Gainesville, Texas 2:13 PM

Just stopped for a break and a check of the radar to see what sort of tropical mess I'm headed into down in Baton Rouge. (well, Port Allen actually, but nobody's familiar with that, even though it's just across the river from BR.).

Then I ran across a few wise words from Garrison Keillor in his Salon.com column from July 30th:

"...I can't remember a summer I loved so much as this. This is a factor of age -- time is more precious when there's less of it remaining -- and partly it's anticipation that the dogs of war who slipped in the back door eight years ago will soon be gone. In a month, the Republicans will convene a few blocks from my house and I'd like to stand across the street with a sign, but I can't come up with the right wording. "Bleaughhhh," maybe, or "Arghhhh."

I stood watering the flowers this morning and then went upstairs and made my bed, two minimum-wage jobs that I am not well qualified for, apparently. But there is yet time to learn. As long as your mother is alive, you are still young, and mine is holding steady at 94, a tall tree shading us from mortality. Whenever I need to feel youthful again, I can trot out to Mother's and there is my high school graduation picture on the wall, the solemn self-important youth of the spring of 1960, who -- so long as I stay away from mirrors -- I maybe still am..."

Leave it to Keillor to express better than I could a few thoughts on age and mortality I've been having lately.

It's so soon autumn...and I wonder where the days went.