HEEEEER’S OCTOBER

October 8th, 2015

October is leaves falling in the final iteration of their colorful brilliance. It is the promise of holidays to come, the stress of anticipated shopping and planning and enduring the bumps of reunited family. It is orange and black wherever you go, and witches and pumpkins and candy. It is the homestretch to a waning year and the incubation of round-ups of the recent past.

And October is many-a-birthday. It is the time of births conceived in the cold, cuddly anti-climactic month of January. It is the time — for karmic unknowable reasons — that people important in my life — have slipped out of womb-protection – on the same tenth day – albeit separated by many years. – arriving on a planet of incontrovertible strangeness.

My late sister, blew onto earth just two weeks prior to the Great Wall Street Crash of October 1929 – her granddaughter Rachel, 63 years later on that same 10th day, as Bill Clinton was galloping towards a takeover of the electoral college, and my long time friend Renee H., as well as my ‘significant other,” both defying all actuarial tables and proving – on this upcoming October 10th — that age is just a number, and that life can still be beautiful even as they complete nine decades.

Maybe you can find some significant connection among the six U.S. Presidents who were born in October: Jimmy Carter (Oct. 1), Rutherford B. Hayes (Oct. 4), Chester Arthur (Oct. 5), Dwight Eisenhower (Oct. 14), Teddy Roosevelt (Oct. 27), and John Adams (Oct. 30 )???

And one more interesting tidbit – the only two first ladies born in October: Elinor Roosevelt (Oct. 11), and Hillary Clinton (Oct. 26)

Not many major national historical events took place in October as compared to other months of the year. As noted, there was the Great Wall Street Crash on Oct. 29, 1929. Investors and those in the general business community have been conditioned all these 86 years hence to become skittish around this time of year. We’ve seen some foreshadowing of that. NO predictions.

On the 4th of October in 1957, the historic Soviet SPUTNIK was launched. Where is OUR aerospace program now????

Ironically, on October 22, 1968, congress passed the “Gun Control Act” of 1968 banning mail order sales of rifles and shotguns and prohibiting most felons, drug users and people found mentally incompetent — from buying guns. (this for an entire column)

It was on October 17, 1979 that the most excoriated of the president’s cabinet posts was established, the U.S. Department of Education.

On Oct. 9, 1986, the FOX broadcasting channel was founded. This being somewhat historical to a number of viewers.

On October 17, 1989 there was a major earthquake that rocked San Francisco, and was it only three years ago that Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc in the Northeast.

A final memory—Hurricane Wilma, rampaging through our own local towns from October 15th through the 26th just ten years ago, destroying trees, screens and the very foundations of so many homes and lives. Memories linger.

That’s October for you. Before you know it, we’ll be eating turkey. And by next year this time, we’ll be awaiting the inevitable “October Surprise,” some scandalous outrageous revelation about one – or both? – of the candidates just days before the election, meant to turn the polls upside down. Whatta country!!!

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