Right here, right now | The Spectator

The season for seersucker

'To every thing there is a season,' we read in Ecclesiastes, and summer is the season for seersucker. No fabric is better suited for long summer days. Its lightness reflects the sun. Its pucker ventilates the skin. Rather than avoid the heat, seersucker dresses up for the hot occasion. Summers in New York are infernally hot. Seersucker makes it livable, if not always desirable. Since fashion dictates that seersucker only emerge between Memorial Day and Labor Day — timing that varies as you head south — its absence also makes its return that much more rewarding. As the weather warms, out it comes, radiating the light of summers past.

William Cook

Gibraltar rocks on

Tourists take the cable car to the Top of the Rock to pester the monkeys that live at the summit, but the best thing about this clifftop arena is the view. Standing on the cliff edge, gazing down at the big ships traversing the busy strait below, you realize what makes Gibraltar so important. Spain lies behind you, Morocco lies ahead. To your left is the Mediterranean and, on your right, the wild Atlantic. This is the bridgehead between Africa and Europe, the gateway between the Old World and the New. No wonder Britain has always been so determined to hold onto it. Whoever controls the Rock controls this narrow strait and all the traffic that passes through it, about a quarter of the world’s shipping.

Matt McDonald

In defense of Spirit Airlines

What is the greatest American airline? Some might argue United, though chances are they’re the ones who haven’t been dragged off after a seating mix-up. Others appreciate Delta for their posturing over Georgia’s voting law — because there’s nothing like being hectored about The Literal End of Democracy from 30,000 feet. If you’re nails-down-a-chalkboard irritating, you might just love Southwest for the cabin crew’s open-mic-night-at-the-Comedy-Cellar patter. All of you are plane wrong. The correct answer is Spirit Airlines. For too long has Spirit been the punchline of hastily written Saturday Night Live jokes. This airline is unapologetically true to itself. With its yellow and black hazard-tape branding, Spirit is for flyers who like to live dangerously.

Dot Wordsworth

The hijacking of the Scots language

A teenager in North Carolina has been revealed as the creator of a fifth or even a half of the 60,000 entries in the Scots Wikipedia. This online resource is like Wikipedia in English, except that it is in the Scottish tongue — not Gaelic, but the Lowland Scots dialect of English, a Germanic language. Robert Burns was familiar with it, but unfortunately the energetic Wikipedia compiler was not. Even his American English seems shaky. He has been at it since the age of 12. ‘The Roman Catholic Kirk is the lairgest Christian denomination in aw the warld,’ begins one entry. ‘Ane oot o ilka sax humans belangs this kirk. It is lead bi the Pape an it haes ower ae billion follaers.’ Some now ask how this could have gone on for years without anybody much noticing.

Bill Kauffman

In the footsteps of Shoeless Joe

A visit to another state should be prefaced by reading one of its poets, so for a trip to Greenville, South Carolina, I chose Henry Timrod, the poet laureate of the Confederacy, over Hootie and the Blowfish. ‘Cling to the lowly earth, and be content!’ commanded Timrod, a favorite of Bob Dylan’s. The Nobelist borrowed a few words (‘along yon dim Atlantic line’) from Timrod for ‘Cross the Green Mountain’, an eight-minute Stonewall Jackson-flavored masterpiece he wrote for Ron Maxwell’s Civil War film Gods and Generals (2003). Dylan, an equal opportunity sampler, also filched lines for the song from ‘Come up from the fields father’ by that barbaric yawper of the Union, Walt Whitman.

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

The error of idealism

‘He who is not a republican at 20 compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after 30, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.’ Thus spake M. Anselme Polycarpe Batbie, a 19th-century French academic jurist whose sentiments, variously phrased, have also been attributed to John Adams, François Guizot and Georges Clemenceau. A generous heart and the ability to learn from experience are very good things, certainly. An even better one is common sense: a native attribute that age does not diminish. Mencken claimed that he had never changed his mind on any matter of importance. Donald Trump said in regard to John McCain that he preferred war heroes who didn’t get captured. Myself, I like thinkers who were right from the beginning —and stayed that way.

Life