Summer's Kick Off

Sun is shining. Weather is sweet. Make you wanna move your dancing feet. 
~ Bob Marley

Summer doesn’t actually, officially, begin until the sun reaches its tippy top most point in the sky. You know, when the earth makes with the solstice action. That’s on June 20th but Memorial Day weekend is, here in the US anyway, the kick off weekend for the season.

Memorial Day, an American holiday observed on the last Monday of May, honors men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971. (source)

On this weekend, Kevin Alexander Scott will be in my head – not that a day goes by that I he isn’t, mind you.

It's a sad/happy, manic-depressive kind of a weekend.

 USA Today tells us of the 10 beaches to start summer off right. None in New England, by the by. Of course, the water here is still much too cold for swimming. Unless you’re a kid or or an L Street Brownie type. I’m neither BUT I’ll wade in the surf here at home and down at Nantasket.

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet Though to itself it only live and die.
~ Shakespeare, Sonnet #94 

Die Fledermaus/The Bat by Van Gogh (No, really – he painted a bat. Awesome!)

Whoa – buzzkill, man!

On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily.
~ Shakespeare, The Tempest

Ahhhh, much better.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 
Check out good ol' F. Scott's pic at the linky – that is some seriously bad hair!

Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths.
~ George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

With the primaries and upcoming election, we SO have that squabble shit covered.

Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young, the music issued at the lips.
~ Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Press close, bare-bosomed Night!
Press close, magnetic, nourishing Night!
Night of south winds! Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night! Mad, naked, Summer Night!
~ Walt Whitman

There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.
~ Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Check out the linkage, if you've time. I find some killer bee, cool shit while I'm googling my way around the intertoobz.