By Bill Anderson

Summer 2018 left in a huff between sundown on Sunday, September 16, and sunrise on Monday, September 17. At 5:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon the temperature registered 93 degrees on a south wind gusting up to 45 mph. By 5:00 a.m. on Monday, September 17, the thermometer registered 48 degrees, accompanied by a 20 mph wind out of the north. A drop of 45 degrees in a span of 12 hours. What a difference a day makes! From wind burn to wind chill in 12 hours. The change in the weather also brought with it a few showers of rain, but not enough to get a reading in any of the local rain gauges. According to information obtained from the internet (and that’s always correct, right?) the Autumnal Equinox will occur on September 22 this year, and astronomers declare the Equinox to be the end of Summer and the beginning of Autumn. However, there is controversy in the scientific community even about the beginnings and the ends of the 4 seasons. Meteorologists use the Gregorian calendar, the one we all use today, to divide the year into 4 seasons, each 3 months in length, and, as far as the meteorologists are concerned, Autumn began back on September 1. So, are the astronomers correct, or are the meteorologists correct? The answer is: YES! At least the meteorologists are consistent. For them, Autumn always starts on September 1 each and every year, but, philosophers say that consistency is “the hobgoblin of small minds,” so being consistent may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. Astronomers, however, can’t quite pin down a date. They say that, depending on the year, the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and several other factors, the Autumnal Equinox can occur, and Autumn begin, sometime between September 21 and September 24. So much for the precision of science! Both meteorologists and astronomers agree that after September 22 we will definitely be in the season of Autumn. That’s where the agreement ends, though, as the meteorologists claim that Autumn will end on November 30 and astronomers say that the Winter Solstice marking the end of Autumn and the beginning of Winter will occur on December 22. According to the President, the entire discussion is all part of a plot to take the spotlight away from him, and get people thinking about less significant personages, such as God. Could be.

Curt & Renee Larson arrived home on Wednesday, September 5, at the conclusion of a 3-week trip to Europe that had begun on August 14. Their first stop was Amsterdam, where they boarded one of Viking River Cruises riverboats for a journey up the Rhine River to Basil, Switzerland. In Switzerland they rented a car and drove to Frankfort, Germany, where they stayed with a friend who had been a foreign exchange student in the Larsons’ home a number of years ago, and who is now a Doctor practicing Psychiatry in Frankfort. “No comment,” said Curt. They next traveled to Norway to visit cousins of the Larson and Seavert families, and then on to Sweden where they discovered that Renee’s Swedish forebears had been Jonssons in Sweden and that they had taken the Sundquist name, derived from the name of their farm in Sweden, on their arrival in America. It was a great trip, but tiring, according to Curt, and, as with most trips, the best part was arriving back home.