Fall Festival is billed as the biggest street fair outside of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Right here is southern Indiana.

This year the weather was perfect; warm days and cool evenings. Each year dozens of not-for-profit organizations set up booths along the street and sell every imaginable form of fried food each competing with the next for uniqueness.

This year, for the first time, fried Kool-aid was offered, along with fried brain sandwiches (a perennial favorite), fried apples, fried grasshoppers, fried...well, you get the idea. Bacon was also featured this year, thanks to a national chain restaurant that advertised its own baconalia festival. Our Fall Festival featured bacon brownies. Next year I expect to find fried bacon brownies on the menu. It is no wonder then to anyone that this city in southern Indiana boasts being number one in the whole nation for obesity. One can counter that this festival only happens once a year but the proof is in the pudding, the fried pudding apparently.

Another event took place at a friend's home. I mention this to remind you what living in the rural south is really like. It was an all-men gathering; a celebration of the home owner's newly acquired band saw. The group of invited men, young and old, stood on the porch, gathered in hushed reverence as the saw was switched on. Amid oohs and aahs, they turned their ears to listen to the quiet hum of the new motor. On and off, the switch was operated by all of them as they marveled at their friend's acquisition. After a fitting time when everyone had listened and switched, they all went inside the home for cider and a discussion of all the different types of Indiana hardwood.

These are my current musings from living here. Sometimes I just plain miss the city. And that's what I think about it.

Vacation

Back from Great Smoky Mountain National Park in beautiful East Tennessee. We started at Milligan College where we saw the lady buffs (as in Buffaloes) beat Union College 6-2 in soccer. Grand daughter Taylor played well.

In a suite at the Doubletree Inn in Johnson City Taylor and I studied while Jim worked on the computer. At one time the three of us had three computers up and running. Church on Sunday found us with 300 others. We were the oldest by 40 years but were warmly welcomed, perhaps as an oddity or because we were with Taylor or perhaps because these are friendly southerners who genuinely like people.

A hike planned for later in the day was thwarted by the sign you see here. Need I say more?

After three days with Tay-bug (family name) we drove to the Smoky Mountains. Trying to stay away from the commercial areas of Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sieverville, Jim had procured a hotel on the edge of town. Our balcony overlooked a mountain and short though it was provided a beautiful morning view. The sun rose behind the hotel and hit the top of the mountain across the street. Little by little, as the sun rose, you could see the sun line moving down the mountain until the valley was fully lit for the day. I never tired of the predictability of the sunrise.

The picture of me was taken on our way to Cherokee, NC, which is not a good way to spend an afternoon unless you love to gamble. What we loved was looking at ridge after ridge of hills that make up this group of the oldest mountains in the country. I did purchase two books on local history, one the life of a mountain woman. The second consists of diary entries from Cherokees both who were removed from the area over the Trail of Tears and those who refused to leave and whose descendants remain in the area to this day. The Trail of Tears is one of those embarrassing events in the history of this country.

And that's what I think about it.

Season Change

The trees are that funny shade of green that signals the end of summer and a change in seasons.

At the same time I am attempting to gear up for two more classes at the seminary, the earth is winding down to take its long winter's nap. We are out of sync with each other and in the battle of sync, well, let's just say, my second place is a given.

Days are shorter and a duck or two has begun the trip south.

Time to take the forsythia wreath from the front door and while it is a spring wreath, no summer wreath replaced it in June. A red and orange leafed one will in a month or so.

I notice the cat is sleeping more...that's funny...how can a cat sleep more than 24 hours a day or so it seems?

Labor Day came and went. Twice I mistakenly referred to the holiday as Memorial Day. Did I miss the whole summer?

Jim planted four huge mums underneath the bird feeder. They compete with the morning glories which have been severely hacked back four times this summer so as to not scare the birds from feeding.

Today is a day of memory for the country. Ten autumns and springs and summers and winters have passed since the attack. Still the freshness of the event remains. We live in an unsafe world whether we abide in the city or country, whether the United States or some other country. Lulled into apathy by wars on foreign soil, we have felt distant or perhaps isolated from these horrors. Nine eleven was perhaps the first time a whole generation of Americans realized that they are not immune to the tragedies experienced by much of the world's countries, tragedies experienced much more often than once every ten years. Brighter, more erudite folks than I have written about this event so I'll just close with a line from a very old hymn of peace, "Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."

And that's what I think about it.

All summer I have battled the bunnies in the backyard. Now they are gone. And sadly, I must admit, I miss them. I miss the cat and mouse game we played, my trying to keep them away from the flowers and discovering they liked red pepper flakes, them chopping away on the leaves and petals with little regard for the wild, ranting woman who was banging on the window and yelling something they could not make out.

I miss the little snake that used to come sun on the porch step. Confession time, I don't miss him at all.

Reminds me of the one time I walked through my grand parents' backyard past the forked tree that held the wooden stage on which my cousins and I performed our one-act plays and musical reviews. I walked down a narrow, rutted pathway, tall weeds on both sides, past the new-born chicken coop with the incubator on the left and the noisy full grown layers in their coop on the right. The path led between these two shed-like buildings right into the corn field. One day I got as far as the space between the tree and the first coop when peripherally I sensed movement. My keen eye was drawn to what must have seemed like a full-grown boa constrictor crossing the rutted path. It was most likely a five-inch garden snake but regardless...I ran, screaming into the house never, ever to venture down that pathway again.

Oh that the dangerous paths of life could be so dramatic that once scared silly, one would be cured forever of even taking one step toward a pathway of danger.

But back to what I am already missing about summer. Our three hanging baskets of flowers, and the pot of pink things on the porch, did not make it through the summer drought. Yes, I could have watered them with more regularity...let's just leave it at that.

Ah but the Knock-out roses. I've cut them back three times this summer. Blooming and growing, they are making nice little buffets for aphids and other bug-like creatures, but still they bloom on and on, the insects loving the leaves but not the buds.

But nothing beats the morning glories. Killing a morning glory is like trying to kill a silk arrangement. They are the neophyte gardener's delight.

I suppose I miss the bunnies because I know that they have not moved on to greener pastures, but in a sense they have. That greener pasture in the sky. Seeing their little body parts all over the street on the one hand gave me great morbid pleasure and on the other hand....no, let's just leave it at the morbid pleasure.

And that's what I think about it.