How's your summertime?

            Today as I was setting up this photo as part of the #1shoeoff promotion for my second mystery, I thought of the song "Summertime" from the operetta "Porgy and Bess" by the Gershwin brothers. It's always been one of my favorites.
            The show opens in a black tenement in Charleston, South Carolina. A mother sings the lullaby to her baby, extolling the easy life of  summer. The song fantasizes a bit that the child will have an easy life because "your daddy's rich and your ma is good lookin'." Life can be like summertime.
           Then I realized that nobody in Charleston, where I lived in the 1970s, would call summertime easy. It's hot as hell, drippy humid and swat-craze buggy. February and March are much nicer. In fact rich folks from the Charleston Lowcounty used to escape inland in the summers, which accounts for the founding and naming of the pleasant little town of Summerville.
            Ira Gershwin, who wrote the lyrics to "Summertime," lived in New York. He probably saw summer as a welcome reprieve, as did most of the New Yorkers watching this show on Broadway. Ira used his view of summer, not the character's view.
             It reminded me of a mistake most of us make. We see the world from our perspective and assume that perspective is true for everyone. Many of our disagreements over "truth" are just a matter of perspective.