Summer Weather Is Almost Here!

Staying cool with a vintage Madras sports jacket in early September 2018.

A selection of personal photographs today, from various late spring and summer seasons gone by, that illustrate how to beat the heat while looking somewhat more presentable than most men traipsing through life in 2019.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

A selection of warm weather neckties. The three at far left were purchased new over several years. The rest were thrifted or, in the case of the four cotton Madras numbers at center, purchased from a vintage clothier.

A nod to my North Carolina roots. Yours truly barbecuing two pork shoulders during Memorial Day weekend in 2008. Red slaw and hushpuppies with copious amounts of sugary Lipton iced tea completed the meal once the pork had cooled enough to pull for sandwiches. This was back in the days when The Grand Duchess and I could still find the time to ride 200 miles a week on our road bikes between May-August, so we were able to inhale as much of the stuff as possible in a sitting without worrying about the sheer number of calories.

Yours truly in his old basement office just a month of so before we decamped for Mid-Michigan in June 2015.

A few pairs of shorts that see considerable wear between May and late September each year barring the odd chilly, rainy day or two.

A selection of my warm weather short-sleeved shirts: Madras, seersucker, twill, and knit polo.

One of the vintage Madras neckties shown above. This one, by Rooster, was actually made in Sri Lanka.

A linen sports jacket from Southwick that is usually paired with a lighter colored pair of odd linen pants.

The upper half of vintage seersucker suit from Abercrombie & Fitch before it became the purview of the junior high school set, as cool as the Polo linen suit that hangs next to it in my wardrobe.

A Belvest cotton suit worn with a panama hat. Yes. I could be an extra in the hotel lobby scenes from The Maltese Falcon.

Comments

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

The Power of Ideas. . .

T he end is nigh! The autumn semester/term approaches. And while we still have almost two months of summer left according to the calendar, "Summer is over and gone," as the crickets sang in Charlotte's Web . At least for those of us who head back to the classroom in less than a month. In advance of a meeting with my program director late Monday morning, I spent about 40 minutes total during the weekend to jot down several ideas about planned workshops and related activities for the coming 2024-2025 academic year. At an opportune moment, I mentioned "I have a few ideas," and opened my leather portfolio. My director was highly receptive to almost everything I suggested, and we had a very productive planning session for just over 90 minutes. Just about everything I sketched out on Sunday aligns with his own ideas. It's nice when meetings go that well, and two related things occur to me in hindsight. One, it pays to exercise...

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 19...

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