In the Good Old Summertime

It is cooler today, only 104. We’ve had too many days at 106 or 107. The weatherman promises that next week the high temperature may fall to 100, or even 99.

Texas summers are always hot. This one has been brutal.

Next week my brother Don and his wife, Mary, fly away to spend two weeks in Wales, where the average high this time of year is 66 degrees. I wish I could go with them. I can’t. I must spend three days a week in dialysis.

Congress and the President are on vacation. Obama is on Martha’s Vineyard, where cool Atlantic breezes blow across the golf course. My Representative sits in air-conditioned comfort in his home in North Dallas, the same neighborhood where George and Barbara Bush live.

In Garland and Mesquite many of his constituents are caught in the Recession, struggling to buy groceries and to pay rent or mortgages. Yet, when our Representative goes back to Washington he will vote “No” to everything the President proposes.

I don’t want to think about either the President or Congress. A plague on both Democrats and Republicans! This too shall pass.

In this weather I don’t go out except from necessity. If we had not had season tickets, I doubt Lois and I would have gone to the play on Sunday. My friend Pat absolutely refuses to go out to dinner in this weather.

I sit in my air-conditioned apartment looking at pictures for the program on Greece I will do next month. Don made a DVD from photos I took in Greece: Me squinting in the sunlight with the Parthenon in the background.

I went to Greece in August 1983; it was as hot as Texas. I thought it would be cooler for my second trip in May 1999. It wasn’t.

Poor Greece! What troubles that country has today! I wouldn’t go there now. Instead, I’ll show pictures of ruins and try to help my friends imagine the glory that was Greece in 350 B.C.

I remember our summer in Ipswich. It rained every day, and every night John and I cuddled up as we slept between cold sheets. Two thick blankets couldn’t keep out that damp, English cold. Yet it was our best vacation.

I’m going to write more blogs about my travels. I loved being in Greece. On a cruelly hot afternoon I sat on a big chunk of marble in Olympia thinking about the ancient Olympic games. I looked down. Beside me on the marble were footprints. A statue of an Olympic champion had stood there. Imagining the vanished statue, I felt ghosts of ancient Olympians. It was a magic moment, in spite of the heat.