October 23, 2025
Dear Liza,
Our Portland Fall has kicked into colorful overdrive this week.
I love this time of year, with the cooler temperatures and rain giving abundant permission to stay inside with books, yea, and kittens. Calm is easier in Fall than in frantic, growing Summer.
It also feels like Shakespeare weather. I read through the sonnets and found the one that had been tickling my brain. I have taken the liberty of modernizing the language and cutting two lines which leaned a bit too heavily on death for my taste.
Rewritten Sonnet 73
That time of year you may in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon these boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me you see the twilight of such day
After sunset has faded in the west.
In me you see the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of my youth do lie,
As the bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This you perceive, which makes your love more strong,
To love that well which you must leave ere long.
And before you worry, I am happy and well. Just a bit older and Autumn-introspective.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 