Day and Night  

Controversy and disgrumplement are rampant. (I’m exercising my writer’s license to invent whimsical words.) No turning the clock back in the fall? No on and off daylight savings time? The government has decreed that Chile will remain on the current time system throughout the year. Voices of protest point out the disadvantages for school children and workers who will enter school rooms, offices and factories in murk fit only for alley cats. This also means I’ll have to readjust my thinking when calculating the time when calling friends in California or Skyping with son in New York. A rather drastic decision to be made without consulting the populace forced to grope half their mornings through the penumbra.

This morning hubby asked, “What happened?” referring to my early rising on a Saturday. “I want to go out for a walk while it’s still cool,” I explained. Every summer day in Santiago the thermometer soars to what we already know– the high 80’s.

The sun was just peering over the cordillera as I took off down our street invigorated with the touch of cool air in my face and arms. People were already out and about: concierges sweeping apartment entrances, workers installing a new garden in a neighbor’s house, a man sleeping on a park bench, head propped on a backpack. In the park blackbirds, doves, austral thrushes and one parrot grazed in a patch of grass. The city streets were unusually calm, though usual for February, the big vacation month. The crowds and congestion have migrated en masse to the coastal beaches or southern lakes.

I spend the hottest hours of the day indoors, moving about the house in search of a cooler       spot to read and write. Yesterday, checking my emails, I opened a link to the newsletter from my small northern California hometown and read about precautions and preparations for flooding as it was currently raining. The usually tame town creek, which eventually empties into San Francisco Bay, has the nasty habit of converting into a raging rogue during very heavy rains. Hey. There was a link to a fixed camera at three locations on the creek. I clicked on the link and there I was watching the creek water, dotted with rain drops, flowing along through my hometown. Live and direct!

Mornings and late afternoons, the sun at a gentler angle, bring me outside. Nothing beats long summer afternoons and evenings. At nine p.m. we watch the local news. The current Socialist government seems intent on making vast sweeping changes with a dubious amount of planning. Educational reform and a pro- abortion laws are at the top of their to-do list. As in the case of no-time-change, major decisions are being made while paying little heed to opinions coming from outside the governing coalition – until mounting opposition forces them to take a few steps back. The buzz words for educational reform are “free education for all”, “equality” and “diversity”. Very noble objectives I’m in total agreement with. The question is how to go about it.

As the summer days shorten and nights lengthen, I suspect the hour-change issue may be subjected to reconsideration. Meanwhile, I harvest two or three very, very dwarf cherry tomatoes from my one potted bush, savoring the special scent of the tomato leaves, pluck off dead petunia blooms, observe visiting bumble bees and encourage our tortoise, Speedy Gonzalez, to eat the plum I’ve placed in his path.