The languid month has run its course, and I’ve pretty much run out of worthwhile aphorisms. Maybe I ran out awhile ago. In any event, I have a final bon mot that Russ Saltzman sent me a couple of weeks ago.
Never become so cynical as to believe that things can’t get worse.
Good advice. In my own case, however, there is little danger. I’m a hopeless end-of-season optimist, always sipping beer on the back porch in late August and looking forward to the crisp autumn evenings, or raking leaves in November and hoping for an early winter snow, or putting my face into a nasty March wind and sighing in anticipation of the first spring flowers.
So here’s to September and the final, departing kisses of summer warmth.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
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