On Sunday we went to Illinois, where we drove the bluff road that has the Mississippi and glacial till on one side and the limestone bluffs on the other. The trees were still in beautiful color, and we saw an itinerant hawk whom we’ve not yet identified. Our friend Hely, next time we see him, will tell us immediately who he is. We took the ferry across the Mississippi from Modoc, Illinois to Ste. Genevieve, the same ferry that Ginger had Rue’s 80th birthday party on a few years back, under the full moon.  In Ste. Genevieve we found a family style restaurant serving bland Sunday dinner to mostly corpulent families. And today is November 4 already, midterm election day. A man outside the polls this morning greeted me with information about a write-in candidate for county executive whose primary goal is to convict of murder the policeman who shot Michael Brown. Everything feels a little crazy these days, feels like we are in the middle of lots of changes. So I am glad for the color, the smells and blue skies, of fall. Oh, and this afternoon I took a picture across Forest Park from the 14th floor of a building where I went (2 hours late, it turns out) for an eye check-up. Oops.