Greetings from Midsummer in Provincetown!!

We’re speeding through our thematic weeks – Baby Dyke Memorial Day Weekend, Ptown International Film Festival, Portuguese Festival, Fourth of July, Circuit Party, Bear Week – and are now midsummering in GirlSplash Week.  Family Week, Carnival and Labor Day lie ahead. Next stop Christmas.

The Provincetown Business Association has suggested that we refer to tourists as visitors.  Whatever you call them, they arrive by car, ferry or small plane. They are national and international, northern and southern hemisphere, young and old, straight and gay, with and without store shopping bags. On rainy days the town maxes out with day-trippers from all over Cape Cod.

Local and guest workers are, as usual, all working two and three jobs – your morning breakfast waitress at Choch can be the evening bar back at Front Street.  Big name and yearly entertainers are all flyering the streets.

Out at Herring Cove, The National Seashore has renovated the old bathhouses and upgraded the beach concession. Farland, a beloved year-round café/deli runs the concession every day until sunset.  It is perhaps a sign of the LGBT times that the National Seashore, no less, has renovated the bathhouse in Ptown, once one of a few gay vacation destinations. Dinner and drinks are served!  What’s next?  The Meat Rack goes vegetarian.

On Wednesday night Farland hosts a band and beachfire at the Cove of Herrings.  Locals gather with their beachchairs, for a drink, tasty beach food and great local music.  Some intrepid folks take a swim, others huddle around the bonfire, all lit by the sweet light of sunset, improbably visible from an eastern shore.

This lovely tradition, this lovely summer rolls peacefully through its days. While tides of refugees ebb and flow around the world.  While planes are shot out of the sky.  While the world forgets 250 young girls kidnapped in Nigeria.  While the Mideast saga of real estate, religion and resentment again rolls through its days.  For many, the summer’s contrast is present and unspoken, our sad gratitude undeniable.

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