Last Wednesday was 2017’s longest day, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.  Do you, like me, remember what a big deal that was when we were kids?  The day with the most daylight and, in Detroit, we had that extra bonus measure from being at the Western end of the Eastern time zone which translated into extra minutes of Duck-on-a-Rock or a myriad of other street games, extended barbecues and lemonade and watermelon on the front porch glider.  Those days when it was almost mandatory to gaze skyward around 10pm and marvel that, “there’s still light at the horizon”.  To be sure, we had some existential anxiety back in the 50’s.  There was the ever-present nuclear threat from those Commies and…well, I know there was probably other stuff, but I’m not Googling it.  But, despite the air raid drills and keeping track of which neighbors had the roomiest fallout shelters, we really did feel safe and happy to have those longer days and more sunlight.

I was hoping to conjure up some of that warm and fuzzy nostalgia this week, but on Wednesday, a blithering idiot, who has somehow become President of the United States, was holding a campaign rally in Iowa, (could somebody please tell him he won…at least for now?), where he was making up preposterously stream-of-consciousness lies for no reason whatsoever, as we were inching closer to armed combat with Russia over nonstrategic airstrikes against ISIS or drones or suspicious-looking peasants, (who may have been fleeing or flea marketing, no one’s sure), the Senate was hiding in a stairwell in the Capital drafting its Simon Legree version of the future of health care, my DVR did not record the final episode of Fargo, there was planned and random terrorist activity around the globe, I found myself woefully sans porch swing, I couldn’t find anybody who remembered Duck-on-a-Rock and, so many of us were feeling the weight of the dire vision of our future that gazing skyward merely tweaked the pains in our neck.

Yet, it’s summer and I’m in Saratoga Springs where I was lucky enough to find emotional shelter in some ass-kicking Cuban rhythms provided by my friend, Jorge and partake in an apolitical meal with friends on Hattie’s patio.  It wouldn’t be until the second longest day that I would learn that while I was allowing myself a respite from the non-stop tales of Grimm, ICE agents had descended on my peaceful, adopted home town to target and take into custody scores of long-residing restaurant workers, hard-working, tax-paying, non-job-stealing, of-no-threat-to-public-safety-or-national-security individuals simply to allow the idiot, (you know, the one I mentioned before in Iowa), to be able to nightmarishly flash his artificially-tanned, elephantine balls.  Is it OK to use the Nazi reference yet?

Sadly, 2017’s longest day will remain in whatever memory I have left, as that day when the global-warming sun beat down longest on the inconceivable insanity of the Trumpian Solstice.