AND SO BEGINS AUTUMN
(Even though it's technically still summer.)
Summer warmth lingers, but the clouds are getting organized for cooler weather.
Labor Day is the unofficial bridge from summer to autumn. During the week immediately thereafter we experienced in rapid succession the sudden appearance of yellow school buses, the start of the NFL regular season, and the cloying stench of pine cones heavily scented with "pumpkin spice" as we stroll into our local supermarkets. Meanwhile, Halloween decorations and related paraphernalia suddenly dominate the displays at THE HOME DEPOT and LOWE'S. As September progresses, sunset will come earlier each evening as its attendant hillside shadows sharpen with the diminishing humidity. Mornings become deliciously cool. All this while late summer's agricultural bounty-- as in sweet and tender fresh corn, lusciously ripe heirloom tomatoes, and pungent fresh basil-- still abounds at our local farm-stands... all because (thanks to climate change) September is the new August, and the the first joy-killing frost typically doesn't arrive until mid-October, at least where I live.
For these and other reasons, early autumn is now perhaps the most delightful time of the year in the American northeast. Meanwhile, here's what I've been up to since I last posted over a month ago.
THE BOYS WERE BACK IN TOWN
Most of us Union College Delta Upsilon brothers from the disco era played football
and have retained our accordingly gargantuan appetites.
The annual gathering of my Union College fraternity brothers took place in Saratoga and Schenectady on August 13-14. For dinner on the 13th we had arranged pay a reasonable group corkage fee while I personally provided the wines from my cellar and acted as the guest wine steward. The boys greatly enjoyed my selection with their steaks and prime rib-- Cam X Wine Lot 34 2024 Oakville Petite Sirah. If you love great wine and you are interested in literally purchasing $100-300 Napa Valley gems (like this Petite Sirah) for mere nickels on the dollar, please check out https://camxwine.com/.
Union's iconic Nott Memorial building; Babs & Bob in a poster for 1973's THE WAY WE WERE, which was filmed at Union; and a quintet of Union gridders who had preceded us by just a few decades.
AN EPIPHANY
In the aftermath of our dinner gathering I ventured alone to the mostly empty Union campus and re-traced my footsteps of nearly half a century prior. The gauzy, time-worn memories washed over me and receded like gentle beach waves until I reached the field in the photo below and found myself smacked by a sudden realization--
The Union College rugby game field. Back in our day it was also the football practice field, meaning that I spent a hell of a lot of time here both practicing and performing my skill.
In high school I was a physically scrawny late bloomer with no particular athletic ability, I was socially behind schedule, and I had yet to discover my inner scholar. In other words, I had little going on in my life back then to make me feel particularly valued in this world... except for my ability to kick a football. Unathletic as my I was, my younger self's complete obsession with kicking, along with the training and practice needed to excel at it, not only gave me an identity and a tangible skill but also the very portal that would take me from boy to man. And as I beheld the mid-August splendor of the rugby field's rich green grass and the late summer sky framed by goal posts, I realized that here-- RIGHT HERE-- is the exact spot where I had largely navigated that portal. And so be it known, dear readers and loved ones, that Union's rugby field is where I wish my ashes to be scattered.
CHESS
The match that made chess cool for my generation-- Spassky vs. Fischer, 1972
That natural athleticism I was sorely lacking in high school was counterbalanced, I suppose, with a sharper-than-average mind, even if it manifested back then as sarcasm and snark rather than high grades. But I was our high school's undisputed (if unofficial) chess champion. Ever since then I've regularly followed all the major chess tournaments and championships, and to this day I enjoy solving chess puzzles-- as in "White to mate in two"-- but alas, I've always lacked the capacity for the mass-memorization of opening lines necessary to seriously compete at the game.
A famous chess problem created by American chess legend Paul Morphy (1837-1884).
White to move and win. (HINT-- capturing black's pawn is NOT the correct answer.)
And so I created a new way to begin a game of chess-- something known in the chess universe as a "variant"-- that greatly diminishes the role of rote memory in the opening. I dubbed this variant JockeyChess because the two players essentially jockey for position while creating one of 2700 possible opening arrangements prior to beginning play. An article I wrote about this is scheduled to appear in the October edition of the MENSA BULLETIN, and Webmistress WinH. and I spent a surprisingly large portion of August creating a rudimentary website (JockeyChess.com) that contains a how-to-play guide along with "The JockeyChess Manifesto," a lengthy essay that covers the history and philosophy of randomized chess variants along with an explanation of the underlying math. Please trust me that this manifesto is a far more interesting read than this description might suggest.
And finally...
A CAR CRASH
No one was injured, but I had to set up a miniature war room to coordinate
the repairs, the insurance coverage, and our new car purchasing options.
On the first day of August someone smashed into my wife's Kia Niro (the blue car) as she was stopped in traffic. Because modern cars are comprised of a surprising amount of plastic, the damage was far more expensive than this photo might suggest and repairs would take more than three weeks to complete. This meant that we had to get her in a rental car ASAP so she could work, initiate deliberations with our insurance company, monitor the repair process, re-calculate almost daily the economics of replacing this car with a new one, and figure out where we would buy it.
(We both love the Kia Niro because it's an old-school hybrid-- not a plug-in-- that gets 60 miles per gallon in city traffic. We quickly agreed on buying the new 2026 version of the Niro should we opt to replace our 2019 model that has 90,000 miles on its odometer.)
The repair estimate was higher than the book value of our car, and yet our insurance company inexplicably ordered the repairs done rather than declaring the car a total loss and simply cutting us a check. Although this lengthened the whole process, it afforded us time to locate the replacement should we opt to go that route. It also provided the opportunity for us to exploit the red-hot demand for quality used vehicles should we choose to trade ours in.
While our damaged car sat in the repair shop, I explored options with three different Kia dealers in our region, noting the truckloads of 2027 models suddenly appearing along our local "automile." This meant that the newest cars were hitting the showrooms and thus the 2026 models would soon be significantly discounted to make room for them. The timing was perfect-- the dealers were motivated to sell at end-of-model-year discounts, and we were under no pressure to purchase a new car because our 2019 Niro was being restored to perfectly good driving condition. At the end of this long and time-consuming process we wound up with a new 2026 Niro at a great price after getting top dollar for our old Niro.
Oh-- and in early August I got a sudden inspiration to start writing a new book... a compendium of suggested rule changes for the NFL. More on that later.
≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈
And so, Dear Readers, that's how I spent my month of August when I wasn't out driving a truck. I missed you, too.
Comments