(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Kitchen Table Kibitzing 6/23/2026: Hot and Cold [1] ['Belinda Ridgewood', 'Matthew Adarichev', 'Meteor Blades', 'Chitown Kev'] Date: 2026-06-23 Good evening, Kibitzers! Astronomical summer is only a couple of days old, but most of us have already had some ferocious hot weather. We (even I) tend to feel reflexively favorable to summer because we were trained by school vacations that SUMMER GOOD, but even the season’s most relentless advocates have to admit, I think, that it’s gotten out of hand. Predictably so, and humans’ fault for sure, but still. And those of us who prefer winter are especially miserable when it’s 110°. In this KTK, I’m sharing some snowy videos I turn to when I am feeling particularly overheated, but also, some songs that pay tribute to summer. Because all of us can enjoy both seasons, as long as the said seasons are confined to the screen and not bothering anyone! (Links in the winter section are to the channels; links in the summer section are artist Wikipedia pages.) Tiny Cabin Life: Jack likes cabins. Sometimes he goes to his family’s cabin in the Minnesota woods with his wife and baby, and sometimes he goes off on guy adventures with some bros. But I like the ones where he goes to a teeny cabin he built in a different Minnesota forest, with only his dog Ellie, to stay through some kind of big storm; today’s is a blizzard. He always builds some fires and constructs questionable breakfast burritos, but it’s a cozy cabin and Ellie is adorable. ❧ [22:10] Cecilia Blomdahl: Cecilia is a young Swedish woman who lives on Svalbard, Norwegian islands about midway between Norway and the North Pole. Her isolated house is a ways out of the town of Longyearbyen, on the coast. She lives there with her boyfriend, and her dog Grimm, whom she addresses in Norwegian because he’s a Norwegian dog. In this video, her boyfriend is away and a giant snow-and-wind storm is arriving, and on top of that, they’re still in polar night so it never gets lighter than twilight. Cecilia is up to the challenge, though — you’ll notice she has no issue with lugging 100 lbs of firewood. I chose this video because the footage of the storm is seriously over the top. (If you just want to see the storm, slide to 20:49, for example.) ❧ [41:43] Alaska Cabin Adventures: Matt also likes cabins, but in a far more serious way. As a kid in Washington state, he was entranced by a PBS show on a man who’d built an off-grid cabin in Alaska, and he was bent on doing the same. So he did, and now his place somewhere along the Iditarod trail has a cabin and several outbuildings, all of which he built himself and maintains in the face of various travails, accompanied by his dog Norman, a short-haired husky. In this episode, three and a half feet of snow fall in a couple of days. ❧ [14:44] Chanticleer Garden in Pennsylvania has been the topic of a KTK before. They make a short video every week to show what’s blooming or otherwise happening there. If you’re tired of howling blizzards, this is some very lovely calm drone footage of gardens in the snow. ❧ [2:10] And in a similar spirit, George Winston plays his short piece Night Part 1: Snow. ❧ [1:54] Onward to the summer music! Ella Fitzgerald: Summertime. ❧ [3:40] John Sebastian and Steve Boone of The Lovin’ Spoonful, with NRBQ: Summer in the City. ❧ [3:20] Sly and the Family Stone: Hot Fun in the Summertime. ❧ [2:48] The Drifters: Under the Boardwalk. ❧ [2:41] Seals & Crofts: Summer Breeze. ❧ [3:43] Well, it seems as if all our KTK political song parodists, who were AWOL for a while, have collected themselves and are ready to push on! The past couple of days have brought us two three good new songs about the reflecting pool debacle. The first, the other day, is from Patrick Fitzgerald. Its tune is the Doobie Brothers’ Black Water. ❧ [4:18] The other, from just yesterday, is from Rocky Mountain Mike. The tune is the theme from the 1966 Michael Caine film Alfie; it’s a tricky one, handled ably here by Mary in Ann Arbor. ❧ [2:28] Tuesday evening: This is what I’m talking about — here’s the second reflecting pool song in 24 hours by Rocky Mountain Mike, this one posting about 90 minutes before this diary. The tune here is Little River Band’s Cool Change. ❧ [2:34] [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/23/800059441/community/kitchen-table-kibitzing-6-23-2026-hot-and-cold/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/