WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY

We’re ready to turn the calendar page to October and Michiganders are still hoppin’ and boppin’ to the orange barrel polka out there. In our neck of the woods, thankfully, the final phase of the Fort Street construction will wrap up in a few weeks after two long, dust-filled years which has been a nightmare to local residents and businesses. Well, our reward for the inconvenience is four miles of wider roads, new traffic signals and new sewers to the tune of $40 million dollars.

The first phase included Lincoln Park, so we were spared alot of the latter extended mess, but now the County has been resurfacing Fort Street and tarring the top of each street. I stopped walking along Fort Street since the tar dribbles were sticking to my shoes at every street I crossed. The workers made a slopping mess by putting so much tar on the road that it looks like the La Brea Tar Pits and the weather on the horizon will spell one hot, gooey mess for sure.

When I finally made it out for a walk after the morning rain, it was for just a petite promenade. I thought I’d just stay in the neighborhood because of the mess on Fort Street. First, I went down one street and there was a striping crew so I switched over to the next street where a jackhammer was both piercing and pounding the pavement so I took still another detour. Alas, all was calm while a group of workers sat on the porch steps sipping from Tim Horton take-out cups while waiting for the churning cement mixer to finish tumbling their cement so they could get troweling. (I was not wearing my fluorescent Cement Masons shirt today so I didn’t feel obligated to ask if they needed a hand.)

‘Tis the season for construction in Michigan and we know that those same crews will be back for repairs and patching after a few hard Michigan Winters take their toll on the roads. Turning the calendar over to October we know only too well that those wintry days are not far off.

Yesterday, all the weather people predicted overnight rain lasting into the early morning hours so I didn’t set the alarm figuring I’d sleep in and rest on my laurels. Of course I regretted the extended slumber when the rain didn’t arrive for hours … grrrrrrr. Well, I’ll be back to pounding the pavement again tomorrow, striding toward that 400-mile goal.

Tonight is the long-anticipated return of “Sixty Minutes” after Summer hiatus. It seems like forever since there was a new episode. This is the only show I follow. I don’t say that I watch it on TV because I listen to “Sixty Minutes” on radio station WWJ 950 AM every Sunday night. I don’t sit staring at the radio with rapt attention like this girl pictured above who was probably engrossed in “The Lone Ranger”. I have the radio on in the background. Sometimes a particular “Sixty Minutes” story will intrigue me and I’ll check out the interviewee or perhaps the scenery on a podcast or “Sixty Minutes Overtime” the next time I’m online, but mostly it is just listening to the show on the radio. My mom and I watched “Sixty Minutes” live for years and never missed an episode, even though it never started on time during football season. Those stellar interviews by Mike Wallace kept you gripping your armrests and on the end of your seat while you watched him interrogating someone or you were privy to what dirt he uncovered. He was the best in my opinion. I don’t think “Sixty Minutes” is as interesting as it was years ago; they seem to interject more fluff stories or world politics pieces now. I miss that old curmudgeon Andy Rooney as well.

As to not watching TV … well, I cancelled my cable years ago and unplugged the TV from the wall. I have not seen a television program, nor rented a movie in many years. I’ve not been to the show since ”Sommersby” in February of 1993.

After the FCC switched our TVs over from analog to digital, my mom’s tiny bedroom TV no longer worker, even with the new converter box. That RCA TV never had stellar reception to begin with. It had extraordinarily large rabbit ears attached to the back of the TV. You could adjust the rabbit ears and it was still fuzzy on some stations. Sometimes we’d hang a paperclip or wadded-up piece of aluminum foil off the top of the antenna … very scientific, but it worked! I bought my mom a 7-inch digital TV for her nightstand and it worked about half of the time. She liked to watch the news and in the middle of a news story, the picture would freeze and only the audio worked. I bought and hooked up a flat antenna, but freeze-frame was the name of the game with this TV so I gave the TV and antenna away.

I don’t miss TV. I’m a bit of an oddity I suppose. I’m probably the only person alive who has never watched one reality TV show. Reality TV would not be my cup of tea. After last Sunday’s Emmy Awards, I listened to the names of the winners the following morning and realized I had no clue about any of the shows, nor their players, despite hearing bits and pieces of TV shows or trending movies on the Warren Pierce or Mitch Albom radio programs. I am hopelessly behind in knowing who’s who in the TV zoo, so gone are the days of “must-see TV” … for me anyway. I watched more TV before I got a VCR. Of course I was younger then and staying up ’til 11:00 p.m. watching TV, then topping it off with the news followed by Johnny Carson’s monologue before turning in for the night was easy. We didn’t get our first VCR until 1989. Before then it was hard to pick and choose what to watch. There was alot of excitement in September when Premiere Week started and the old favorites were back and there were always great made-for-TV movies. The sweeps in November and February had absolutely awesome television – how about all those wonderful miniseries from years ago? My favorites were “Roots”, “Lonesome Dove” and “The Thornbirds” … I was just glued to the tube every night. I had my favorite night-time soaps: Thursday was “Knots Landing” and Friday night was “Dallas” and “Falcon Crest”. Sometimes by the end of the workweek, a nap was in order after dinner to ensure not nodding off during the Friday night television shows. There were spectacular end-of-season cliffhangers and we’d speculate around the water cooler all Summer who Abby Cunningham would be stabbing in the back or who shot JR? Do the new shows have that intrigue? Just wondering? And what happened to walking over and turning on the TV with the “on” button and checking out the regular channels 2, 4 and 7? Now you have low-tier cable, high-tier premium cable or Netflix, Hulu – it is mind boggling. I’m glad TV no longer has its hooks in me. I am liking the simplicity in my life now. Perhaps I should have lived in another era and been classmates with Richie, Potsie and Ralph Malph and suckin’ down a malt at Arnold’s Drive-in. How about living in Mayberry, North Carolina with Aunt Bee, Sheriff Taylor and his boy, Opie? Life and TV was a whole lot simpler in those days, even with those dumb ol’ rabbit ears.

An absolutely perfect Fall day! I started my morning with a trek to Council Point Park, then walked to Wyandotte toward the river, and finally reluctantly headed home rather than risk shin splints. I walked a total of five miles and am happy to report I have now beaten the car’s mileage by 2.75 miles, thus I have earned my half-gallon of Honeycrisp apple cider. My stats on my sweet success are as follows:

Total miles walked as of 09/28/13: 318.75
Total miles driven as of 09/28/13: 316.00
Thus, I have walked 2.75 miles more than I drove the car in 2013.

I may be able to stay ahead of the car’s mileage for the balance of this year if there are minimal errands to be run and the weather cooperates like it has the last few weeks. Unfortunately, the days are getting shorter, so the likelihood of getting three or more miles in daily will diminish and rain will put a damper on the morning walk as well. My next goal will be to reach 400 miles before year-end.

Council Point Park was the first stop on my walk. It was very tranquil there this morning. There was one jogger on the path and one sprinter running back and forth across the grassy area between the paths. The fog was present again in the Park’s shallow baseball and soccer fields and there were several gaggles of geese in each field. It seemed as if the fog was creeping up their legs so all you saw was their waddling bodies and long, graceful necks bending down to graze as they seemingly glided along in a mist created by dry ice special effects. As I watched the geese in the foggy fields, right on cue I heard the unmistakable low humming of a foghorn from the river. As I walked along the water’s edge, I saw a Sandhill Crane between the reeds on the banks of the Ecorse Creek. I stopped, and ducked behind a bush, hoping to see the crane foraging for food, but it remained motionless the entire time I paused so I moved on. That’s a first for me at this Park; a Facebook friend posted a picture of a Sandhill Crane in her Milford neighborhood earlier this week so I could readily identify it. The songbirds were just delightful, as they appeared to be outdoing one another, each with their own unique song, while I wound my way around the two-mile path. When I finished at the Park, I walked toward the train track and I heard a train’s horn repeatedly blowing, its long and mournful sound interrupting the still morn. Then the horn finally stopped, followed by the creaking and rattling sound of the train as it groaned along the railroad tracks.

I finally headed home, after taking the longest route I know to rack up the steps to get to five miles. I passed the house where, as I detailed in my September 1st blog post “Corncobs”, I told the older man who tends the garden out back that he reminded me of Farmer Jack, of local supermarket fame. As I approached the house, I noticed some harvest décor around the yard, including a few scarecrows lined up like soldiers along the fence. I mused that perhaps the scarecrows were not harvest décor at all, but were guarding his garden. Today, once again he carried a large wicker basket filled with his garden veggies. He nodded his head to me to acknowledge my “good morning” greeting because his hands were full. He was wearing his perpetual straw hat, a flannel plaid shirt and worn-looking denim pants. The resemblance between him and the scarecrows was evident, but I refrained from commenting that a scarecrow was his doppelganger, even in jest, because that just may not be interpreted as complimentary.

I came home and changed clothes and got out in the yard to round up the yard ornaments, pots and baskets and corral them in the garage. This was easier said than done. It’s a small garage and alot of garden paraphernalia has been accumulated through the years, but I finished three hours later. There is absolutely no room for one more thing. The shelves which line the driver’s side of the garage are great for organizing and stacking but it becomes dicey to enter and exit the car, especially when wearing a bulky Winter coat. I stopped looking for new garden ornaments a few years back once I had to encroach into the basement with my white rocking chair, colonial blue pout chair, Precious Moments resin figurines and St. Francis statue. My hose reel/hose has overwintered at my next-door neighbor Marge’s garage for nearly twenty years.

Less is more – it’s my new mantra!

Christopher Cross sang about the joy and wonderment of sailing in his song by the same name. My boss Robb is sailing, if this would be the correct term for hopping a freighter in Detroit and plowing through the waters of Lake Erie enroute to Cleveland. The second leg of the trip will find him in Lake Superior and docking in Wisconsin. Robb is on day one of a four-day trip on a freighter named the S.S. Alpena, one of several cement-hauling freighters owned by one of our clients. This is an annual trip for Robb and he usually goes with an attorney friend mid-Summer, but for months their schedules, as well as that of the boats, just didn’t mesh. Robb decided to go solo after Scott bowed out due to a hectic trial schedule. While the accommodations are not as snazzy as that of a cruise ship, he has e-mailed me pictures of his living room with three big portholes and a picture of the view from just outside his room. That picture is above; the freighter is preparing to dock near the Cleveland cement silos. I have not been on the S.S. Alpena, but several years ago I visited a larger freighter, the J.A.W. Iglehart which often has paying passengers for Great Lakes cruises and the accommodations are very nice. The meals are taken in a dining room on bone china with crystal glasses – very elegant and you would never know you were on a freighter. Before the Detroit River Walk project was initiated, the cement silos were just a stone’s throw away from our office so Robb and I walked over to visit and have lunch a few times. They have a full-time chef on board and the food was exquisite; one time it was ratatouille and white wine in the dining room with the officers and another time we had hamburgers and massive onion rings in the ship’s galley. Robb has certainly developed an affinity for sailing. Over the last year he was on a large yacht sailing the Galapagos Islands for the Christmas/New Year’s holiday and then April found him sailing aboard a catamaran in The Great Barrier Reef and now he is aboard a freighter in the chilly waters of the Great Lakes. Hopefully, he will find a good night’s rest with the lapping of the water against this huge steamship and just a bit of paradise with the wind whipping in his face and hair. This landlubber will be visited by Mr. Sandman just as quickly after walking nearly five miles this morning.

Fog

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
~Carl Sandburg

This morning the fog enveloped the low parts of Council Point Park making the soccer field look like vapor was rising out of it and it was an eerie-looking phenomenon. Well, there was fog … but no felines to be found at the Park because canines ruled instead.

I saw a couple of funny things while walking the Park perimeter that I must share with you. First, the title for this blog post is “See Spot run!” because I saw a young man rollerblading with his Dalmatian dog. It struck my funny bone since the dog was running very fast on a long red leash and his owner was trying his best to keep up on his rollerblades. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a Dalmatian up close and this one must have had easily a thousand black spots on its white body and I wished I had a black Sharpie to play connect the dots. The tall man was wearing a rugby shirt in red and white stripes and white bike shorts and was hunched over a little and looked like a candy cane. The bold contrast of stripes versus dots made a colorful and comical picture. I’ll just bet that Dick and Jane never thought to strap on their roller skates and chase after Spot in the old “Fun With Dick and Jane” readers.

Next, I also saw a man biking with his Bull Mastiff dog. This big dog looked as if he was doing all the hard work, while wearing the perpetual scowl that Bull Mastiffs generally do. The biker was flushed and pedaling fast and furiously in an effort to keep up with his galloping dog.

The last scenario was just before I left the perimeter path to head home. I often see a couple of walkers, a man and woman, who usually walk side-by-side, but sometimes the man is there alone on his rollerblades, skating along the perimeter path and pushing a white, mesh-encased baby stroller. I always thought ‘how nice he takes his baby out for a walk and gets his own exercise at the same time’ and I just assumed he was a stay-at-home dad with child-care responsibilities. We always pass the time of day and I never once looked into the stroller as we passed one another. This morning I saw the couple along the path and each one was pushing a stroller … now that piqued my interest. They waved “hi” and I caught up with them in the parking lot when I finished the trail. They were unpacking the strollers and lifting out their “babies” who were two small dogs! Can you say spoiled rotten pets?

Whatever makes you happy but it sure looked like the Park was going to the dogs this morning.

Weather wise, it was a stellar Hump Day. Thankfully I departed using two feet, not four wheels (or on four legs) and I walked an easy three and half miles before I got home. I wish we could bottle up this weather and have it year-round.

I often check the trending videos on Comcast when I log onto my e-mail. I cherry pick the ones to watch. I don’t know alot of the new celebrities and the ones I’ve heard of like Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, well … I just bypass their antics. Sometimes I’ll check out videos about clever critters or the babies laughing non-stop … but even they can get old after awhile. I had not heard of the thirty second “Hump Day” commercial from Geico until it became the subject of Facebook chatter so I hopped onto YouTube to take a peek. I’ll bet the ad agency behind Geico’s “Hump Day” is destined to win a coveted CLIO award for this clever commercial. If you’ve not seen it yet, here’s a link to the ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWBhP0EQ1lA

I Googled to find out some background on Caleb the camel who has surpassed Old Joe from the Camel cigarette commercials in popularity. Caleb was paid a flat fee for his appearance at the workplace where he wanted everyone to answer “it’s Hump Day” to his query to guess what day it is. There are over 13 million views on YouTube of this video already.

Just like Caleb’s twin bumps on his back, I’ve got two stories to share today.

The picture accompanying this blog post is me with a camel named Missouri in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt which was a port of call on a Greek Islands cruise I took in September 1981. I was part of an American Express tour group and the agent had booked our entire party to take a camelback excursion around the Great Pyramid. There were fifty camels in the caravan, each named for one of the fifty U.S. states. I asked for “Michigan” but he was already taken by the time I climbed aboard. It was a bumpy but memorable ride. Each camel had its own camel driver. I asked our tour guide to snap some pictures of me sitting on Missouri and then standing next to him when we concluded the ride. You don’t dismount a camel like a horse … the camel is positioned like above and you climb on or off and the camel raises back up again. I had another picture taken standing next to Missouri and his camel driver who removed his keffiyah scarf from his cap and plunked it on my head for a very touristy photo. Yes I was uncomfortable as I’d never shared a hat with anyone before and it was dirty and sweat-stained … ewwwww!!!

I also have a story to tell about animals in the workplace and it wasn’t “Bring Your Dog to Work Day”. When I worked at Young & Rubicam ad agency, our major client was Lincoln-Mercury. I worked in the Creative Department as a secretary. If you’re old enough to remember the Mercury Cougar ads and the snarling cougar sitting atop the Lincoln-Mercury dealership sign, you’ll remember Tom-Tom the cougar who starred in those ads. Tom-Tom wasn’t the only frisky feline in Mercury’s car ads. There were automobiles named Bobcat and Lynx, each with their respective namesake mascots. One day our downtown Detroit ad agency, which created those memorable auto ads, was paid a visit by the trio of famous cats, each accompanied by a handler. The bobcat and lynx, whose names I no longer recall, were playful and their nails kept getting caught on the common area carpeting while they were walking around the halls for the meet-and-greet event. Tom-Tom, the famous cougar, had a main handler and a stand-by handler and the visit was a P.R. photo opportunity with the president of Y&R’s Detroit office. Tom-Tom was posed in the prez’ executive chair in the corner office with a pen in one paw. We were allowed to take pictures alongside Tom-Tom and the other cats and I have a few pictures in a scrapbook tucked away in a cupboard. We never got to see Tom-Tom’s famous growl, because that growl is only done on cue with the incentive being a big chunk of meat dangling in front of him. But no matter, it was great fun and we were treated to a visit by a trio of stars, though Tom-Tom was more famous than the others. And … just in case you are wondering, yes, Tom-Tom had 8 X 10 pics of himself handed out, autographed with a paw print.

Yesterday, I struggled with the wayward drawstring on my sweatpants, and that apparently set the tone for the rest of the day. Well, it was Monday after all.

After I came home following the sweatpants debacle, I removed, then washed my eyeglasses and while drying them, they fell apart before my very eyes. First, I should mention that I absolutely detest the glasses I wear 90% of the time, a/k/a as my “good glasses”. They slide down my nose and don’t hook properly on my ears. If the optometrist tweaks them to make them fit tighter, I end up returning the next day to have them loosened and vice versa. After wearing contact lenses for 35 years, I still am not completely used to wearing glasses full time. My old glasses are the ones I wear to walk, exercise or do anything that requires more head movement than merely staring at the computer screen. Granted, my old glasses are a prescription from a decade ago, but they are very comfortable and I don’t even know I am wearing them. But suddenly they were in multiple pieces on the counter. First, the screw popped out, followed by the left lens shortly thereafter. I cursed a little, but figured no problem – I have an eyeglass repair kit. I was confident I could do the repair … I mean, how difficult is it to pop the screw back in the hinge and tighten it? I have small hands but they might as well have belonged to a large man because I was all fingers and very clumsy. Plus, I could not see close up without taking my other glasses off and then I could see nothing. Well that was irritating. The kit provided a handy-dandy magnifying glass but it didn’t do much good. How do brain surgeons do intricate surgery? They simply can’t fumble and be all fingers to do such a painstaking, exacting job. I dropped the *&^% screw at least a dozen times and when I finally got it fastened in properly, the frame wobbled. Clearly another screw was needed. In the kit were various screws, but none of them were the correct size. One hour after starting the procedure, it got the better of me and I scooped everything up and put it into a large Ziploc bag and decided to go to my eye doctor’s office for “the fix”. I took along my repair kit to show I gave it the old college try before throwing myself at their mercy. I’m happy to report the optometrist’s assistant took pity on me and despite my not having purchased the eyeglasses there she fixed them up in a minute. She laughed at my story about being all thumbs and told me I put the screw in upside down and only one screw is needed. I told her I would not be a candidate to assist in the surgical suite anytime soon.

But wait … the last of the trio of calamities was just before I went to bed last night. I walked over to the sink to get a glass of water and while walking across the kitchen floor I could feel a tugging on the underside of my shoe and that unmistakable feeling of sticking to the floor. Glancing down, I saw a splotch of undetermined origin and wiped it up, then quickly went to the kitchen chair to remove my left moose skin moccasin to see what was on the sole. I was half-afraid to turn it over. In the end, I never noticed if anything was sticky because my mouth gaped open when I saw the entire sole on the shoe was split in half! I believe things happen for a reason. I feel fortunate that I didn’t catch the sole on something and wipe out. The other shoe was perfectly fine. I never wear these shoes downstairs or outside. The sole was clearly worn down on both shoes and they are only about a year old. This leads me to believe that I am putting the mileage on my moccasins inside the house as much as my outside walking. But, I’ve logged nearly 500 miles in my walking shoes over 2012 and 2013 and they are not beat up at all. Perhaps I should start measuring how many miles I walk inside per day because clearly I am rackin’ em up bigtime. My house is very small and I spend most of my day in the 15 X 15 foot kitchen. Can these miles be tallied into my daily total or should I remain a purist and just count outside miles walked? Decisions, decisions … I guess I’ll take the high road and just count outside mileage.

At any rate, my boss was out this morning so I decided to take care of business and get my glasses fixed and buy new moccasins which added another eight miles to the car odometer – all the more for me to walk to surpass the car mileage. Sigh! Feet don’t fail me now….

The alarm rang and I snapped it off and snuggled down further beneath the extra blanket I put on the bed last night. Mmmmmm … felt so good. But, I am a creature of habit and those extra few minutes of slumbering indulgence put a chink into my morning routine. When it was light enough outside to leave, I got a fresh sweat suit out of the bureau drawer and finished getting dressed. When I went to hook my pedometer leash to the sweatpants’ drawstring for safekeeping, I saw a white twisty tie on the drawstring. I was puzzled. I’d not seen these sweats since I packed them away in the Spring. Was there a hole that would embarrass me if I went out in them? I glanced in the mirror – nothing. I sighed and pulled first the top off, then the pants and gave each a cursory look. Well, no holes visible, so I guess I was good to go. I still had the niggling feeling something wasn’t right though. I shrugged my shoulders and slid into my cardigan sweatshirt, laced up my shoes and left. Good thing I didn’t remove the twisty tie from where I found it, because I was about two blocks from the house when my sweatpants started slip-slidin’ away. I looked down and I couldn’t see the tops of my shoes. Oh my! So that little twisty tie was supposed to remind me that I needed to deal with the drawstring before wearing these pants again. Oops! Well … the morning was glorious and I was enjoying my walk and I was not going to interrupt my plans just because my pants were not staying hitched up. All the efforts to earn those Brownie and Girl Guides badges for emergency preparedness were not wasted. I jerry-rigged the twisty tie on the drawstring and drew it up through a buttonhole on my cardigan. However, while that was clever, I was wearing low-rise socks and now high-rise pants which made for a strange combo or the “waitin’ for the floods” look. It didn’t matter because it was a workable option and I made it home without any further wardrobe malfunctions. Now I know how Janet Jackson felt!

What a gorgeous Fall day. Fall arrived at 4:44 this afternoon and right on cue with the cooler temps and harvest décor aplenty. I love the whole Fall season and its trappings. I enjoy watching the homeowners outdoing one another with clever Fall decorations before the Halloween items get dragged out. I’m not a fan of those blow-up, bigger-than-life monsters or neon Peanuts characters on lawns, but I like the more-traditional Halloween decorations. Today I saw people tying cornstalks to gas lights and adorning front doors with Indian corn. I saw a few hay bales and fake-em-out pumpkins that looked like the real deal. I’ve not been to a farm with a pumpkin patch in decades, but it was always a fun time and a great photo opportunity while picking out your perfect pumpkin or having your picture taken on a bright and sunny day with a big hay wagon in the background. Call me a by-product of the 60s and 70s, but I kind of like those groovy-looking psychedelic veggies. Nothing says Fall more than a cornucopia brimming with Striped Sweet Dumpling squash or those squash counterparts with spotted or speckled rinds. No cornucopia is complete without those goofy-shaped gourds or bumpy mini pumpkins which look like they have warts. I also like checking out the various scarecrows with their smiling faces and down-home charm as they stand guard next to porch steps or in front gardens. This year I saw girl scarecrows wearing straw pigtails with calico ribbons standing alongside boy scarecrows clad in checked flannels and denim duds. Their smiles are infectious and I wanted to smile back, but checked myself lest I should lose my credibility.

I’ve never seen a chipmunk but I use this little guy as my Facebook profile picture once Fall has arrived. He looks like he’s up to mischief with those cheeks all puffed out with corn kernels. You can figure the expression “squirreling away” comes from this time of year. The squirrels are scampering to and fro carrying corncobs and nuts and they’re fast and furiously digging holes in my backyard, not that it hurts the lawn. If you try to shoo them away they look at you and go right on digging. The squirrels haven’t put on any weight yet but give them time. They are too busy hustling for nuts and I’ve walked under several trees in the past week and have narrowly missed the kerplunk of a wayward acorn.

Speaking of gathering … I have accumulated my own stash, i.e. 300 miles in my walking efforts for 2013 as of today. I topped the 300 mark by walking a whopping five miles today. Just a few more days to best my car mileage but the weather promises to be perfect most of the week. As to my blog, I’ve not been woolgathering there, because today I made my 150th post since I began blogging in February.

A friend circulated an e-mail a few years about a chipmunk gathering nuts. It was an excerpt from The Discovery Channel. If you have the time, it is definitely worth clicking on this link. It will make you smile at this industrious little fellow and the pickpocket who tries to steal from his cache of nuts. I looked on YouTube and sure enough this little video was there so I am happy to share it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5EZB3nSEl4

It looks like we are about ready to turn the corner … the writing is on the wall. Soon the flip flops will morph into loafers then snow boots. Ugh. So let’s say so long to the easy-breezy, carefree days of Summer and welcome the action-packed days of Fall where calendars groan with school activities, commitments and soon will be chock-full of holiday reminders and events. The shorter days are also the precursor to the time change which looms large. Perhaps try to soak up the sun a little and put that good feeling of the warmth upon your face into your memory bank. Already, the porch pots and baskets have been replaced with mums in every color of the palette. They lend welcome spots of color amongst the yellowing leaves and soon-to-be bare trees. Porch sitting, stargazing and swatting skeeters will soon be forsaken, since sitting in front of the television, especially as the new season kicks in next week, will take precedence. The Tigers are playing their last home stand and doesn’t it seem like it was just Opening Day? That humongous Harvest Moon the other night not only triggered a memory of my parents’ stereo cranked up and Mitch Miller crooning “Shine On Harvest Moon”, but when I took a look at that big ol’ moon hanging out in the sky it looked suspiciously like an overgrown pumpkin and I knew Fall was not far off. Since Summer gets its last licks in today, there’s still time to head for a triple-dip, decadent Calder Dairy ice-cream cone. Yup, Summer is a goner Baby!

I want to share a beautiful video about the changing seasons with you. This is nature at its finest coupled with the beautiful song from the movie “The Cider House Rules” which you will recognize right away as the theme music from the Pure Michigan commercials. This was a serendipitous find for me and I listen to it often – it helps keep me grounded. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csnUV3Gz4Pk