July is in full swing here in New York. The sticky heat of the city has set in, and while humidity is the default in the river valley we call home, it’s not quite the same when it’s accompanied by the smell of hot garbage instead of honeysuckle blooms. So we’re longing for a different kind of summer day, below the Mason-Dixon Line and accompanied by the sounds of rain on tin roofs, the gentle hum of rural roadways, and the snapping of green beans on a covered porch. And maybe, if we’re lucky, a thunderstorm will roll on through.

Art: “Rural Highway, Southern Georgia after Rainstorm,” Raymond Smith (1974, gelatin silver print)

Poem: “Haiku 228,” Richard Wright

Book: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Song: “The Spiritual,” Jukebox the Ghost

Video: “Letters to July // 16,” Emily Diana Ruth

Quotation: “A Southern moon is a sodden moon, and sultry. When it swamps the fields and the rustling sandy roads and the sticky honeysuckle hedges in its sweet stagnation, your fight to hold on to reality is like a protestation against a first waft of ether.” — Zelda Fitzgerald

Photos via: Ogden Museum, @PERSILCHEN