Sands of time
Dispatch from summer vacation
We’ve passed the summer solstice, which means summer vacation is halfway over for teachers and students in Arizona. Some teachers work summer school. For me, I take summer vacation as a retreat from ordinary life. A time to ponder. A time to connect with values and internal motivators. A time to play cheap rounds of golf in 110-degree temperatures.
Lately I’ve been pondering the inevitability of time.
Nothing is static. Everything changes.
We can’t rewind time. The sun will rise tomorrow. When the days of the year run out, a new year will begin.
Seasons allow for ritual and routine — a sense of repetitive familiarity that enriches our lives. There are meteorological seasons. We experience cycles of weather and notice the changing vegetation. There are sports seasons, religious holidays, and national holidays. Rhythms of life, despite the constancy of change.
We grow older as individuals, but the cycle repeats itself with each new generation. The seasons of life. With enough time, the contours of history take shape.
I don’t use ChatGPT much, but sometimes when I’m bored I ask the question, “When will the sun explode and destroy civilization?”
The artificial intelligence chatbot is quick to reassure me, “The sun, in its current form, will not explode and destroy civilization.” ChatGPT explains that in 5 billion years, the sun will enter its red giant phase, engulfing the solar system, but by that time, humanity will have presumably evolved and colonized other celestial bodies.
One time I asked ChatGPT when the sun would explode and destroy the Earth. It responded by saying, “The sun will not explode and destroy the Earth anytime soon.” When I pointed out that “soon” is a relative term, the robot was apologetic, granting the relativity of time, but again reassuring me, as a human being, that it will be billions of years before the sun explodes, so don’t worry about it.
Here’s the latest response:
The sun is not expected to explode. It is a common misconception that the sun will explode like a supernova at the end of its life. In reality, the sun is classified as a main-sequence star, and its eventual fate is to become a red giant.
Approximately 5 billion years from now, the sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel in its core and start to burn helium. As a result, it will expand into a red giant, becoming much larger and engulfing the inner planets, including Earth. This phase of the sun's evolution is likely to destroy life on Earth, but it is not an explosion in the conventional sense.
Eventually, the sun will shed its outer layers, leaving behind a hot core known as a white dwarf. The remnants of the sun will gradually cool down over billions of years, but it will not result in an explosive event that destroys the Earth.
We could debate the semantics about what constitutes an explosion, but my point, here, is that time is relentless. Time is always marching forward.
This reality is coming into sharper focus as I watch the days tick by on my summer vacation.
At the beginning of the summer, the time feels eternal. You imagine all the things you’re going to do. Learn a language. Learn an instrument. Clean out the garage. Write a book. Read War and Peace. Watch all the documentaries on Netflix. As July creeps up, you start to realize that time is a real force of nature. It won’t be defeated. When you start having dreams that it’s the first day of school and you’re standing in front of a class of students but don’t have any lesson plans, you know summer vacation is basically over.
Teaching can be frustrating. The layers of aggravation baked into the job sometimes stack up and seem unbearable. The financial benefits of working as a classroom teacher are, admittedly, less than ideal. There are far greener pastures one could explore, even in the field of education.
During the school year, during times of frustration, I often make a vow to myself to pursue greener pastures. But for the past decade, I’ve looked ahead to summer vacation as an oasis in the desert, a place to rest and drink deeply from reservoirs of emotional energy. To recharge and try again next year.
It might be too harsh to say that the best part about teaching is that you don’t have to do it for two months over the summer. Teaching can be fun. It’s an intellectual life, shared in community, and there’s a degree of autonomy to running a classroom. But I appreciate the extended break. Not many jobs provide for a two-month sabbatical every year. The psychic benefits are invaluable.
If I were to design a school schedule from scratch, I would probably not carve out two straight months of free time. If I were asked to choose between more sustainable day-to-day teaching conditions and two months of summer vacation, I would probably give up the summer vacation.
But I’ll take summer vacation when I get it.
It’s possible that my reservoirs of emotional energy are running low, and that I will step away from teaching after next year, or the next. I don’t know. Maybe I will teach until retirement.
Time will tell.
ICYMI
I’ve written several historical sketches since the launch of this newsletter in the summer of 2020. They are quick reads, as I’ve tried to pack solid research into digestible and interesting narratives. I plan to write more historical sketches in the future. If you have any ideas for future posts, write a comment below, or, if you reply to this email, it will show up in my inbox.
In case you missed it, here’s a selection of my historical sketches:
The Coliseum
I wrote this piece while the Veterans Memorial Coliseum was under occupation by the Cyber Ninjas.
The Phoenix
The bird, the myth, the legend. How the city got its name.
Creating Arizona
By Substack’s metrics, this is the most popular post I’ve written. How the state’s borders took shape.
Camelback Mountain
By my own metrics, this is probably my favorite Cholla Express post. How Barry Goldwater helped preserve the upper portions of Camelback Mountain. Or, why there isn’t a hotel bar on the summit.
Eusebio Kino was an Arizona cartographer
Eusebio Kino is being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church. He was a missionary, a bridge builder of cultures, and an early mapmaker of the American southwest.
The Heat
This post from August 2020 includes a brief history of staying cool in Phoenix, as well as an explainer of the science of monsoon storms.