Summer

The heat this summer was tough to beat, but folks in Ocean City, N.J., gave it a try yesterday. While Philadelphian Howard Zogott, above, packed it in, Nancy Folsom of Somerdale stayed in the surf with son Ryan and niece Lauren Wilgus. In Philadelphia, a 92-degree day ended a record season.

For some Philadelphia residents, it's not summer until the pools open. Yesterday provided a less-than-sunny start, but the cloud cover didn't seem to bother those who jumped right in. The rest of the week is shaping up as another mixed bag of swimming weather, with clouds, sun and some showers expected, and temperatures in the 70s.

Ah, the hazy, lazy days of summer are upon us. My childhood memory is of hearing that last dismissal bell of school and racing out the door, endless days of summer frolic stretching before me. There was a tingle of excitement as I anticipated how I would fill my days. Wiffle ball first, or wire ball? Build a fort? Jailbreak? Whose pool for snacks? Who can ride the fastest behind the Good Humor man? Our only restriction was to be in before the streetlights came on. It was a certain rite of passage to survive the summer.

Early indications are that the summer about to begin will not be a rerun of the record-setting summer of 1988. For much of the nation, the summer of 1988 set new standards for heat, discomfort and frightening talk about the prospect of global warming. In Philadelphia, the average temperature for the months of June, July and August - the meteorological summer - tied a record. Those months brought 49 days of 90-degree or higher temperatures and five days of 100 or higher. The summer saved its best for last.

Although the biggest crop of cookbooks is usually released in the fall/holiday season to capitalize on the gift-giving market, there's a flood of new titles this spring and summer, many designed for leisurely, fun, warm-weather eating. "Cookbooks definitely go by season," said Tim Fischer, manager of Los Angeles' Cook's Library, a store stocking 6,000 to 7,000 cookbooks, memoirs, wine and food history titles, both domestic and imported. Of the 171,061 books published in the United States in 2003, 2,856 were cookbooks, according to New Jersey-based Books-In-Print.

Keep your shirt on. Summer won't be revealing anything today. The now famous stripper is not expected to testify at this morning's preliminary hearing for Main Line hubby Craig Rabinowitz, whose restless libido and staggering debt helped lead to his arrest in the April 30 strangulation of his wife. Already, Summer's strip-and-tell account of her year-long relationship with the 33-year-old latex salesman has filled prosecutors' court documents, and has tantalized the city with its exposure of the sordid double life that Rabinowitz apparently kept secret from his wife of eight years, Stefanie, 29. Much to the sadness of Steffi's family and friends, the murder of a beloved young mother and Center City lawyer of promise has been clouded by the scandalous details of the Main Line husband and his favorite lap dancer.

The sun's rays slant more sharply now, and certain tree tops are tinged with faint gold already, and you know what it all means. Summer is leaving us. It doesn't seem possible. The calendar says Labor Day, but in our hearts we want to believe it's still mid-July. There must still be time for one more clambake, one more round of croquet, one more cold beer on the front stoop in bare feet. But the daylight is noticeably shorter now. It's time for the beach umbrella to return to its hibernation in the crawl space.

I can't believe summer is almost over. The nights are cooling off. The air has a heavier, duller scent of spent flowers and dusty fields. The sun hits the porch with a tired air, too weak to really summon enough rays to matter. The night sounds are less hopeful than dire. Lying in the hammock has lost its appeal when you need a sweater. The fan doesn't hum at night, the extra quilt is out of the cedar chest, and no one has slept in the tent for a few weeks. Summer is on its way out. I hate that.

Now that the summer is more or less over, the obvious has become more or less official: The summer of 1988 was one of the warmest on record. "In years to come it will be studied from many different angles," said Donald Gilman of the federal Climate Analysis Center. "It certainly deserves to be. " "We're still talking about it here," said Greg Poulos of Global Weather Services, a private agricultural forecasting service based in Leawood, Kan. "It was impressive," said Dan Cayan, a researcher with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.

Usually, we in the news business yawn a lot in the summer and complain how hard it is to find interesting stories to report. Summer is known as the doldrums, the dog days, when nothing much happens. But not this summer. This summer has been non-stop news - Mudman, Mumia, more Mumia, Mantle, and mergers. Also, hurricanes, Hecht's, and hearings on Waco, Whitewater and Randy Weaver. We are used to Big Stories happening either in the winter or maybe spring. Don't know why. It just happens that way. The Gulf War was launched in January (1991)