In That Golden Summer Time

by Sandi Page, FAU/LLS Jupiter Student, Volunteer and Member of the Marketing Committee

Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.
―Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

From The New York Public Library

Ah, summer!  Except for isolated, paradisiacal moments, I will never again recapture the insouciance of my childhood, where a summer day stretched on endlessly, deliciously, filled with unplanned activities and adventures that segued seamlessly into each other – until at night, I tumbled, not quite willingly, into bed and a dreamless sleep on sweet-smelling sun-dried sheets, never doubting for an instant that tomorrow would be waiting with open arms to welcome me to another day of simple delights.

By the very nature of things, our summers, as adults, are more ordered, less spontaneous, but the joys of the freedom offered by relatively unscheduled weeks, even months, are still there – time which we can choose to fill with books we have been meaning to get to, home projects we have put off all year, gardens that are begging for our love and attention and personal projects that have seemed too much of a luxury in our hectic schedules to devote much time to.

Part of my reading list for this summer has been influenced by two of our wonderful LLS professors. Thanks to Dr. Robert Watson’s enthusiastic recommendation during one of his spring LLS lectures, I have just started reading Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, the biography which served as the inspiration for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway musical Hamilton, a show which received a record-breaking 16 Tony nominations and won 11 awards, including Best Musical, at the 70th Annual Tony Awards Sunday night. After finishing the book, I will tackle the clever, fast-paced lyrics and music on the double-CD set of the Hamilton original Broadway cast recording. Dr. Watson has the lyrics memorized. I won’t be going that far, but I truly admire his dedication and tenacity!

The second book on my list is The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (two-volume Mass Marketing Paperback set available on Amazon for $10) in preparation for the inimitable Dr. Taylor Hagood and his fall 2016 LLS Jupiter series of lectures on Sherlock Holmes.

The personal project that I am the most excited about is the expansion of my family genealogy research thanks to a special Memorial Day Ancestry offer which added a newspaper archives membership and a Folds3 (old military records) membership to my Ancestry World Access annual membership. In just a few days, I have already unearthed an old newspaper interview which will hopefully help unblock one particular ancestor whose family records I can only, for the moment, trace back to 1795. I have also found my great-great-grandfather’s Civil War pension records among other documents pertaining to him. I currently have 4,800+ family members listed on my family tree, a number which represents many long satisfying hours spent researching as I burned the midnight oil. It has always felt akin to being my own private detective as I combed through state and national census records, tax records, property records, searched for information on nearby headstones in cemeteries where ancestors are buried (family members were often buried close by), and chased old leads which often yielded nothing but other times provided answers to long-unsolved family mysteries. Submitting a DNA sample for testing earlier this year was an additional research step which has now put me in touch with distant unknown cousins. Genealogy is an emotionally satisfying and intellectually stimulating hobby and I am delighted with my two new research tools for this summer and the upcoming year!

So, there is my summer in a nutshell. How about you? How will you be spending your golden summer?

I queried some FAU/LLS Jupiter faculty, staff and students about their summer reading and personal projects. Here are their inspiring answers:

Dr. Jeffrey S. Morton (Faculty)

Books I will read this summer:  As is usually the case, I read economics (domestic and international) over the summer. So much of world politics and foreign policy are affected by economic considerations that I find reading econ provides information that is useful in many of my LLS lectures.

Projects: Florence and I are building a mountain vacation home in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. This summer we will be selecting flooring, tiles, countertops, appliances and other items to finish the project.

Dr. Jacqueline Fewkes (Faculty)

Books – I have a few books that I’m rereading this summer. Two of my favorites are Stuff by Daniel Miller and Social Archaeologies of Trade and Exchange: Exploring Relationships among People, Places, and Things by Alexander Bauer and Anna S. Agbe-Davies (Editors). Both of these books offer great ways to explore how we understand material culture and its role in our lives. On a much lighter note, I’m looking forward to fun summer reading too – I don’t have any specific titles in mind yet but I’m a fan of well-written science fiction and fantasy novels. I’m always fascinated by the creation of a believable fictional world, a process which is very anthropological in nature.

Projects – I’m working on my garden this summer, and trying to develop a collection of less common tropical plants and fruit trees in my yard. I was recently inspired by a visit to a plant sale held by the Palm Beach County Rare Fruit Council (http://www.pbrarefruitcouncil.org) – there were thousands of tropical plants that I had never heard of, and wanted to try growing! I’ve gotten new moringa and canistel trees planted already, and am looking to buy a black sapote, if I can find one. I have a number of trees that I need to learn how to prune better to encourage growth and fruiting. I also want to learn more about fruit tree grafting, and try my hand at creating a “personal mix” tree for myself. When not gardening and spending time with my family, I’ll be doing some research work, and trying to finish up the articles that have been stacking up on my desk during the academic year.

Hope Goodsite (Student)

As late spring approached, I allowed myself to realize I was suddenly facing the last semester of a very busy year at LLS. This always brings a tinge of sadness as the learning process, the camaraderie of fellow students and fellow members of the Advisory Board, and the LLS Administration fade away for a few months. These are things surely to be missed. The first thing to develop is the “summer reading list” – that infamous list we read about in the New York Times and alluded to by all our friends. My list is, to say the least, eclectic. It is filled with books I should have read when they were first published (even though the topics were very familiar to me), or books that were published in the past few years. These books will take me from Israel through My Promised Land by Ari Shavit, to Paris with some adventurous Americans in David McCullough’s The Greater Journey.  I don’t want to leave out British government intrigue in The English Girl by Daniel Silva. I will then look at the theme of whether we can ever go home again in Margaret Bradham Thornton’s new novel Charleston.  Also included will be Erik Larson’s book Dead Wake about the sinking of the Lusitania, and The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, an improbable story about a group of young men at the University of Washington who win the gold medal in rowing at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. I may end up on Wall Street through Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book Too Big to Fail which still sits on my Nook but between the documentaries, a movie on the subject and required reading for all of us as the crisis unfolded, I may let this book continue sitting on my Nook and decide to clean out the garage instead!

Sandy Henry (Student)

My books are lined up for my summer reading. Hopefully I’ll get to them all.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

Euphoria by Lily King

Lone Wolf and Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

In addition, I will need to add whatever books my 2 book clubs suggest for the summer months.

Jean Dessoffy (Student)

I’m just completing All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It’s easy to understand why it has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 109+ weeks.   After this, I will embark on Penny Vincenzi’s Windfall, all 528 pages. That will keep me busy.

Emily Morton (Staff)

My reading projects for the summer are slightly different this year.  Aside from exploring new literature, I would like to start re-reading the Harry Potter book series – in French! I have always enjoyed these magical books and I think it would be interesting to peruse them again in my second language. It is also my goal this summer to make a map that displays all the countries, major cities and territories that I have visited. I have been to 47 countries within the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia.

Suzanna (Suzie) Wells (Staff)

My summer reading projects are The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (I’ve had it downloaded for some time now but just need time to sit down and read it) and Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, another book recommended by my traveling daughter that is a must for this summer.

Wendi Geller (Staff)

When I find time to read for pleasure, I always go for biographies and autobiographies about musicians and actors. I am fascinated by artists who often create many of their greatest hits during periods of true insanity, be it mental illness, drugs, or alcohol abuse. Some of the biographies that I have read include No One Here Gets Out Alive – The Biography of Jim Morrison by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarman; The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of A Shattered Rock Star by Nikki Sixx (bass player for the band Mötley Crüe); Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography by actor Rob Lowe.

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