Shouldering The Bootleggers

The crowds are gone. The weather is still fully summer. Every store and shop is still open. The ocean will be warmer than it has been all summer for the next month and a half. At no other time in the year is it more clear why we live here.

There are still a lot of visitors-The Bootleggers, to coin a term. Just as rot gut tasted better in a swinging speak easy, vacation feels better when it's a little out of bounds. Those here now, the almost retired, and the childless twenty-probably thirty, but who could pin them down-somethings enjoy summer time amenities at bargain basement rates. They are shoulder people, enjoying the shoulder season--Neither children, nor retirees, not quite summer yet not quite fall. It is pure coincidence that we who live here are accidentally more pleasant to visitors than we will be at any other time in the year. We are not too broke at this point, and we don't have to work all the time.

I can grasp at straws to try and relate this to the rest of the world. My mind wanders to the Syrian dilemma. I can reach, but during the shoulder season, I just can't make it stick. Maybe that's the only point to make. I found myself discussing intervention in Syria with a co worker today in conventional terms...You see a little old lady's purse being stollen, you must act. What if the old lady is two blocks away and you just hear about it later? What if the old lady was actually a mugger on her day off etc etc. But when I walked away from the admittedly short and somewhat flippant conversation, I wasn't thinking about Syria. I was thinking about going spear fishing as soon as I could reasonably stop working for the day.

There's the rub. Duck is a little like booze. Most of the year it's like a fine wine. In February it's like PBR. In the Fall it's like 151. It's at it's purist. It works fast. If you are just visiting you will probably have a great time, and skate through a minor post vacation withdrawal/hangover. If you're here full time you've gotta take the good time easy. Do some chores! At least clean out a couple closets or weed some flowerbeds. If you don't temper the good times, January will be a rude awakening. And as for trying to mould the rest of the world into versions of my permanent vacationland--Don't Do It! We (humanity) would never get anything done. Then again, maybe that's not such a bad thing