Hot Enough for You?

Right about now, a 90 degree day seems like a respite.

I am in love with the idea of Fall. The exuberance of Summer wanes and the somber reckonings of Fall come to the fore.

While I no longer experience Fall as a Midwesterner, I anticipate  - and long for -  the beginning of the End of the Year.

As a child, this illustration by John T. McCutcheon (appearing in the venerable Chicago Tribune) holds a generous basketful of memories for me....just by looking at it I am transported back to Jefferson Park, on Higgins Avenue, where men who looked like the guys in Mad Men lit the cabochons of raked leaves in front of their houses. Their cigarettes sometimes tossed into the pile as it burned down. It was a Fall Ritual, long banished....the neatly raked piles in the street and the men tending them. The smell was intoxicating....and I wonder what my father envisioned in the billowing clouds.

No matter my age, I stand insignificantly before the mystery of Mother Nature herself winding down, coalescing her forces, preparing for the inevitable stasis of Winter....only to be followed by an explosive Spring.

It is the promise of renewal that keeps me going. I hope you enjoy this old illustration. Before the PC police ban it - even the title seems quaintly arcane. Just as that little fella's imagination turns the smoke into a war dance, my imagination envisions a dramatic November Election war dance. We need brave Braves now from the GOP. Braves of either gender. What do you see in your campfire?