CONTINUING EDUCATION REWARDS NEW BEGINNINGS

Here it is, September again, second New beginning time of the year. What! Isn't July 1 the second new beginning of the year? Or the spring equinox? Easter?

New beginning time is a state of mind and can happen any moment, any split second. Each time a fresh new cell in the body replaces an old exhausted one i~s a new beginning. But that is getting microcosmical for this little string of words.

January, the first new beginning time of the year, is just a calendar date. If a person was "mindfolded" and turned around several times he might declare it to be November or February. But, September? You couldn't miss it.

~Look! There are asters by the roadsides and goldenrod in the corners. Listen! Crickets fiddle faster, seemingly overnight. In August they seem to think there is plenty of summer left and drag their "bows" across their "strings" languidly. I know it is their wings scraping together that makes the chee-chee, cree-cree, or re-treat, re-treat sounds, but isn't it much more fun to see them, with the mind's eye~, as equipped with a bow and fiddle, fiddling away in the ripening grass. It seems that almost exactly on Sept. 1 some great overall cricket symphony director steps it up from eight to the bar to 16. Suddenly, they know courtship days are waning.

There is cider in August and October, but not quite like the cider of September, squeezed fresh from the first rosy fruits. Discerning pallets can tell the difference.

The biggest telltale of all, though, are those yellow school buses on the road again. I wonder if the school children have made a parody of Wi~llie Nelson's "On the Road Again," somewhere inserting the suggestion that it is time to move the mind's potential up a notch? It would probably go like this, "Here we go again, man. Let it grow again, man," over and over and over with a suggested heavy metal beat.

There should be a place on a diploma for the receivers to sign, stating: "I do not yet know it all but will continue my education in every way I can, every day."

Maybe it wouldn't mean a thing to many, but there would be others who, from time to time, would remember signing that promise.

Maybe, out of long habit, at the September new beginning time, such signees would look around in the stores for some type of notebook or tablet they, at one time, were quite familiar with and start a study of something they have, for a long time, wished they knew more about. (Note that this paragraph is one sentence of 51 words.)

In the wa~ning days of August, I begin looking around for a red covered Big Chief tablet. That's what I had when my formal schooling began and I'm sentimental. I've already entered the first notes of my new continuing education entitled: Learn how to break up my writing into shorter sentences. Review Strunk and Whi~te's "Elements of Style. Re-read some of Hemingway's stories. Remember that a one word sentence can be very effective. Yeah! ~See?

Continuing education! It is one of the greater concepts of the post-wheel era, a project of a great organization too.

Not all persons are interested in improving their writing. Maybe, in September, one would really like to look at the night skies and be able to recognize the constellations. Pegasus. Casseopia. Ursa Major. (Hey! I'm gettin'~~~ good at these short sentences.)

Maybe you~ want only to know how to make a better apple pie. On the first page of your new beginning notebook you might write: I'll go to the orchard and hand-pick my Jonathans from the tree. While there I'll note the butterflies, especially the Monarchs heading sou~th. I'll breathe deeply of the orchard fragrances the ripening fruit and dying grasses. Back home, I'll put my rosy apples in a blue crock and use them as a centerpiece for several days. Then with the elements of flour, shortening, sugar, butter, nutme~g and cinnamon I'll put the peeled, sliced apples together in some new crusty way, maybe building up my apples in the middle of the bottom crust to resemble the Great Pyramid Cheops and crisscross with little ribbons of dough,~ that turns and twists like Highway 72 to Fredericktown.

Ain't that a new twist to your continuing education about apple pies? Huh?

REJOICE!