Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

It's funny how certain bits of verse stay with you.  At this time of year, that line of Keats from Ode to Autumn always pops into my head.  I don't know the rest of the poem, but today, on my walk with dear Daisy (my dog), it was very misty in the park and the geese were congregating, getting ready for their big trip south, and I said it out loud as I looked out at the inlet and could only see the rocks closest to me -- everything else was misty white.

My brand new furnace came on of its own accord this morning.  Good to know that it works!  All the stuff we had done to the house this summer is finished and now, I hope we can enjoy it.

Since it was raining yesterday, I got a DVD from the library (I know I'm living in the past, man) of the tv show "Mad Men".  I know most people have already seen it, but I haven't and I heard it was great.  I find it quite shocking.  I wonder if it catches that time period as it was.  I suppose almost everyone smoked.  Both my parents smoked and my sister smoked (I never did, thank goodness).  Everyone in movies smoked -- there's that crazy, supposedly romantic, scene with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in "Now Voyager" where he lights two cigarettes and then gives her one -- ooo!  The way they treat women!  It makes you think we have come a long way -- I read an article this summer in The Guardian about how much better the world is now than it was fifty years ago -- how there are many fewer people living in poverty and life expectancy is going up and we have figured out how to cure many diseases and things like that.  When you experience the smoke of forest fires hovering over our city and hear about the succession of hurricanes causing havoc and worry about intercontinental ballistic missiles, you think things are terrible, but perhaps it's the glass half empty-half full argument all over again.  I worry about all those things, but I am definitely in the glass half full camp.

Hope you had a great weekend!  I wonder how all you graduates from Steveston-London are doing in your new lives.  I hope it's all very exciting and wonderful.  Try not to get overwhelmed and give yourselves time to adapt to all the changes.  I read that one of the scourges of university is loneliness. It is natural to feel lonely when you've left everything and everyone you know, but soon, you will know people and get used to your new normal.  Trust me -- I know whereof I speak.

Here's the whole poem if you need some lovely imagery to start your day:

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,	5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,	10
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;	15
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;	20
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,	25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;	30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.