Summer Valentine

In the epigraph to his musical, “The Music Man,” Meredith Wilson explained the genre of what followed. His play about River City, Iowa in the doe-eyed early years of the twentieth century—the little town populated by a pompous Mayor, hen-like chattering ladies, petty grudges, stable-loitering slobs, a bushy-tailed, over-inflated confidence in its own rising greatness, and a proud, young, spinsterhood-staring librarian, Marian—his play was not a tragedy, a comedy, a romance, or a farce. It was, said Wilson, a Valentine.

A Valentine is a very different sort of genre, because it arises not primarily on the form, and not even on the content, but from the attitude of the creator. A Valentine captures love yes, but a certain kind of love, a tenderness, an affection, a feeling sweet and sad.

At the close of Labor Day weekend, I thought I’d offer one of my own favorite Valentines, courtesy of Calvin, this one not to a town, but to a season. This strip was originally published in late August, as summer was winding toward its golden conclusion, and it’s hard not to sense the twinge of nostalgia for what was fleeing.