the great leslie

Let us remember the late, great E.B. White today, an essayist and the father of The New Yorker's Talk of the Town, as well as the author of some of my favorite children's books of all time.

He would have been 100 years old today. You might want to reread his famous essay Once More to the Lake. You might remember this. There's also this, which is about Maine and is a little early, but we don't care:

Late August, 9/3/1949

For us the prettiest day in all the long year is the day that comes unexpectedly at the end of August in the country. It is a cool day, freshly laundered (as though straight from the Bendix* of the gods), when the airs, the light, and a new sound from the grasses give the world a wholly changed character. On this day, summer, languishing but not really sick, receives her visitors with a certain deliberateness—a pretty girl who knows she doesn't need to stay in bed. The yellow squash illuminates the aging vine, the black-billed cuckoo taps out his hollow message in code (a series of three dots), and zinnias stand as firm and quiet as old valorous deeds. This is the day the farmer picks up the first pullet egg, a brown and perfect jewel in the grass; the day a car stops and a man gets out and tacks up a poster advertising the county fair. You couldn't get us to swap this one day for any six other days.

*Bendix Home Appliance Co. produced home laundry equipment.