REFLECTIONS/Jonathan Gramling
When the Living Is Easy
In the play Porgy and Bess — hopefully I will be sending some of you to Google — there is the song, ‘Summertime.” And the song begins, “Summertime and the living is easy.” I don’t know how “easy” the living actually was for Black folk back then.
But it is a beautiful song that connotes a cycle of the year where people take it easy as the crops grow and the weather is hot. And you just have to take it easy, especially down South in the heat and the humidity. You can’t help, but take it easy, relatively speaking, if you were going to survive until fall.
And I imagine summer to just be that as people enjoy family reunions, visit relatives, go on vacations, head up North every weekend to cottages and condos where things are a little bit cooler if for no other reason than there isn’t that much asphalt to warm things up. People go camping, ride bikes around Madison’s lakes and go to the zillion festivals that seem to pop up every weekend in Madison. There is too much to enjoy, almost too much.
When I was younger, still doing the things that I am doing now, there always seemed to be time to enjoy the summer even though there was a ton of work to do. It all seemed to be in hand and there was mental, emotional and physical space to distance one from the work, even though that space might last for only an afternoon or evening. But it was still space beyond the demand of everyday life and the dog eat dog world that seems to define human existence at times. It was what I wanted to do and not what the world wanted me to do.
It seems that as I get older, the proportion of work time and personal time seems to get more out of balance with work — and volunteerism — taking up a greater and greater proportion of my time. And while I have always been blessed to enjoy the work that I do and be my own boss in the context that none of us are never totally our own boss — after all, I have customers to keep satisfied — one still has to get away from it from time to time or even that which you enjoy becomes a chore and drudgery. We have to do without sometimes to enjoy the things that we love to do.
And so I bring up summertime because about the only thing that I have done that is summertimeish is play cards with my brothers out in Lake Mills. We play in Lake Mille because I usually go down to Milwaukee for family functions and so this is the only time that my brothers “come to me” for a family function. Of course it was fun as it always is. I could be getting my teeth pulled and if my brothers were there, I would find some humor in it all.
But I have to realize that I am getting older. I will turn 70-years-old on August 20th, on the same day that Africa Fest will be held. And I have lost a step or two although I have always been rather hyperactive trying to fit a lifetime or two into one.
And the summer has already gone by so fast. La Fete de Marquette and Atwood Fest are already in the history books along with countless other events. And unless I am there with camera in hand doing a story for the paper, I am in my home office dealing with a lot of things. I have had a number of my accounting customers going through some changes and so they have demanded my time
more often than they would normally do to keep the services going to the community. And while I guess I make more money, I also sometimes do the service without marking down the hours. I am blessed to have my son working in the business — and eventually taking it over — but he hasn’t gotten to the level, he will, that it takes to deal with some of these transition and COVID-19 induced challenges.
And I so want to enjoy summer when the living is easy and I think of “retiring” someday. But it would probably mean that I would have to leave Madison because people would still call me up and even though I would be retired, I would say, “Sure.”
Freida High Tesfagiorgis once told me that I would know when my body was ready to retire. I know that day is coming, no matter how far it might still be in the future. I will have to wait until the non-profits I work with settle down into a post-COVID-19 routine and then I will see how I feel.
I had a moment to enjoy the summer when I drove out to the American Players Theater to interview the cast and director of The Brothers Size. It is such a gorgeous drive there and b ack. And the play is going to be superb, I do still hope to enjoy some of that easy living yet this summer. And I do hope that you, our readers, get plenty of that easy living.