From the Style archives comes this sumptuous saga of being young in D.C. and heading for the Eastern Shore, written 32 years ago next week by current New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller. Leave your brains on the Bay Bridge…
D.C. policeman Bill Norton measures the distance between women’s knees and the bottom of their bathing suits at the Tidal Basin bathing beach in June 1922. That summer, the superintendent of D.C. public buildings and grounds ordered that suits not be more than six inches above the knee.
Let’s hope Officer Norton isn’t in Rehoboth Beach, Del., this weekend…
Lamon Rogers, in his Grand Rapids backyard, becomes our official summer buddha. Excellent heat gallery here.
Photo by Rex Larsen (AP)
"People are confused about the weather of Washington. I shall explain basics: Winter is cold. Summer is hot. Every year these truths hit the populace with the force of a thunderbolt. … There is a strong connection between complaints against summer and general idiocy."
— Henry Mitchell, in a 1984 essay in Style. Read the whole wonderful piece here.
It is 1:16 p.m., which means summer just started. Earlier this morning a couple greeted the rising solstice sun from the ancient observatory Kokino in Macedonia. Photo by Robert Atanasovski (AFP/Getty)
"Press close bare-bosom’d night — press close magnetic nourishing/ night!/ Night of south winds — night of the large few stars!/ Still nodding night — mad naked summer night."
— Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass.”
