So, here we are in the season of transition. It is still hotter than hell in afternoon when the sun cuts the arc over the parking lot at Big Pink. It bathes the western-facing units on the north-south wings by the Big Road with warmth and light. It also brings up the prognosis for what is “next,” or at least what to expect in the way we dress in the morning. We are still in that phase that the transitions required for comfort can be compressed into a single day.

At least it was true this morning. The light morning breeze wafting across a sleep-appropriate t-shirt left the smokers almost shivering out over the concrete. It didn’t last, but brought up the forecast for warmth in the later afternoon. And word that a new co-host has been named for
Fox & Friends in the morning. That program has been on top of the ratings for the last decade or so, but that length of time has impacted the current broadcast team.

Steve Doocy represents the old style programming. He is an older white guy. In fact, he is old enough that his son Peter has become a primacy interrogator of the sitting President. Or standing, if the recent
G20 conference is a reliable indicator, although the description of his performance indicates it may a time of transition in the nation’s capital.

Those last lines represent transition in season as well as television. There are some brown leaves coming down in the parking lot. Not many of them yet, but we are posed on the big slide into Halloween themes for the lawn decorations, then those big birds and seasonal feasting and then we will be seated on the decorative lawn chair outside remembering when it was warm outside.

Seasonal change means seasons of change. We are not quite ready for them, though it is going on all around. The kids are back in school. The Congress is back in their buildings on the other side of the River. We are shrugging off the lassitude of Summer with the crisp awareness of Fall. There is only a hint of it in the air this morning. The skies are a sort of bottomless blue, the clouds only a puffy reference to the diminishing power of Hurricane Lee which is in the process of bearing down on the State of Maine.

It will miss us, thank goodness. The computer-generated tracks have the storm sliding east into the richer part of the Atlantic between the two big continents. We can feel some of the transition here. It is slow at the moment, but like the “slow news” period that surrounds the recent Labor
Day commemoration, it will change to something more frantic soon. The leaves will burst into bright optimistic shades (briefly) and the joyful and irritating sounds of the leaf-blowers.
Rousing from the slumber of slow news? There is a bunch rocketing around. One side of the monochrome political system appears to have briefly roused from slumber about who they will nominate for the Presidential run that will go on for this quarter and most of the next year.

It has been entertaining so far and we expect it to get better. As Pandora’s box opens on the race through Fall, we expect the pace of news will accelerate into the “breaking” segment. In no particular order?

* Maybe a strike by the United Auto Workers this evening. There are major discussions about electric-powered cars in that package. The Secretary of Energy did a public affairs demonstration in an EV and had a Georgia family call the cops because she was breaking a spot at the charger with a gas-powered car to ensure she would not be inconvenienced. Some of our group belonged to UAW Local 167, so there is always interest around the strike season and the state of the auto business. This season features all sorts of new stuff.

The Chinese, North Koreans and Russians are holding military exercises. It is all inside-out, since the Koreans have dispatched their Current Kim in an armored train to meet with Mr. Putin to provide aid. That is inverted from the way things worked for most of a century- the U.S. and Russia glowered at one another to determine what would happen in the rest of the world. In this strange season, the Chinese, Koreans and Iranians are the only ones with full arsenals. They are talking about using those weapons to alter the balance of conflict in Ukraine.

It appears to be a major of transition in season. We have lived here a while, and are not unaccustomed to the idea that we sometimes will still wear shorts after the ghosts and goblins parade and the turkeys flap their wings.

Seasonal Transition is a great time of year for the noise of leaf blowers, inflation, gas prices and 50% unemployment for the youthful Chinese workforce. We will see how that works out. Some alleged experts are saying there could be war out there, maybe not in this season but soon.

That is the joy of the transition. With a light sweater to complete the wardrobe, you know?

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
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