As if on cue, we had a cooler afternoon and evening to start September. Not much cooler, but noticeable. Warmth will be back soon, but the air is slowly leaking out of that balloon as the days grow shorter. Back to posting around September 7.

There’s a nice bloom of goldenrod out by the back fence.

I realize that it isn’t causing our intermittent runny noses, which have been worse this year than last, but not as bad as the worst ever. That would be 1987, the first late summer/early fall I spent in northern Illinois, maybe without much experience with the pollen in question. Ragweed causes that unpleasantness, I understand.

“About Hay Fever,” says American Meadows. “In short, it’s an old wives’ tale. Goldenrod does not cause hay fever. It simply got that bum rap since it blooms at the same time as the real culprit — ragweed.”

Today I started reading When In Rome by Robert J. Hutchinson (1998), subtitled “A Journal of Life in Vatican City,” which is part travel book, part memoir, part popular history, and all very readable and amusing.

Something I found out today: Lyle Waggoner (d. 2020) founded a successful company that provides trailers to movie and TV studios, Star Waggons. After The Carol Burnett Show and Wonder Woman, that’s what he turned his attention to. One of his sons runs it even now, though it has been acquired by a REIT.

One more thing I found out today, early this morning: even at my age, dreams about missing class, or being unprepared for a test, do not disappear completely. Also, the sense of relief is still there when you wake up — ah, I haven’t had to go to a class in nearly 40 years, much less be prepared for one.