Winter, it is generally agreed, is the harshest season. But summer may be the cruelest. It offers its promises with soft, welcoming arms only to snatch them away.
Read MoreWinslow Homer’s “Summer Night” (1890), oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Each summer, I dream of spending part of it by the sea as I did as a child. Never happens. Maybe summer disappoints, because we expect too much of it.