A bummer to remember
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IN HIS short story “All Summer in a Day,’’ science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury describes a gloomy world where it rains all the time, and where the inhabitants see the sun for an hour every seven years. Apart from not living on Venus, we in New England have reason to feel just like them.
Every year, residents of this region suffer through a frigid winter that gives way to a dreary, drippy March, April, and May. But this month, too, has been a washout - the second-least-sunny June on record. The summer solstice came and went undetectably, amid cool mist and overcast skies.
Usually, local weather patterns offer one defense against seasonal-affective disorder: a short but spectacular summer of lounging at the beach, hiking on wooded hillsides, or mucking about in the garden. So far this year, it’s all muck. The only ones rejoicing are transplanted Southerners escaping record heat in that part of the country - and a few cranky climate-change skeptics, who insist that cool temperatures here mean that global warming is a hoax.
Bradbury’s 1954 story looked forward to when space-traveling earthlings would move to rainy planets by choice. But advances in technology only underscore how New Englanders remain at the weather’s mercy; a few days ago, a popular iPhone weather application presented dark-cloud icons foretelling seven days of gloom.
It could be worse. Bradbury’s story revolves around a maladjusted schoolgirl who’d emigrated from Earth. The mean Venusian kids lock her in a school closet, just as the long-hidden sun is about to peek out. Some forecasts suggest that the clouds over Boston could part during the day tomorrow. Far better would be a sunny weekend. When that unfamiliar light finally appears in the sky, let’s hope most people aren’t stuck inside.
