Summer Arrives

The last three days have had a very summer-like quality to them, which is to say sun and warmth pretty much unlike anything we've seen so far this year.  Just watching the shrimpy-little garden plants that seem to have been up but shrimpy for months, or at least weeks, reaching out to the warmth is enough to gladden your heart or believe in hope or something like that.

We ought to have some kind of celebration for this phenomenon, and of course there is the summer solstice within a week or so that we could be celebrating.  That would be a natural here given the widespread Summer Solstice festivals in the Scandinavian countries and Point Roberts' Icelandic history.  But not: Point Roberts puts everything into July 4th (despite the fact that the relationship between the Point and the Federal Government is not always a happy one, or even usually a happy one, it sometimes seems) and has no time for any summer solstice-y thing.  We're raising money this week, as a matter of course, but no sheer celebration for the sake of celebration and summer. 

It's different down south of us, apparently, where the Scandinavian-Americans are still hanging onto their ethnic traditions.  According to Wikipedia,"The Seattle, Washington neighborhood of Fremont puts on a large Summer Solstice Parade & Pageant, which for many years has controversially included painted naked cyclists. In St. Edwards Park in Kenmore, Washington, the Skandia Folkdance Society hosts Midsommarfest, which includes a Scandinavian solstice pole."

Now that's something that I think Point Roberts could get behind: painted naked cyclists!  Could that involve an economic development plan?  And maybe combine it with painted pole dancers.  I guess not.  Well, in lieu of any other summer solstice festival, we could just watch Ingmar Bergman's 'Smiles of a Summer Night,' or listen to Stephen Sondheim's 'A Little Night Music.'  The latter is derived from the former, and both are about what can happen on a summer solstice night.  Neither, however, features cyclists, painted or unpainted, naked or clothed.