This Long Summer Works For Me

Excerpts from The New York Times' The Long Not Summer: A Calendar Quirk Stretches the Season By N. R. Kleinfield

In one of those calendar quirks that can sneak up you, Labor Day, the marker of summer’s conclusion, arrives as late as it possibly can this year, on Sept. 7.

With Memorial Day having shown up on May 25, its earliest arrival, this has been one very, very long summer. It hasn’t always felt that way, of course, since it did nothing but rain for so much of the season. But long it has been....

...Nonetheless, with an inexhaustible summer there is no end to the things you can accomplish. The extra time can clear out all those leftover projects that did not fit into a conventional timeframe.

People can be excused if they were not better prepared for Labor Day’s lateness. The calendar does get messy. Memorial Day, of course, is now always the final Monday of May, and Labor Day the first Monday of September. Every time Memorial Day appears at its earliest designation, May 25, Labor Day plods in at its latest, Sept. 7, making for the longest unofficial summer conceivable.

These lengthy summers basically occur five times every 28 years, in a staggered, recurrent sequence. The last Sept. 7 Labor Day was 1998. Before then, it happened in 1992, 1987 and 1981. Then it was 11 years again, back to 1970.