Wednesday, 10:45 am: I think autumn is here. Leaf-peeping is rapidly coming to an end here in the Saint John Valley. Work around the house has been changing according to the cooling weather. Hopefully, not so soon, we’ll be waist deep in snow. Well my wife’s waist; I am a bit taller and it would have to be very severe to get up to my waist.

Sputnik 1 -- NASA Photo Archive

Wow! Fifty years ago this week the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. I remember it as a kid growing up in Phoenix, Arizona. I remember my father and most of our adult [I use the term “adult” loosely] male neighbors, were very concerned about the Russian space program. The next thing you know; Russian paratroopers would be landing on our roofs and in our gardens, such as they were at the time in the desert. I could only visualize Russian MiGs screaming overhead [they were pretty cool jets] taking out Luke Air Force Base to the west. I had no idea where they would come from. But my father and most of our neighbors were sure they were up to no good. Those crafty Reds! The next thing you know we’d be eating beets and cabbage and wearing very ill-fitting and unfashionable clothes. I went to Catholic school, so being an unfashionable seven year old kid wasn’t much of an issue for me. But a cabbage-based gruel, that’s a bit gassy for me. It’s surprising how much fear Joe McCarthy and others of his ilk foisted on America. And it’s even more surprising how many people believed it. I have a difficult enough time using the Latin-based alphabet, but the Cyrillic alphabet. Luckily, 1950s America weathered the alleged “Red Menace". What next; Yuri Gagarin? By the way the term Beatnik is derived from Sputnik. Beatnik was the term the press called them. They referred to themselves as Beats. Maybe they were in league with the 1950s communists? Ah but no, communists didn’t have espresso. They just were not cool enough.

Now if the above was not weather the following certainly must be . . .

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 56.7° [F.]

Barometer: 30.157 & falling slowly

Humidity: 84%

Wind: SSW at 5 mph – light & variable

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: ca. 90% overcast

Precipitation: None:

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 46.7° [F.] at 12:50 am

High wind: 13 mph at 10:40 am