“Summertime and the living is easy...” as the song goes.  Brilliant dawns, soft days, and warm twilights the temperature of skin are flowing by.  Not to mention that the nights throb with moonlight and electric blue shadows and phosphorescence, as if the earth is recharging her batteries.  Nature has written truth all over Elm Creek and deep into Minnesotans.  Why didn’t I raise my kids here?

I sincerely hope that wherever you are there are inspiring things that stir the magic in you.  And if not, close your eyes.  There.  You see that black screen?  Fill it.  You can do it.  Find your dreams and edit out the compromises.  It’s really about the quality of what you think and how you see and communicate.

Speaking of how you see, what sharp eyes you bikers have.  Yes, there was a bike switch in last month’s newsletter photos.  The shot of me riding is on Bruce’s bike (wearing his shoes too, because they have sole clips that lock onto the petals); my bike is the one I’m lifting in the other photo.  You can find old newsletters w/photos under News & Articles at www.thomassullivanauthor.com .  Intense recreation burns a lot of calories, and Bruce recognized early-on that if he didn’t rave about my cooking, he just might starve to death.  Dark secret: sometimes I like to cook.  But it was the 4 pounds of Trader Joe’s chocolate espresso beans poured into a flexible plastic sleeve so that it would fit into his cooler that really lit up his smile as he headed home to Idaho.

Chicago writer Wayne Allen Sallee says I have to write about the fact that I saw THE DARK KNIGHT and MAMA MIA back-to-back recently (don’t ask, I had my reasons).  But it has been a summer of stark contrasts.  Then again, it’s the contrast that makes the heights what they are.

This month’s column over on Storytellers is one I dreaded having to write.  More on that in a moment.  The column that was originally intended for post was part 2 of the Glenn Frey concert at Crosslake, MN, and some interesting artistic and personal interactions.  I will pick up that sterling event again in September.  And, incidentally, the Eagles are coming to St. Paul September 30!  I have fond memories of St. Paul and taking someone exquisite to dinner with Glenn and having dessert in one of its parking garages.  At any rate, that first column on Crosslake and Glenn Frey pulled in more e-mail than any other.  The concert that night was interrupted by a line of thunderstorms, and we hid out in an upper room of the Manhattan Beach Lodge overlooking spectacular gusts and brambles of lightning out on the lake while awaiting the outcome.  Sitting there with Glenn and the band, listening to volleys of rain, I came close to suggesting that the Eagles be renamed the Seagulls.  That little interlude as the concert was on-hold was very charming for me, and it got symbolically better when a double rainbow appeared over the water.  If a rainbow is a promise, make it a triple rainbow that I will get back to this in September.  But this month’s column took a hard left when we lost Frank T. Wydra.    [Note if the link http://www.storytellersunplugged.com/thomas-sullivan-flamingo-frank-3  doesn't work, you can go directly to www.storytellersunplugged.com and find the story featured on August 15 or 16, 2008]

As close as a brother to me, Flamingo Frank was a great writer, thinker, and human being.  August’s column connects the dots of what happened, but I have since followed through with a promise made in the funeral oration.  Frank and I had many odd adventures, and so it didn't feel strange at all carrying a plastic pink flamingo through dense undergrowth and planting it in a remote tract of forest bounded by water with only jumbled fallen trees for bridges.  This will keep Frank close by.  I’ll revisit it in the fall when the bugs have left and the nearly impenetrable growth has matted down and the snakes have burrowed.  It will still be isolated, so we’ll have a long talk without interruption.  The last time we spoke was in Detroit just after he stopped chemo.  I shared with him the adventures of getting there, including catching a possum in a Meijer’s Thrifty Acres outside Kalamazoo, and brought him a paper Krispy Kreme Donuts hat.  No cheap flamingos this time.  Very chic.  Despite the difficulty speaking, he talked of everything from the Cuban missile crisis (in which he took part) to the world’s most beautiful pharmacist

.

I will miss Franklin T. Wydra.

The reason the pink flamingo is sorta snugged against a tree in the photos below is because I stuck a white feather next to a tree in a golden field less than a mile away and, amazingly, it is STILL there four months later, having survived high winds and hail (see photo).  Other photos: the water polo pix comes from my goalie days after David Wilson asked if it was posted anywhere, so that he could show his son who was watching Olympic water polo.  The Olympics never fails to stir memories and communications among athletes and friends who took their shots at the international scene, but the connection for me is solely that I’m wet.  I never made the team.  The selection process at the New York Trials meant that you either had to be on the winning team at the tournament (first 7 slots) or be one of the 4 picks at large, each of whom had to play two positions during the tournament.  Though I usually did play two positions, I was All-American as a goalie, and since we were a relatively weak team, I never left the net the whole tournament and thus was technically not eligible, though I heard I had received two of the three necessary votes.  Funny, funny stories about those Trials, but we were bombed.  We were out of the tournament so fast (three straight losses to the top three draws), that we were kicked out of our hotel and I spent the middle week of the Trials hanging around to catch the swimming and sleeping in Times Square movie houses, which stayed open until 4 a.m.  I remember scalping tickets to the World’s Fair, also on at that time, to get money to eat at delis.  Alas, two years later the pattern of high hopes disintegrating into humiliation continued, as the euphoria of being picked for a Pan-American All-Star tour quickly fizzled into cancellations owing to politics between Brazil and the US and Canada.  As with writing, the nice thing about remaining a best-kept secret is that it keeps people from finding out you are overrated.  Always one for optimism, I soon rationalized that having more or less lost at everything, I had become an EXPERT on…failure!  The last photo (from, who else, the notorious Dr. Foto, Mark Manrique -- and he didn’t doctor this one) offers confirmation that I have succeeded at last.  Seriously though, if today’s athletes are vastly superior, there is no shame or shortfall in what we did.  To go for perfection is the real accomplishment in life.  It’s audacious to think you're going to be the best of anything, but it’s not audacious to try.

I need to drive every night and work during the day, so I haven’t watched a lot of the televised Olympics, but I’ve just recently discovered my own private venue: a sand-bottom pool the size of a small lake at Elm Creek.  For some reason the park system quit staffing the pool on August 10, so it’s lightly attended all day long.  And that’s where I usually work out between writing sessions.  May the rhythms of your life be equally rewarding and full of energy, and may you always go for the gold!

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com