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Published on 07/22/1996 All articles from this issue

Where have the old summers gone?

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By Charlotte Kaye Jarmy

Here we are moving rapidly toward the end of July; it may only be the middle of July, then whoosh, it's August. When I was teaching, summer stretched out in long, lingering weeks that only ended when the store ads blared out "Back to School Sale." We had some days when the thermometer hit 90 degrees. Then my house fell into a brooding silence while the lady of the family retreated to a cooler spot to live through torture. Mostly, however, the weather was bright and cheerful, lending itself to lunch with "the girls," browsing through women's magazines or dashing off to Stanford for a luxurious shopping trip.

Those days are over. I think Bay Area weather will tease us with lovely days, then revert to the new summer: hot and hotter. No need to rush out to shop. I have all year to check out the sales. I stare at the blank computer screen and dredge up guilty feelings about the long hand-written novel which I swore I would put on the computer this summer.

To give you an idea of time, I wrote the entire novel during the Gulf War. There have been recurring news items or movies that deal with that time, and suddenly I am galvanized into thinking about typing out the 200 pages, especially since the novel uses the war as a metaphor for the dysfunctional family I wrote about. Nothing happens. Well, there's always August. But in August we are planning to drive up the coast for a week or so. The thought of coming home to a boxes of mail, to phone calls that must be answered and to the imminent opening of Stanford's supervisor program makes me shaky about my promise to type my novel. If Howard and I win the lottery, I'll hire someone to do it for me.

Some happenings do pull me out of the summer stupor. The burning of the black churches is one example. I reacted with despair that a country which could sing the praises of our flag on the Fourth of July could also tolerate the dozens of assaults on one segment of our population. The majority of decent Americans responded with shock to this throwback to what felt like racial hatred. Other churches and synagogues came to the rescue with financial aid. President Clinton spoke with anger and disgust, as did many others.

Lately, the rash of burnings have stopped. Was it summer madness and a series of copy-cat "pranks"? I think not. We have among us small segments of militant and angry people who use church burnings, bombing of buildings and defiant stands against authority as a way to release their frustrations. The incidents die down, though not without tremendous expenditure of money and energy. We breathe easier and turn to something else that demands out attention.

James Baldwin's book, "The Fire Next Time," warned us that racial hatred could blow up our cities. Jim Jones led his people to mass suicide long before the burning at Waco occurred with its suicidal impulse to defy the government. Our forests go up in flames because an arsonist cannot resist the sick impulse to set a part of the world on fire.

We live in contentious times, and the weather outside often parallels the heat in the minds of angry people. Perhaps we need to celebrate the Fourth of every month, the better to keep in mind that we are the caretakers of all the wonders of this country: its beauties, its diversity and its freedoms. No longer can we relax on the beaches or hike the trails all summer without a thought to our responsibilities. The movie "Independence Day" blames its violent madness on the aliens. Sad to say, we have no one else to blame but ourselves. I miss the innocence of summers past.