We folks in academic life don't have much to complain about. But this is the roughest time of the year. The days are hot but they get shorter and shorter, and the start of another school year is just around the corner.

The envy of all our friends with "real jobs," we are often asked what we do with the three or four months we get off every summer between tours of duty. Every spring we make an incredibly ambitious list of summer projects, and we get around to several of them, but not nearly all, before we run out of sand in the hourglass, and it's back to the show.

Oh, well. Although we didn't conquer the world this summer, there were some truly fine moments, crystal clear and hot and good. And there are still a couple of weeks to send the season off in style. "Don't know when this chance might come again/ Good times got a way of comin' to an end..."