Columbus Day 2022.  Today is a federal holiday and traffic is noticeably lighter.  “A day off” is appreciated especially by students, who get to sleep-in this morning.

The fall days are superlative as the mornings edge toward the appearing of frost.  Leaves are beginning to fall.  Vegetation has an arc of lifespan as do all living things.  There seems to be a time of natality, of rapid growth, maturation and fruitfulness, and then a decline, dissolution and death and decay.  We all are “of nature” are we not?  Of course as a language enabled mammal we have “a say” in the detail of our lives.  Medical science has made early detection of cancer feasible, the progression of the disease slowed or even stopped.  Nevertheless we yet share with all living, the finite arc of a lifetime.

Yesterday we enjoyed the Blueberry Festival at Windy Acres Farm in Batavia.  I felt pleasure in the splendor of the varieties of gourds, especially the pumpkins of varied colors, surface textures, sizes, etc.  My imagination is stimulated to project personality onto these fall harvest vegetables.  I feel an impulse to touch. How many days of warmth, of soaking rain, of growth while drawing nourishment from the soil as well as patient weeding, cultivation — is necessary for the creation of each of these truly interesting, edible vegetables?  Each is a three dimensional lesson in the way of nature, and of our dependency upon the land, and upon the beneficence of the climate.

As counterpoint to these pleasant thoughts, I recalled the images coming from Ukraine.   So much of our history has been of catastrophe, of the violence of random and premature death, the result of a leader or of a party with malign purposes to impose a univocal will upon others…  

The lash and the sword have been as prominent as the plow in the making of the story of humankind. 

*The header photo is of the bridge to Crimea, burning in the aftermath of the Ukrainian strike.