AUTUMN AND SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER IN THE OZARKS

It was George Eliot who wrote “... if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive Septembers”. Actually, he wrote about seeking successive autumns but I’m sure if he had given it more thought he would have said September.

I love poetry. I love reading it aloud to myself and anybody else who will listen. (It’s amazing how few people will!) I love memorizing poetry. I still remember October’s Bright Blue Weather from grade school. “When comrades seek sweet country haunts...and count like misers, hour by hour, October’s bright blue weather.” I only wish I had thought of those lines before Helen Hunt Jackson wrote them.

September poems are hard to find so I wrote one myself this week and it is printed elsewhere on this page.

September is an incredible month. Sandwiched in between August (my birth month so therefore special to me) and October, about which many poems have been written, it is a bridge, a transition time.

Victoria Erickson wrote about September in this way: “This strangely still pause between Summer and Autumn - greenery and gold, and the heat and rising wind that is once again ready in itself to rush it all the way into a climatic Symphony of color and scent is, in my opinion, one of the best parts about living on Earth.”

Lazy summer days when the kids love to sleep in late then spend the rest of the day just loafing all too quickly turn into early morning wake up calls when the mind is foggy and the mood is grumpy and the hectic start to the day is only the beginning of a time of “reading and writing and ‘rithmatic” as the old song about school days puts it.

Let me digress just a moment to share a generational moment in time with you. I’ve been talking to teenagers and getting a new kind of education. A fourteen year old this week had never heard the word arithmatic. Math is the preferred term nowadays. And a sixteen year old corrected me when I called a zip-around three ring notebook a notebook. He informed me that notebooks are the spiral bound lined pages they write in, and what I carried to school to keep my pages in order is now called a binder.

Back to September. There is a transition in sports once the World Series is over. Baseballs and bats give way to footballs and shoulder pads and helmets. There is a transition in retail stores. Summer cottons and shorts and tank tops are placed on clearance and can only be found on the farthest racks in the back of the stores. Coats and scarves and leather boots, along with corduroy slacks and heavy sweaters grace the front part of the stores. Not that they will be needed in September, but it’s at this point that September becomes a month of preparation.

We know from experience that once October’s leaf-blowing wind begins, November with it’s damp cold that can chill you to the bone will soon be knocking at our door.

My favorite transition is when the garden has been harvested and the salad greens and veggies that tasted so good on hot summer days are replaced by root vegetables like turnips, and I bring out the big cooking vessels in which to stew a pork roast with potatoes and carrots and onions in a thick savory broth, and stir up a pan full of sliced apples simmering in lots of butter and sugar and cinnamon. Then I pull out a hot cast iron skillet of steaming corn bread to complete the meal. Now that’s what I call a good transition.

Transition and preparation. Bringing in the flowers before the first freeze. Wrapping up the garden hose. Protecting the water pipes. Raking the mountains of leaves. Trying to clear the driveway of large hickory nuts before we run over them with the car. Watching the squirrels gather the nuts and leap from tree to my office roof where they sometimes drop them and let them roll across the roof until it sounds like a veritable bowling alley as I work inside.

That’s September in the Ozarks. This is my 80th September to live here. And I love it.

COMMUNION ON THE MOON

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. (Melody Beattie) Americans need a day dedicated to gratitude. I have noticed that in the lineup of most of our holidays that Thanksgiving is perhaps the one least given over to secularism - the one we still observe in a traditional fashion. We need it to keep our focus clear and to teach our children what it means to be thankful for family, friendship and faith. We need a time to gather around the table with extended family and enjoy turkey and dressing and gravy, two kinds of potatoes, cranberries, hot rolls, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie and whipped cream. We need it, not for the calories, but to create an awareness that there are those who don’t have those blessings, because in the hectic pace of our everyday lives we tend to forget those in need. Family and food are important, but above all else, Americans need a rededication to our faith. Faith brought the pilgrims to the ne...

My Facebook Message To Readers

I posted this on my Facebook recently to let my Facebook friends know what to expect from my revamped page. A personal note for my special Facebook friends. No one is getting this but you! My Facebook posts have evolved through the years. I still like to make my friends laugh with a silly story or a joke or a cartoon, or get you caught up in a drama that seemingly could only happen to me, or just sharing a memory in a special photo, but more and more I am trying to post words that will inspire you or encourage you. I also like to post informational articles about subjects that might interest you - something you didn’t have time to read or watch. And you know of course that I love to read and especially write poetry so I will share lots of "rhyme and reason" with you, too. My days revolve around the computer, doing research on subjects in which I am interested and want to pass on to you, or surfing Facebook to keep up with my friends. I am not lazy. Unless you are pretty much...

SIGNERS OF DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

I wrote this for the newspaper several years ago. Not political. Just history about the signers of the Declaration of Independence but extremely interesting. Not because I wrote it, but because it is history we have either forgotten, or maybe never learned it in school to begin with. Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated, but they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well ...

Straight From The Hart

Search This Blog