all the leaves are brown

and the sky is grey.  what a wild and crazy wind is whirling those brown leaves everywhere.  as i went from one campus building to my next class in another this morning, i had to wade through piles of leaves in the corridor before i got to the door.  vacuuming won't take care of this!  they'll have to RAKE the carpets.  it sounds like freight trains constantly roaring by right now, outside this little room which has windows on two sides.  i keep expecting a locomotive to come charging through.

but what i've been thinking about is Ramadan, and those who observe it.  some of our muslim students are, some are not.  i don't really notice much difference in their class performance, though most of my students of all nationalities report not eating breakfast on a regular basis, so maybe it doesn't make a difference until later in the day.  thinking about food, reading the riverbendblog, where she has started a new blog with iraqi recipes for Ramadan. for myself i've gotta bet observing Ramadan would make me think about food all the time.  kind of the way a serious diet does.  although one usually does not diet for religious reasons.  anyway, there's riverbend, living in the chaos and madness  that is baghdad, writing about the chaos and madness that is her country in one blog, then moving over to Is Something Burning? and giving us a delicious lentil soup recipe.  life is a mysterious thing, isn't it?