sunny summer days
another trip around the sun
I painted "another trip around the Sun" on my birthday. It was a sunny June day and the weather was just about perfect. But it didn't last; I should know by now I live in a world that has screwed Mother Nature and so I need to wrap my head around weird weather patterns. Still, I just can't get used to it. As someone who has been a pseudo-sun worshipper for most of her life, this has been one of the most upsetting summers I can remember.
The day after my picture-perfect summer birthday, the sun wasn't interested in coming out. For weeks afterward, when the sun did pop out in my neck of the world, it was under a haze of smoke that smelled like everyone was simultaneously burning their backyard fire pits. What I was actually smelling and seeing was smoke coming down from Canadian wildfires. Weird, I don't remember smoke from Canadian wildfires being a summer 'thing.'
Because of the smoke, I started wearing masks outside, masks that were initially purchased for wearing indoors because of COVID. If we hadn't been used to wearing masks for COVID, would we have adapted to wearing them outside for smoke so quickly? Head spinning, the irony not lost on me, I couldn't answer my own question. Instead of sunny skies, the nightly news showed scenes of the Manhattan skyline beaming in otherworldly bright orange. It was like Armageddon was lurking around the corner. My mother's guests visiting her in her coastal town in Maine couldn't enjoy spending their days at the beach. Summer life there this season has meant lots of gray skies and spitting drizzle. On phone calls to my mom, I would report back; same here in New York - the sun would come out for a few minutes, go behind a cloud, the sky would darken, rain or drizzle for a while and then the sun would pop out again, go in, repeat; it was playing a strange peek-a-boo game.
untitled sun that hangs in my home office. This little watercolor was painted a month before my son Elliot was born. It used to hang in his nursery along with other watercolors I painted for him while expecting his arrival! July 1999.
Whatever was happening, the weather worsened as we went deeper into summer. While I was complaining about not having my idyllic, pretty summer, we had storms and flash floods that destroyed homes and property and closed down East Coast parks. The Midwest and other parts of the U.S. have had unrelenting killer heat waves. The Guardian reported that, on average, annual heat-related deaths in the U.S. are up 95% from 2010 to 2022.
Then Greece happened. Scorching temperatures and wildfires that killed in the double digits. But the worst of all the weather-related events were the wildfires in Maui. The destruction and losses are unfathomable. A totally avoidable fire that has left nearly a thousand missing, over 100 dead, so many without homes and now homeless. The one survival story I heard on NPR sounded more like fictional horror or sci-fi. I am praying for relief and hope and, if not a return to everyday normalcy, something new and brighter than what the communities in Maui face now. I didn't watch the news, I haven't seen pictures. I can't bear it.
Ceramic jewelry boxes I made in ceramics class in high school. My fascination with painting suns started way back then and no, I am not putting a year on these pieces or you will figure out my true age!
The photos presented here have nothing to do with this post. Yes, the first one because it was a picture-perfect radiant day on my birthday and I was beaming with joy to be under the sun's warm rays. The other photos are of artwork I made years ago before we royally messed up summertime.
Do we have a right to a healthy environment and normal sunshiny summer days that don't destroy our economies, kill us and leave us homeless? Maybe we should start suing our states like these kids in Montana did. And they won!
Oh, so sorry, was that last bit about kids suing out of left field? Not really, if you are honest with yourself and realize this summer has been out of left field, too!
