| 06 August 2006 Summer Reading August is calling out to us all. It is the tantalizing glimmer of slim fingers at the end of a nut-brown hand, tanned to perfection by hours under the July sun. The index finger beckons to a last delight before the State Fair of summer is about to have its last hurrah, and that plans for Labor Day must be made soon. That is the chimera, since these days, in jurisdictions that do not have a major theme-park, the last holiday is just a last tantalizing break after the school bells have begun to ring. The Paramount Corporation purchased the garish theme park that is located most of the way down the broad concrete highway to Richmond from the capital. It is a big money-maker for a mostly agriculture area, and down-state legislators have managed to pass laws that prohibit school from starting before Labor Day, so that the high-school employees can help wring the last revenue from the tourists. We call it the King's Dominion Law. For us in Big Pink, the fingers invite us to the pool, but clearly there is something that has emptied the capital. The Congress is gone. The lobbyists have decamped for the south of France, or wherever it is they go to work on their perfect tans. Only the prosecutors are working, investigating those who have gone, and the counter terror analysts of the government, who have not been employed long enough to build up much vacation. I heard that they have a case of the Willies. Not exactly the heebie-jeebies. Those come when you know there is something just around the corner. The Willies are defined as being “a state of nervous restlessness or agitation: accompanied by fidgeting or jitters.” There is nothing specific to worry about, or at least nothing that has not been in the background since the lovely August of 2001. I had the Heebie-Jeebies then, full blown. I knew something was waiting around the corner, but I was very much like a small boat in a very large stream. I knew we were being carried toward the rapids, and there was nothing whatsoever I could do about it. At the time, I wrote off the feeling of impending doom to the fact that there were other things happening in my life, it was only to be expected. Since that time, the analysts dutifully informed us, month by month, of the atmospherics of the war against ghosts. They appear to have given up. The warnings caused too much trouble, too much overtime for the police and firefighters. Besides, nothing happened. Not in the year after the attacks, or the year after that, or the nearly three years since then. I think we have reclaimed our numb satisfaction that we are somehow apart from the chaos overseas, which is foolhardy. I am as numb as anyone, and fully intend to follow the enticing fingers of August on a break, where I intend to think about absolutely nothing. I have to believe nothing will happen, and it is a good time for a vacation. The people who are charged with protecting us are on guard, doing their summer reading of the traffic and watching the rockets fly. They are on the job. Still, I throwing my copy of Thucidydes in the duffle to read under the last rays of the summer sun. He is the first Historian, or at least the earliest one whose work has survived the centuries. He had nothing but contempt for Herodotus, the Father of History, since he included myth and legend matter-of-factly in his accounts of the works of humankind. His successors are with us today. Thucidydes fought in the great wars of Athens against the Spartan League, and that is what he wrote about. His prose makes the Peloponnesian Wars unsettlingly real today, unsparing in its it's accuracy. He was going to get around to writing about how to fight the Persians, but he died before he could get to it. Twenty-five hundred years ago, he remarked that "It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions.” I do not intend to think much over the next few weeks, but when I think how little has changed in our hearts on this raft-ride through history, it gives me the willies. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |