Fall Path by author

The weather in northeast Ohio has just begun to align with the month of November. Since moving here nine autumns ago, this October was the most delightfully long stretch of warm and sunny fall weather I have ever experienced. However, if I was a tree, I would have been very thirsty. Shutting down the production of chlorophyl in dry conditions resulted in less color as trees release their leaves. Now fauna and flora alike have begun to see some gray rainy days. The temperatures have dropped during the day as well as at night.

Combined with turning the clocks back, dark mornings and afternoons tend to turn us inwards, inside of our homes and inside of our own selves. Hibernation is a deep long- term sleep that shuts down some mammal’s bodies. Brumation (as I learned from the NY Times this morning), is more of what I, and my fellow squirrels, tend to do. It is a partial slowing down but remaining aware of what is happening- to get out when needed to attend to life outside our cozy nests.

Part of a November poem from 2025:

The landscape is dull, branches stripped bare

black up against the gray sky.

The news of the world is relentlessly sad,

joy seems so hard to come by.

Waiting for winter on this gray day.

Waiting for winter in gray.

The gray was born of electric blue skies,

the rainbow colors of fall.

Now the clarity’s gone.

The edges have blurred.

My paintbrush is washing it all

opaque and gray.                     

Clouds tear apart, the sunshine breaks through,

wind blows a hole through the sky.

A cold front is coming embracing the land

with a whispering white lullaby.

Waiting for winter on this windy day.

Listening for winter today.

Seven geese a’swimming…. by author

This year, November also brought the results of the Midterm Elections. For so long it has felt like I was swimming upstream against the dangerous current of many Americans. I didn’t feel part of the greater whole anymore. Having learned to stay informed but not to become emotionally overwrought at the loss of what I hold dear in my country, I tried to stay open as a witness, acting when and where I could to make a difference. I was cautious in hoping for enough representatives to enact the massive changes needed to make me feel that I was swimming with the current again.

And now? I do feel part of my fellow citizens’ collective. I breathe easier. I wonder if the animal part of me has been quietly frightened by feeling excluded from the herd. That would make me more vulnerable to becoming prey to the aggressors waiting to take down the weak, sick, elderly (me), or the Unfit Others. Ultimately, I am part of our human condition– which means acknowledging we have inherent attitudes of predators and prey.

I hold to the ideals of peace and justice in a functional democratic organism. I see those who have taken control of the power of capitalism, holdng tight. This casts people into us vs. them positions, leading to predator and prey mentality. The ultra wealthy want to remain the ones who decide who is worthy of receiving the beneficence of their wealth/power/AI machinery to live their daily lives. I ask, “How does 21^st century capitalism mesh with a democracy at the highest level? What does that even look like?”

I am not an economist. I am not a political scientist. I am ignorant of how to best weave AI into our future. But even I can see the wild fluctuations of asserting dominance without morally answering to the larger dominated body cannot be economically sustainable. Who leads, who needs? Who enacts, who listens, who educates, who responds? There is now a growing chance to revamp the means of achieving a “more perfect union.” May we have the patience, persistence, and willingness to sacrifice for a greater good of all Americans. Those who rejoice in the Blue Wave must keep working to support national diplomacy and sustainably intelligent legislation. May we find ways to integrate those who are as frightened of our desire for change as we were frightened by their methods of redefining America.

Leaf Litter and Lavender by author