To summer, such as it is--which, let's be honest, is surely good enough.

{Photo by rocketlass.}

On a lovely, still night that I would call unusually cool if it weren't in keeping with what we seem to be being offered in lieu of summer this year, what better than open windows, Blossom Dearie, and very dry martinis--

great, wing-shaped glasses of perfumed fire, tangy as the morning air,

as Elaine Dundy describes them in The Dud Avocado. I can't find Blossom Dearie's version of Irving Kahal and Harry Richman's "Moonlight Savings Time," the song that best captures tonight's mood, but this big band version by the High Hatters will surely do:



And if I may be allowed to trifle with the great Dr. Johnson's words, I'll swap gin for wine in these lines of conversation recorded by our friend Boswell, and be the happier for it:

Yes, Sir: but yet we must do justice to wine; we must allow it the power it possesses. To make a man pleased with himself, let me tell you, is a very great thing.

A glass to summer, and a glass, as always, to books.