by Jonathan Reisman

The equinox occurs when the Earth is tilting neither toward nor away from the sun, and therefore receives almost an equal amount of daylight and darkness. In the spring, the days start getting longer than the nights; in the fall, our days get shorter as winter approaches. This past autumnal equinox took on particular significance for me; at 67, I know I am in the fall of my life, if not early winter.

October is my favorite month. I will never forget a mid 70’s early October trip to run the rapids on the lower Dead River. It was peak foliage, relatively warm, with a lot of water. My future best man and I traveled up the Arnold trail with a canoe on top of my ‘66 Delta 88 (8 mpg on premium gas, which was an exorbitant buck a gallon or so), portaged up river about a mile, and ran the rips three times before returning to Waterville. Two weeks later, I led an Outing Club Trip to Baxter State Park. We got a somewhat late start, and arrived in Chimney Pond by the light of the moon, a million stars and a cow moose welcome. 

Cool October nights mean postseason baseball. In 1975 I watched Carlton Fisk will and gesture his home run fair from the Colby dorms, and then watched the Sox eventually succumb to the Big Red Machine, as “Spaceman” Bill Lee launched one eephus pitch too many to Tony Perez. I watched Bucky Dent crush the Red Sox hopes with my fellow economics graduate students at Brown in October 1978. I watched from my home in Cooper when Bill Buckner cost Bruce Hurst the World Series MVP and the Sox a chance to end the curse in 1986. In 2004, I was working on a Cooper deorganization committee with the Sox in the background when they came back against the Yankees and finally ended the curse. I watched them repeat in 2007, and especially 2013, when domestic Islamic terrorists bombed the Boston marathon and galvanized David Ortiz and the Sox to the “Boston strong” championship. I did not pay a lot of attention to the 2018 Sox run, as I was still in recovery from cancer surgery.

October precedes the November elections, and I had a few memorable election run-ups. In 1994, I was busy on Angus King’s first gubernatorial election. I videotaped and/or attended and analyzed the initial gubernatorial debates and advised Angus and campaign manager Kay Rand on debate strategy. Four years later, I was running for Congress, driving my ’97 Ford Ranger all over the 2nd CD. My late father joined me for televised debates from Portland, Lewiston and Bangor. In 2000, I got in an argument with my liberal Orono colleague Amy Fried over George W. Bush’s chances to carry Maine, before the late DWI story torpedoed his chances. In 2016, I was depressed over the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, which oddly enough is pretty much how I feel about a likely choice next year between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

This October has brought another excruciating decision. My wife of 44 years has early onset Alzheimer’s and aphasia, and has declined significantly in recent months. I have reluctantly concluded that I cannot sustain her care at home, much as I wish that that were not so. My family wants me to place her in a facility in Orono, and for me to move to the Bangor area. I have decided to place her in Machias, where others and I can visit her regularly and where many on the staff will know her from her time as HR director at Down East Community Hospital. My family is very unhappy with that decision, preferring the more highly rated (by Medicare if not Down Easters) facility in Orono. I fear that leaving our familiar home of 38 years will accelerate her decline, but there is no good option here.

My sabbatical to think this through lasted a month, and I hope and plan to write regularly again. It is good for me. I got a great deal of support and prayers from folks I knew and some I had never met – thank you all.

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here, or to him directly via email at [email protected]