Fall is magical time.  Two holidays of the Fall season are Halloween on October 31st and Thanksgiving, the last Thursday of November.  As the leaves begin to turn, float to the earth to dapple the ground, the magic begins.

This year I’ve taken note of the particular attraction that Fall has for children.  Halloween is an evening traditionally dedicated to the Trick or Treat ritual of treats received from neighborhood homes, by children variously costumed to represent fantasy figures.  To everyone’s delight display of creatures conjured by the imagination begins some weeks before Halloween.

I recorded several of these imaginative yard displays in West Chicago and Batavia.  By means of photographs join me on a walk in a West Chicago neighborhood, and then along the Fox River Trail from Fabyan Forest Preserve toward Batavia.  We begin with a photo of a window view of the maple which is aflame in our front yard.  A photo of a pumpkin with a background of corn stalks indicates transition from West Chicago to the Fox River Trail.  The series of scenes celebrating Halloween concludes with several photos of fall color and life along the Fox River.  Join me!

[The Martians prepare to depart earth with Homer Simpson in captivity as a sample human for intended study.  Perhaps an ironic commentary upon our state of affairs ?!]

---

Unfortunately this is not make-believe fright.

What county in the United States has the highest rate of tax audits?

The answer is Humphreys County in rural Mississippi, where three-quarters of the population is Black and more than one-third lives below the poverty line, according to ProPublica and Tax Notes. Tax collectors go after Humphreys County, where the median annual household income is $28,500, because the government targets audits on poor families using the earned-income tax credit, an antipoverty program, rather than on real estate tycoons who pay their daughters (that’s you, Ivanka!) questionable consulting fees to reduce taxes.

The five counties with the highest audit rates in the United States, according to Tax Notes, are all predominately African-American counties in the South.

— excerpt, Who’s the Tax cheat? You Decide.  By Nicholas Kristof  NY Times, Oct. 11, 2020