Lee Harvey Oswald began working at the Texas School Book Depository about six weeks before he became the most infamous man in the world. He was an “order filler”. He worked on the first and sixth floors. He would gather books from an order sheet and deliver them to the first floor shipping room. It could be described as simple, repetitive work. Oswald lived in a rooming house in Dallas. His wife and two young daughters, the youngest only a month old at the time, rented rooms in a house in Irving, Texas about fifteen miles from the Depository. Oswald didn’t own a car and would get a ride every Friday out to see his family and get a ride back to work Monday morning from co-worker Buell Frazier. Frazier lived with his sister a half a block from where Oswald’s family lived. The routine changed on November 21, 1963. Oswald asked Frazier for a ride out to Irving on Thursday night. Frazier was surprised and asked why. Oswald said, “I’m going home to get some curtain rods to put in an apartment.” That was a lie.

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Eighteen year of Jillian Ludwig a freshman at Belmont University in Nashville was walking on a track in a park in the middle of the afternoon this week. The bullet hit her in the head. She was found almost an hour later taken to a hospital where she died two days later. Ludwig had only been at Belmont for less than three months. She was from Wall Township, New Jersey. She played the bass guitar and was studying music business. She posted videos of herself playing the bass and the piano. She performed at events around Wall. She was well liked with her whole life ahead of her. The person who fired the shot should never have had a gun. But instead of the law preventing him from having it, it allowed him to have it.

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We have one week before everything changes. We had the last late gasp of summer over the weekend when the temperature hit 80 degrees. The leaves were at their peak of red, orange and yellow. But they will be joining the dry, brown, dying leaves that have been crunching under foot for weeks. This last week before we give up Daylight Saving Time and go back to Standard Time feels like a curtain is coming down on the warmth of summer and cool sunshine of autumn. The kids all hope it will stay warm one last day so they don’t have to wear layers under their Halloween costumes. It will be dark by five o’clock and by December 21st, it will closer to four-thirty. The world will feel smaller and  darker.

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“In a contest as long and difficult as this campaign has been, his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans, who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president, is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.”

These are the words of Senator John McCain conceding the 2008 election to Barack Obama. They seem to come from another time. McCain was showing grace and eloquence on the most disappointing night of his political career. He realized the historic significance was more important than his own feelings.

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It’s supposed to be the time when summer slips into fall. The temperature cools down. The foliage makes us appreciate the world around us. There is good news for parents as their kids go back to school. Kids not so much. So, what the hell happened? The month started with a blast of record hot weather that felt like we were standing in front a pizza oven. It was ninety-five degrees on Labor Day. Seventy-four of Philadelphia’s school buildings don’t have air conditioning. Kids were let out by noon for the first week of school. Just when a parents thought they got rid of them for the day. The city opened cooling centers and gave out fans. Since 1888, there have only been thirty-one heat waves in September six of them since 2008.  That should tell us something. This is climate change on fast forward.

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It caught my eye as my wife and I walked through The Jenkintown Arts Festival. We were looking for new art for the house by a local artist. We actually came back to it twice before buying it. We wanted to check out as many artists as we could. There were dozens. But I was drawn to the sunset colors and mix of images. The slightly rising road disappearing into the glowing horizon. There are indistinguishable shapes at the crest of the road and a traffic sign. To the left is the darkened house with trees protecting it and a dim light in the upstairs window. You can imagine yourself  looking out the window enjoying a light show that only nature can provide.

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It’s day eleven. He’s still on the loose. He could be caught by the time you read this. But, so far he’s like trying to find a shadow in the night. This has a been the summer of extreme heat, wild fires, floods, and Trump indictments. But no story has shaken people  in Chester County, Pennsylvania like the search for an escaped killer. Every morning people wake up asking, “Have they caught him yet”? You probably know that five foot tall convicted killer Danelo Cavalcante escaped the Chester County jail by crab-walking up between two walls in front of a surveillance camera. He then got up to the roof of a jail building, despite razor wire, and managed to somehow jump to freedom. All in full view of a guard tower. The guard apparently wasn’t pay attention. He’s been fired. It took an hour for the jail to realize Cavalcante was missing.

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It keeps happening. This time it was a twenty-year old University of South Carolina student who banged on the wrong door at two-o’clock in the morning. Earlier this year, it was a Missouri teenager going to the wrong house to pick up his younger brothers. In rural New York, a car full of young people pulled into the wrong driveway looking for a friend’s house. The Missouri teenager survived. A young woman in the New  York incident was killed. In both those cases, old men with guns have been charged with crimes. Things in South Carolina have ended very differently. Nicholas Donofrio had moved into fraternity house on the same block just a week earlier to start his junior year. It’s still unclear if he was drunk or on drugs. Toxicology tests are pending. It was a fatal mistake.

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There is only one thing you need to know about last night’s Republican candidates’ debate. It doesn’t matter what they tried to sell as their policy positions or their shots at the other candidates. Whether it was Pence saying he was proud he followed the constitution and did his job when he certified Biden’s 2020 election victory, or Bully Boy Chris Christie calling out Vivek Ramaswamy for trying to ripoff Barack Obama in his description of himself. The biggest and only take away was the candidates’ answers to the question if they would support Donald Trump as the party’s nominee even if he was convicted in one of the four felony cases in which he is charged. Six hands went up. Christie sheepishly raised his hand half way to get attention. Only former Arkansas  Governor Asa Hutchinson kept his hand down. It was as if Trump was standing backstage peeking out the curtain to see who would standby him no matter what. The candidates were like members of a cult who didn’t want to show disobedience to the leader who has them all brainwashed.

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This week a judge in Montana, of all places, took a small step for clean, healthier air. It took a bunch of kids, with the help of some adults to make it happen. The case was called Held v. The State of Montana. It was brought by Our Children’s Trust on behalf of a group of young people ranging in age from five to twenty-two. It was the first of its kind to go to trial in the United States back in June. The suit claimed the state’s support of the fossil fuel industry was contributing to climate change violating their constitutional rights to a clean and healthy environment. Yes, that right was written into the Montana state constitution in 1972. It says, “All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment.” The original document was written in 1889 and influenced by the powerful copper and coal industries. The state’s policy says it can’t consider climate change when issuing new permits for fossil fuel projects. Basically, letting these industries pollute all they want.

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