Peak Summer
by Eric Nixon

We're steeped deep in summer
And everything around me
Seems to indicate it'll never end
But still I'm spending time
Looking for the subtle signs
Trying to figure out when
We've reached peak summer
When the billion green trees
Start to dull ever so slightly
When the bounty of vegetables
Found at all the local farm stands
Start thinning in quantity and quality
When the Halloween candy
Appears in the supermarkets
And the Back To School! signs
Show up in the big box stores
When the sun sets a little earlier
And gets a little more noticeable
Each night, night after night
Until you start thinking about
How much daylight you've lost
All of the signs and all of the things
I've been noticing are telling me
That we're right in the midst of
Peak summer and if I'm not careful
It'll be completely over
And I'll have missed it entirely
As the season folds into fall

“Peak Summer” by Eric Nixon from Equidistant. © Double Yolk Press, 2019. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It's the birthday of the Swedish journalist and novelist Stieg Larsson (books by this author), born in Skelleftehamn (1954). He originally took up fiction writing in 2001 as a way to make some extra money. He approached an editor in 2003 after he'd written two novels and started on a third; he planned 10 detective thrillers, called the Millennium Series, but he died of a heart attack the following year. His three novels were published posthumously; the Swedish title of the first volume translates as Men Who Hate Women (2005), but it's better known in the English-speaking world as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That book and its sequels — The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (2007) — have sold about 80 million copies around the world.

It's the birthday of Mary Jo Salter (books by this author), born in Grand Rapids, Michigan (1954). Salter's married to fellow poet Brad Leithauser; they met at Harvard, in a poetry class taught by Elizabeth Bishop. She's published several poetry collections, including A Phone Call to the Future (2008), Open Shutters (2005), and A Kiss in Space (1999).

When asked what she'd be if she weren't a poet, Salter said: "I'm a writer because I'm not a composer. That's what I'd really love to be — a composer of long, complex symphonies and operas! To produce the wordless power of music, to move people in that way, has always seemed to me the highest artistic goal. I'm stuck with being better at words."

It's the birthday of essayist Thomas de Quincey (books by this author), born in Manchester, England (1785). As a teenager, he showed a real aptitude for Greek; he spoke it fluently and wrote verses in that language. He moved to the Lake District in 1809 to be closer to William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his literary idols. But he eventually fell out with both of them, and, in 1813, he became hooked on opium. Chronically in debt, he had to take a job writing articles for Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine to make ends meet. He wrote more than 200 articles, but he's best remembered for Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822). It was an instant sensation and influenced later writers like Edgar Allan Poe and William Burroughs.

On this date in 1935, humorist Will Rogers (books by this author) and pilot Wiley Post, died in a plane crash flying from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Point Barrow.

Post had cobbled together the plane himself, from parts of two different Lockheed aircrafts. Lockheed knew the parts were incompatible and refused to assemble it, knowing it was unsafe. Post had also ordered pontoons for the Alaska trip, in case he needed to make a water landing, but they didn't arrive in time, so he attached two ill-fitting floats instead. The floats made the plane hard to control, and its nose tended to dip down. They hit some bad weather that made it hard to get their bearings. They landed in a lagoon to ask directions, and found they weren't too far from their destination. They took off again, but the engine stalled when they were just 50 feet up. The plane's nose dropped and the craft hit the lagoon, and Post and Rogers died instantly.

On this date in 1843, the amusement park known as Tivoli Gardens opened in Copenhagen, Denmark. It's the second oldest amusement park in the world; the oldest is in nearby Klampenborg. It was designed it mainly as a pleasure garden, with flowers, cafés, theaters, and bandstands set in a lovely park setting. In 1943, Nazi sympathizers bombed it, burning most of the buildings to the ground, but rebuilding started immediately and the park reopened just a few weeks later.

It's the birthday of Denise Chávez (books by this author) born in Las Cruces, New Mexico (1948), a town just 40 miles from the Mexican border.

After earning two master's degrees, Chávez went to work on her first novel. Face of an Angel was published in 1994 to high critical acclaim. The novel includes excerpts from the diary of the protagonist, who is a career waitress, as well as a waitress etiquette and philosophy manual. Chávez herself had spent more than 30 years waiting tables.

Today is the birthday of Sir Walter Scott (books by this author), born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1771. He is responsible for many famous phrases, including "blood is thicker than water" and "O, what a tangled web we weave, / When first we practise to deceive!"