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  • The Paris Review

    The Start of Summer

    by Nina MacLaughlin May 31, 2019 5 minutes

    In this series on the summer solstice, which will run every Friday through June 21, Nina MacLaughlin wonders what summer’s made of.

    Max Pechstein, Summer in Nidden. 1919-1920

    It was early June, Saturday, midmorning on the Red Line. I was moving through tunnels beneath Cambridge when a teenager approached and asked if I wanted to take part in a memory project. Take an index card and a pen and write down a memory, any memory at all, and get one from a stranger in return. I took a card, a pen, and wrote. I handed it to her, and before we reached the next stop she returned and handed me a memory that belonged to another person on the subway car. It was written on an index card folded in half:

    On the last night of summer camp, my best friends and

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