AUTUMN LEAVES

IT WAS AROUND 1968, The Zombies sang about a "Time of the Season". The song asks:

What's your name? (What's your name?)
Who's your daddy? (Who's your daddy?)
(He rich?) Is he rich like me?

The song has little to do with the crux of the matter of this post. (If there is a crux to this one.) (As I'm typing, this feels like just putting words out there about something/anything, to avoid saying out loud those words that weigh most heavy.)

So let's get to that crux--the essence: Autumn is my favorite season, and it starts today: Monday, September 22, 2025, at 1:29 CDT here at About Pops HQ. Although, with a forecast high of 90, it's not feeling like sweater-wearing season just yet.

The Autumnal Equinox is the time where the hours of sunlight and darkness are roughly the same. I'm not crazy about the days getting shorter, especially now when it feels like our cultural darkness grows longer and deeper. It is true that the darkest hour is just before dawn, and now dawn will be taking its sweet time bringing light and hope and newness each day. But, like that little girl sang: "The sun'll come out tomorrow."

Fall reminds me of one of my favorite songs. It's one of the "standards" as the music industry says. It's called "Autumn Leaves". It paints a picture, as good lyrics always do. We see the epitome of Autumn, not a pumpkin-spiced latte, but the leaves of red and gold. We're reminded of summer's passing and time marching on. With a twist: even though the daylight hours grow shorter, somehow the days grow long.

Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear old winter's song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

Here's a little background to save you the googling:

"Autumn Leaves" is the English-language version of the French song "Les Feuilles mortes" ("The Dead Leaves") composed by Joseph Kosma in 1945. The original lyrics were written by Jacques Prévert in French, and the English lyrics were by Johnny Mercer. An instrumental recording by pianist Roger Williams was a number one best-seller in the US Billboard charts of 1955. --Wikipedia

Since its introduction "Autumn Leaves" has become one of the most recorded songs by jazz musicians. More than a thousand commercial recordings are known to have been released by mainstream jazz and pop musicians. I've played in a few jazz bands in my days and in each and everyone "Autumn Leaves" was on the set list. It has been arranged and rearranged in so many styles that it can sound like many different songs, but always with that haunting melody. One of my favorite versions is by the jazz pianist Bill Evans.

For a different take on it, listen to this YouTube video of it being played by a drum and bugle corp —The Bluecoats— who have made the song their official anthem. CLICK HERE FOR A LISTEN.

NOW FOR MY FAVORITE: This is a live recording of Eva Cassidy. She was in her young 30s at this performance. She died of cancer not too long afterward. When you watch this and hear her sing I think you'll agree with me that's it's almost like the song was written to be sung by her. CLICK HERE TO SEE EVA’S VIDEO.

Happy Autumn All. Enjoy. The Winter Solstice will be here soon when Autumn leaves until next year.

HORIZON

THERE WAS A TIME when I could water ski. Today, with arthritic hands and carrying extra ballast, I doubt that I could hold on to the rope tight enough and long enough to pop out of the water. That's okay. I have no desire to be on skis anyway. It's not the proverbial sour grapes; I've moved on to other thrilling endeavors--like reading a newspaper or two each morning and tuning in to hear of the latest antics from D.C. Sometimes that feels like trying to hold on tight while being dragged face-first through the wake of long boat powered by two big Evinrudes.

I loved being around my Uncle David. He was oh so funny and fun. I remember being his caddy for a few rounds of golf when I was a kid. One summer, during college, I worked in his concrete construction company. But the best memory of all was going sailing with him on his sailboat. Skimming across the water without the roar of engines or the smell of fuel exhaust, the sails full of wind; this was the boating life for me. That day I vowed that one day I would have a sailboat.

Decades later, My Amazing Missus and I set sail for the first time on our Catalina sailboat, named (by the previous owner) "Trust Me II". People often asked, "What happened to Trust Me I?" I would explain that I covered that in my marriage proposal to her.

my amazing missus battening down the hatchs after a sail aboard trust me II

Sailing and marriage do take some trust; and repentance and forgiveness and courage and teamwork. You have to balance the white-knuckling, fraught, terrifying moments of changing winds and choppy waters with those that are blissful, serene and sublime. Occasionally, in precarious sailing moments, I would remind her and myself that I had three sailing certifications including costal cruising and navigation. But certificates don't matter when the boat is heeled over, keel up, and on the edge of its beam, speeding across the waves. The combination of thrills and terrors demands a return to calm. So a gentle turn into the wind puts on the brakes.

Once nerves and winds calmed, I might quote Captain Jack Sparrow just to reassure her: "The seas may be rough but I am the Captain! No matter how difficult, I will always prevail." She would give me a look as if to say, "Whatever floats your boat 'Captain'."

In the first sailing class you learn that a boat under sail (no engine running) always has right-of-way over a "power" boat. I raised my hand and asked the instructor if a guy with a six-pack or so of refreshing beverage in him, driving his boat full throttle across the lake, is aware of that rule. "Absolutely not!" our instructor warned.

Moral: You can know the rules, you can seek to follow the rules, but watch out for the guy whose t-shirt reads: Boats-Booze-Babes.

It feels like these days, the rules made by men are applied arbitrarily and only as they suit the desired ends of the power-brandishers. But when it comes to the ultimate, unshakeable rules of nature: the winds and the waves will have the final say.

A bit of sailing wisdom from a crusty old sailor named Scully, who ran a floating seafood joint/sailboat rental on a decrepit ship called the "Barnacle", to a guy named Jack (played by John Candy) renting a sailboat in a movie called "Summer Rental".

Scully:
She'll make ya rich, or she'll feed ya to the fishes. If she wants you to dance, sonny boy, you've got to follow her lead.

Jack:
Didn't I read that on your bathroom wall?

Scully:
Yes. And it's as true today as when I hung it there.

There was a guy whose boat's home slip was near ours. Even when he wasn't sailing, often times you could find him on his boat there at the dock, maybe doing some cleaning or straightening up the lines. Sometimes he would be sitting, reading and smoking his pipe. When we would pass by whether going out to sail or returning home he would say: "Fair winds and following seas." It's apparently a sort of sailor's blessing for well wishes. If you've been on a sailboat, it rings true. It's something I long for at this stage of the journey.

Once more, a quote from the quotable Captain Jack Sparrow: "The problem is not the problem. Your attitude about the problem is the problem."

I know, I know, Captain Jack. But these days it sure seems like the problem is the problem.

You've probably heard someone say, "This too shall pass." It's a very future focused sentiment isn't it? While I tend to get mired in the muck of the moment, I'm fascinated by that thing artists call the horizon line. Being on the water makes the horizon line so clear and straight. Depending on where the line is--high or low--in a picture, it gives us the feeling of being near or far from that moving target of a line. And even though it keeps its distance from us we still move toward it and all that it promises; over there beyond the horizon.

“Now bring me that horizon. ”

— Captain Jack Sparrow

Billy Collins is one of my favorite poets and one of his poems that I've been reading a lot lately is "Aristotle". Each time we would go on a sail, there was a pushing from the dock and raising of the sails--a beginning. There was middle part--the adventure, the fun, the drama. And there was the return to the harbor and the routines of life. Mr. Collins in this poem pays homage to Aristotle's observations of well-told stories having a beginning, a middle and an ending. So, I'm thinking for a moment about each of our stories and our Story.

---

Aristotle
BY BILLY COLLINS

This is the beginning.
Almost anything can happen.
This is where you find
the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,
the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.
Think of an egg, the letter A,
a woman ironing on a bare stage
as the heavy curtain rises.
This is the very beginning.
The first-person narrator introduces himself,
tells us about his lineage.
The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.
Here the climbers are studying a map
or pulling on their long woolen socks.
This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.
The profile of an animal is being smeared
on the wall of a cave,
and you have not yet learned to crawl.
This is the opening, the gambit,
a pawn moving forward an inch.
This is your first night with her,
your first night without her.
This is the first part
where the wheels begin to turn,
where the elevator begins its ascent,
before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.
Things have had time to get complicated,
messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.
Cities have sprouted up along the rivers
teeming with people at cross-purposes—
a million schemes, a million wild looks.
Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack
here and pitches his ragged tent.
This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,
where the action suddenly reverses
or swerves off in an outrageous direction.
Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph
to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.
Someone hides a letter under a pillow.
Here the aria rises to a pitch,
a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.
And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge
halfway up the mountain.
This is the bridge, the painful modulation.
This is the thick of things.
So much is crowded into the middle—
the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,
Russian uniforms, noisy parties,
lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—
too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,
the car running out of road,
the river losing its name in an ocean,
the long nose of the photographed horse
touching the white electronic line.
This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,
the empty wheelchair,
and pigeons floating down in the evening.
Here the stage is littered with bodies,
the narrator leads the characters to their cells,
and the climbers are in their graves.
It is me hitting the period
and you closing the book.
It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen
and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.
This is the final bit
thinning away to nothing.
This is the end, according to Aristotle,
what we have all been waiting for,
what everything comes down to,
the destination we cannot help imagining,
a streak of light in the sky,
a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

---

Fair winds and following seas to you and yours.

IN BETWEEN

"You know what the happiest animal in the world is? It's a goldfish. It's got a 10 second memory. Be a goldfish." --Ted Lasso.

Hopefully you're familiar with Ted Lasso and his fish out of water story. Ted is a coach of an English football (soccer) team. He knows very little about the game but has an uncanny insight into people and a morsel of folksy wisdom for every occasion.

One of his best players has had a bad game and he's let it get to him. Ted gives him the goldfish fact in order to help him see that it's possible to move on. Stuck? Be a goldfish.

In another episode of Ted Lasso, they diagnose one of their players as having The Yips. I suspected that The Yips is a real thing and apparently it is. I should consult with my daughter-in-law, Dr. Brooke Fuller, a "mental performance consultant" on the matter. But that doesn't seem fair. She'a pro. I shouldn't be asking for free advice.

According to Psychology Today magazine: "The yips refer to psycho-neuromuscular impediment interfering with the execution of fine motor skills during sport.

"One of the saddest and strangest phenomena in professional sports is when an athlete starts experiencing the yips. The ability of our best athletes to perform under high levels of stress is a major determinant in attaining the highest level of sport and competition.

"One famous example of the yips involved Steve Sax who went from being named National League Player of the Year in the 1982 season to not being able to throw the ball to first base on routine plays during the next season. Fortunately, he overcame this affliction, but not all pro athletes are so fortunate."

I've actually witnessed Brooke working through an exercise with a young athlete--her niece, Nora, the gynmast. It was in the moments leading up to Nora's first big meet. She was riding to the meet with me and her Mimi (aka: My Amazing Missus). She was getting pretty anxious. She recalled a practice session when she had an incident on the bars. "Be a goldfish", I counseled. That didn't help. Let's call Aunt Brooke.

I won't go into the details of the conversation they had but it worked. Nora went on to win best overall in that meet and every other meet she entered during the season.

"Getting in one's own head" is a trip I've taken many times. You would think I knew it well, but it's sometimes dark there and fluid; so I don't know what I might find around the next corner or under the next rock--the overthinking and obsessive analyzing of situations, which leads to more overthinking and frustration. The advice for getting out of one's own head: focus on the present moment and engage in activities that ground you, such as mindfulness or talking to others. So this essay is me being mindful and communicating it by casting these words out into the ether.

I'm reading a book by David Brooks called, "How To Know A Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen." [note: If next time we meet I seem a little strange, I'm just trying to see you deeply.] Brooks suggests some questions we might discuss with one another and ourselves. Maybe, I thought, that by working through these questions, I might be more goldfish-like and therefore able to courageously navigate these senior years. Who knows, there may be others out there in their own head, or their wilderness, their in-between. In case you would like to try, here are the questions:

---

What crossroads are you at?

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

If you died tonight, what would you regret not doing?

If we meet a year from now, what will we be celebrating?

If the next five years is a chapter in your life, what is that chapter about?

Can you be yourself where you are and still fit in?

---

If someone asked me these questions I would reply, "Those are great questions. I'll get back to you with my answers." I would never get back because these questions are too big. I've been pondering them for weeks and still haven't settled on a definitive answer for a single one of them. Heck, I struggle when someone asks me: "Sup?" or "How's it going?" or "How are you?" My honest answer to each of these three is: I'm just not sure. Not to worry though: I like a bit of mystery and suspense.

Being in-between doesn't have to be purgatory--the kind of place where, in the dark, you might bump into depression, despondencey, or despair. It might (metaphorically) be that your number will be the next one called to order at an amazing ice cream shop or bakery. You know, where you're surveying the goodies, pointing at this one and that one, finalizing your choices and deciding if you'll have a coffee to go along with your treat once your number is called.

Let's go back to David Brooks' questions with a few ideas for answers:

1. What crossroads are you at? Banana split or affogato.

2. What would you do if you weren't afraid? Buy the new Airstream.

3. If you died tonight, what would you regret not doing? At that moment I would be beholding stuff that didn't include regrets.

4. If we meet a year from now, what will we be celebrating? That's a conundrum. A year is a long ways off and it will be here before we know it. Hopefully it will involve sitting beside a shiny Airstream, enjoying another banana split. My inability to honestly answer #6 is a hurdle to full disclosure of my answer to this question.

5. If the next five years is a chapter in your life, what is that chapter about? Peace, love and joy.

6. Can you be yourself where you are and still fit in? Where it really matters: yes! These days though, I tend to make my world too small.

If you're a goldfish, a small small world is okay. The comic Dusty Slay does a bit about the short memory of the goldfish. He tells of a goldfish circling his little aquarium, "Hey, look! There's a scuba diver in here." "Hey look, a treasure chest!" "Hey, look! There's a scuba diver in here." "Hey look, a treasure chest!" "Hey, look! There's a scuba diver in here." "Hey look, a treasure chest!"

Thankfully, for all of us, there is the promise of more. It's okay to occasionally speak the language of in-between where we start our thoughts and sentences with: "For now..."

Let's meet again on July 12, 2026 and celebrate the past and the wonder about future.

IN THE MOMENT

"Sometimes we don’t recognize a narrative when we’re living it." That's not a quote from a famous speech or a book or movie. I read it in the comments of a sports blog. That doesn't make it less thought provoking though. Does it?

You know the analogy about future/past perspective: "You can either look through the windshield or you can look in the rearview mirror."

There's at least one other option (we'll get to that in few more paragraphs), but first let's step out of our car and pretend we are watching it from the outside as it goes through life. Try this: imagine you're in one of those Little Tikes cars going through Kindergarten. Looking through the windshield at your future is myopic at best. We can barely see past recess and naptime to gathering our jacket and lunchbox to head home for the day. This little car doesn't even have a rearview mirror which is fine. There's just not much "past" back there to view anyway.

How about the cool car of our adolescence? Again, there's not much in that rearview--little experience to inform the decisions about the road ahead. We’re probably more enthralled with what’s happening in the car rather than what’s ahead. Hopefully we see the next curve coming,

It seems like this is where we can fall prey to the third option in our windshield/rearview mirror metaphor. This is the one where we are looking at the windshield but not through it to the path ahead. We are in the moment and the moment only. Next time you're in the car try it. Just look at the windshield. Focus on some bug guts if that helps. Don't try it long because it can be disorienting. It's like time is marching on, the miles are passing but we're neither forward-focused or looking back to inform the future.

Ever have one of those moments when you're driving, your mind drifts, all of a sudden you realize you've driven several miles but you can't remember the details?

Don't get me wrong; I'm not disparaging living in the moment. I'm a big fan of daydreaming and peaceful reverie. Maybe though, I need to replace the blank stare at the bird poop on the windshield with an occasional look out of the side windows, taking in the moment, making the most of the trip.

All this introspection about introspection turned to some recent soul searching for me. It all started when watching a documentary called "The Jesus Music". It dawned on me just how formative that era and that music was. Jesus Music was at the heart of what Time magazine called "The Jesus Movement". This thing that started in southern California, and as it spread across the country and my psyche, became part of me and I became part of it in a small way; maybe a few small ways.

The whole hippie movement had an appeal. I was fascinated by the whole "antiestablishmentarianism" of it all. (Ever since I learned that word and discovered it was one of the longest of our language I've been trying to find a way to use it in a sentence. Check that off the bucket list.) This movement gave me a way to be a little transgressive but still compliant with my upbringing.

Not only did I quickly adopt this new genre of music, setting "christian" messages as lyrics to the rhythms, melodies and chord structures and instrumentation of folk/rock music of the 60s and 70s, but I got the opportunity to join some fine musicians as the drummer in a Jesus Music band called "Light". It was largly bank-rolled by a man named John Frank who was the founder of Frankoma pottery. He had a heart for ministries to kids.

We played in coffeehouses, which were springing up in empty downtown buildings all over (places for young "Jesus Freaks" to hang out), and at "Jesus Festivals" (outdoor mini Woodstock type gatherings). We didn't play in churches. At that time, drums and electric guitars were the devil's instruments.

a concert poster i saved from back in the day. according to the u.s. inflation calculator $2.00 in 1972 would be about $15.30 today. Still a pretty cheap date.

People like evangelist Jimmy Swaggart had a few things to say about the music:

"Swaggart, was conducting one of his mass revival crusades in New Haven, Connecticut. Before the cameras and the glare of stage lights he paced back and forth, waving his arms like he was fending off a swarm of bees. He raised his Bible high above his head. He shouted at his audience about the moral degeneracy that dragged reprobates through the gates of hell. He took aim at ‘the devil’s music’: rock and roll. How had Christians made peace with this vile, hideous music, he asked with urgency in his voice: ‘You cannot proclaim the message of the anointed WITH THE MUSIC OF THE DEVIL!’ shouted Swaggart. —https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/god-gave-rock-and-roll-you

One of the earliest pioneers of Jesus Music, Larry Norman, had a hard-driving song to counter Swaggart's point:

I want the people to know that he saved my soul
But I still like to listen to the radio
They say rock 'n' roll is wrong,
We'll give you one more chance
I say I feel so good I gotta get up and dance

I know what's right,
I know what's wrong,
I don't confuse it
All I'm really trying to say
Is why should the devil have all the good music?
I feel good every day
'Cause Jesus is the rock and he rolled my blues away!

larry norman from his album “only visiting this planet”

Apparently a real rocker, with shoulder length hair, swatting the hornet's nest so to speak, didn't do much to smooth the gap between this new movement and the established church. It took Billy Graham himself to calm the panic of church leaders and help them see that there can be other songs along with "How Great Thou Art" and "Just As I Am" to move people.

By 1969, Graham had launched a series of youth nights during his crusades, which attracted young Jesus Freaks with a laidback coffeehouse vibe, and folk singers. By 1994, huge acts such as DC Talk and Michael W. Smith headlined a series of revamped Billy Graham crusade youth nights. Teenagers could belt out Smith’s “Place in This World” and headbang to DC Talk’s “Jesus Freak” before hearing a “grandfatherly” Graham deliver a short gospel sermon. Graham’s reaction after the first such concert, held in Cleveland: “Personally, I didn’t understand a word of those songs [as they were being sung]. But I had all the lyrics written down, and they were straight Bible; great lyrics.” —https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/04/songs-love-sing-billy-graham-edith-blumhofer-crusades/

Shortly after that, I toured with a youth group, playing drums in a musical, performed in a number of churches. Teens and young adults gave great reviews. More than a few old deacons gathered on the church steps afterward to have a cigarette and wonder out loud what fresh hell they had just witnessed, no doubt prophesying the end of the world as they knew it.

As Jesus Music was taking root I began working with youth in local churches. I always made it a priority to try to expose as many of them as possible to a wide spectrum of music and musicians, not just as listeners but as participants themselves. Now, many years later, I look in the rearview mirror and realize I am grateful for those early troubadours, those ground-breaking disciples. I am grateful to courageous leaders like Billy Graham, to my own Dad and Brother who were open to new expressions of the power of music. I am grateful for the vulnerable who let me set up a drum kit and play in the Sanctuary of the church they led. And I'm grateful to some of my favorites:

Larry Norman
Randy Stonehill
Second Chapter of Acts
Jars of Clay
Jennifer Knapp
Audio Adrenalin
A Few Small Fish
U2
DC Talk
Switchfoot
Sixpence None The Richer

... just to name a few.

Now at 70-something, most of the ride is in the rearview mirror--not trying to be morbid, just honest. If I'm not careful though about too much longing for the good old days, I'll wake up and someone else will be doing the driving. I'll be in that rear-facing seat in the back of the station wagon, which is terrifying because we had one of those in a family car of my youth and I would always get car-sick riding in the way-back. It's a wonder I don't have a drug problem; I always enjoyed the haze of a Dramamine induced nap on a long, long road trip.

---

Here's a suggestion for road trip music for this stage of the journey:

Now think back to when you were a child
Your soul was sweet, your heart ran wild
Each day was different and life was a thrill
You knew tomorrow would be better still

But things have changed, you're much older now
If you're unhappy and you don't know how
Why don't you look into Jesus?
He got the answer

--lyrics from verse 2 of "Look Into Jesus" by Larry Norman.