August Is Asking a Lot of Us

There is something about August that feels like living in the doorway between two seasons.

Technically, it is still summer. Very much summer, judging by the thermometer.

The tomatoes are ripening faster than we can eat them. The zucchini have apparently entered some sort of competitive growth program. The flowers we lovingly planted in May are either glorious or staging a dramatic collapse.

And the weeds?

The weeds are thriving.

Of course they are.

Meanwhile, many of us have reached an age when looking out the window at something that needs to be done and actually going outside to do it are two very different things.

And that’s worth talking about.

The Yard Can Wait

For those of us who are older, extreme heat isn’t simply uncomfortable. It can be dangerous.

The CDC says people 65 and older are more susceptible to heat-related illness because our bodies don’t adjust to temperature changes as well as they once did. Chronic health conditions and certain medications can make that vulnerability even greater.

So perhaps one of the lessons of this particular August is this:

You do not have to prove anything to your yard.

The weeds can wait.

The tomatoes can be picked early in the morning.

The hydrangea will survive without your supervision.

And if something doesn’t survive?

There is always next spring.

Maybe aging well requires occasionally accepting that the garden works for us. We don’t work for the garden.

And Somewhere, a Backpack Is Being Packed

At the same time, millions of families are making the great August transition back to school.

New shoes.

School supplies.

Lunch boxes.

Bus schedules.

Sports practices.

Forms that were apparently designed by someone who believes parents have unlimited free time.

And beneath all that logistics is something more tender.

A kindergartner walking into school for the first time.

A middle-schooler desperately hoping to find someone familiar at lunch.

A teenager starting senior year while a parent quietly wonders how 18 years disappeared so quickly.

Parents are managing schedules and expenses and transportation, certainly.

But they’re also managing worry.

Will my child be safe?

Will they have friends?

Will they find a teacher who sees something wonderful in them?

Will they be okay?

And lately there is another question parents shouldn’t have to ask:

Can I trust the public-health information coming from my own government?

The Umbrella Over All of This

This is where our ordinary August intersects with something much larger.

Because while we’re watering tomatoes and buying notebooks and trying not to get heatstroke pulling weeds, the Trump administration continues producing decisions and pronouncements that can make every day feel like another exercise in disbelief.

The latest concerns childhood vaccines.

On August 10, President Trump signed an executive order seeking changes in how childhood vaccines are administered, including spacing vaccines across separate medical visits and breaking the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into separate shots.

The justification includes claims about vaccine safety and autism that have been repeatedly investigated and rejected by scientific research.

And this isn’t some abstract Washington policy debate.

These are children.

These are parents sitting in pediatricians’ offices trying to make responsible decisions.

These are diseases we spent generations learning how to prevent.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has maintained its own 2026 childhood immunization schedule, grounded in its review of vaccine safety, disease patterns and the evidence of vaccines’ ability to prevent disease and serious complications.

The organization says the evidence has not changed.

That distinction matters enormously.

Science isn’t supposed to tell us what we want to hear.

Science is supposed to keep asking:

What does the evidence show?

When political ideology begins dictating the answer before the evidence is considered, all of us should pay attention.

So What Do We Do With All of This?

This is the question I keep returning to.

How do we remain informed citizens without allowing every alarming headline to consume the life directly in front of us?

I don’t think the answer is disengagement.

But I also don’t think the answer is living in a permanent state of outrage.

Maybe the work is learning to hold two truths simultaneously.

Pay attention to what matters.

And…

Keep living your life.

Call your representatives.

Support good journalism.

Listen to scientists and physicians.

Vote.

Speak up when something is wrong.

But then put the phone down.

Call your daughter.

Ask your grandchild how the first day of school went.

Pick the tomato.

Read the book.

Sit outside after the sun goes down.

Laugh with someone you love.

Because protecting democracy and protecting public health are ultimately about the same thing:

Protecting the possibility of ordinary human life.

The backyard.

The classroom.

The dinner table.

The people we love sitting around it.

And perhaps that’s what I want us to remember during this hot, complicated August.

We don’t pay attention because politics deserves every minute of our lives.

We pay attention because our lives deserve protecting.

Stay cool. Stay curious. Stay engaged.

And please—leave the weeds until morning.

Julie Bolejack, MBA

The Mindful Activist

Thank you, as always, to everyone who subscribes, reads, shares these essays and occasionally sends me a note to say, “I was thinking the same thing.” I appreciate you more than you know.

If someone forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like to receive future editions, you can subscribe to The Mindful Activist and join us for thoughtful conversations about politics, culture, aging, reinvention—and this fascinating, frustrating world we’re all trying to navigate together.

BONUS: A Completely Unnecessary Investigation Into Why We Can Never Find Our Glasses

I would like to discuss one of the great unsolved mysteries of aging.

Where are my glasses?

Not your glasses specifically.

All of our glasses.

Because somewhere in America right now, a perfectly intelligent adult is walking from room to room saying:

“I JUST had them.”

This statement is apparently required.

Nobody ever loses glasses they haven’t recently possessed.

The glasses were JUST HERE.

There are several traditional locations one must search.

The kitchen counter.

The bathroom.

Beside the bed.

Inside the purse.

On top of the book you were reading.

Near the computer.

The refrigerator, because apparently at some point we all become capable of putting absolutely anything in the refrigerator.

Eventually another person enters the investigation.

“Where did you have them last?”

This is not helpful.

If I knew where I had them last, Dale, we would not currently be conducting a multiroom search operation.

Then comes the humiliating possibility.

“Are they on your head?”

No.

Surely not.

You reach upward.

There they are.

This is a difficult moment because there is no graceful recovery.

You cannot say, “Yes, obviously. I was testing you.”

Everyone knows.

The glasses have won.

But reading glasses have another supernatural ability.

They reproduce.

At some point you decide the solution is to purchase multiple pairs.

One for the bedroom.

One for the kitchen.

One for your purse.

One for the living room.

One for the car.

Now you own approximately eleven pairs of reading glasses.

And yet somehow, at 7:42 on a Tuesday evening, you cannot find a single pair.

Where did they go?

Do they meet somewhere?

Is there a tiny reading-glasses convention happening behind the sofa?

Are they with the missing socks?

And why is it that the moment you finally find one pair, three others suddenly appear?

There they are.

On the end table.

Beside the lamp.

Next to the coffee maker.

Sitting openly in places you swear you searched four minutes ago.

I don’t have an explanation for this phenomenon.

Science may never understand it.

But I do have one comforting thought.

If you’ve ever wandered around your house searching desperately for something that was already on your head, you are not alone.

You are simply a member of a very large, slightly nearsighted club.

And somewhere nearby…

your glasses are JUST HERE.