Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Honey Extraction Moon<\/p>\n
The end of the day.\u00a0 The time when the season turns on a pivot toward fall and away from the Solstice.\u00a0 My mood has shifted to melancholic.\u00a0 Not sure why.\u00a0 Maybe the end of the day, the time of year.\u00a0 It is around this time in the year when I turn melancholy, a sort of seasonal affective disorder, perhaps more related, to the nearness of the school year.<\/p>\n
No, not because of any negative associations with school.\u00a0 No, maybe because I’m not going back to school.\u00a0 Not anymore.\u00a0 School was good to me.\u00a0 I got lots of strokes from lots of folks, school was feel good time for me.\u00a0 Yes, I had some troubles that happened during school, but they were extra curricular, the school part, that always grooved.<\/p>\n
Well, not quite always.\u00a0 That first year at Wabash I encountered German.\u00a0 German and I did not get along.\u00a0 I found myself near mid-semester and staring at a D.\u00a0 A D!\u00a0 I graduated at the top of my high school class.\u00a0 I didn’t get D’s.\u00a0 But I was about to get one.\u00a0 So, I dropped it.\u00a0 Not my finest hour academically, but it did save my bacon.\u00a0 Why was I taking German?\u00a0 I wanted to read philosophers in their own languages and German seemed like a good place to start.<\/p>\n
Other than that first semester at Wabash, school was fun.\u00a0 I enjoyed learning, studying, taking tests, writing papers.\u00a0 Weird, huh?\u00a0 Now when See You In September begins to play on the oldy stations, my nostalgia meter hits a high.<\/p>\n
Hmmm.\u00a0 Just occurred to me.\u00a0 This may be the way successful athletes feel when the school year starts, in those day after their career has ended.\u00a0 Those were the best years of my life.\u00a0 That sort of feeling.<\/p>\n
No.\u00a0 That’s not it.\u00a0 Those weren’t the best years of my life.\u00a0 These are the best years. Right now.<\/p>\n
It may explain why I keep throwing myself into things like the docent program, learning Latin, Tai Chi, always going for the burn that comes from conquering a learning curve.\u00a0 That life long education idea really took hold in me.\u00a0 I believe in it, body and soul.<\/p>\n
Though I do, each year when the evening’s cool, the leaves begin to change and parents start packing their kids up to take them off to college, I wish, a part of me wishes, I could go along with them.<\/p>\n
Here’s something a bit strange.\u00a0 The song that always comes to mind for me at this time of year is See You In September by the Happenings.\u00a0 Here’s a youtube version filmed on Lake Calhoun.<\/p>\n