The Water Cure

“Everything you have to do to get to the point of actually doing it is a hassle,” a friend groused to me recently as I extolled the virtues of swimming. I get it. If you don’t live close to a body of water, hauling yourself and your brood to the shore with all the attendant gear can be a massive hassle, like trekking the Oregon Trail. But once you arrive, once you’re in the water, is there anything so magical, so ecstatically right as floating there, your body suspended? The sun may beat down, but you’re comfortably submerged. You’re a cool and weightless mer-creature, returned to the primordial soup that formed you.

I should be clear: I do not technically swim when I’m in the water. I know swimming is incredible exercise, but when I’m in a lake or pool I want to splash and drift and look up at the sky, not toil or kick or perfect the pull of my crawl stroke. I have a group of friends, however, who are competing to see how many lake laps they can swim before Labor Day, and I’m intrigued by their industry. They take what I approach as the ultimate in relaxation and make it into an endurance sport.

August is high season for swimming the English Channel, a feat that, for a polliwog like me, is so impressive and impossible it feels hard to imagine. Twenty-one or more miles from Dover to Cap Gris-Nez, powered by your own arms and legs and all that bilateral breathing. Channel swims used to be big news. (“Willis Hanks, who walks five miles a day taking special delivery mail to the garment district, announced yesterday that he would try to swim the English Channel next month,” began a Times story from 1958.) Now, we’re accustomed to achievements of extreme athletic endurance.

Perhaps no one was more breathlessly celebrated than the first woman to make the crossing, a 20-year-old New Yorker and gold-medal Olympian named Gertrude Ederle. Monday was the 100th anniversary of Ederle’s first attempt at the Channel. She completed the swim in 1926, breaking the men’s record by nearly two hours.

If you find yourself with time when you’re not swimming this weekend, you might take a dive into Ederle’s life — archival stories about her contain delightful details. She sparred publicly with the coach for her first attempt, telling The Times, “I will never understand Mr. Wolffe’s statement that I sat around playing the ukulele when I should have been training.” At the start of her successful swim, she sang “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” to the rhythm of her stroke, while her accompanying boat crew yelled at her to conserve her breath. While she swam, the crew held up signs reading “one wheel” and “two wheels” to remind her of the red roadster her father promised her if she finished. She was, according to a member of her team, “this pretty, tiny atom of humanity in her red bathing dress.” Calvin Coolidge called her “America’s best girl.” An estimated two million people turned out for the ticker-tape parade in New York on her return.

Ederle’s story is inspiring, but not enough to make me abandon my devotion to steeping languidly in the lake while hardier aquanauts complete their 97th, 98th lap of the summer. The water doesn’t care if you’re a wader or a whale. How wonderful that it will cool you off and surround your limbs and exert its upward force on you. No matter if you’re in it to break a world record or just to lie still like a buoy, face up in the late-August sun.

THE LATEST NEWS

Trump Administration

• “Honey Don’t!,” the second solo feature by Ethan Coen, is a murder mystery that involves a sex cult and a revenge cycle. Our reviewer calls it wry, weird and sometimes cruel.

• “Lurker” is a Gen Z psychosexual thriller in the tradition of “All About Eve” and “Single White Female.” Its director spoke with The Times about the movie.

• Some parents are reliving a golden era of boy bands and girl groups thanks to their kids’ obsession with the Netflix hit “KPop Demon Hunters.”

• Spike Lee’s latest movie, “Highest 2 Lowest,” gives us Black maximalism and Denzel Washington’s best hairline yet. Our critic Wesley Morris dives into it on the “Cannonball” podcast. Watch it here.

Music

• The rising British pop-soul singer Lola Young is self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, irreverent, evasive and in-your-face. Joe Coscarelli followed her over one weekend in July.

• Taylor Swift’s upcoming 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” is being teased as a pivot back to pop bangers. The “Popcast” hosts break down why. Listen here.

More Culture

• A perfume favored by Elizabeth Taylor was nearly lost to time. Fans rescued it from extinction.

• The share of Americans who read for pleasure has fallen sharply in the last two decades, according to a recent study.

• A Los Angeles woman charged with selling the ketamine that killed Matthew Perry, the “Friends” star, has agreed to plead guilty.

GAMES OF THE PAST

We are in the era of the forever game. Many of the most popular video games today — Fortnite, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto — use pop culture collaborations and casino-like psychological tactics to entice players to return to their online worlds night after night, year after year.

That makes this a particularly interesting moment to look back on gaming in the year 2000. In that quaint period, before smartphones and social media, online gaming hadn’t yet hit the mainstream. Instead, many games were self-contained single-player experiences with affecting narratives. Others could be played for hundreds of hours on solo quests for rare loot, or deep into the night with friends on a basement couch.

One-Pot Ratatouille Pasta

Vivian Chan-Tam’s one-pot ratatouille pasta is a streamlined take on everyone’s favorite French vegetable dish. As in the classic, she cooks the vegetables in stages: the eggplant and onions first, followed by the zucchini and peppers. This brings out their deepest flavors and allows everything to cook through while still retaining some texture. Then, the raw pasta is simmered in the sauce at the end, absorbing all the good, herby flavors. Make it now while summer vegetables are at their peak.

REAL ESTATE

The Hunt: After the pandemic forced them to leave Oakland, Calif., a couple returned to realize their dream of owning a home there. Which did they choose? Play our game.

What you get for $2.8 million: A stone house in Old Lyme, Conn.; a recently renovated midcentury house in Miami; or a 1790 rowhouse in Charleston, S.C.

36 hours in Normandy: Visit the remains of William the Conqueror and take a seaside stroll.

Going away to college: These momfluencers want to help you decorate your dorm room.

Eating in: Cooking in a vacation rental can be stressful. Bring a few kitchen items from home to make it more relaxing.

ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER

Maximize your smallest spaces

With a little planning — and the right design hacks — even the tiniest spaces can feel expansive. A few tips from our experts: If you’re working with a small kitchen, loosely divide it into five zones (food prep, cooking, food storage, non-food storage, cleaning) to make it easier to figure out where your tools and equipment should be stored. For a bathroom with limited storage, choose accessories that double as décor, like vintage glassware that can hold your toothbrushes. And lastly, if a room has more than one function, being intentional about your furnishings and lighting means the difference between flow and chaos. Try a standing room divider to elegantly partition sections, or a rug or pendant light to delineate different areas. — Sofia Sokolove

GAME OF THE WEEK

And on the international side, two teams with very different histories: Taiwan, which has more titles than any country besides the U.S., takes on Aruba, which has never won a title.

The international final is today at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, and the U.S. final follows at 3:30 p.m. The winners will meet in the championship game, tomorrow at 3 p.m. All games on ABC.

NOW TIME TO PLAY