2022.06.21
i can taste summer coming. there are certain smells that i forget about until summer rolls around, and then they all come flowing back in my memory: bonfires, sunblock, cookouts, fresh-cut grass... and then there are the images, pictures of things in my mind that probably weren't as good as i remember, yet i can see them so vividly: cramming in a car to go to drive-in movies, covered in bugspray and armed with snacks; wandering around amusement parks dripping wet from water rides; grabbing an elephant ear and some cotton candy at the local fair; seeing a movie on a weeknight and leaving the theater to meet the warm night air... these are the things i hope to do every summer; sometimes i do, sometimes i don't... but this year i'm hoping extra hard.He's writing before Solstice, but the way I can take the long summer evenings on the porch in this goofy patio "zero-g" chair is a pleasure, and reminds me of how envious I am with West-Part-of-Timezone Cleveland - that extra hour 'til twilight, the not quite as pushy morning sun...
Anyway, he wrote that in LJ years ago, and the sense memories it invokes has always stayed with me.
If you're trying to be cosmopolitan it's easy to look down on American food in general, but there are some things we do really well....
With the SCOTUS out to break down walls of church and state for school purposes, people who lean secular may find this article Modern American Satanism: The Church of Satan Vs. The Satanic Templeof interest.
(I remember "Church of Satan" and LeVey's "The Satanic Bible" scaring the bajeebers out of me as a kid...)
But yeah. This is an extension of what I figured out as a kid, that there are too many beliefs to not have our political system (and maybe some of our personal moral systems) be in the realm of overlapping secularness.