Monday,
November 8, 2004 DECLINE AND FALL – BUT MAGNIFICENTLY
They
have no choice. They’re on the way out. But before they fall,
the leaves of fall resist nature and gravity brilliantly, putting
on a show to make even Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts jealous.
Expiring throughout New England, they become turncoats. Setting trees
ablaze in departing finery, they give up on green to flash red, gold,
auburn, maroon, orange and subtle variations. I used to tell my pre-school-age
children that it was the work of an itinerant artist called Pete the
Painter, who showed up during October in these parts, and kept applying
new coats daily.
He
wouldn’t stay long, so enjoy it. That was my advice, and this
year it seemed more enjoyable – irresistible to my irrepressible
roommate, Anita Ruthling Klaussen, who takes the pix for this web.
Out she went with camera, to Concord, Mass., taking me along for the
glorious ride, to capture these scenes before the inevitable downfall
– an exhibit to make Monet’s mouth water and eyes gleam.
Some of the trees reminded me of an ice cream I haven’t experienced
since boyhood: orange pineapple. Dee-licious to the psyche. In that
time the leaves were given a noble farewell, cremated like Viking
heroes in redolent bonfires. No longer allowed. They’re unsentimentally,
mechanically blown into piles and trucked out.
Anita
and I feel that October is the best time of the year in our Boston
habitat. Yet warm enough for outdoor tennis, decorated by the works
from Pete the Painter’s easel. Maybe it seemed sensationally
better this time because of “Our Olde Towne Team,” the
madcap Red Sox, and the way they ran away from the historic Curse
around their necks, all the way to vanquish the Vaderian New York
Yankees in the semis, and then win the World Series.
That
dispelled some of the local gloom surrounding the failure of a Bostonian
named Kerry to win some other contest. His plight took me back to
1975 when Arthur Ashe, a long shot, too, beat Jimmy Connors for the
Wimbledon crown. A happy group of his young relatives excitedly brought
the news to his aged grandmother: “Arthur won, Gramma! He won
Wimbledon!”
Her response: “That’s nice...but does he have a job?”
Kerry should be heartened that he still has a government job. His
wife won’t need to take in laundry, and he won’t have
to hire out raking leaves.
They
have no choice. They’re on the way out. But before they fall,
the leaves of fall resist nature and gravity brilliantly, putting
on a show to make even Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts jealous.
He
wouldn’t stay long, so enjoy it. That was my advice, and this
year it seemed more enjoyable – irresistible to my irrepressible
roommate, Anita Ruthling Klaussen, who takes the pix for this web.
Out she went with camera, to Concord, Mass., taking me along for the
glorious ride, to capture these scenes before the inevitable downfall
– an exhibit to make Monet’s mouth water and eyes gleam.
Anita
and I feel that October is the best time of the year in our Boston
habitat. Yet warm enough for outdoor tennis, decorated by the works
from Pete the Painter’s easel. Maybe it seemed sensationally
better this time because of “Our Olde Towne Team,” the
madcap Red Sox, and the way they ran away from the historic Curse
around their necks, all the way to vanquish the Vaderian New York
Yankees in the semis, and then win the World Series. 
That
dispelled some of the local gloom surrounding the failure of a Bostonian
named Kerry to win some other contest. His plight took me back to
1975 when Arthur Ashe, a long shot, too, beat Jimmy Connors for the
Wimbledon crown. A happy group of his young relatives excitedly brought
the news to his aged grandmother: “Arthur won, Gramma! He won
Wimbledon!”
