Jubilee Fever

Jubilee fever is in full bloom this week as we await the Saturday celebration of our six jubilarians (on pages 16-19 here) and their 500 guests. Yes, that's what I've heard--500. I know the chapel can hold about 300 when all the additional chairs are put around and another 100 or so are going to view the chapel rituals via large screen TVs in the front parlor or Garden Room. Following the ceremony it becomes a glorious celebratory free-for-all reception, everyone talking and laughing and meeting people they haven't seen in...well, sometimes 25 or 50 years!

Meanwhile while all this is going on indoors, outdoors autumn is making her first appearances with cool mornings and sunny, warm afternoons. Oh that that clearness in the skies could continue for the next 6 months instead of descending into that grey dome that seems to settle over the Great Lakes regions during the deep winter months. Here's one of those clean, clear skies right after sunset.

And Mary Oliver's take on autumn:

"Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness"

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun by swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.