May You Live in Colorful Times

The debates are over. There will now be three more weeks of revisionist advertising to wade through before the election. Most of us have had our minds made up for twenty years years and, short of our guy actually being caught on camera murdering somebody, they'll stay made up. And even that would depend on who they are murdering.

It has been an uncannily beautiful Fall in Vermont this year. It flies in happy contrast to the steady drum of bad news coming through my radio and television. Had similar events taken place in late Novemeber, we would all be swinging by the neck from these sugar maples rather than admiring them. Soon the rains will come and dampen the color. A couple of hard frosts and a wind storm will clean the trees of their leaves and drop a branch or two across our power lines. We'll sit in the dusky light of late October once again reminded of our own mortality and the winter ahead. And then we'll vote.

Enjoy this color while we still have it.