Oped / Garrison Keillor
It's September; lighten up
That crisp, clean, dry smell of autumn is in the air, so stunning and surprising every year, a smell forever connected to bright colors and fresh apples and cool grass with beads of dew and the eagerness of a boy, pencil box and tablet in hand, wending his way toward Benson School and Mrs. Moehlenbrock's sunny classroom. The pencil box is new. Mr. Truman is president, the neighbor's son Jack is fighting the Communists in Korea, and every Saturday we yearn for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team to be triumphant, which sometimes they are.
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Lighten up. Get a grip. Leave morose silence to teenagers; it's too dramatic for you and me. We have passed the great test of a republic, to survive the most incompetent leadership, and now we can anticipate a new era, one with no Bushes. As Emerson said, "This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. ... Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
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