The fiery summers that California has had over the last decade give me an existential sense of doom.
Cate-Blanchett-as-Galadriel Voice:
The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was, is lost, for none now live who remember it.
This year, though, it’s different. People on the Central Coast are complaining the sun has left us. It’s so cold, so unusual, they say.
Where’s the light? The “May Gray” morphed into even a grayer “June Gloom” and it’s taking the youth, and the newcomers, by surprise.
Us old-timers on the Central Coast remember.
It’s a cliché to bring up the Mark Twain quote, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” But it’s true! When I lived in the City, I’d watch the fog swirl through the streets like a ghost hand in a cartoon. I had a summer anorak.
I remember the goosebumps on my arms at the end-of-school-year swim parties, 65 degrees under the marine layer. I remember hoping, “Please, ju…