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I’m in another, and surely, final, week of the local autumn observational complaint. You can’t make autumn stay, you can’t show off the season properly. I’m still trying to do it, even though it can’t be done. But I’m still trying.
More leaves are falling, the time is drawing nigh. But we’re not into the long dark season of winter’s discontent just yet.
There’s still a lot of color up in the air.
A few weeks back I began the annual autumn lament, that you can’t make them stay, or even show off the season properly. But we try anyway. I’m still trying. I wonder if I can get another week out of this gimmick.
So anyway, here’s two more pictures from Dunn Meadow. It is a lovely time of year on campus.
Two weeks ago I wrote:
It seems like that time of year where you try to catalog the changing of the leaves, because they’re pretty, but because you want them to stay.
So that’s what I’ve been doing around here these last few days, soaking up the season while it lasts.
Because it is just gorgeous right now:
And here’s another view of Jordan River, or Spanker’s Branch, looking west:
Winter, as they say, is coming. And it will last far too long, but there are a few beautiful weeks of autumn that … don’t actually make up for it, but it is a decent enough apology in advance.
Two weeks ago I wrote:
It seems like that time of year where you try to catalog the changing of the leaves, because they’re pretty, but because you want them to stay.
So we’re filling the week here with autumn, and some of the pretty scenes on the IU campus. This is around the Mighty Jordan River, in Dunn Meadow.
It’s a creek:
Below the topsoil is limestone, non-draining, flood-prone limestone. When it sprinkles hard, the levels rise. When it rains, water is coming over the banks.That’s when it is mighty. On calmer days, it reminds one of its original name: Spanker’s Branch.
Two weeks ago I wrote:
It seems like that time of year where you try to catalog the changing of the leaves, because they’re pretty, but because you want them to stay.
So I’m doing that this week, which feels like the peak of the leaf turn. Here are two more examples from campus.
This is the newly renamed Francis Morgan Swain Student Building:
Before women could vote, Francis Morgan Swain was making waves on the IU campus. She lobbied the university for a space meant for female students. She was in school here for two years, from 1889 to 1891. During that time she raised $6,500 from alumni and members of the community — that’s about $200,000 today. Her husband, Joseph, a math professor, was the ninth president of the university. They stayed on to lead the university for nine years. She came back in 1904 for the groundbreaking, laid a cornerstone and she was here again when the building was formally opened in 1906. In September of last year the university rededicated the building in her honor.
And this is the side of our building, Franklin Hall, the brand new 110-year-old, $26 million dollar renovation, featuring all the bells and whistles journalism and broadcast and video game majors and comm scholars could ask for.
My office is somewhere behind that tree.
