I have made my fondness for the summer solstice as clear as can be. Officially, summer begins in these parts at precisely 3:24 a.m. today.
I love when the sun rises at 5:05 a.m. If I had my way, we would not “spring ahead” and the sun would rise at 4:05 a.m. today. I don’t care when the sun sets; most days I’m tired by then anyway.
We are scheduled to have about 15 and a half hours of daylight today. I am very fond of daylight.
The reason I’m singin’ dem ol’ Summer Solstice Blues is that starting tomorrow, the day will be a few seconds shorter. This, this day right here, is the longest day of the year. Next thing you know — well, on Sept. 22 — we’ll have 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night — and on Dec. 21 we’ll have 15 and a half hours of nighttime. Fooey on that stuff.
The forecast says that the sun will be shining for much of the morning and it will get cloudier as the afternoon progresses, but I don’t care. It’s the summer solstice, and the distance between sunrise and sunset is the farthest it’s going to be in 2026, and that’s good enough for me.
On second thought, never mind the blues, they can wait until December. Let’s celebrate all this daylight.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band played the last concert of their Farewell Tour on Thursday night in Denver. Sixty years later, pushing 80 years old, they’ve decided to sell the tour bus. It sounds like they are not giving up music, just the nomadic life. We do have a need to call some place “home” and settle there when our roaming days are done. “Sit. Rest a spell.”
Part of me wishes they would keep the name alive. Maybe it’s just because I’m a fan boy, but “The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band” has come to mean more than the four, five or six musicians who play the music at any given time. The Glenn Miller Orchestra is still touring, the Lovin’ Spoonful plans to play Green Bay next week, etc. — if they are true to the sound, why not? I would not be offended if Jaime Hanna and Ross Holmes, the “young’uns” in the current lineup, maintained the name.
I hope someone captured the night with a worthy recording. I do see a camera guy or two wandering the stage in the YouTube videos that have emerged from Thursday night. Or maybe the memory is enough — scattered around the universe are people who were there in 1966 when a bunch of kids took a stage in California and started to play some old-time music, but that first show itself is tucked away in their hearts.
The group probably thought “The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band” was an appropriately goofy name for those silly old songs, and maybe they started out making fun of songs like “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate,” but somewhere along the line they began to respect the music — or maybe they respected it all along.
I know they taught generations to respect the music, especially through their legendary Will The Circle Be Unbroken project that celebrated traditional country, or bluegrass, or Americana, whatever you want to call it. They have always found amazing songs and amazing songwriters — for example, Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy in 1970 features four songs by a young man named Kenny Loggins, who went on to make a bit of a name for himself.
They set out to honor the legends of the genre and grew to become legends themselves. I’ve attended more concerts by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band than any other artist, and they have not just aged gracefully, they get better all the time.
You never know, when you first turn your head and pay attention, where something might lead. Back in 1967 I heard a song called “Buy For Me the Rain” coming out of a transistor radio, and something connected and made me listen. Nearly 60 darn years later, they still have my attention, an unbroken circle.
I worry about so many things that I often quote Tom Petty like a mantra: “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.”
Although — I worry about how much I procrastinate. I worry that I have procrastinated most of the way to the grave.
Although — most lives end unfinished. Gone too soon. Of course, when is the right time to declare a life finished? When we euthanized Willow The Best Dog There Is™, the vet said, “Are you ready?” I lied. Of course I wasn’t ready. Death always leaves us unprepared. Denial does that.
Death is the sort of thing that happens to somebody else. You never expect it to drop by, even though it eventually visits everyone.
Mary and I went to someone close’s funeral Thursday, a sweet lady who lived to be 93. I pray I will have a chance to celebrate Mary’s 93rd birthday.
Talk like this inevitably gets me thinking about the various projects I have not yet finished. Over and over again, I have not finished what I have started, and so of course I cannot put it on the market or keep it on the market until it is sold. Mr. Heinlein is smirking at me, or perhaps he is looking on with pity in his eyes.
Somewhere there’s a character like me who has a story to tell for the ages. Will I ever scratch at my psyche deep enough to draw that character out of hiding? I feel like I will know him, or her, when I see him, or her. I think I’m waiting for the words and images to come tumbling out like Fibber McGee’s Closet and line up like dutiful ducks. It does happen sometimes, you know: I sit down to write and bang! The words are there, and I send them to the ether almost in the exact order they tumbled from my pen, and the Likes appear magically at the website and I feel validated.
But the stories — oh, the stories! — I can almost see them and touch them and feel them waiting to be told, and they are so happy that I am here, that someone out there sees and wants to tell them. And here I sit in my comfortable recliner, feet up, dreaming of the day the stories are told and people hold the books and enjoy the adventure and the lessons and the meaning, and it’s as though I’ve already finished.
Mr. Heinlein’s ghost taps me on the shoulder just then, and I can’t turn to face him. I only hear his voice, even though I can’t remember what he sounded like.
“You must finish what you start, young man,” he says, “although I see you are no young man.”
I am only a young man in the cosmic sense, where the cosmos has been there forever and I am just a passing mist. The little boy in me wells up in fear that the next person will ask, “What have you been doing all this time, young man? Have you finished what you started? Let me see.”
Fear makes it worse, of course — fear of never finishing is the prime cause of never finishing. It’s a vicious, vicious circle, and a vicious, vicious fear that circles back and leads me to write about it again.
“I am finished writing about not finishing,” I declare. “I am focused on marching forward to the finish line.”
I’m not lying when I make that declaration. I’m merely mistaken.
“Oh, please, Lord,” I pray like George Bailey on the steel bridge. “Help me finish what I start. I’m stuck on Heinlein’s second rule, and I still have three to go after that. Please, Lord, I want to finish! I want to live! I want my imaginary friends to live!”
Will it start to snow again after I pray? Will Bert and Ernie call out, “Hey George, are you OK?” Will Zuzu’s petals be waiting in my pocket?
There they are. What do you know about that? Merry Christmas.
I should save these images for a day when a story is finished and the book is released. But I’m afraid if I wait for that, the images will never see light of day.
I don’t want to finish this journal session on a downbeat, however. I love happy endings as much as the next guy. So let’s leave me joyously running through Bedford Falls proclaiming that I finished my morning journaling and grateful for another chance.
AFTERTHOUGHT: I refer above to Heinlein’s Rules and Fibber McGee’s Closet, not to mention George Bailey and Zuzu’s petals. How many readers will think, “What the bejeebers?” and how many will appreciate that I respect you enough to get the references? And if you don’t, don’t fret; use your search engine. The info is still out there for now.
