Saturday morning on the deck* in These titles mean nothing.

This is the second week in a row that I’ve had Friday off. I guess I’m transferred back into my original department where there is less work? Doesn’t matter a lot. Less work means less money but it’s not my decision so I will try to use my time wisely.

Yesterday by this time I was into my second pot of coffee. I had a lively day. Conversations, trip to town, housework, laundry and evening at the McGregor Art Center’s last opening of the summer.

It rained overnight and everything is damp and there are golden leaves on the deck. I took my plants in a few days ago so the deck is kind of bleak. They probably could have stayed out longer but it’s good to have them inside.

Jim has gone with his combining friend to pick up the six row corn head in a town twenty or so miles north of here. Jim had a combine head carrier made on an old wagon gear of my dad’s. He was proud of it. I hope it works. The six row head is needed because the other farmer has switched to narrow row corn and the conventional four row head won’t match his rows.

Harvest is close. The seed corn guy was here the other day and he and Jim and Gracie scouted the fields and brought back sample ears. Gracie has been enjoying them - carrying them around, eating them, burying them.

Harvest has a general order to it. First corn silage is cut and bagged. Then beans are combined. And then corn.
Harvest is October and November - give or take, depending on weather and luck.

Corn and soybean prices are half of what they were a few years ago. We are waiting for prices of things we buy to go down too.

Turkey buzzards - there may be a more graceful name for them - are riding the air currents. I watched The Snows of Kilimanjaro on

There is a maple along the road not too far from our driveway that has a brilliant blaze of orange leaves in the midst of its still green ones. I told myself I’d take its picture today. I might have to make coffee first.

I’ve been listening to a fresh book on tape from the library on my trips to and from work. It’s called Up in Honey’s Room and it’s by Elmore Leonard. I’ve always heard of him as a writer of mysteries/thrillers, many of them turned into successful movies and tv shows. For various reasons, snobbery on the list for one, I’ve never read any of his books.

I’m really enjoying this one. It’s set in Detroit as WWII is coming to a close. It involves German spies and escaped POWs. There is a smart blonde and an FBI agent and a US Marshall, both of whom were wounded on the same island in the Pacific before becoming civilian cops. It’s a smart book. Debra Winger’s husband Arliss Howard reads it. He has a soft insinuating voice and a gift for German and Oklahoma accents.

A subplot opened up on my way to work Thursday in which one of the POWs meets a woman in the book department of Hudson’s book store and agrees to translate a stolen play of Kurt Weill for her. I can’t wait to see how that turns out.

It has one semi-glaring mistake. Honey’s brother is rustling cattle for her ex-husband’s black market meat operation and the cattle are being hauled behind pickups in stock trailers. Stock trailers didn’t come into use until the 1970s or ‘80s. I’m being picky.

It started to rain lightly and I’ve moved inside to the sofa. Still no coffee and still no big plans for the day. I might not even get the orange leaves photographed.

• A star used to mean an edit. Maybe it still does.
  I had looked up Kurt Weill to see how to spell his name. Then after I finished here I went to read/skim his Wiki article. Turns out he was a composer not a writer so his work would not have to be translated - though of course he wrote music for plays and they would need to be translated. Picky.

Wiki says this:
Weill suffered a heart attack shortly after his 50th birthday and died on April 3, 1950, in New York City.[17] He was buried in Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York. The text and music on his gravestone[24] come from the song “A Bird of Passage” from Lost in the Stars, itself adapted from a quotation from the Venerable Bede:[25]

    This is the life of men on earth:
    Out of darkness we come at birth
    Into a lamplit room, and then –
    Go forward into dark again.

        (lyric: Maxwell Anderson)

I’m always looking for good tombstone quotes.

Last updated September 20, 2014