Editor's Note

I feel like this summer was extra rite-of-passagier than others on recent historical record, and I therefore deserve to hurl myself extra hard into this fall’s reprieve of cooler temperatures and, more importantly, cultural events.

One of my daily rituals is going to the Health section of the ScienceDaily website and checking to see if they discovered a food or pill that can make me, like, not die.

The heat has interesting side effects. It gives our summers the flavor of a challenge, a communal trial, maybe even a shared rite, and we’re asked to adapt with composure and ingenuity.

Usually in this space, I do the opening-flourish shuffle to introduce the issue’s feature package with a bunch of hypertrophic, overheated prose. I was going to do that this month, too, but then I realized that I’d only be telling part of the story.

The phrase “road food” doesn’t exactly ring with promise. It typically calls to mind the functional fare of burgers and fries, eggs and hash browns.

I’m basically the worst house party guest on the planet because the hosts are usually half-convinced I’m side-hustling as a cat burglar.

I needed air, sunlight, solitude, the murmur of breezes moving through leaves.

I spent a heroically lazy Christmas week on the couch, possibly in the same clothes for several days in a row but that’s not a confession, alternately reading and napping in a state of what I told myself was a silently transformative chrysaloid stasis.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Brandolini’s Law. It states that the amount of energy needed to refute BS is an order of magnitude larger than that needed to produce it. I propose a corollary: The amount of theatrical bluster and outrage behind an opinion is inversely proportional to how informed that opinion is.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand about tragedy and death — aside from, of course, its own tragical deathitude — it’s that spirit-sapping side effect of making life’s everyday pleasures feel shallow and dumb.