The August struggle is real. What’s the secret to hanging onto summer while accepting that half the country’s kids seem to be back at school? I’m sad for them because starting kindergarten while the ice cream truck is still rolling through the neighborhood seems wrong. But I get it. Gotta close those learning gaps. Yesterday the tailgating display at the grocery store brought me down. How can it be football season when I’m not done eating sliced tomatoes with a drizzle of olive oil and a finish of salt every day for lunch? I’m not ready to gear up, get back to work, make it happen. I still want to make it Caprese.
I’m working on a new book and maybe I’ve triggered myself with some first chapter imagery of a character wearing a striped wool sweater on the first day of school despite the heat and humidity. Remember that? Why did we not just wear a t-shirt? One day we’re in bathing suits and the next, Fair Isle sweaters. Who talked us into that annual tradition of dressing for November in September? Was it you, Seventeen Magazine?
I guess the solution is to ease on into the new season. Keep eating the tomatoes. Go to the beach on the weekends. Tend to your garden. Have a glass of rosé. But also do your homework. Make your lunch the night before. Catch up on the news you’ve been avoiding. Start to think about holiday plans. Read the long book you’ve had on your bedside table since Memorial Day. Ease on into the shorter days, the darker after dinner walks, the pumpkin spice.
Cheers, Lian
Lian Dolan
Pasadena
Substacks You Might Enjoy in the Waning Days of August
Need a refresher on khakis and Fair Isles? Preppy is coming back around, in fashion and in lifestyle. See the rise of the LL Bean Tote in modern iconography if you need proof. Check out Muffy Aldrich’s The Thing Before Preppy.
Join me on this delightful reading journey with Cambridge Ladies Dining Society. Forgotten books by women authors of the early 20th Century. Find the list here
A Few Food Substacks to inspire and entertain. The OG substack for me: The Department of Salad by Emily Nunn. Also, La Briffe by the incomparable Ruth Reichl. Accessible and just fun over at The Amateur Gourmet.
Is this the year you move to France? Or just subscribe to A Good Vintage and read about a charming woman who did? Need more Paris? Then Prompts from Paris by writer Jane Bertch is a must read. Or A Week in Paris about an American family in the City of Light.
How about some absolutely charming art, often of charming spots in Europe? Find the work of illustrator August Wren here.
Serious about Pop Culture? Me, too. I can’t help myself. I love I Say This with Love. And this one is deep dive on shallow topics in the world of PR meets Pop Culture.
And forever Tina Brown. What Fresh Hell indeed, Ms. Brown.
Events
Writers and Other Creatives!
Join me in conversation with
Writer/Meditator
April Davila
Vroman’s in Pasadena
Monday, August 17
7:00pm
You nailed it -- Seventeen Magazine is 100% to blame. Too hot! I also remember when we had to put on parkas over our Halloween costumes to go trick or treating -- sigh...
So funny that you brought up Seventeen Magazine. I saw the memory of August 1976 Seventeen Magazine posted on FB. I am sure I had that copy. I was 16 and living in Plano, Texas. It was always so hard because I did feel like I wanted to wear the plaids and boots that the cover models wore on my first day of school. It was always a challenge to wear the more subdued fall colors with a shorter sleeve and cooler fabrics.