Hello Friends. Can’t believe it’s already the end of October!
Fall is going much too fast for me. I wish there was a way to make it last longer — trees aflame with color, deep blue skies, crisp mornings, apple everything and friendly pumpkins! If I had my way, I would skip summer entirely and have two autumns in a row.
More than any other season, Fall reminds me to make the most of each moment. Lovely though it may be, there’s always this sense of reckoning, the gathering in and taking stock, and with that an acute awareness of life’s evanescence.
AUTUMN
by Linda Pastan
I want to mention
summer ending
without meaning the death
of somebody loved
or even the death
of the trees.
Today in the market
I heard a mother say
Look at the pumpkins,
it’s finally autumn!
And the child didn’t think
of the death of her mother
which is due before her own
but tasted the sound
of the words on her clumsy tongue:
pumpkin; autumn.
Let the eye enlarge
with all it beholds.
I want to celebrate
color, how one red leaf
flickers like a match
held to a dry branch,
and the whole world goes up
in orange and gold.
~ from Heroes in Disguise (W.W. Norton, 1992)
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It’s hard to believe Paul is going to be 74; he hasn’t slowed down one bit. Right now he’s in the midst of his 
Jama's Alphabet Soup 