Barry Kirk’s blog

"Rocketsummer" comes from the title of a short story in one of my favorite books of my youth, Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles."  It was also one of the stories dramatized on an album my brother and I owned of an old time radio Dimension X performance of the book. In the story, a boy refers to "rocket summer" as another way of saying "Indian summer."  I never completely understood what that meant, but as a boy I decided that it must mean that the exhaust of rockets taking off to hurtle their occupants toward adventures on Mars must leave behind so much heat that Summer was extending itself into Fall.  My adult perspective can't help but pollute that romantic notion with the thoughts of global warming, but 10-year-old me thought it was wonderful.