Nothing Gold Can Stay: Happy Autumn!

We spent the second week of September exploring the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (also knows as the North Dakota Badlands), where we saw our first real glimpses of leaves changing color. What a glorious time to be there!

I love fall--the beauty of the variety of colors, the crisp morning air and warm days. But I am all too aware of impending winter, and the constant, slow change of nature. As I walk among the changing leaves, I think of Robert Frost's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.

Please read the rest here. Go ahead, click. It's short.

Here's Frost himself reciting it:


and from me, with apologies to Frost,

Make the most of every day,
Grab what's golden on the way,
Knowing that it cannot stay,
Be thankful for the moment.

Happy Fall!

Goodbye Summer!

On this first day of fall, I want to share a few summer tidbits and revisit connections to a couple of books.

We had some great family times, including our almost-five-year-old granddaughter's first bike rides. She invited us to her house to watch her ride because the video on her mom's phone just wasn't enough.

Charles Ghigna covered this in his forth-coming book First Times. I blogged about that book here.
"The first time I help my mother go shopping.
The first time I ride my bike without stopping."

It was a proud time for all of us, and we were pleased to see our granddaughter's grit as she fell and got up again, learning to master the turns.

Another highlight was meeting Andrea Page, author of Sioux Code Talkers of World War II, and hearing her presentation based on her book. She packed our library meeting room, and people even came from other towns to learn more about this important topic. I blogged about the book here.

I'm thankful that Andrea and the family who traveled with her from Rochester, NY, had a great time in my state. You can see her remarks here, here, here, and here. And our tourism bureau did not pay her for any of these glowing reports!

What were some of your great times this summer? Bye, summer, and hello, fall!