A Crisp Morning, Some Fallen Leaves

7:11

7:52

It's been a morning of a blinding sunrise, so bright that I have not yet been able to take a photograph of the lake. Unfortunately, I got up just after it rose, at 7:10, so I missed its slow rising above the shoreline.  When I did walk outside, there was a crispness in the air, reminiscent of Autumn, which is just a week a way.  Change of seasons, unnoticed, has crept into Chautauqua.  We are ready for fall but how about winter?

Sunday was another day of gray skies, drizzle, some rain, not your kind of weather that the weekenders desire.  Despite the gray skies, we were able to get in a nice walk around the Chautauqua Institution, close to an hour of observing the changing yards and gardens of the homes, abundant hydrangeas, blooms sagging, turning brown.  We ended up stopping at a shop in the Arcade and had a great conversation with the salesperson, Ruth Ann, who lives in Westfield.  She told us about a great new restaurant in Westfiled, the Park View Cafe, right next to one of our favorites, Brazil's.  I checked it out on Facebook and it does look cosy, a great ambiance, with an interesting menu. Their luncheon special this fall is a chicken pot pie!  It's been there for a while and we have never heard about it.  She also recommended her favorite sauvignon blanc, Matua, available in most wine stores. She was fun to talk with, so much so that we almost bought something that we of course did not need.
We were home by 12:30, in time for Evie to make our Sunday breakfast, eggs, bacon and bagels, and it was ready in time to watch the opening kickoff of the Buffalo Bills game on TV, listen to the Browns game on Sirius radio.  Evie loves to listen to the Browns voice, Jimmy Donovan, so after breakfast, she spent a good part of the afternoon in the kitchen, making cut out cookies and listening to the Browns lose to the Jets, no surprise.  We both wanted to get outside, perhaps kayak, but the weather was unappealing, the lake choppy, windy, with occasional rain.  So we stayed in, read, watched TV, waited for the rain delayed tennis finals to start.

Sunday Skies

Dinner was easy and delicious, leftover fried chicken and  baked portabellos stuffed with Italian sausage, tomatoes and cheese.  We watched some tennis, then a boring episode of Masters of Sex, a series that is fast losing its way, then Real Time with Bill Maher, quite good as Salman Rushdie was one of his guests.  They talked quite a bit about the exodus of refugees (up to four million Syrians) to Europe, mostly Muslim yet not one of the Muslim countries in the Middle East will allow any refugees into their countries (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Arab Emirates, and Iran) with the exception of Turkey. What hypocrisy and intolerance from supposedly Muslim countries.

And those refugees 'who supposedly hate the West,' our values, ironically want to emigrate to the West, not to their Arab and Muslim brothers.  The panels solution to the problem is to find a way to settle the chaos and violence that forced this evacuation in the first place (like our invasion of Iraq), and stabilize Iraq and Syria, not an easy solution as we well know.

Finally,  they see this mass migration causing all kinds of problems for Europe, as assimilation of most Muslims so far has been quite difficult, especially in France, Germany, and Great Britain.  And Denmark, Sweden and Belgium, all now have conservative anti immigrant governments in place, a result of xenophobia, the immigration of both Arabs and Africans.  And we Americans think we have problems with illegal immigration.  Just look at Europe.

And as things continue to fall apart in the Middle East and Europe, what's the 'big news story' in the States?  Kim Davis, the clerk in Kentucky, who refuses gays a marriage license.  Have we gone crazy?