Tag Archives: summer

Quarropas

Long. Languid. Like August.

August is the reason the French refer to September as “reentry.”

Like some Old World countries, the Belle Republique takes a month off after the bombast and celebrations of July. Americans should do that here in the New World but wouldn’t this just be the thing to interrupt our motorcycle rallies and guns shows? Besides, we must grudge the notion of vacation. Isn’t it a national trait? Instead of seeing time off as deserved, ah, earned, business and our hamsters on wheels go-getting natures insist we disdain time away from the millstone.

That’s just wrong. Continue reading Long. Languid. Like August. →

Observed

Solstice Serenades

Despite the mounting profusion of ads for Halloween, the bloom of summer remains fragrant. Besides, this was written in September. At least two weeks yet before Michael Myers, Freddie Krueger, and Jason Voorhees start invading screens for marathon gore sessions. Continue reading Solstice Serenades →

Lost Wages

Let Us Broil

In the Mojave Desert, residents are on the cusp of our least wonderful time of year. Indeed, if Andy Williams had to sing about this season those lyrics would get stuck in his throat.

Summer. Already in mid-May Las Vegans can expect triple digit temperatures. As the month elides into June it becomes hotter with July and August turning everyday into a constant blow torch of torrid.

Throughout summer, I thank American breweries for 30 packs! Continue reading Let Us Broil →

Lost Wages

Gone Shadows

Autumn stretches a lighter hand across the Mojave than she does upon the Northeast.

Although the desert days shorten and the shadows lengthen as well deepen earlier, the chill which accompanies these shifts lack the same heralding of great changes which will occur in New York.

Except in the dispatch that follows. Continue reading Gone Shadows →

Baboon America, Observed

A Grim Silly Season

Looks like the 2021 Silly Season will be vicious. Usually, these months don’t leave much behind in the way of planet-realigning events. Uh, other than the outbreak of the Great War and Martin Luther King’s appearance at the Lincoln Memorial.

Safe to assume this August will deposit avoidable death on us as it further scars American society. Continue reading A Grim Silly Season →

Agitprop/Propaganda

Under the Stateside Sun

“Silly season” is an Anglophile conceit. Across the Atlantic, it’s Brit shorthand for that carefree time of year when news seldom rises above trivial and the frivolous assumes gravity.

Were that the American version of the silly season consisted of the same confections.

Instead the menace and insipient violence always lurking beneath the surface of ordinary life here frequently shatters summers’ otherwise lightness. Hawks devour our larks. Vultures then pick over what scraps remain on the bones.

Our silly season has the likelihood of going overboard this this year. Continue reading Under the Stateside Sun →

Quarropas

From the Miasma

    August does not lend itself to cool reasoning. Heat and humidity alter senses. Fetid extremes don’t simply quicken our humors but agitate them.

   Somehow the ancients understood this. And somehow given current advances in science we today dismiss their view as archaic.

   We seek reason where none exists. When the answer fails fitting our box we prefer believing the dilemma “inexplicable.” Or worse, chop the matter down and stuff it into an approximation which mollifies us. “Close” suffices because “right” taxes us too much.

   Besides, getting it right just may upset a lot of comfortably held perceptions. Well, hidebound ones with which we’re comfortable.

Continue reading From the Miasma →