The weather today was actually cool, well cool for August in Mississippi anyway. After getting home from work I grabbed a Guinness, a book, and headed for the swing on the front porch. It was nice to sit and read without sweat dripping onto the pages.

Familiar sounds also accompanied the cool weather–some appreciated, others not. One of the pleasant sounds is the MSU band practicing for the coming football season. The band practice field is not too far away and, if the wind is blowing just right, we can hear the session with no problem at all. Sylvester Croom is getting the Bulldogs ready to play and it sounds like the band will be ready to urge the team on. The canon in front of the ROTC building is away getting rebuilt for the coming season as well. With luck it will be fired more this season than it has been in the last several.

The cool weather is also inviting for motorists to turn off their air conditioning and open the windows and sunroofs. But what lets the fresh air in also lets the obnoxious, pounding, over-bassed music out. I have to ask myself how anyone can possibly enjoy music so loud that I can hear it a mile away. And most of the tunes come from rickety old cars in which the sheet metal resonates more than the speakers making good quality sound an impossibility But then again, I wouldn’t really call what they listen to “music” so who cares how it sounds. Bad music is bad music regardless of the decibels but my ears would much prefer it not be heard at all.

With any luck there will be many days like this before winter hits. One of the things I dislike about Mississippi is the lack of four seasons. We go from blazing hot to freezing cold in a weekend and typically have very short, almost non-existent, falls and springs. The winters are usually cold and wet with an occasional snow but mostly they bring icy roads, broken tree limbs, and power outages. Growing up in other states I did grow to love actually having four seasons in a year. One day maybe I can get back to the world of four seasons.