During these short summer months, some are lucky enough to return to the vacation spots of our youth. However, for most, those old summer haunts are long gone, vanished into the changing landscape. But, I’ve happily discovered, one can spy the shadow of our faded past, even in a new locale. For really, what does returning home mean in our increasing nomadic culture? Might not home be anyplace where the screen door bangs in an accustomed way and none of the dinner dishes in the cupboard match or where you spend the day wandering to and from the watering hole barefoot and laughing hours away with cousins? In these places, nostalgia for carefree days blooms all summer long. One whiff of a rose or hydrangea as you stroll along sandy roads and you are reminded, yes indeed, you realize why place is secondary to the familial faces knowingly smiling back. Most assuredly you discover it is the people who make the summer place feel like home.
Free To Be…
If you have the good fortune to catch a small-town parade this Fourth of July, then these pictures will look familiar to you… If not, I hope they are the slice of nostalgia you are looking for today!
Creative Sparks
Recently, I rubbed shoulders with a ‘Brilliant One’… acclaimed as Brilliant with a capital B. I was quite in awe as we 
shook hands and felt the warmth radiating sparks from his star status. The whole millisecond was just that, a millisecond, but enough to feel exactly what is transmitted from contact with a capital B Brilliant One. Actually it was only a handshake and a few niceties, but you get the metaphor. Yet, despite the hoopla buzzing about, there was a discernible droop around his eyes, a downward trend across his brow, a forward curve in his shoulders: the burden of this capital B tangible and not at all enviable. As I let my hand drop, instead of aspiration, I felt something different.
