Labor Day. Summer is over. Many schools are back in session. Halloween's traces are beginning to show.
Thanksgiving Dinner times and places are being discussed.
Could the dread over being behind in making Christmas cookies be just around the corner, can placing those precious Christmas kielbasi orders be far behind?
While we're at it, how about a Lackawanna County kielbasi maker winning the Plymouth Keilbasa Festival again? Adjudged "best" one more time was Bosak's of Olyphant. Luzerne Countians, mostly Wyoming Valley-ites really, are pretty smug about having the best when it comes to ethnic dishes, and they are largely correct, yet a northerner takes home the prize repeatedly. Born and raised in Lackawanna County, now making my home in Luzerne County, I am not about to take a side here, except to say that I spell it kielbasi and pronounce it the same way.
La Festa Italiana also rings a bell this weekend, telling us all that a season has ended. Huge crowds on Courthouse Square, the aromas of countless great Italian dishes in the air, so many aromas that I could likely gain a few pounds just by breathing heavily at the corner of Linden and Adams for a half hour. Once again the ever-popular and never-stopping Poets will be a key draw. These guys are good. These guys have been around since I was in high school. Just how old are they?
The telethon of all telethons is this weekend, another signal that summer came, was, and went. The Jerry Lewis telethon really is the telethon of record in the USA. Sure, there are others, all worthy, but Lewis and MDA essentially created, defined, and continues to define, what a telethon is.
The dogs got a bath today. Out on the deck, in the still warm sun, they got a rub, scrub, a rinse, then dried with a nice fluffy towel. Carol did the work. I watched. There, that was easy.
I had a chat with a local fruit grower just a few days ago. Summer fruits are still abundant, he tells me, but the apples are starting to come on strong. Apple fans, this could be a year to remember. Apples love water. This summer's rain will bring big and very juicy apples. Apples, pumpkins, both signs of the turning seasons. Dried cornstalks are another. For whatever reason, you need to stand a few by the front door, that way, I guess, everyone will know that you know that these are autumnal days.
Finally, Steamtown's Rail Fest was held again this
Labor Day Weekend. Swinging by for a half hour or so, the big shocker was the crowd. The place was jammed. Good to see, it's very good to see. Again in town for Rail Fest was Amtrak. An Amtrak train-set in Scranton sends my imagination spinning some, if only for a few seconds. We should have Amtrak service here, rail options to NYC, Buffalo, Syracuse. This time around, a scrap of news that might prove apocryphal - some day. Amtrak's president and CEO, Joseph Boardman, spoke to a small crowd while standing before his employer's locomotive and handful of passenger equipment. Mr. Boardman made the claim that Scranton deserves Amtrak "connectivity" and that Amtrak is studying that possibility and is ready to make it happen, that all it takes is money. Come to think of it, that's really not much in the way of news, now is it?
