Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt Archives - View from the Front Porch

28 08, 2023

Labor Day, Yellow School Buses, and School Supply Sales

By judythemorgan|2023-08-25T15:57:21-05:00August 28th, 2023|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Fall Equinox will arrive on September 23, 02:50 A.M. EDT

Labor Day is upon us. The day that signals the time to bid farewell to the carefree days of summer and the return of high school football and fall festivals.

This little poem by Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt says it best.

It is the summer’s great last heat,
It is the fall’s first chill: They meet.

Down here where I live, we’re not experiencing or expecting the chill but I’m a former teacher and the return of the yellow buses brings waves of nostalgia. Not because I’m longing to be back in a classroom again, those days are long gone.

To be a teacher again, I’d have to give up too much time and energy I prefer to devote to writing.

But fall also means school supply sales. Necessary stuff for all the munchkins heading off to school and impossible for writers to pass up.

At least this author.

Never mind, I have plenty of pencils, pens, and notebooks. I simply can’t resist. I have to stop to check out all the displays.

Nothing jumpstarts my creativity like a shiny fresh notebook and a sharp new pencil or a bright colored pen.

Plus, who can resist a sale?

How about you? Do Back-to-School sales entice you?

22 09, 2014

Bye, bye Summer

By judythemorgan|2021-09-22T05:53:39-05:00September 22nd, 2014|Make Me Think Monday|0 Comments

Today is the Fall Equinox and signals the official end of summer.

I know you thought Labor Day ushered out summer or the first day of school ended the carefree days of summer. Not so. Those are the traditional end of summer.

What is the fall equinox?

According to Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, a 19th-century poet who lived in Ireland with her American Counsel husband:

It is the summer’s great last heat,
It is the fall’s first chill: They meet.

According to Weather.com, “Meteorologically speaking, autumn began on Sept. 1, but the autumnal equinox marks the astronomical start to the fall season.”

Being a wordsmith, I like the dictionary definition for equinox: The twice-yearly times when the lengths of day and night are equal. At equinox, the sun is directly over the Earth‘s equator.

I’ve never clocked the hours on the day an equinox occurs, but I do know that after the date marked on my calendar daylight changes. The days start to get shorter than the nights.

To me, the fall equinox means we say farewell to the scent of sunscreen and welcome the smell of wood burning in the fireplace. Temperatures begin to drop and leaves change color.

The signs of change are all around us. What signs of fall are you seeing?

In my neck of the woods, leaves started turning early. Some say that means a long, cold winter. That’s okay with me.

While I’ll miss summer, I can’t deny I’m looking forward to a cup of green tea beside a crackling fire and huddling beneath a quilt to read.

Are you looking forward to the change of season or do you agree with Edie Melson’s quote that summer is too short?