The popular notions of summer fun and the things we actually feel like doing can sometimes be at odds with each other.
There’s a period before sunrise called civil twilight, when the sun is still below the horizon but it’s light enough to start your day. In high summer in New York City, light starts to peek around the edges of the shades at 5 a.m., scratching at the screen like a pet trying to get in: I’m here! Get up! Let’s go! It makes for a long day if you get up at this hour — around 15 hours if you’re keeping track, as I am, trying to squeeze as much juice out of the season as possible before it’s done.
A member of the anti-summer contingent recently groused to me that she hates this time of year, because she feels so much pressure to always be doing things, to fill her time with outdoor activities that would be impossible in colder months. She feels guilty saying “I’m just doing nothing” when asked about her weekend plans. How could she be so wasteful, squandering this brief period of light and warmth? Think of all the picnics and pool parties and breezy strolls she’ll regret not having undertaken come February!
She’s right — in the warmer months, there’s a tinge of accusation to our small talk. “What are you up to this summer?” seems to require a recitation of an action-packed agenda in response. If you have kids, the pressure to keep them properly occupied can set the season up as “a parenting Rorschach test,” as Hannah Seligson recently wrote in The Times. Someone once suggested to me that there’s no question that makes one feel more defensive than, “Any fun trips coming up?”
The socially acceptable definition of fun and the reality of what we actually experience as fun can often be quite different from each other. One person’s “beach barbecue” is another person’s “lying on the couch, reading, kind of dozing all afternoon.” Doing absolutely nothing today might be the most pleasant summer activity you can think of. You do not need to get up with the sun and pack your hours with berry picking and butterfly catching in order to have a dreamy summer day. (I did that only once, and I was so tired by lunch I could barely keep my eyes open.)
The true promise of summer, the one we’re all entitled to, is that feeling of lightness and openness, of our cares diminishing at least a little bit. Let no well-intentioned but ultimately irksome query about what you did this weekend keep you from doing, or not doing, whatever it takes to achieve this.
Trump Administration
In a prisoner swap, the Venezuelan government released 10 Americans and U.S. permanent residents in exchange for more than 200 Venezuelans whom the U.S. had sent to El Salvador.
The State Department will sharply restrict its criticism of tainted foreign elections, pulling back from the pro-democracy advocacy that the U.S. long offered.
At President Trump’s request, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to unseal grand jury testimony from the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Trump sued Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal over an article that said Trump had contributed a cryptic note and a drawing as part of a birthday gift for Epstein.
Trump, disputing The Journal’s report, said, “I don’t draw pictures.” But many of his sketches have sold at auction.
Other Big Stories
Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, to wear an ankle monitor. Bolsonaro, who is charged with attempting a coup, has lobbied Trump for help.
Heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan have killed at least 57 people in recent days.
The leaders of Britain, France and Germany are working together to build diplomatic and defense institutions that free them from their reliance on the U.S.
An explosion at a law enforcement training center in Los Angeles killed three sheriff’s deputies. A state official said it appeared to be an accident.
Colbert Cancellation
CBS said it canceled Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show for financial reasons. People familiar with the show’s finances told The Times that it was losing of tens of millions of dollars a year.
But Democratic lawmakers raised questions about the cancellation, which came just days after Colbert criticized CBS’s parent company for paying Trump millions to settle a lawsuit. “Do I think this is a coincidence? NO,” Senator Bernie Sanders said.
The saga evokes a term Colbert coined many years ago, our TV critic writes: “truthiness,” or a statement that is not actually true but represents a reality the speaker wishes to inhabit.
Ari Aster
Ari Aster has made some of this century’s most unsettling films — like “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” — by taking his own anxiety and putting it onscreen. Read a profile of the director.
Aster’s new movie is “Eddington,” a Western set in the early days of the Covid pandemic. Our critic gives it a good review, writing that the film “sets us not-so-gently adrift on a sea of very recent memories and the nausea they re-prompt.”
In the mood for horror after all this Aster talk? Here are five movies you can stream now.
Drake’s Comeback
