By Jan Miller Penton

For those of us who have a need to decorate and love to do so with each passing season, the slight change in temperature from very hot to sort of hot is enough to send us into spasms of excitement. Any minute change in the weather can only mean one thing! It’s time to decorate for fall!

Today, as I rummaged through the non-climate controlled shed where a lot of my goodies are stored I almost broke out into a sweat. Well, you all know that Southern girls only glisten, and you can be any age and still be a Southern girl. It’s more a matter of heart and attitude than age and any Southern girl will tell you that her age is not really a matter of have to know.

The sun beat down on the shed as I opened up box after box peering in to see if any of my autumn décor was hiding there. After retrieving quite a few items my decorator’s heart beat a happy little tune and a sunny smile caught my lips a little off guard. Now, to get my pretty things home and get to the business of adding some color and fun, I thought.

Within a day or two my home will be transformed into a more warm and inviting space. There is just something about putting out those decorations and moving things this way and that until it looks perfect, to my eyes at least, that brings such a sense of pleasure to those of us who love the changing seasons and the décor that heralds them.

With all the heartache and loss that so many are facing it feels even more wonderful to do any little thing that says normalcy. I decided to look up the world events of a random year when I was little because this last couple of years seems to me sometimes as the worst ever, and I wanted to gain perspective.

I actually looked up a couple of years and one year there were two horrific earthquakes along with events, which led up to the Vietnam War. Not good by any stretch of the imagination, but the Beatles rode into town that year on a wave of almost unbelievable popularity. Maybe people wanted to be excited about something and latched onto the Fab Four for dear life.

In a few years, after much bloodshed in Vietnam the Beatles opposition to the war came out in their music. There were several songs including “Give Peace a Chance,” “Revolution,” and “All You Need Is Love” which alluded to their views on world peace and their opinion of the war. I don’t think the Beatles opinion is better or more important than anyone else’s on the matter, but they did have some great music.

Of course, at the time I had no idea what was behind the music; I just watched them take America by storm along with the rest.