There was a time when getting out of bed beyond 7:00 am was an event I considered wholly scandalous! It was either a wilful disregard of obligation or an abuse of privilege. Nor did it matter whether the monstrous disgrace transpired on a weekend or a weekday.  Indeed a weekend – especially if the weather were favourable – was all the more cause to get up and to get going! From those pastoral though Stoic days I have now thankfully broken free. In a word my descent to the nether ambitions has afforded me a smug complacency.

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An indisputable novelty of staying north for the winter is the very nearly imperceptible remake of the seasons. Travelling south at this time of year has characteristically exhausted the delicacy notwithstanding the taunting though evanescent insinuations of the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Mountains en route.

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Even though the extraordinarily pleasing weather today had been forecast several days ago we were nonetheless smitten from the moment of arising this morning! We immediately opened the patio door on the balcony and cranked back the windows throughout the apartment. Part of the forecast is a precipitous decline of the temperature overnight ushering in what appears to be unremittingly cool weather. We have but fleetingly escaped traditional autumnal weather.

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Show me someone who doesn’t know tonight is the final debate between US presidential hopefuls Trump and Biden! From the moment I awoke this morning – no, throughout the past three days – I have been consumed by the upcoming event!  It surprised me to learn when speaking today with a long-time friend in Nova Scotia that he and his gun dogs are able to bear the deprivation. He said he’d prefer to drink his martini in peace! It is perhaps a poignant notification that we for our part have descended to the vulgarity of the groundlings.

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Reminiscences about the dead are – at least demonstrably – more often than not rather like the funerals that preceded them; namely, fraught with anguish, despair and sadness. This, as I am certain you’ll agree, is not the preferred way to confront the “inevitable” notwithstanding the circumstances or consequences of the loss. What, I ask, is there to be gained by submerging oneself within a stew of sorrow?  I can’t but imagine how more inspiring a recollection would be if it were heightened instead by spirited bravado.

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Autumn – so I am beginning to think – is like life itself; namely, an initial canvass of every colour on the palette suddenly followed by evaporation and a dormant chill. As I have so often remarked, “Nature teaches us how to die” which in this context will suffice as a period of transition from one expression to another. That is to say, there was today as we cycled along the erstwhile railway right-of-way no suggestion of either demise or disappearance; rather the willing admission of change conjoined by the uncommon beauty and effervescence of the season. The irrepressibility of the morning constitutional lingered undiminished into the afternoon.

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There are I am sure few extravagances about which one is instinctively reluctant to clamour on the public stage. Yet proclamations involving cravings can so often descend into frightfully common exhibitions! Fortunately for me I needn’t lapse into the threat of the visceral on that particular subject. My personal indulgence is the passenger automobile. The snag is not that there is anything wrong with an affection for a mechanical device; but that automobiles so often reflect a hidden perversion or psychological impediment of the owner. It is common knowledge that the adrenalin is aroused differently in prospective customers; and the manufacturers have long ago learned just how to market their brand.

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Four years of listening to Donald J. Trump as putative and elected president of the United States of America – a personal intelligence project which I initially began with interest in the candidate but which soon descended into an inexorable education in politics – I have shamefully only now  acknowledged that there is some muster to Trump’s bluster. Or as is so often regurgitated, “It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it!”

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While I don’t believe there is any magical date by which one imagines having reached the pinnacle of human knowledge, there is nonetheless a moment at which one achieves licence to detailed reflection upon the subject. Curiously I have always been attracted to summaries – whether of impending deals (when I was practicing law), of completed tasks or of something as mundane as money in the bank. It was as much a process of organization as mere repetition (part of my obsessive nature no doubt).  I accept the philosophic conclusion that there is no past or future, only the present, but I persist to itemize both the past and the future as though they materially affected the present.

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Herd mentality is noticeably an inescapable subject throughout both the Trump succession and the COVID-19 pandemic. How else explain the percolating chaos that has overtaken the United States of America and the globe?

Herd mentality, mob mentality and pack mentality, also lesser known as gang mentality, describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make different decisions than they would have individually.

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