On Meteors and Cicadas

Every year, two things creep up on me and remind me that it is August, not April, and that the curtain on Vermont’s summer will soon be drawn.

The first is the Perseid meteor shower, an annual display of heavenly fireworks that happens at the end of the second week in August each year as the Earth passes through the 130-year orbital path of the comet Swift-Tuttle.

The second is the realization that the sawing noise I’m hearing is not a neighbor weed-whacking but the annual return of the cicada, newly transformed from its underground nymph stage to its adult, tree-climbing stage where it makes as much noise as possible to attract a mate.

From astronomical and entomological perspectives, these phenomena are worth a lot of study. For me, however, they simply mean that I have run out of time. School is about to start, I have to commit to a pre-buy, and I’m looking at the calendar wondering where did all the time go.

Leaving aside the concerts, plays, openings, and other events I have been unable to get to (and God forbid I neglect visits to grand-parents and vacations with in-laws!), there are so many planning meetings, marketing meetings, development meetings, advocacy meetings still to shoe-horn in, I simply don’t know how it will all happen before Labor Day.

But somehow it will.

We all take advantage of as much as Vermont has to offer in the summer from fresh produce at farmer’s markets, to isolated lean-tos on lakes with loons, to incredible cultural events where mountain or lake views vie with the performers for the audience’s attention.

But today it’s all I can do to keep from wishing that it was April and that I still had the whole summer to get the rest of what I wanted to do, done.

First on my list...Basin Harbor. What a great program they have involving artists, adirondack chairs, the lake, fine dining and an auction to benefit the Arts Council.

I wonder how the meteors look and the cicadas sound over by the lake?