Summer

For sure summer got here two plus weeks ago. Fortunately for us we have not had the high temperatures that our family and friends living in the western United States are enduring. Portland and Seattle are lot convection ovens, for lack of a better description. The big difference between there and here right now is that air conditioning is rather random there given the very mild climate while it is in almost every facility here given the summer heat and humidity. There the air is usually chilled by cool marine breezes. Here the waters get nearly as warm as the air. I am wishing all of you in the radical heat some cool in the coming days.

Monday evening we had a meeting downtown. When we arrived at the library there were two young boys riding together on a bike. Of course, they did not have helmets they were just enjoying zipping around like we used to do on late summer days. As we were getting close to crossing the street one of the boys looked back at me and said, "Nice shoes." I guess that goes to show I might not be as old as I thought (don't I wish). Another highlight of the evening was coming home and having fireflies flitting around in the yard. Fireflies are new to me, we did not have them in the west.

Fun Find

It has been a drill trying to get back to this blog. I have not been out exploring the countryside much the past few months. Instead I have stayed very close to home. Perhaps too much time doing this. Recently I joined the Friends of the Milton Library. My first time working in the small gift shop the organization runs was last week. While I was shelving some recently received used books, I came across one that really caught my eye. I flipped through the pages and was drawn to a few drawings and to some very interesting topics like Mosaic of Subcultures, Identifiable Neighborhood, Eccentric Nucleus, Old People Everywhere, Life Cycle, Garden Growing Wild, and many others. The book is in excellent shape and who can resist the price, $ 0.25? Best 25 cents I have spent in a long time.

What an informative book this is. I have not started to read it through but I have opened it just for fun and read a short section wherever I happen to flip it open. For a "technical" book, this is a captivating look at "towns, building and construction." Published in 1977, this is Volume 2 of Center for Environmental Structure Series. The other two volumes are Volume 1, The Timeless Way of Building and Volume 3, The Oregon Experiment. Sometime I will have to check out the other two volumes. Real Estate developers should be required to carefully read these books.