GOODBYE TO THE FLOWERS

I've lived in nearly every part of this country at one time or another but, to me, it's only in New England that the "poetry of seasonal change" feels like more than a cliche. Most times, in most places, a changing season is treated as just one more dreary pretext for one more dreary sale down at some dreary suburban mall. Don't you hate that?

But here in Massachusetts, spring and summer really do sing the body electric. Winter really does look and feel like a whited sepulcher. And in between floats autumn, the richest season by far, when Life and Death wrestle over the tiny souls of a billion fiery leaves.

The fall announces itself with a chill that whips into your eyes, your mouth, your throat and makes you feel everything a little more deeply: The scent of burnt leaves; the flavor of apple cider and cinnamon donuts; and the dull pain in your (my) still-healing heart.

Of course, there's a lot that's unsettling about a New England autumn. It makes me conscious of how little time I have here on earth, and how much I've got to lose. It reminds me that my wonderful freedom to feel and to write as I please is a terribly fragile privilege - as fragile as the blooms that I often stop to photograph with my little Nikon Coolpix. Those blooms are beginning to shrivel-up and flutter away now and I wonder what and who I will be when they return - and whether I'll be here to see them. Today, as I was snapping my camera at a lilly, I found myself humming an old song by the late John Hartford called . . .

I'M GOING TO WORK IN TALL BUILDINGS

someday, my baby, when i am a man
and others have taught me the best that they can
they'll cut off my hair and sell me a suit
and send me to work in tall buildings

so it's
goodbye to the sunshine
goodbye to the dew
goodbye to the flowers
and goodbye to you

i'm off to the subway
i must not be late,

i'm going to work in tall buildings

now, when i'm retired, my life is my own

i've made all the payments, it's time to go home

and wonder what happened, betwixt and between . . .

when i went to work in tall buildings

So my autumn wish for you, my loved ones (and for everybody else on earth, too) is, may you never have to work in tall buildings. Unless, of course, you like that sort of thing.

-cc-

NEWSFLASH! GLOBE'S FLASHY HEADLINES FLASHIEST ON THE GLOBE!

I think it was Arthur Schopenhauer who said, Wenn das Leben nicht entworfen war, um Ihr Herz zu brechen, als es war schlecht in der Tat entworfen ording - which, according to the Babelfish translator, means, roughly: "If life was NOT designed in order to break your heart, it was badly designed indeed."

I couldn't have said it better myself, especially in German. My heart has been broken so many times, in so many places, by so many people, things and institutions, that I sometimes wonder: Which do I get to have more often, heartbreak or toaster waffles?

And yet, as accustomed as I am to the agony of despair that follows the explosion (or implosion) of something I once loved, it's hard to believe that even a heart as brittle as mine could be broken by . . . a newspaper.

But the Boston Globe is no ordinary newspaper.

I started reading the Globe in 1979, shortly after matriculating at my dear old alma mater, The Massachusetts College of Insufferable Brats. (Our dear old college motto: "It may be your money, daddy, but it's my goddamn life!") During the week, we brats did not often read newspapers, because we rarely got out of bed 'til late afternoon and by that time, all of the news was obsolete. But on Sunday, when you needed to find something to do with the girl you'd slept with on Saturday night - something that didn't involve talking to her very much - a thick, sharable newspaper was a valuable acquisition.

Although most Insufferables preferred the New York Times, chiefly because it absorbed more of daddy's money, I liked the Globe. It weighed a lot less than the Times, the pictures were larger, the comics more plentiful and, best of all, it came with coupons that saved you money on salty snacks. The only thing I didn't like about it was that the ink would rub-off on your hands and, if you weren't careful, your shirt. I used to wonder if they printed it with natural lump charcoal.

Seriously, it was a great paper. The editorial page was feisty and liberal; feistier still were the SWAT teams of dogged, fearless investigative journalists; and, without a doubt, the Globe boasted the best news photographers in the country.

Oh, and one more thing: It was scrupulously edited.

Today, however, the Boston Globe is a piece of shit, and Editor Martin Baron and CEO/Publisher Richard Gilman never cease in their efforts to flush the thing farther down the crapper. Over the last decade-or-so, I watched the slow crucifixion and decomposition of this cultural treasure until my heart broke; but, happily, the heartbreak is over. Since there's no longer the slightest vestige of cultural treasure in what now passes for the Globe, I'm able to enjoy it on its own buffoonish terms. If Chevy Chase had been born a newspaper, he would have grown up to be the Boston Globe.

Except for the Red Sox boxscores, there is very little actual information in the Globe, but you can always extract plenty of entertainment from it's impetuous fouling of the English language. Think of a small boy reverently picking up a beautiful, expensive violin . . . and then using it to wallop his little sister on top of her head. Here's a selection of actual headlines - guaranteed genuine - all of which appeared on the paper's website in just one week!

BIOTERROR DRILL BY MAIL SET FOR BOSTON

FINALLY, LEFTHANDER GETS OPPOSITE RESULT

TURBINE STAKES ITS ONLINE GAME TURF

LOVE INFUSES FIREFIGHTERS RITES

NY WELCOMES WAVE ADAPTIVE MODULAR VESSEL

PAVOROTTI ALWAYS VOICED HIS LOVE OF TENNIS

IMMERSION DIRECTOR EXERCISES OPTIONS

LOSS TO VENUS NOT UPSETTING

Even more entertaining - at least to me - are the endless reporting and editing pratfalls that make the Globe's "Corrections" section its most valuable asset. Herewith, last week's choicest offering:

September 7, 2007 Correction: Because of a reporting error, a Page One story in some editions yesterday about the TV series "Curious George" misidentified Arthur, the main character of another PBS show. Arthur is an aardvark, not a mouse.

One thing's for damn sure: You'll never have to read a correction like that in Hirsh Horn's Weakly Blow.

6AARDVARK6

6MOUSE6

-cc-