Shoulder Season

I received the “They’re back!” text from my friend Greg in Oxford, Miss., on Monday evening. “They” were the Halloween inflatables festooning his neighbor’s lawn, as depicted in an accompanying photo: a jack-o’-lantern with a ghost flailing from each eye, Skeleton Medusa, two spiders the size of Volkswagen Beetles. Greg knows I’m appalled at the ever-earlier arrival of spooky-season décor.

Mid-September, still summer by the astronomical calendar. I went to the website of “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” for some sanity. No comfort there: “Thanksgiving Weather Forecast 2024 — With U.S. Travel Map!” the headline chirped, gleefully premature. “Who decides on the seasons,” I searched, just to be a brat. I know what’s happening: Tomorrow morning, at 8:44 a.m., the sun, heading southward, will cross the celestial equator. No matter what post-Labor Day stalwarts on Cape Cod told my colleague Steven Kurutz about September’s being a summer month, if you’re currently residing in the Northern Hemisphere, the argument’s over: Tomorrow’s fall.

I’m relieved, at this point, to stop the charade; enough with this yearning. It was 82 degrees in New York City last weekend, but it wasn’t really hot. It was a noncommittal hot, bright but withholding. When the sun went behind a building, it felt like an abandonment. I picture the months of September through December as a long slide. You’re at the top at Labor Day, maybe holding on to the railing, afraid to let go of August. By the time you get to the equinox, the descent is fully underway. You’re picking up momentum: Oct. 1, Halloween, Election Day, changing the clocks; buckle in, here come the holidays. You land at the end of December, with a flying leap into the new year (if you’re blessed), or with a thud, in a puddle (if you’re me), or you just land on your feet (a good goal for all of us).

“Don’t talk to me of solemn days / In autumn’s time of splendor,” Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote, denouncing those who would portray fall as a time of sadness and decay. I’m persuadable. Last weekend, as the sky turned pink and the sun set on an outdoor concert in Queens, I closed my eyes and tried to feel the chill enter the air, to detect the exact moment it went from short-sleeves weather to sweater weather.

The threshold between one season and another, between one moment and the next, between one way of being and the next one: There’s power there. If you can identify the demarcation and pause in it, you can turn your head one way and see where you’ve been, turn the other and see where you’re going. We’re doing so many things and moving so quickly that these moments usually slip by unacknowledged. We don’t realize we were in portal until we’ve already passed through it.

For more

• New England isn’t the only place where you can see fall foliage.

• Lindsey Zoladz’s most anticipated albums of fall.

• Fall fiction, nonfiction, movies and TV.

• I’m collecting poems that sing of the glories of this time of year. An excerpt from “Leaves” by Lloyd Schwartz:

You’ll be driving along depressed when suddenlya cloud will move and the sun will muscle throughand ignite the hills. It may not last. Probablywon’t last. But for a moment the whole worldcomes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Music

• The music mogul Sean Combs, also known as Diddy, pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, and he has been ordered to remain in jail until his trial. Read a timeline of his career and the accusations against him.

• Sophie, a pioneering hyperpop producer, died in 2021. The album she left behind, finished by her brother and studio manager, will be released next week.

• The New York Philharmonic still faces troubles as its fall season opens: It’s in the middle of labor talks, still lacks a president and chief executive and is undergoing an inquiry into sexual misconduct.

Film and TV

• An audience of nearly seven million watched this year’s Emmy Awards ceremony, an increase for the first time in three years. Jodie Foster was among the first-time acting winners. See a list.

• “Wolfs,” in which George Clooney and Brad Pitt play underground fixers, is one of 11 movies our critics are talking about this week.

• In “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore, an aging starlet uses an experimental drug to create a younger version of herself. If you enjoy it, here’s some other body horror to check out.

• Contestants in “Beast Games,” a reality competition show hosted by the YouTube star MrBeast, have sued him over what they describe as dangerous filming conditions.

• “The West Wing” debuted 25 years ago. Aaron Sorkin, its creator, spoke to The New York Times about the current political moment. Cast members visited the real White House yesterday.

Other Big Stories

• The gaming platform Roblox is ubiquitous among tweens. A fashion game called Dress to Impress has adults paying attention.

• Nelson DeMille, a prolific writer of thrillers featuring terrorist hijackings, Mafia kingpins, military malfeasance and more, died at 81.

THE LATEST NEWS

2024 Election

• Kamala Harris, campaigning in Atlanta, blamed Donald Trump for abortion bans across the U.S. and spoke about two women who died as a consequence of Georgia’s strict abortion law. “Trump is the architect of this crisis,” she said.

• The pro-Trump majority on Georgia’s State Election Board ordered counties to hand-count ballots cast on Election Day, likely delaying results. The rule could face legal challenges.

• Secret Service agents failed to communicate clearly with local law enforcement before and during the July rally where a gunman shot Trump, an internal review found.

Other Big Stories

• An Israeli airstrike on Lebanon killed a top Hezbollah commander. Lebanese officials said the bombing leveled two apartment buildings and killed at least 14 people.

• Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon this week — exploding pagers on Tuesday, an airstrike yesterday — mark a significant escalation of the war on its northern border, Patrick Kingsley writes.

• A security company formerly owned by a New York City deputy mayor got millions of dollars in city business after he began working at City Hall.

• The F.D.A. authorized an at-home nasal-spray flu vaccine, the first time it has approved a self-administered alternative to flu shots. AstraZeneca plans to make it available next fall.

• The Federal Trade Commission took legal action against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers, accusing them of inflating insulin prices to boost their profits.

• Canada is debating whether to exhume possible graves at former schools for Indigenous children. Right-wing activists increasingly question the graves’ existence.