Danger never takes a vacation
As you are learning, summer is a very dangerous time.
Earthquakes; bridge collapse; mine cave-ins. Stock market gyrations. Leaky tunnels. Hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, floods. Tainted toothpaste; lead-coated toys. Each morning, I screw up the courage to walk to the curb and pick up the paper. Peril lurks around every corner.
Just when you thought it was safe to go near the water. . . First there was that shark sighting off of Marshfield; just a basking shark, but still. Then Chatham falls prey to a meandering great white. It's a good thing Great Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, called off his annual visit. I hear great whites have a penchant for fleshy Scots.
You would think that New England's many lakes would be safe from predators. But here's another disturbing headline: Boating deaths on the rise. The always-sober powerboating fraternity is killing off each other -- and the rest of us -- with Darwinian efficiency. Where can I hide?
Is summer really dangerous, or is there just an astonishing lack of real news? More the latter than the former, I'd say. After June 1, every story that would normally appear on Page A5 of the newspaper now appears on A1. I suppose there are still some editors around, but the columnists hit the beaches weeks ago. How else to explain the rash of commentaries on endangered shorebirds, Maine's imperiled strawberry crop, or the predictable summer reading list columns, generally a stack of critically hailed books the writer has set aside in favor of a Michael Connelly thriller.
The government can be counted upon to generate plenty of news, but it threw in the towel about two months ago, after failing to come up with a new immigration law. President Bush has been on semipermanent vacation, watching his advisers jump off the ship of state before it crashes into the iceberg. The claimants to his throne aren't exactly setting the world on fire, puttering around the nether regions of New Hampshire and Iowa, promising people whatever it is they want to hear.
So it's danger news, all day, all the time. Forget about shark attacks, what about pizza attacks? This month police filed criminal assault charges against Sherri Ferns of Concord, N.H., for throwing a slice of pizza at an umpire during a contentious Little League game. She could face up to a year in jail. Stop her before she flings again!
If ever there was a summer to go on the Breatharian diet, where you "consume" only sunshine, this might have been it. I was unlucky enough to be in New York when Gotham's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene launched its anti-sushi campaign, "encouraging women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or planning to have children in the near future to stop eating raw fish," according to the New York Sun. That was right around the time that researchers from Tufts, Harvard, and Boston University reported that "people who drank more than one diet soda each day developed the same risks for heart disease as those who downed sugary regular soda," according to what the Associated Press called "a large but inconclusive study."
I keep a large and conclusive study from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, "Salt: The Forgotten Killer," on the bookshelf next to my bed, because I find it so ridiculous. Sample threatening chapter heading: "The FDA Blasé about Sodium."
Inside the report, I found my ad hoc "Danger" file, thick with clippings I always hoped to use in columns. My favorite: "Danger in Your Neighbor's Backyard," a Parade magazine feature on the 7,000 pet tigers in private captivity across the United States. One of them might be wandering onto your property while you read this, who knows?
In that same file, I see a Wired magazine article on "Danger
I wouldn't say it can't happen here. Maybe it will happen here. There are still 10 days left of summer. Who knows what disasters may befall us?
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
