Summers used to feel longer.  Open playgrounds hosting sweaty cheeks and hot sneakers.  Public pools full of chlorine and cannonballs.  Beach towels smelling of coconut oil and seaweed.  All of that was before noon!  Afternoons got a little warmer, a bit more mischievous, full of mysterious glances and silent wondering, fantasizing on “what would happen if…”  And then there were the nights!  Summer nights – or as the local rock stations used to call it “The Ninety-Four-Point-Seven Nights of Summer!”  In Summer, every night was a Saturday night – prepping, primping and planning.  There was gel, grease, hoops and studs, heels and points.  Squeezing in, flipping up, hitting the streets to make trouble.  And it was only Monday!  There would be ninety-three-point-seven more mornings, afternoons and nights of Summer to savor.  A lifetime.

So much time, in fact, that between all that action and activity, some of us actually did some reading.  A sports page in the morning.  A comic book while waiting on the grilled cheese to melt right.  A novel or book of stories in the afternoon or late at night if you struck out at the bars.

Summers in the 21st Century are faster-paced.  Electrical, digital, virtual, constantly moving ahead and morphing into something else.  There is still mystery and michief, primping and planning (mostly posing and posting) but the urgency to keep up, combined with information overload, makes it hard to savor, digest and remember.  You don’t know where the time went!

Except for the reading.  We always remember what we read, even if we don’t remember anymore when we read it or where we were when we read it.  Reading good stories, thoughtfully crafted poems, provocative and informative essays – they go straight into the brain’s memory bank to be savored and digested in their own time.  It’s a neurological thing … but we are mere magpies so don’t ask us to explain.

Point being:  Our Summer 2023 Issue 22 is out www.thievingmagpie.org and loaded with some of the best writing anyone can make time to read this Summer!  Click on the Current Parliament https://thievingmagpie.org/category/current-parliament/ take your time, savor Summer.