Surely, it’s an ominous beginning for the fall season. The news is full of strange, unrelated odds and ends of things to make one think.

First, John McCain, the conservative dream captain, selects a woman as his running mate. Not just any woman, either, but a former beauty queen who can shoot and dress (butcher to those not in the know) her own woods critter.

All over America, talk show talkers are doing their own polls and predicting what American woman are thinking. Dangerous territory for the most astute of men, but particularly for male talk show hosts. Do men in general assume that thinking women would actually vote for someone only because of gender?

The second big news flash is that Tom Brady is out for the season. One can, perhaps, imagine the pain he felt when he went down on the field. Talk show hosts, who know about such things as football, will have new fodder for drive time and I guess, given my druthers, I’d rather hear predictions about football than about the Wonder Woman of the North.

Back to something of substance. I’m not one of the walkers in the Sept. 27 Walk for Fuel, sponsored by Neighbors Helping Windham Neighbors, but I sure hope they get a good crowd and lots of sponsors. More importantly, I hope there are no more blank looks when the organization or its mission is mentioned. Remember, even if you don’t walk the walk, you can buy raffle tickets and have a chance to be a winner!

There’s a lot of weirdness to the news lately. Besides the vision of field dressing a moose, there’s the $10 billion spent to (maybe) create a black hole on earth. I’m sure there’s a lot more to this experiment, but the $10 billion caught my eye. I’m all for science, but when we get into discussions of more than a couple of thousand dollars, it all sounds like play money to me.

Last week, a man, an immigrant from Sudan and a graduate of Portland High School, was shot and killed while on a break at his job in Portland. In front of a hospital. Now that’s downright frightening. Imagine escaping from a turmoil and violence filled country to settle where human rights are more important than anything, to graduate from the local high school, have a job, be a good citizen – and have life end like this? It’s enough to send chills.

I hope our neighbors in Gray who are thinking of using an old fire station for a historical society building think again. I read there are perhaps five parking spaces available. Perhaps the planners for this change have another plan for a parking lot. Two or three people working in the building would use the majority of the spaces. What if there was a meeting or program that attracted a large group? Personally, I say leave the historical society at Pennell – history loves history.

Now that the quarry public hearings are over (they are over, aren’t they?) in Windham, it’s time to make public the amount of dollars (tax dollars) spent for the recording of these meetings. Must be over $20,000 by now – more than I make in a year! I hope it was worth it and that we all believe this when we pay our tax bills.

See you next week.