Seize the Season

This time of year makes you think like that.    
    If seasons had clocks to tell the passing of their days, we’d read the numbers 8:25 with advancing insight.
    Ah, it’s getting late, we’d think. Insects have struck up their string and tympanic bands. Even early in the day, the light has a melancholy radiance that reminds me of the lost moments of old photographs. School busses are rolling and kids waking with the sun rather than noonish. Sunsets are getting ­earlier, 7:45ish, meaning we’ve shot past the coincidence of calendar time and sunset time toward longer hours of darkness.
    But, we’d say, it’s not too late yet.
    Late summer has arrived as a blessing, sweetening our temperaments, ending our ennui and letting us go out to play. Temperatures are blissful and, after two months of stewing, we’re comfortable in our skins and in our world. Meteorological summer has still a month to go, while astronomical summer is ours until Sept. 22.
    Seize the day, seize the season, seize the hour.
    To guide the way, our paper this week is full of fun-seizing opportunity.
    To find out who’s now pushing the edge of the envelope in live music, read The Kids Are Alright. In that scene-setting story, contributor Selene San Felice, who’ll graduate college this year, introduces her generation of musicians. (Bonus points to readers who pick up the hidden references in this paragraph.)
    For a broader range in tastes and times, you’ll find more music in 8 Days a Week’s wide-ranging, weeklong listing of concerts and club dates.
    If your taste is Victorian, this Thursday is your night, when Jane Austen’s songbook is opened at Hammond-Harwood House.
    If hard-rocking outdoors summer concerts staged like mini-festivals are your thing, Friday is your night, when Goo Goo Dolls and Collective Soul play at Calvert Marine Museum.
    On a more intimate scale, most every night is your night to sit at the Tiki bar or on the beach to hear who’s up at Chesapeake Beach Resort and Spa’s classic bandshell.
    You’ll still find concerts in the park this week, too.
    Beyond music, 8 Days a Week guides you — and all the ages in your family — to dozens of ways to seize the season.
    If you’re of age, how about Saturday at Goshen Farm, with wine-tasting, noshes and jazz to benefit the historic farm?
    August 27 is a late-summer day offering too many good things to make your choices easy. You could watch jousting at Calvert’s 150th festival dedicated to Maryland’s state sport and country pleasures. Learn more about jousting in this week Chesapeake Curiosities on page 4.
    Or join the Beaches & Bay Breezes Festival in Annapolis.
    Or hit the opening weekend of the Maryland Renaissance Festival.
    Or cheer on dragon boats racing in Solomons. (Do you think the Chinese will adopt skipjack racing?)
    Or learn to fly fish in saltwater with the West & Rhode Riverkeeper and the Free State Fly Fishers Club.
    That’s just a taste of Saturday. 8 Days a Week brings you seven more days full of opportunity every week.
    I know. At this time of year, you want to do it all.
    I’m sorry to burden you with so many choices. But keeping you active in life in Chesapeake Country is what we do, weekly, at Bay Weekly.

Sandra Olivetti Martin
Editor and publisher; [email protected]