End of summer
August 7 began autumn in China when the temperature at dusk and
dawn in the northeast got tolerable though it remained scorching at mid-day. North China really did not feel like autumn
but since Xi Jinping took his state visit to Mongolia late August, the warmth
(though one could not tell by the way people were attired) remained a welcomed
state of the ambience.
The first Monday of September in the United States is
considered the end of the summer though this is really more symbolic. It is the day before school kicked off so the
feel for the end of summer is existentially real as families secure their
camping gears in the garage, and the enterprising young boys and girls resume
newspaper delivery routes.
The autumnal equinox does not occur until September 22, but
that is neither here nor there since the day is simply, more or less, the
closest to equal time between daylight and nighttime at the equator when the
sun looks like it is headed south; in fact, the earth's rotation just tilts
that way.
The Labor Day beat is also America's response to the
worldwide observance of May Day, the latter of "socialist" origin
from the labor unions at Chicago's pre-Ferguson riot of police at McCormick's!
End of summer is experienced more as the time when we set
aside the white and light colored clothes for the darker ones that eventually
ends up with the solid dark come sun-deprived winter. Mainland US and western Canada (a colleague
sent me a picture of accumulated snow) drenched and soaked as fierce storms
with hail and snow hit certain Midwest and Atlantic east coast regions.
In Saipan, we worked on our last BBQ for the year by the
lagoon quaffing our ice-cold beer in the breeze, got the big screen for the NFL
and college football seasons, and gathering chicken feathers and located the pumpkin
pie recipe, cotton balls for snow, noted the gifts and lights to be shopped, located
a real fir tree, caught a Pinoy to make real parol, and grabbed a crazy willing to be decked-out as Santa in
shorts to ride a water buffalo in December!
But we're ahead of the season of the winter solstice when
the earth hits the longest night, and the shortest day starts getting longer
again, appropriated conveniently by the patriarchs to celebrate the Body of
Christ (Christ Mass).
Endless summer was
a movie when I was young of guys who went around the world chasing after the
big wave to surf. Being a resident of
Hawaii, I am familiar with the surfing culture, more so because my brother lived
in Waianae before he moved to the new city of Kapolei, both locations of which
are only a hop and a skip towards the north shore where the real aficionados
wait it out for the big one. For looking
fashionably comfortable, of course, one heads out for Waikiki with sun glasses,
an occasional touch of sand but from the shore, not from wading in the wave and
the water. Serious surfers inhabit the
windward side of Oahu.
Ours is a profession that goes by a "beginning-less summer",
or more accurately, "hardly any summer" at all. I spent summers in Saipan with peers around
meeting tables charting out the design of the incoming year in conferences too
full to stretch the leg during deliberations, which was before we discovered
that being aerobically fit also cleaned out the cobwebs of our minds leaving
brain cells to work efficiently and well.
Summer was what other people had before I got to lasso them
into the "productive" activities of the fall. This is the anti-fun component of my
Victorian heritage as a second generation Methodist in a Church parsonage. I already knew myself to have been born "beautifully
brown" with the skin sheen akin and seen in Madagascar to Tahiti across
the Indian Ocean, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, from body surfing the
waves and wild night dancing around the bone fire.
The end of summer in China came early this year as did the autumn
rains that were too abundant in places not normally known to be wet, scarce in other
places where dampness sweltered and aridity wilted the peonies, followed by the
quakes and the monsoon-turn-violent typhoons; we had a sure fire formula for tragedy.
The season came with the view of my neighbors from my
solarium and my kitchen back window more rosy than bleak. My immediate community has the oldest set of
tenement houses (1995) in the old Shenbei Center, now dwarfed by the
surrounding high rises of apartment units for urban professionals. A retiree across the street opens his
non-performing repair shop to keep busy since it obviously does not add income
to his retirement benefit.
Younger men and women walk under my sunroom through the
commons equipped with cellphones or tablets, locked in to their own digital
universes, ignoring each other's presence.
They adore at the altar of the renminbi
attending to the next sales' appointment and market deal.
The summer has not come to an end. Many just shut it down. Funny that I should just be discovering the
pleasure of mine!
j'aime la vie
pinoypanda2031@aol.com
yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!
-----Original Message-----
From: Jayvee Vallejera <
jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com>
To: Jaime R Vergara <
pinoypanda2031@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Sep 18, 2014 2:18 pm
Subject: Re: Speaking in Tongues
Jaime,
Do you have anything for me for Friday?
Jayvee
Marc used to teach at MHS before I got to Saipan. Sapuro, did you know him?
j'aime la vie
pinoypanda2031@aol.com
yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!
-----Original Message-----
From: Marc Wathen <
kismarc@gmail.com>
To: Jaime R. Vergara <
pinoypanda2031@aol.com>
Sent: Wed, Sep 17, 2014 10:02 am
Subject: Speaking in Tongues
Hi Jaime,
Enjoyed your column today as I am an English teacher at a local high school in the New Territories. I teach mostly oral English, so I try to make my classes as welcoming as possible.
Interesting comment about Pimsleur's. When I first came to Hong Kong in 1995, I bought Pimsleur's Cantonese cassette tapes and listened to them on my Sony Walkman.
English is the third language of my half-Chinese son Thomas. He went to local schools where Cantonese was the medium of instruction. His mother spoke to him in Putonghua at home, and I spoke in English.
Thomas is now studying Japanese at East Los Angeles College. I spent five years in Osaka, Japan in the 1980s, so I am very happy about this.
It seems that the Filipinos that I have met in my travels are natural linguists. The Filipino domestic helpers here have much better spoken English than the majority of Hong Kong Chinese. That is something that the Chinese here do not like to hear.
Hope all is well.
Best,
Marc