Twice, in early December, when glowering clouds veiled the skies so thickly that nothing was visible, I heard their song.

By now, you’re getting a bit panicky. When you put last year’s Christmas “away,” where did you put the list with all the names of friends who get cards or gifts or coffee cakes? And what about the red and gold banners you stick on the pasture gate and the cemetery fence with green duct tape (which gives you a fit when you try to remove it come summer)? At least you remember where the rolls of red plastic ribbon are that turn the porch’s white pillars into candy cane look-alikes when it is spiraled around them.

In these very troubled times – national troubles, global troubles, financial troubles, violence troubles, climate and weather troubles, energy troubles, war troubles, strike troubles, health troubles, ad infinitum – there are many families who will surely have trouble being thankful this Thanksgiving Day.

From Washington D.C., the telegram is addressed to Mr. Harry Thompson, St. Clair Avenue, East Liverpool, Ohio.

For me, Christmas morning can’t hold a candle to one of these rare October dawns when the sun is not quite up and the dew is heavy on the grass and contrails play tic-tac-toe in heaven’s splendid blue vault.

Even above the 6 o’clock newscast I could hear an insistent voice – that of a chickadee calling over and over, and loudly, from the back porch.

Decisions! Decisions! Which of more than a dozen jottings gets the lead paragraph for this column? And suddenly, Mother Nature makes the decision with a dazzling offering on the sunny last day of summer as a friend and I admired the just-mowed pasture.

It wasn’t even Labor Day yet when Halloween decorations, cards and other gimcracks appeared on store shelves.

Getting ready for Canfield Fair was always a rite of passage in bygone days, and it was surely less complicated then than it is today.

Anyone who fancies himself a writer always reads and critiques other writers’ efforts, sometimes with disdain and sometimes with admiration while saying to himself, “I wish I’d written that.