Summer never lets you forget that joy is fleeting. No matter how great it is, every bite of summer fruit, day at the shore, or night under the stars is also a reminder that you’re that much closer to winter. I don’t even like summer that much and it makes me sad.
There’s tons of folklore about the reason we only get a few months of summer. My favorite is the Cherokee legend of Acoma—I’m won’t do it justice here, but I can give the basic plot. It’s the middle of winter and the people of Acoma are starving. Co-chin, a young woman, is out gathering what she can to eat when she meets a man who gives her corn for her family. She brings the man home, and he is revealed to be Miochin, the Spirit of Summer. Miochin challenges Shakok, Co-Chin’s husband, the Spirit of Winter, to a battle. The battle rages for many days until Shakok eventually calls a truce. The two spirits agree to share power, and thus we have summer and winter every year. Personally I find this much more community-minded and uplifting than poor Persephone being forced to spend a few months with her abductor every year.
When I moved to New York I was introduced to the concept of Summer Fridays. The story goes that they started out as a way for wealthy advertising execs to get a head start out of the city and off to wherever their wives and children were. The practice spread to publishing and other media, and became a sort of fake perk for underpaid workers who couldn’t afford to go anywhere but were allowed approximately 48 hours of unstructured time per year, as long as they got their work done before leaving.
Even so, anything that lets you bail on work is fucking great. I couldn’t wait to get a job with summer Fridays, but didn’t manage to do it until 2012 or so. For a former freelancer, post-crash publishing was by turns luxurious and humiliating. I had the best health insurance I’ve ever had in my entire life; my salary was the same amount the magazine had paid me to work for them part-time six years prior to coming on full-time. Summer Fridays had similarly been reduced. An email would go out in early May saying something like,“Each employee may participate in two Summer Fridays per month, provided they work until 10 pm at least 3 other nights, find someone to cover for them, and eat at their desk. Freelancers and contractors may take Summer Fridays, but we will dock your pay without decreasing your workload. If there is a full moon or one of the two other editors working on your story changes her mind about the direction, your Summer Fridays are revoked and you have to take the stairs.” Nonetheless, on days when I got one, I’d take the train back to Brooklyn and get in bed feeling like I had somehow stuck it to someone.
Like most things that start with rich white guys, Summer Fridays, while more widespread than they used to be, are still for the privileged few. Just the term “Summer Friday” implies a salary, a five day work week, an office job, and boundaries. I wish! Some companies offer more flexible work schedules in general, which I think is amazing, but I also think just flat out telling everyone to work less and leave early, with no reduction in compensation should happen everywhere, especially for people who don’t have office jobs.
There’s lots of ways to take advantage of summer without a Summer Friday, of course. We used to have a game called “Beach Day.” Someone would call a beach day by emailing or texting something like “Beach Day Wednesday.” A Beach Day meant you had to wear your bathing suit to work under your clothes. NO EXCEPTIONS. No suit, no Beach Day for you. You had to prove you had your suit on by showing it to someone. Ideally this would be done surreptitiously during a meeting, but you could also do show it in private or send an image to the group. At 5 pm we’d get our stuff, meet at the train, and head to Coney. Upon arrival, you had to dump your stuff on the sand, throw off your clothes, and run into the water, yelling, “BEACH DAY.” A couple of hours out there and the next day we’d be as refreshed as anyone with a place at the shore.
Eventually summer comes will come to an end, along with Summer Fridays, Beach Days, or whatever it is you love about the season. We don’t have to start mourning yet, though. Here’s some stuff to see you through.
Jaws
It is the greatest summer movie of all time. IT IS!! I know I’ve mentioned it before. I don’t care! As soon as we get universal healthcare, universal basic income, and a few other things, I will prepare my legislation granting everyone the right and the responsibility to watch it together every summer. If you already watched it this summer, you should probably watch it again, or watch the sequels.
Other Summer Movies
If you have already done your Jaws (all three!) viewing for the year, there are many other summer movies to enjoy. This barely scratches the surface and skews heavily towards witness and the west coast, aka me, but it might have some things you’ll like.
Endless Summer is a beautiful 1966 documentary about surfing. Hard to believe this world ever existed.
Condition Black is also a documentary about surfing. OMG it is SO FREAKING GOOD. A hurricane hits Hawaii during the biggest surfing contest in the world. The contest is shut down, people are evacuating, and a group of big wave surfers decide to head out to a break that only hits under these conditions. Ken Bradshaw ends up surfing what was then the biggest wave ever surfed, a record that stood for almost twenty years. It’s probably one of the most foolhardy and dangerous things I’ve seen anyone do on camera, and it’s totally breathtaking.
Spring Breakers. Phenomenal.
The Truman Show is set on an island! And his life there comes to an end! It’s a movie about summer!
I Dream in Another Language is about preserving indigenous culture, grudges, and being gay, three of my favorite things.
Impromptu. I feel like I’ve mentioned this before as well. But it’s about a bunch of artists sucking up to a rich person so they can get a few weeks away and it’s fucking hilarious.
Bhaji on the Beach is about a group of women who go to Blackpool for a day trip—complex and hilarious.
The Lure is a genuinely unsettling mermaid movie. For one thing, the tails are…gross? Like really gross. They look like tongues. You really start to think about what it would be like to be half fish but not in a cartoon.
Super Blue Moon
Arguably the best thing about a blue moon is all the people who get persnickety and want to tell you that they aren’t really blue, but also blue moons are cool! Super moons are super cool, and on Wednesday we have a blue super moon, what’s not to love?
Roasted Peaches
Listen, I can’t cook at all. Truly. And I can make roasted peaches. Maybe not the super fancy kind, but the kind that involve a tiny bit of lemon juice and sugar. Just google a recipe and tell me what time I should come over.
It burns when you pee
I mean obviously that’s not something I love about summer. But I was looking around to see if there was anything else I wanted to mention, and on the Reader’s Digest list of “Amazing things that only happen in summer,” number 18 is “It burns when you pee after wearing a swimsuit all day.” And that is something I now love about summer.
Blackecologies
A beautiful new zine with essays, interviews, original art, fiction, and poetry about food, forests, agriculture, water, community organizing, the past, and the future, centered around Black lives and the Black experience.
That’s it for today, hope you have a great week. xom
The Lure IS SOOOOO GOOD!
I've only had summer Fridays twice in my life, and the second time had caveats! (Not as intense as yours... we could do every other Friday and had to negotiate with the team to see who could take which ones.) Now I am a freelancer at a company that has "wellness days" for staff, who keep bringing that up in meetings freelancers are also in. Blergh. I should just go rewatch Jaws.