Journal of a Sabbatical

July 6, 1999

thunder and lightning and red raspberry ice cream

Today's Starting Pitcher: Jin Ho Cho

Today's Reading: The Storm Petrel and the Owl of Athena by Louis J. Halle, Before the Dawn by Shimazaki Toson

It's still hot (mid 90's) and even more humid. My water is shut off for work on the water main in the street. Warnings are out for a bad air day, not to mention the threat of rolling blackouts. But the sign is out, Benson's has the red raspberry ice cream. This is always the big news of the summer within a 20 mile radius of Benson's ice cream. All their ice cream is good, but the fresh native red raspberry is transcendent. They never have to announce it or advertise it. All they do is put up the red lettered sign on the menu listing all their flavors and everybody calls their friends and relatives to let them know it's time. The raspberries are all grown right here and the ice cream is all made right at Benson's. All local all right-from-the-fields fresh. Mm. Good. No line today either, its being a weekday afternoon and so hot the ice cream almost melts before you can get it into your mouth.

The humidity felt crushing today, even worse than it's been so far. I would have huddled by the air conditioner at home except not having any water made it a little difficult. I hung out at Starbucks reading Before the Dawn (only 336 pages to go) for a couple of hours and stretched out lunch at Bertucci's for as long as I could, while reading The Storm Petrel and the Owl of Athena. The brief interlude at Benson's in the heat of the day convinced me to seek air conditioning again and I went home regardless of the water situation. I figured I could always go out again if needed.

About 4:30 or 5:00 I went out to fetch the clean laundry from Cleancraft. In the space of about 15 minutes the sky got as dark as 9:00 at night and the wind started whipping the trees around furiously. This was not your picturesque purple thunderstorm, this was your frightening charcoal gray thunderstorm. Big jagged lightning zapped straight down hitting the ground or whatever was in its path. The heavens opened up and rain fell like it was being dumped from giant buckets. I left the clean laundry in the car and cocooned in the house again. Fortunately, by this time the water had been turned back on.

My house never lost power although it dimmed a couple of times. I settled into my recliner chair and listened to the Red Sox take a commanding 4-0 lead over Tampa Bay (in Tampa Bay) through crackling static, and then blow the lead and lose 6-4 between crackling static and periodic tornado warnings for Plymouth and Bristol counties (not where I am) and severe weather warnings.

The weather is supposed to get better tomorrow.