Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Summer has another flavor

Read this before you pour it down the drain

Published June 9, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)

A version of this essay first appeared in The Bite, Salon's food newsletter. Sign up for early access to articles like this, plus recipes, food-related pop culture recommendations and conversations about what we're eating, how and why.

Summer is a strange season in adulthood.

When you’re a kid, it arrives all at once: the last school bell, the first trip to the pool, the permission slip feeling of a completely unscheduled Tuesday. But for those of us who don’t work in education and don’t have school-aged children, summer tends to seep in more gradually. It arrives disguised as ordinary life.

Maybe it’s the airport gate before a long-planned vacation. Maybe it’s the local pool opening on Memorial Day weekend. Maybe it’s simply the annual ritual of wrestling your air conditioner out of storage.

For me, this year, summer began with a dress.

At 8 a.m. on Memorial Day, I boarded a plane in Kentucky after a family visit and landed at O’Hare two hours later. The weather was sunny and just sticky enough that, before calling my Uber home, I ducked into an airport bathroom and changed out of my jeans and into a forest-green knit tennis dress I’d packed in my carry-on.

It’s something I used to do on vacation, especially in my early 20s — change clothes before the hotel check-in, before the trip had technically begun. A........

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