Jenifer’s Shelter Island Journal: Midsummer madness

Today, Sunday, June 21, at 4:24 a.m., marked the summer solstice, that moment when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, resulting in the maximum amount of daylight in 2026. 

Summer Solstice? Is it just me, or has this year blown by like an express freight train?  I haven’t even had time to not fulfill my New Year’s resolutions. The solstice is also considered to be the beginning of storied “Midsummer.” Wait, how can it be the first day of summer and yet already be at its mid-point?  A.I. has the answer to that: “It’s called ‘Midsummer’ at the start of summer because historically, ancient cultures divided the year into only two seasons: summer and winter. In these old calendars, ‘summer’ spanned from the spring equinox to the autumn equinox, making the summer solstice the exact middle of the season.”

But the thing about Midsummer is that it is a time, according to treemystic.org, “When the veil between worlds was considered to be thin and otherworldly encounters could occur that much more easily than at other times … across cultures believed to be a period of good fortune and fertility marked by rituals, festivals, mischief and magic.”  

There’s a reason why Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is such a timeless favorite. It captures the gamut of folly, foolishness, romance, heartbreak and sheer magic causing havoc in three intersecting realms of existence — the fantastical, the aristocratic and the quotidian. Everything is out of balance, exaggerated and illusory, with the line between fact and fantasy not smudged but shattered.

Maybe Midsummer’s approach this year is particularly poignant because there are so many aspects of it that seem to have become a way of life for many of us in the past decade or so. It’s one thing to experience a finite period of possibilities and puzzlement, even transformations, a couple of times a year, or watch a delightful play that, within a couple of hours, provides a resolution to all the misadventures and restores the balance between Nature and humanity. However, when, due to many factors, including unbridled technology and unchecked destruction of foundational norms, we find ourselves living in the confusion and that persists, in fact, increases, day after day, it becomes a lot less entertaining. 

Maybe that’s an indication that the “madness” part has kicked in. “Midsummer madness” has its own definition. From vdict.com: “Extreme folly or irrational behavior referring to a temporary state of lunacy often associated with the excitement of Midsummer … implying an action or mindset that is wildly unreasonable or out of character.”

Except it’s feeling a lot less temporary, and a lot more year-round.

Speaking of lunacy, many midsummers ago, I was on the ferry coming over to the Island one evening. I guess I was in the passenger cabin at first, but then I walked out onto the deck and came face to face with a full moon so freakishly enormous that I literally shrank back in terror.

Turns out that, though somewhat more frequent in the summer months, this “moon illusion,” as it’s called, occurs throughout the year. As NASA describes it, “Photographs prove that the moon is the same width near the horizon as when it’s high in the sky, but that’s not what we perceive with our eyes. Thus, it’s an illusion rooted in the way our brains process visual information … but there’s still not a satisfying scientific explanation for exactly why we see it.” 

Whatever accounts for this quirk in our perception, I am seeing our present national situation in much the same way. It took that magnificent but terrible moon an hour or so, but eventually it rose up in the night sky and assumed a more conventional proportion.  The problem is, this present phenomenon, lodged on our national horizon, appears to be swelling, not shrinking. Even if it is essentially harmless in terms of real strength and power, like the Stay-Puff marshmallow monster in Ghostbusters, just its size alone can do terrible damage. 

This whole year of 2026 seems magnified somehow. Everything that’s happened so far, and everything that is slated to occur in the next several months has taken on a huge significance. Where’s Puck when we need him?

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended —

That you have but slumbered here,

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend.

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

If we have unearned luck

Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long

Else the Puck a liar call.

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.