The Wine of Summer

Taste, and remember all the summer days

Taste, and remember all the summer days
That lie, like golden reflections in the lake
Of vanished years, unreal but sweet always;
Soft luminous shadows that I may not take
Into my hands again, but still discern
Drifting like gilded ghosts before my eyes.
Beneath the waters of forgotten things.
Sweet with faint memories

—from “Wine of Summer” by Lord Alfred Douglas

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On the other side of solstice, I’m thinking about the pervasive presence of AI and what it means to be an American. Here are some notes from week 27 of 2025:

- Sky the color of salmon and chicory just before sunrise on an early morning run

- This episode on The Grey Area about the catastrophic effect of AI on higher education. Will we lose our ability to think critically as a society? Are we entering a post-literate society?

- James Baldwin’s insightful reflections on the past and what makes an American:

“I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly,” from his essay “Autobiographical Notes.”

“The making of the American begins at that point where he rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land,” from “Many Thousands Gone.”

- The cinematography, music, and scope of story in 28 Years Later, a film that lingered in my imagination for days after and provoked questions about what it means to exist as human.

- Learning about the presence of Saint Thomas Christians in Kerala since the 1st century CE, a state on the Malabar Coast of India, in Abraham Verghese’s epic and sweeping 2023 novel, The Covenant of Water.

- The delicious exhaustion unique to sun-drenched, heat-filled days on/near/in water

- The delicate dance of parenting three kids during summer break while also working full-ish time

Happy Sunday!