August, the Month of Big Feelings
August is a weird month.
I'd started to sketch out my thoughts on the matter a few days ago in preparation for this week's newsletter, and then realized that I'd expressed nearly the same sentiment here almost exactly one year ago:
August stinks.
I don’t mean this in a slangy, pejorative, Jay Shermanesque manner; I mean, it literally stinks. I stepped out onto our back patio earlier this week, and the combination of recent heavy rains, already-simmering heat and stifling humidity had brought forth a rotten smell in the air—nowhere comparable to the hot-garbage smells of my New York City summers past, but by no means pleasant either. I immediately clocked the stench for what it is: a harbinger of the season’s final evolution. The playful warmth of June and the festive frizzle of July have fallen away, and we find ourselves face to face with August, the boss battle of months. Summer journey’s culminates here, and if we’re going to make it fall, we’re going to have to fight our way through. Temperatures in the mid-90s barely tell half the story, as dew points nearing 80 conspire with them to make the whole world feel like a car that had a sandwich left in it on a hot day. (We are the sandwich in this analogy.)
To dwell on these negatives is to miss out on the genuine pleasures of the month, though. Yes, August is a sweltering, stinky mess, one where the only form of relief is the occasional severe storm—but it’s also a time of still-warm tomatoes fresh from the vine, juicy sweet corn, plump berries and melons so ripe they’re dripping. It’s the season for the state fair and the boardwalk, baseball that starts to mean something and afternoons that mean nothing. It may not be the best month (that’s October, prove me wrong), but it’s arguably the Most Month, a bold-italic-underline season lacking in subtetly but loaded with swagger. At the end of it, there will be a new year of sorts: school starting fresh, marching bands heralding the return of football, schedules re-forming after three months of slow dissolution.
(That was a pretty good newsletter.)
Scott Hines
Yes, August is a time of Big Feelings–of relishment and revulsion, of overstimulation and ennui, of beginnings and endings and somehow also interminable middles. It's a lot!
I feel that muchness more strongly than ever this week, as a new school year dawns for my kids.
(Depending on where you live, it might surprise you to hear that our school year here in Louisville started yesterday. You might even find yourself saying "that's too early for school to start!", and though I agree it is not what I was accustomed to in my own school days, having just been subjected to eleven weeks of YouTube Fortnite tutorials and snack wrappers everywhere, I can assure you that it is in fact not one moment too early.)
My oldest started middle school yesterday, something that should confound me, seeing as how he's still five years old and I'm still 27. I'm not going to get hung up on the mathematics of it, though. Instead, I'm holding my breath for him, as middle school presents its own invincible August. It's a time of excitement and discovery–you're not a little kid anymore!–and of angst and confusion and bewilderment at a strange new world. (You're not a little kid anymore.) Some of my strongest childhood memories come from my middle school years, both good and bad: memories of friendships that meant everything, crises that ultimately meant nothing, of discovering Oasis and Green Day and Monty Python, of finding out years later that the punk eighth-grader on the bus only stopped picking on me because my older brother kicked his ass.
My son is a different person who belongs to a different era, and I know his experiences will be worlds different than mine. He's a terrific kid, smart and funny and more confident in his own skin that I ever was at his age. I trust that he's going to dive in head-first and make the most of what lies ahead of him.
But, man... you're in for a hell of a ride, bro.
Friends, it's Friday once again at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.
I've obviously got some big feelings today, but I've also got some big offerings below the paywall break. I'm diving into the Most Month with relish, offering up a super-seasonal carb-load, a hyper-local cocktail, a new contender for ACBN Album of the Year, a book that speaks to one of my favorite fixations, pets, and more!
Let's cook.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, things of that nature
As noted in today's intro, my greatest joy this time of year is the bounty of produce that peaks this time of year. My modest garden is producing tomatoes faster than I can use them. I roasted a batch of Hatch chiles this past weekend with no particular plan for them simply because the store had them in stock. (More on that next week, probably?) There's zucchini and squash and berries and melons... and, of course, there's sweet corn.
Fresh sweet corn is the kind of thing that's worth skidding to a stop along a country road for, and it might be the most versatile member of August's bounty. With a long training run on my schedule this past weekend, I was in need of a carb-load, and I didn't want to pull a Michael Scott by eating a dairy-heavy pasta dish.
Some sweet corn and a powerful blender meant I didn't have to.
