Cooperative Living July 2016 - 4

Viewpoint | by Richard G. Johnstone Jr., Executive Editor
ISSN 1529-4579
RICHARD G. JOHNSTONE JR.
Executive Editor
BILL SHERROD
Editor
LAURA EMERY
Field Editor
JANET BAILEY
Production Manager
LAURIE MILLS,
Apple Eye Studio, LLC
Graphic Designer
AMANDA S. CUNNINGHAM
Advertising Sales
MARY HOWELL
Classified Ads
To contact magazine:
9 a.m.-5 p.m. M-F
Phone: (804) 346-3344
Or at any time:
Fax: (804) 346-3448
Email: bsherrod@odec.com
Web: www.co-opliving.com
Published by the VA, MD & DE Association
of Electric Cooperatives
LARRY C. HOWDYSHELL
Chairman
JAMES E. HUFFMAN
Vice Chairman
HERBERT R. PATRICK
Secretary
FLETCHER B. JONES
Treasurer
JACKSON E. REASOR
President
RICHARD G. JOHNSTONE JR.
Executive Vice President
Board of Directors: R. Wayne Browning, Belvin Williamson, Jr.,
A&N; C. Michael Sandridge, Michael J. Keyser, BARC; George N.
Goin, Gary E. Wood, Central Virginia; Robert E. Arnold, Michael
I. Wheatley, Choptank; Jeannette S. Everett, Steven A. Harmon,
Community; James E. Huffman, Shawn C. Hildebrand, CraigBotetourt;
Patricia S. Dorey, J. William Andrew, Delaware;
Fletcher B. Jones, John C. Lee, Jr., Mecklenburg; Russell G.
Brown, Greg W. White, Northern Neck; J. Manley Garber, Stan C.
Feuerberg, Northern Virginia; Dale McNiel, Randell W. Meyers,
Powell Valley; Herbert R. Patrick, Micheal E. Malandro, Prince
George; Richard C. Oliver, Kent D. Farmer, Rappahannock; Larry
C. Howdyshell, Myron D. Rummel, Shenandoah Valley; Frank W.
Bacon, Jeffrey S. Edwards, Southside.
To advertise in Cooperative Living, contact:
Amanda Cunningham (804) 346-3344
National Advertising Representative: NCM,
611 South Congress Ave., Suite 504,
Austin, Texas 78704 * 800-626-1181
Member of the NCM network of
publications, reaching more than
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COOPERATIVE LIVING (USPS 473-300) is
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issues, by the Va., Md. & Del. Association of Electric
Cooperatives. POSTMASTER, address changes
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ADVERTISING published is accepted on the
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customers at the advertised price. Neither this
magazine nor the electric cooperatives in Virginia,
Maryland, and Delaware endorses any products or
services advertised herein. If any readers encounter
non-compliance with these standards, they are
asked to inform the Editor.
Summertime Magic
A man in late middle age recalls the many magical moments of
boyhood summers spent out-of-doors, and inside the wondrous
worlds of books.
M
emories of Thanksgiving and winter's
sacred days are the stuff of snapshots,
of family gatherings around the bounty
of the communal table ... beside the hearth ...
beneath the tree.
Summertime memories, though, are the stuff of
long-form films, played out slowly in the mind's
screening room ... of warm rain and cooling shade
... of hot sandy beaches gently slapped by foamy
saltwater ... of chilly entries into the chlorinated
blue of neighborhood pools ... of the hypnotic
throaty hum of tree frogs in the sticky blackness
beyond the window screen ... of the tang of freshmowed
grass ... of the enveloping warmth rising
from blacktop after a thunderstorm ... of bright
blue mornings of outdoor play ... of hot, hazy
afternoons reading a book, chosen not by a
teacher but by the reader ... of relief over the
school year past and anxious curiosity about the
school year ahead ... and mostly, of the long
sweep of time stretching to the horizon, and the
magical moments that lay ahead in this limitless
green landscape.
Summertime is magical, especially for the
young and surely at least in memory for those
of a certain age. For one late middle-aged man,
memories abound of summers as a boy in the
1960s, with time spent absorbed in the wondrous
worlds summoned and shared by the late Ray
Bradbury, a gifted storyteller who passed away
in 2012 at age 91.
The boy in question spent long afternoons,
and sometimes long beyond the midnight hour,
devouring the pocket-sized, drugstore paperbacks
of Bradbury's works, delighting in the awesome,
sometimes awful, but always exhilarating realms
they recounted. His boyhood summer Bradbury
list returns to mind without prompting. The
Martian Chronicles. Fahrenheit 451. The Illustrated
Man. I Sing the Body Electric! Something Wicked
This Way Comes. And his favorite all-time summer
read: Dandelion Wine. This latter classic's opening
passage opens our ode to summertime, as we offer
a few excerpts from literary works that describe
and celebrate this magical season.
AB
It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with
darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the
weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing
2
of the world was long and warm and slow. You had
only to rise, lean from your window, and know that
this indeed was the first real time of freedom and
living, this was the first morning of summer.
- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, 1957.
AB
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, 1925.
AB
Summer on the land is spring completed and fall in
the making, time in both its strange dimensions.
- Hal Borland, Homeland: A Report
from the Country, 1969.
AB
Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things
can happen to quiet people. For those few months,
you're not required to be who everyone thinks you are,
and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to
dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage
you don't have the rest of the year. You can be grateful
and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. Summer
just opens the door and lets you out.
- Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, 2005.
AB
" Come with me, " Mom says. " To the library. Books
and summertime go together. "
- Lisa Schroeder, I Heart You, You Haunt Me, 2008.
AB
Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.
- George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones, 1996.
AB
[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school
days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done,
obligations gathering, books and football in the
air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was
something of jubilee in that annual autumnal
beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped
clean by summer.
- Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose, 1971.
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Cooperative Living July 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Cooperative Living July 2016
