tagged, those games got an increased intensity at night.\u00a0 Play like that has vanished it seems, occluded by the television, the computer and\u00a0 busy schedules, even in the summer.<\/p>\n
I had no schedule in the summer,\u00a0no music lessons, no sports leagues, no advanced this or that.\u00a0 Instead I would get up and consider how to spend the day.\u00a0 Would we go the field and build on our fort?\u00a0 Ride bicycles down the hill by the Meyer’s house?\u00a0 Maybe baseball over at the Carver’s?\u00a0 We might get a wagon and collect pop bottles, take them downtown to Cox’s supermarket and redeem them for ice cream or comic book money.\u00a0\u00a0 We swam at Beulah Park pool.\u00a0 In the afternoon around 3pm I would deliver my paper route.\u00a0 Go to the library.\u00a0 Read at home.<\/p>\n
As a teen-ager with a driver’s license, the night opened up even more possibilities.\u00a0 There were dances in towns all around Alexandria, dances that happened each week on the same night, so we could go every night except Sunday and sometimes did.\u00a0 Our dances were at the National Guard Armory, I don’t recall the night.\u00a0 My friend Richard Lawson and I would get in the car and go somewhere the nights we didn’t work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Richard died several years ago of wounds suffered in Vietnam.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Astronomy brings back the magic of the night.\u00a0 I went into that world for a couple of years, but over time it lost its appeal; still, I loved it for giving me back the night.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It’s time for me to reclaim the night,\u00a0the childhood magic and wonder.\u00a0 It has become clearer and clearer to me that the secret to life is to retain as close a contact with the awe and marvel of childhood as possible.\u00a0 For to them belong the realm of the sacred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
69\u00a0 bar rises 29.80 0mph NNW dew-point 57\u00a0\u00a0 Summer night \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Last Quarter of the\u00a0 Flower Moon A soft summer night has fallen.\u00a0 As age piles on, the magic of summer nights seems to disappear, like the Other World of the Celts disappeared long ago from this world.\u00a0 As a boy, there was always hide … Continue reading A Summer Night<\/span>