Devil's Hatband

Hot. Hot like the hell. Another round of temperatures exceeding the 100° mark, and it looks like we are headed for 110° in the next two days or so. Folks are predicting new records for the KCMO area. I am inclined to believe them. This is heat I haven't felt for some time, and never for so long. The yard is turning into brown chaff faster than sprinklers can restore it. When I look out the window I sigh and shake my head.

"There is nothing to be done," intones the hollow voice in my head. We water, we "tsktsk", we wonder: when will it rain? Rain enough to make a difference? I grow tired of waiting.

Drought conditions persist, not enough work, water or money. August is approaching. This means I am facing ten months without an architecture job of which to speak. This means that the rain has stopped. The cisterns such as I had are swiftly draining. I can see the bottoms now, this makes me very nervous. I have lost my rain-making juju. This vexes me greatly.

The lake level has dropped, you can see the stumps now. There is baked mud where used to be pond weed and lilies, frogs and fish. The trails of dying fish can be seen in the hard grey earth of the dry bottom. They flipped and flopped, gasping for air in the heat, perhaps not comprehending their fate. I can only know by imagination what they felt. The idea of suffocating in air, gills drying out, tongue blackening, is truly unsettling. I don't know it physically. I do know it mentally. My bad dreams have shown me the path into the desert.

Grim, I know. Not the sort of thing we really enjoy discussing in polite company. I try to avoid inflicting these inner terrors on those around me, and those for whom I care. I am, as you may have noticed, not a complete success in that endeavor. Witness the words I spill for you now.

I stepped out in the heat today, on multiple occasions. There were errands to run, lunch to be had, sprinklers to be adjusted. While I was out, I saw that the flower bed at the front of the house was suffering an incursion of pesky grasses and bindweed. This was a bit much for me, having been parked in front of my computer trying to piece together some fragmented areas of my domestic life. I was in an ornery state. The agitation arising from my contemplation of the figuratively disappearing lake spurred me into action. The grasses and the weeds, they didn't stand a chance.

I ripped. I pulled. I tore out handfuls of vegetation, reveling in the discharge of energy. It felt good to flex and move. The heat made me sweat profusely, but even that felt invigorating. As is often the case, the distraction of a well-defined task allowed my mind to let go of some Stuff. This freed it up in turn to contemplate some Things. Things like that slowly evaporating lake in my mind.

If the idea of vanishing water and sun-baked stumps seemed bleak, the lower level of the lake also presented opportunities. That which was once hidden by the murky water was now coming to light again. What used to be wreckage could now be salvaged. Ideas and ambitions, hopes and fears, exposed again to the light of the day-mind. Now I could wade into the shallows and drag them back to higher ground. Something good could be reclaimed from things I believed to be lost.

Cool water splashes on my calves and back. In my peregrinations around the flowerbed, I had wandered into the arc of the sprinkler out in the yard. The shock of the water reminded me by contrast, of the heat. The mirage in my head popped out of existence and I came back to this world. The sun burned like a plasma cutter and I heard the voice of my father saying "It's hotter than the Devil's hatband out there!"

I wipe the sting from my eyes. There was curse making its way to the tip of my tongue, but I swear I could taste a little lake water there, so I bite back on the epithets. The Devil's hatband might as well be on my brow, the sweat pouring down my face in direct contradiction to the drought all around me. The drought, though, seems less threatening. It's change that creates difficulties which can be hard to overcome. Still, with change comes opportunity. The heat may brown the grass and dry the leaves, but this time I'll save the seeds I've gathered, in anticipation of the rains I know will surely come.

Sunday Meditation #18: Time Away from Love

Struggling in the midst of chores, I wonder: why do we spend so much time not doing that which we love to do? How is it that the balance of life always tilts away from the heart?

It is the reason this meditation is so short.  I was so caught up in maintenance I had little time for wonder.  There is so much more I wanted to write about, but it wasn't meant to be.

If I could, I would write most of the time.  I would imagine great things, and then sweep the floor.

New for 2012: The 2-Door (Hatch) Back Spasm!

Maybe its just me.  Whenever I see the little car known as the Fit (by a car maker whose name rhymes with "Rhonda"), I cannot help but laugh.

You see, when I read the word Fit, I don't think of it in the senses of "appropriate for the circumstances" or "suiting the dimensions and shape of something".  I mean, I do, but not when I see that word applied to car.  When I see it capitalized and in a logo, my mind automatically leaps to the definition of fit as in "having a tantrum" or "a state of being characterized by involuntary spasms, tics or outbursts, and usually associated with extreme emotional upset".

So when I see the Fit on the roadways?  I laugh, and I hope there won't be a fit.  What about you?

Schlubs

I'll own up now, I am not a fashion plate.  Never have been, probably never will be.  I clean up well but sartorial endeavors are generally not on my screen for most of daily life.  So I'm not sure just how much credibility I have in this particular area of human interest.

This is not to say I am completely ignorant of how to dress, or what to wear, or at least how to put on clothes and not look like a dweeb when I leave the house.  Most of the time I do want to maintain a minimum standard of neatness and decorum, just by personal inclination.  What that means is that sometimes I even tuck in my t-shirts.  And I don't go grocery shopping in flip flops and cutoffs.

Which brings me to the subject of this post:  Schlubs, and the women they inflict themselves upon.

I took Wee Lass out for dinner over the weekend, after which we went for a stroll down the main street to window shop and have ice cream.  Something was bugging me, though, something that started during dinner and came into full bloom while we were out walking.  There were an unusual number of schlubs out that evening.  It started with the guy in the restaurant who was wearing a tank top and what looked like satin basketball shorts, along with bizarro black tennis shoes complete with red piping.  He looked like he had just crawled out of a hamper.

His wife (I assume she was his wife, they were eating together with two kids and behaving like a family unit) on the other hand was dressed casually, too, but so much more put together.  Simple black top with white capri pants and canvas deck shoes.  Maybe not knock-'em-dead elegant, but it looked good.  It looked like she gave a hoot about simple things like matching! and neat! and 'I didn't just get up!'.

When we left the restaurant I was sensitized to the phenomenon, as I really started to notice the walking fashion victims attached to arms of (for the most part) much more 'with it' lady companions.  Wrinkled t-shirts, river rat shoes, baggy cargo shorts, ragged jeans with flip-flops and far too many logos for beer and cars and drinking establishments.  All of these contrasted with nice summer dresses, well-fitting shorts, interesting shoes (I confess, my knowledge of womens shoe etiquette is sketchy), even just simple tops and intriguing accessories.  While it wasn't a top hat and tails evening, just a casual weekend night out, the ladies looked a lot better than the dudes.  Like they actually thought about it.  The guys, they made me wonder in some cases if they had scintillating personalities (or money) or if maybe they were just plain lucky to be in the company of the women with them.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was wearing a plain tan t-shirt (tucked in), off white shorts and canvas tan casual shoes with light brown laces.  I wouldn't have won any awards for world-class casual dress, no doubt, I felt I could hold my own against the Larry, Darryl and Darryls out that night.  My daughter was wearing a casual summer top over flower-patterned shorts, along with her favorite golden sandals

To paraphrase Al Pacino in And Justice For All..."Don't you care, guys?  don't you even care?".

I know it isn't earth-shattering, maybe even flirts with shallowness, but I bring this up because I didn't used to care. And now?  I do.  I don't know why, I just do.  While I'm not so much a block head that I would try to outshine the sun, I do want feel like I belong in the same part of the sky.  And that means, for better or worse, that I have to care about how I shine.

Now I Don't Know What To Put On My French Fries

WTH, G**gl*?

The targeted ads?  You think you could improve the algorithms that govern how the sidebar ads get selected?  Because I've seem some bizarro stuff in my sidebar, but this takes the cake.

Right now, on the side of my email window are four ads.  Three of them are for new cars.  Nothing in the email that was on display said anything about new cars, but not so out there, ya know?

The fourth ad?

It says "Vinegar Douche: Learn about new ways to freshness."

I didn't see any references to condiments, seasonings or flavorings.  How does this even happen?

(sigh)

I'm feeling a little uncomfortable about my next order of fries.  Thanks, G**gl*.

Friday, Friday, Gotta Get...F*%k No I Don't!

For all the hoopla over Rebecca Black's video for "Friday" I can say I have successfully avoided having watched it, although I feel like I have based on all the chatter that has besmirched the interwebs since it hit YouTube. And at this point it I doubt I ever will.  After all, with all the stuff I've read about it, I feel like I don't have to see it.

One thing I've learned, from all the time I've spent on the internet, reading, writing, catching up on current events and just plain goofing off, is that time is definitely precious.  It doesn't behoove me anymore to waste time on stuff that appears to be blatantly crap.  I have a feeling that, just like with William Hung of American Idol fame, the commentary on the content is, in the main, more interesting than the content itself.

I make no claims for the quality of my own stuff I've put on the web, but I like think that I've given you, the readers, some quality content for your investment of time.  I also like to think that I have successfully avoided the self-delusion that just because something can be done, that I can do it.  Nothing wrong with playing to your strengths.

Perhaps the problem is that technology and the new media has made it so easy for content to be generated, that far too many think they can really generate it.  I wish, wish, wish that there was a way for technology to make people honestly assess themselves and their capabilities.

I'm sure there are a lot of pleasant people out there, who like to sing or dance or make videos...but desire in no way automatically translates to worthiness.  I daydream about a technology that can allow me to filter enormous amounts of content and make judgments about its quality before I invest too much time ingesting it all...wait...that tech already exists...

...and its called a "brain".  Imagine that.  Time to reset the filters.

Sonic Truth

If you ever want to know the truth about life, the universe or simply what is in your heart, take heed of the sounds all around you.  Shut your mouth, open your ears and listen.

I have heard the truth, my friends, oh yes I have.  The swish of wipers on a windshield and the sizzle of tires on rain-slick pavement.  A train horn in the cool of the night has shouted gospel to me across the river, this I know, because I have heard it, heard it speak.  I have heard it in that pause in the music when switching from station to another.  I have heard it the music itself, fast or slow, loud or soft.

Truth has whispered to me.

The truth, ladies and gentlemen, has been delivered in the buzz and tweet of the lawnmower and weed eater.  Maybe sometimes not what I want to hear, but consider this: pushing and toting those machines means that I can walk, freely, and the sound means I have ears to hear.

Small wonders, you know.  Ordinary miracles we should be grateful to witness.

The truth is definitely out there, as the X-Files would have us believe.  And it is.  The wind has ruffled the leaves outside my window; it has sighed around the eaves of my house.  This is truth, loud and clear.

It will be Monday when your eyes fall upon this page.  Mondays, for many of us, bring their own truth, that many of us have a hard time swallowing.  It is Monday and that which has us by the short and curlies pushes us out of the sanctuary of our homes and back into Real Life.  Be that as it may, I ask you to wrap your head around this:

Mondays sometimes get me. Life sometimes gets me, by the throat.  This I know.  But...I have heard the truth and have wrapped my heart around it.  The truth...

I have heard it from my daughter, dear ones, in her laughter pure and strong like a brace of silver bells.  

It makes me stronger than the beast. I hope it can do the same for you.

Roshi Moth

The moth was there when I left the house this morning.  It clung to the storm door like a damp scrap of cardboard.  It moved nary a twitch as I shut the door, I noticing it when I turned to check the lock.  Cardboard.  Hmmph.  Perhaps a bit too pedestrian, and disrespectful.  It was, after all, a creation of the natural world and not cast-off detritus of mankind's ability to create waste no matter what its undertaking.  Out of respect for my lepidopteran visitor, I'll try again.

This moth clinging to the door better resembled tree bark, maybe of a sycamorean cast.  It was gray and mottled with a a few light patches.  In the morning light it did resemble somewhat that fascinating flaking patchwork that sycamore bark takes on as the tree gets older.  I paused, peering at the moth, and wondered, why it, why here?  I felt no desire to disturb the little fellow.

Concurrently to my insectarian ruminations, a large spider was lurking at the threshold of the door.  I'm wasn't sure of its species, either, and had no real curiosity to look too close.  It was rather large for a spider in these parts, and somewhat fuzzy.  I had the silly notion that it was trying to get into my house, at which point a crisp flick of the shoe sent the arachnid tumbling end over end and off the porch into the ivy bed.  It crawled away, which put me at ease.  Even though I am not particularly fond of spiders, I don't go out of my way to kill them.  If they are in my house, maybe, but not outside where they have more than enough territory.

Back to the moth.  I watched it for a few heartbeats, then trundled up the steps and to the car.  Surely, the moth would be gone when time I arrived home that evening.

About that, I was mistaken.  There it was, still clinging to the door.  As far as I could tell, it had not moved in the hours I had been away.  The angle of repose, the wings flat and spread: exactly as I had left it.  The creature yet again didn't move when I opened the door to step inside.

Later, after dinner, I repaired to the porch, glass of iced tea in one hand and a trio of cookies in the other.  The moth on the door, a sphinx proffering a riddle.  Sitting down at the little round table I have, I propped my feet up and contemplated life as a moth.  What did it do all day?  Where would it go, if not here?

What is it, if anything, that moths think about?

It occurred to me then, that maybe the answer was right there in my hands.  Not in a literal sense, from the moth point of view, but figuratively, from my point of view: Sip tea, eat cookies.

Just because we have wings does not mean we have to spend every waking minute flitting frantically from place to place, so afraid of missing something we forget to appreciate and enjoy the quiet mysteries right in front of us.  The breeze, birdsongs,and the distant wail of a train horn all have something to offer us, if we only cared to let them give it.  Sometimes what we need is to hold still like the moth, watching the sun carve its arc across the sky.

Sometimes, all we need to do is sip tea, eat cookies.

---

Later, I was taking out the week's recycling, and I saw the moth was gone.  Makes sense, I suppose.  Night had fallen, and perhaps it was time for it to fulfill other aspects of its moth-being.  I wish it well.

Fall of the Crow Tree

Two houses over from mine, and you couldn't miss it.  It had to be the tallest tree in the immediate neighborhood.  I had a great view of it from my kitchen windows.  My next door neighbor's house blocked the view of the bottom half of the tree, but it towered over the roofline.  The tip of the tree must have been about ten feet higher than the next highest one beside it.

The species is unknown to me.  All I could tell was that it was straight and slender, probably as a result of being surrounded by other trees.  The top of it was sharp, the few branches angled gracefully upward into a fairly compact radius.

The best part of that tree was the birds, I think.  Very often a small group, usually five or so, would alight on the top branches and hang there swaying in the breezes.  Robins and starlings, maybe, but definitely some crows.  The crows looked wonderfully portentous on cloudy days with wind.  The black outlines stood out against the sky like sheet music for some delightfully scary opera.  My guess is the view was spectacular.

Most mornings I made sure to take a look at the crow tree.  The tip a cathedral spire on a golden sunny day.

The Crow Tree was a landmark, and I hoped it would be around for many more years.  Nature had other ideas, in the form of  a sucker punch landed during a severe windstorm earlier this month.  I looked out the window one morning, and it was gone.  I did a double take.  Yep, gone.  Not all the way gone; when it blew over, it got hung up on an adjacent tree.  I suspect my neighbors haven't quite figured out how to remove it yet.  It was a tree most tall.  Still is, even in repose, languishing in the arms of another.

I can see it there, atilt and wondering, and I wonder myself at what the crows must think.

Good Day In The Field

(HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: PLEASE SEE ANNOUNCEMENTS AT END OF POST. THANKS!)

One advantage to being unemployed is that, while I am stuck at home working up resumes and scouring the Internet, I get to listen to music as much as I want as loud as I want. I am free to play the air guitar and the air drums (even the occasional air bagpipes) and shake my moneymaker all over the damn house without shame, censure or scorn. Well, perhaps a little scorn. I am pretty sure my cats look upon all these antics as a truly vulgarian display of poor taste and worse manners. I care not, for I am an artiste.

Of course, all of this imaginary musicianship does little to further my career as an architect. It pays to be creative in that profession, as a rule, but I have yet to encounter a single prospective employer who wants to know if I can accurately play the chord sequence to “Monkey Wrench” by Foo Fighters while grimacing musically.* This is quite the pity. I have been practicing, I know I can nail it if they just give me the chance!

I have been assisted greatly in my musical excavations by the receipt of an iPod as a gift on my most recent birthday, in conjunction with a wireless rig to some pretty good bookshelf speakers that I purchased with some bonus money.** A consolidated music library with the flexibility of streaming from the iPod or my laptop has allowed me to listen to a deep catalog of stuff I haven’t listened to in years. Thank the lawd for shuffle!

One of the most striking aspects of “Music Appreciation Month” in the Gumbo house is the sheer breadth and depth of memories and emotions I have experienced. At various times I have been nostalgic, deeply pensive and riled up. I have been sad to the point of tears and overjoyed to the point of crazed laughter. Sometimes all within the space of a few minutes. All sorts of memories:

1: Sitting on the benches at a local playground on a summer weekend, my friends and I eating cheap carryout pizza and ill-gotten beer. When we could, we would pitch in and get someone to buy us a case: Three six-packs of Budweiser and one of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Guess who drank the PBR. Heh. “Free Bird” wasn’t far away, either.

2: Carrying around my brand new (drum roll) boom box with an 8-track player in it, wearing out my copy of “Deguello” by ZZ Top. Yeah, it was the definition of unhip, but it was mine and I didn’t care. “…Spied a little thing and I followed her all night, In a funky fine levis and her sweater's kind of tight, She had a west coast strut that was as sweet as molasses, But what really knocked me out was her cheap sunglasses…”

3: I can remember sitting on the edge of my bed, head in hands, wallowing in anguish and self-pity because the first great love of my life didn’t love me back, she just really wanted to be friends. “Thank You” by Led Zeppelin was on the stereo. I hated that song for the longest time after that day, but lately it has worked its way back into my playlist. It is a great tune.

4: Freshman year in college, the blond streak in my hair, skinny ties in the closet and I had Oingo Boingo’s “Cry Of The Vatos” on the turntable in my dorm room. Not so much a song as a collection of funny noises set to a melody, it always put me in a silly mood. My next door neighbor, a true son of New Jersey and a die-hard Bruce Springsteen fan(atic), knocked on my door and said “What the fuck is the matter with you?”. I laughed and said nothing. Later that year, he got me drunk the night my nephew was born and I was trying to study for a calc test. My nephew turned out fine, but the calc test was a train wreck. Ouch.

5: My fourth year in college and I had moved in with two of my friends, into an off-campus apartment. One of my roommates was the Audio Equipment guy, had a great rig with huge speakers and a CD player. Because of that, I bought my first ever CD: “Electric” by The Cult. The song that did it: “Wild Flower". It still gets me, right there.

6: Senior in college, and I am heading back to my apartment after a late night in the architecture studio. It was some distance off campus, and I was (in my mind) lucky to have a creaky old 1977 Chevy Nova as a form of transportation. Sort of a pre-hoopty, but it ran and it has a radio. Zipping down the road, and “Copperhead Road” was blaring out of the speakers. At the time, listening to Steve Earle snarl out those lyrics, I thought he was the bad-assest of the badasses. Great song, just don’t drink whiskey while listening to it!

I graduated from college just before the 90’s, entering the ‘real world’ and leaving behind the easy access I had to the same range of music I was lucky with in my studio and dorm. I was relying primarily on one local radio station, did a lot of listening in the car during my commutes. It’s weird, I have a bit of a musical memory drought from those years. Mostly what I remember is either goofy (Presidents of the United States of America), grungy/poetic (Soundgarden, U2) or angry and dark (Tool). What I can recall is mostly singing along with one or another of those groups (Nirvana, Foo Fighters and Alice In Chains should be in there, too), and being vaguely dissatisfied with life. It didn’t start out that way, it was a gradual thing, but looking back I realized a bit of a cloud had settled in on me by the end of the decade. I know it sounds really weird, but “Aenima” by Tool actually helped me through a rough patch.

2000 and beyond has been a bit of backwards and forward for me. I started getting into all the music I had left behind from my teen and young adult years at the same time I was expanding my horizons into “the softer side of Irish Gumbo”. I was getting much more interested in folk, country, funk and rap. I picked up a taste for some “alt country” and old blues. I ended up listening to a much broader range of styles, with an exponential increase in singer/songwriters in my music library. I can now count among my collection various works by Ellis Paul, Jeffrey Foucault, Eddie From Ohio, Johnny Cash, Son Volt, Parliament/Funkadelic and Jeff Lang***. It was also about this time that I started attending the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in Hillsdale, New York almost every year.

It was at the 2001 FRFF that Jeff Lang provided me with one of my all time favorite music memories. Jeff is a blues/folk oriented singer/songwriter from Australia, and happens to be a monster guitar player, to boot. I was fortunate to catch Jeff on the Workshop stage, a smaller one than the main stage, in a group workshop with about 8 other performers. We were sitting on a blanket in the grass, and the weather was sunny and excellent.

The performers were taking turns playing songs based on a set theme for the workshop, I don’t recall the theme, but I’ll never forget the song. Jeff stood up to play “Ballad of Hollis Brown” (a Bob Dylan original) but discovered a problem with his guitar. He asked to borrow one from Mary Gauthier, who was sitting next to him. She gracefully obliged, and Jeff proceeded to play.

I wasn’t a big Bob Dylan fan at the time, so I didn’t know anything about the original. Jeff launched into the song, setting a fast pace for it, and tore into the lyrics. About a minute into the song I realized that I was hearing something special. Talk about passion for the music! Oh, lawd, he lit that thing up! He was really bringing the story to life, and his guitar playing was inspired. Possessed, almost. He did a bit of a solo, kinda fast and bluesy. My jaw was dropping, and when I looked around, mine wasn’t the only one. We were gobsmacked, flat out. When he finished playing, there was about two seconds of silence, and then everybody starting clapping and shouting and hollering. We were on our feet, standing ovation. The other musicians on the stage were just staring at him in awe, and clapping. Jeff turned to Mary to hand her the guitar, and she is looking at him like he’s a lunatic. She looks at the guitar, then looks up at him with a smile, and says “What in the hell did you do?”

What the hell did he do? Why, he amazed us by creating magic, that good day in the field.

*For the record, I cannot play the chords. I can grimace musically, in a variety of styles. Including klezmer and Tuvan throat singing.
**The last bonus before the Crash of ’08. I don’t regret the purchase one bit. I likes my tunes.
***Geek that I am, I actually have three signed CD’s from him, plus I introduced myself to him at a show he played at the Kennedy Center in D.C. Nice guy, and tolerant of doofuses like me.

PSA #1: Tomorrow, Saturday February 7th is another Pic and Prose collaboration with Michelle at Confessions of a Desperate Housewife. Please stop by both of our blogs and drop some comment luv, it’s a feast for the eyes and the mind!

PSA #2: The simply smashing Petra at The Wise (*Young*) Mommy has invited me to participate in a contest to win her affections, for the weekly “HeBlogs/SheBlogs” post that she runs on her blog. Ordinarily, Heinous at Irregularly Periodic Ruminations is the lucky fellow to keep Petra company, but Jim will be on hiatus while he takes care of some personal matters, and we wish him all the best and have him in our thoughts. Please visit with Petra for the rules and stuff. Myself and seven other strapping young lads are competing for the honor, and you lucky readers will get to vote on us! Contest entries will be posted beginning Monday, February 9th on The Wise (*Young*) Mommy, two per day for the week. My entry will posted Monday, so please visit and vote!

Sunshine And A Glass Of Beer

Snippets from a lovely fall afternoon…

The weather here has been lovely, mostly, and today is no exception. The wind is up, and the temperature is down a bit. The sky has been clear almost all day with crisp, golden sunlight shining down on the changing leaves. It is the definition of a fall day. All I need now is a bit of wood smoke to round things out. Too bad I am without a fireplace.

I had the luxury of a walk around the park this morning, all by myself. After I made the circuit around the lake I sat for a time at a picnic table and did some people, and dog, watching. This is good dog walking weather and the pooches were out in force this morning. The dog count for the day stood at forty-nine before I left the park. With the exception of four tiny Chihuahuas I saw, today seemed to be a day for the big dogs. Labrador retrievers, Rottweilers, a bloodhound and even a Rhodesian ridgeback (I think). Some of them looked like they were so happy to be outside, I wanted to get down and roll in the grass with them.

I write this with a glass of beer sitting at my elbow. Anchor Steam beer to be exact. The sunlight coming in the window is shining through the amber liquid in the glass. It is an amazing color. Very fall-like in its radiance. In my opinion, Anchor Steam is one the greatest American beers out there. I don’t drink it as often as I should (wait, that didn’t come out right), rather, as often as I could, but I always dig it when I do.

Today I discovered that Anchor Steam goes quite well with roasted pumpkin seeds. I made them from the jack o’ lantern we carved up for Halloween. Toasted with a bit of oil and sprinkled with a spice blend (southwest seasoning from Penzeys’) they are a right tasty snack.

On the dining table are some placemats printed with pumpkins. More sunlight streams through the window at the far end of the table. I am struggling to come up with the right words to describe the glow and the color. Pretty is inadequate. Silvery-gold is accurate but seems trite. The fall light regains a wonderful clarity it loses during the smog season. Maybe it is the fall breezes, or the lack of humidity. Whatever the reason, I am always glad to see that light after the heavy wet towel we call a typical Baltimore summer.

Fall is making its way back, creeping in on leafy paws. The cooler, cleaner air is welcome. I sip some beer, chew some pumpkin seeds and give thanks that this is all I am obligated to do on this wonderful November day.