In America, everyone has a two month break during summer to mark the time between one grade and the next one. Even now, I still associate summer with transitions, the calm moments before the craziness that is the months between September and January. I realize that it isn't a calm period for most, but I keep seeing signs that things are about to get a lot crazier, and a lot worse. I hope that I'm wrong, and that my brain is imagining things that aren't there, but I suspect that I won't know until September comes, the time when, in Washington at least, we have to begin the next year.