September 21, 2026

Greetings Everyone!

It is September and we are now moving towards October, my favorite autumn month!

Ray Bradbury, the well-known science fiction and horror writer, describes autumn in his book The October Country  as:

“That country where it is always turning late in the year.  That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay.  That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun.  That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts.  Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain....”

In another book, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Bradbury warns us against the autumn people, whom he claims are soulless, evil things that seek to ensnare humans. 

But Bradbury is wrong about that.

For there are autumn people who have souls and are not evil; they love autumn and celebrate the death of the year and the renewal that always follows.

JLS

September 18, 2026

September 18, 2026

Greetings Everyone!

It is September, and autumn continues.

Washington Irving, American writer and author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Adventure of the German Student,” wrote a classic autumn tale, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” 

The main character, Icabod Crane, is riding alone at midnight through a spooky forest.  Previously, Crane had attended a party near Sleepy Hollow; he was wooing a young, beautiful heiress, but she rejected his marriage proposal. As he returns home, he is understandably dejected.  But he is also fearful that he might encounter the Headless Horseman, the ghost of a dead soldier who rides the dark roads at night.

As Irving describes it: “It was the very witching time of night...the hour was as dismal as himself...All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection.  The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight....”

Predictably, Crane does, indeed, encounter the horseman: “In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black, and towering.  It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler.” When this shape emerges from the shadows, Crane sees that it is headless and immediately, he sets spurs to his horse and flees as fast as he can.

The Headless Horseman chases Crane, riding even faster, and finally throws its head at him, knocking him off his horse. 

The next day, Crane has disappeared; his horse is found wandering by itself and the saddle is discovered in the dusty road; nearby are the remains of a shattered pumpkin.  But there is no trace of Crane.

Among the townspeople, there is a suspicion that a rival for the affections of the beautiful heiress, a man named Brom Bones, was responsible for the attack on Crane—the theory is that Bones masqueraded as the Headless Horseman and threw a pumpkin at Crane which knocked him out.  Furthermore, or so the theory goes, when Crane woke up the next morning, he was mortified by losing the heiress and by his encounter with the horseman and so, he fled from Sleepy Hollow.

The majority of the townspeople, however, do not hold this theory.   Instead, they assume that Crane encountered the actual Headless Horseman and that the latter spirited him away to hell.  Thus, Crane is dead.  This view ends up being confirmed later when  a number of people hear the voice of Crane’s ghost at twilight, singing “a melancholy psalm-tune” among the “tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.”

JLS 

September 11, 2026

September 11, 2026 

Greetings Everyone!

It is September, the first month of autumn—my favorite season!

John Keats, the great English poet, wrote a poem “To Autumn” where he celebrates the season, picturing autumn personified as a beautiful, witch-like  woman with her hair lifted by the wind, drowsy with the “fume of poppies” as she watches the ripening orchards, the harvesting of corn and the operation of a cider press. 

The final stanza takes us up into the skies, away from the woman and her earthly concerns:

“Where are the songs of  Spring?  Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

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 bourne;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”

The movement is from the stubble-plains lit by the rosy light of sunset to the river and then to the hills and finally to the emptiness of the autumn sky.  The music of autumn speaks of death and nothingness—i.e. the “soft-dying day,” the “wailful choir,” the gnats mourning, the sinking of the  wind that “dies.” 

JLS