Anticipating fall: From summer memories to political shifts and community growth

Two great philosophers, one was known as Phineas and the other Ferb, once said summer belongs to you.

Which is nice, because it used to belong to Will Smith.

If you heeded the above philosophy, you hopefully found a way to grab the world, or some meaningful part of it, and made it yours this summer. You went somewhere new. You did something that scared you. You reduced your to-be-read pile. You tried poutine because someone finally explained what it is.

Whatever it was you found this summer, The Press hopes you found a way to make it yours.

For us here in the office, summer is a somewhat challenging time. It’s a good time for human interest and perhaps something of the arts, but politics slow down, schools go away altogether and take sports with them.

And this space ends up filled with things like marking the transition from one season to the next. That’s how you know things are really desperate.

But if we’re going to do this, let’s try to get something out of it. Fall is, indeed, right around the preverbal, hackneyed corner. Which means school will be back in session. Community Board 8 will be back in session. There will be elections of consequence to the greater Riverdale neighborhood — however forgone we might think the conclusions will be now — involving our incumbent assemblyman, state senator and U.S. rep.

And more broadly, yes, there is the presidential election looming. Creeping? No, more like rolling up on all of us like an Indiana Jones boulder.

Or something that rolled up in this century, if you like.

Last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago made it official: Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will battle former president Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to determine who gets to lead the free world for the next four years.

While this week’s entry in this space wasn’t meant to be overtly political, it probably does bear mentioning using Arlington National Cemetery as a prop after calling dead U.S. soldiers losers; refusing to be photographed with the maimed ones; insulting the late Sen. John McCain for being shot down and captured in Vietnam; and thinking you had the mental gravitas to call the former chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, whom you appointed, “very stupid” is not a good look this close to Veterans Day.

Or, you know, ever, particularly if you also think the Presidential Medal of Freedom is better than the Congressional Medal of Honor because those who receive the latter are often dead or otherwise dismembered.

It almost seems like you’d have to be an unfeeling troglodyte to do and say things like that, doesn’t it?

Anyway.

Fall will certainly see more debate and discussion about Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes proposals, especially when it comes to parking and affordable housing here in Riverdale. Elsewhere on this very page, the mayor seems as headstrong as ever to see his plans through, even if some of the terms used therein are broad with lots of room for questions and concerns.

More on that as it develops, no doubt.

And more on greater Riverdale as it develops. There’s a new school on the way, a new migrant shelter, and there’re some determined folks opening and expanding their businesses in our neighborhoods.

It all bears watching, and exploring.

Fall is going to bring with it another World Series, another new TV season — That’s still a thing, right, or no? — and another football season. You’ll probably go to some weddings, and, once the leaves are down and there’s a nip in the air, we’ll all get that special pre-season twinge that can only mean the holidays are coming.

Seems entirely too soon for those, doesn’t it? Well, for now, it still is.

But only for now…

Even though it’s not fall quite yet, it does appear pumpkin-spice-everything time is already upon us, so there’s comfort and bewilderment to be taken from that now annual inevitability.

The transition from summer into fall is a welcome one here in the newspaper office, for reasons already chronicled, and because the HVAC once again has a fighting chance against the outside temperature. It’s also a time for thinking of things to revisit and things we might like to examine or investigate.

If you’re thinking of those things too, let us know. We are but four brains on this end.

No matter what happens this autumn, especially on the national political stage, let’s try to remember who we are, why we all contribute to putting the great in greater Riverdale, and what we can do for our neighbors who might need a hand with one thing or another. There’s a lot to celebrate in our lives, and a lot for which to be thankful.

And, hey, fall has a special day for that too. 

Oh autumn, what can’t you do?

Get this editorial to a nice, round 900 words, apparently.

Maybe next year.