Quote of the Day (Pamela Paul, on Why She’s ‘Not Summer People’)

“The 1 percent of the 1 percent don’t need to plan summer because they have it built in. They have a place on the Vineyard or in the Hamptons. They belong to a club where everyone speaks golf and there’s a long waiting list even for those who can afford it. Summer is when the maw of income inequality gapes wide open and only people who summer are allowed in.

“I am not summer people, something hard to admit because summer is also the pushiest season, the most insistent that it be reveled in publicly.”—Opinion columnist Pamela Paul, “My Favorite Part of Summer? The End,” The New York Times, Aug. 16, 2024

I’m “not summer people” either, Ms. Paul. I not only share your lack of membership in these exclusive clubs, but also your physical discomfort with the heat, humidity, and pests that come with the season—issues that have gathered in importance with me over the years not only because of my own aging, but also because of climate change.

So yes, my favorite part of summer is also the end—though I also savor, while it lasts, something I’ve come to think of as “false fall”: the several days, maybe even a week, from in the third or fourth weeks of August when the temperatures abate, you don’t have to turn on the air conditioning, and, if you’re in mountains or the northern end of the country, maybe even don a light jacket in the evening.

(The image accompanying this post, showing Pamela Paul at the 2019 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, was taken Oct. 26, 2019, by Larry D. Moore.)