Autumn rolled in on time at the start of September.  Temperatures on the Cape dipped, and continued to dip from the 70’s to 50’s, though autumn’s official start late in the month sees warmer weather returning.  The hummingbords are gone, headed south on their migration to the Gulf Coast and Mexico. My days now stretch without their frequent visits to the salvia.  Late dahlias are slowly waking in my garden, and the roses continue to bloom.  The mums are on stand by as are the Montauk daisies. Hopefully, October will see the final flower burst, maybe into November.

I have enrolled in an online class on Indian art, and I am reading about Buddhist stupas, which I did forty -two years ago in India, when I studied art history for a year at a Stella Maris College. We drew stupas, and learned about the distinguishing features in Buddha-imagery, which included “lotiform” lips, which made us seventeen-year-olds giggle. I find no trace of Buddha’s lips in the histories I am now reading, though there is mention of lotus-shaped eyes. The course is harder than I imagined, with weekly questions to answer, plus blog postings. I am in the company of 54 students from around the world, in all stages of life.

But my obsession this week is a song I have posted on other forms of social media, sung by Meklit, an Ethiopian-American singer, accompanied by The Kronos Quartet. It is “The Day the President Sang Amazing Grace,” written by Zoe Milford, and also covered by Joan Baez. The shift of a pronoun from “the” to “my” might make you weep, as it did me:

https:// t.co/7L1p19usGl?amp=1

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=AhGmjpqioe4