The last week of October

The last week of October began with fierce rain, wild wind and power outages. But by midafternoon on Sunday, the rain was finally wrung out and the wind was spent. Minutes later, the sun appeared between the clouds, bearing a rainbow that invited people out of their houses for a walk.

The trail was ankle-deep in fallen maple leaves — or at least they would have been ankle-deep if they’d been dry and crunchy. In their flattened, squishy state they barely disturbed a shoelace. They weren’t the only storm-caused change. When the trail maintenance crew came to work on Monday, they had a fallen foot-thick cottonwood branch to cut up and clear, along with the big willow branch that broke its fall and was left cracked and dangling.

There were patches of bare sky between the branches of the maple trees, but still plenty of bright yellow and orange leaves hanging on. This was true on the trail, and along just about every road in the county.

This last week of October is surely peak maple fall color. You don’t even have to get out of your car to fill your soul with the glory of it all.

And there are still more brilliant maple leaves to come — so many you’ll need to find an expert to reliably identify all the varieties. This is tricky because there are so many maple varieties, some native and many — like all the Japanese maples — nonnative. There are also trees whose leaves resemble maples, but are sweetgum, sycamore or London planes. One key difference is that the true maples have opposite branches, and the lookalikes have alternate branches.

If the difference between opposite and alternate is unclear to you, here’s a picture.

Sometimes the difference is more subtle than this photo; sometimes one of a pair of branches breaks off and confuses things. Mastering this difference may cause a sore neck from looking up for a while.

But human vision is a wonderful gift, and the more you look, the more you see.

Unfortunately, by Tuesday, the pleasures of a colorful fall were interrupted by worries about food — and the Trump administration’s threat to withhold it from 42 million Americans who rely on food stamps, known as the SNAP program.

The New York Times published an op-ed by Josh Hawley, the Republican U. S. Senator from Missouri, who passionately opposes the Nov. 1 loss of SNAP benefits because of the federal government shutdown. He has introduced a bill to fund SNAP, and 10 of his Republican colleagues are co-sponsoring it. Democrats would, of course, vote for it too, but the Republican majority leader won’t bring it up for a vote. And of course, the House of Representatives is AWOL.

This is an unnecessary drama, because there is a SNAP emergency fund, and other federal funds the Trump administration could tap. On Friday, the Agriculture Department, which is responsible for SNAP, claimed that only natural disasters qualify as emergencies.

Another element to this "Perils of Pauline" drama came from court cases in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

On Halloween afternoon, the New York Times reported on “two rulings in the span of about an hour that found the administration had acted unlawfully, after it had refused to tap an emergency reserve — enacted by Congress and totaling in the billions of dollars — to sustain the nation’s largest anti-hunger program.

“But it remained unclear if or when food stamps would actually reach the roughly 42 million people who rely on monthly federal help to purchase groceries. Lawyers for the Trump administration had previously suggested it could take weeks to disburse the benefits during the shutdown, and the Justice Department could still try to appeal in the case, perhaps further delaying aid.”

The entire drama is a colossal waste, fraud and abuse of the American public’s time and attention and a demonstration of needless cruelty to 42 million people.

All this trauma lands just as food banks are also losing about 20 percent of their federal funding to buy food.

Even if all this turned out to be a bad dream, rising grocery prices, stagnant wages and other hardships already call us to strengthen our local community support for each other.

Our food banks need us, our disabled and/or low-income neighbors and their children need us, and Souper Sunday, Chris Hyde’s growing meal and grocery nonprofit needs us. Money, food and volunteer hours are all in demand — and the hallmarks of a civilized community. Search your pantry and your heart.

The one glimmer of hope in this exercise of political immorality is that the intensely Republican Senator Hawley and 10 of his colleagues have dissented from their party’s leader.

Still, Halloween has never been scarier.

Thankfully, there is still solace outdoors. Another storm is replenishing our aquifers and trees of all kinds are still waving their bright flags. It’s a good time to plant some garlic to keep the vampires away, and to fill the hummingbird feeders. Anna’s hummingbirds are here all winter, and they are always a cheering sight.