First whiff

While I was walking Goblin the Dog yesterday, fall blew around the corner. It wasn't too hot of a day, but still a little muggy and summery; a breeze came scattering leaves through the little street garden we were walking past, and it felt dry and chilly and quiet, like autumn. And today, you can definitely tell that change is in the air. There's an undertone of fall, even though the cicadas are still buzzing away. My brain is waking up from its summer slumber - a good thing, too, since school begins next week and it's time to get all professorial again.

When I first moved to New York, it was September of 1989; I didn't move until after Labor Day, but it was still warm and unbelievably humid. There was a day when I was walking uptown, and crossed the street, seemingly right through a cold front. On one side of the street, it was warm and muggy summer, and on the other, crisp, dry fall. You could actually feel the wall of cold air as it pushed its way downtown.

Around that same time, somebody took me to my first real cabaret in New York. It turned out to be a performance by a guy who had been a graduate student when I was in undergrad in Arizona. He was sort of a like a big blond football player type, and you wouldn't really imagine him doing cabaret. There he was, doing his act, intoning his "patter": "But hey, it's almost autumn. I love autumn."

And his next song was, of course, "Autumn."

It was my first inkling that, hey, not everyone in New York is really all that good. Whew!

But I did love that autumn.