Yesterday was first day of Autumn. Or today. Today is the first full day of Autumn.  The distinction is most likely only important to whichever weather person was on air yesterday versus who is on air today. Either yesterday or today you must have noticed the difference when you woke up? The trees are now covered with bright colorful leaves, pumpkins are lining all the by-ways, there’s a smell of warm apple cider in the air, and that air is decidedly cooler than it was yesterday with decidedly fewer daylight hours. Well, maybe not quite. In truth there isn’t much difference between summer and fall if yesterday and tomorrow are the comparisons. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, just read this paragraph backwards. There’s not much change between the last day of Winter and the first of Spring either. Seasons just don’t change that quickly.

In truth, any change seldom happens quickly, but it happens. And it happens inexorably. Things you barely notice from day to day add up so over time the change becomes monumental. Take yourself for example. You likely are not noticeably different than you were yesterday, maybe not from last week, perhaps even barely noticeably different from last year. But compared to five years ago, ten years, twenty years…the change is remarkable.

Something that rarely changes is our desire not to change. Almost everybody prefers the familiarity of now to the point they would choose a future to be no different than the now. Except now. Our “now” is taking a great toll on us. It is a hard now that we’d gladly change for calmer times. Unfortunately, those calmer times may come with their own set of peril. To me, Eden is the fictional town of Mayfield were the Cleavers raised their two sons, a few miles from Bryant Park where Uncle Charlie helped Steve Douglass raise his three sons, which isn’t so far from the Springfield were Jim Anderson knew best how he and Margaret would raise their two daughters bookended around their only son. Springfield barely changed from week to week yet somehow, it’s unrecognizable now when Homer and Marge struggle with their brood. I’d rather live in the Springfield of the fifties, the Mayfield or Bryant Park of the sixties, than the 21^st century Springfield or any other model community even if it meant living in a politically incorrect time of two genders, people advancing on merit, family values, and inter-generational respect.

So, now you’re going to ask, what about segregation, marginalization, anti-Semitism, homophobia, the Cold War, and inner-city gangs? So, now I will ask you, why are all those still going on? Last week a young man in a Pittsburgh, PA suburb shot three people at a baby shower, for his expected child by the way, over an argument of who would transport the gifts from the venue to the home. Over 4500 Asian hate crimes were reported in the first seven months of 2021. In one week in May 2021, the Anti-Defamation League found more than 17,000 tweets using variations of the phrase “Hitler was right.” Violent crimes against the marginalized group of hearing, visually, and physically challenged persons are more than double for non-challenged males and over three times as prevalent against women versus their non-challenged counterpart. Just last month, the Associated Price reported that a parent barged into his daughter’s elementary school in Northern California and punched a teacher in the face, sending him to an emergency room, over mask rules. So, I ask those who say my idyll is a paradise for only the privileged white male, how they would like to respond to these.

Ah yes, there is a change in the air. If we could only tell which way the wind will blow next.