Andrew Taylor-Troutman

I was in a fraternity. We brothers gave each other nicknames: Stick and Stump and Leebo and Alien and JP and JC and BC. I was simply Trout.

“Volta” is Italian for “turn.” In poetry, particularly a sonnet, the term refers to a shift in tone or subject. As the song goes, “there is a season, turn, turn, turn.”

It’s now fall, and I have been musing on the verse Ecclesiastes 3:1, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every delight under heaven.” Pete Seeger wrote a tune to this verse, which the Byrds made famous with their guitar riff and harmonies.

The writer Annie Dillard died this week. In tribute to her, I first wrote these words now...

My friend worked in Prince George’s County in Maryland, and he was driving to work on the freeway on September 11, 2001, when two fighter jets roared into the air from Andrews Air Force Base.

My wife and I celebrated 19 years of marriage this week. Wendell Berry, the writer-farmer from Kentucky, passed away on Monday after 69 years of marriage to his wife, Tanya.

Last Sunday, I was weeding along my backyard fence and discovered two pumpkin vines! (That is a sentence that deserves an exclamation point.) Initially, I thought they were squash plants.

Wednesday afternoon, I took my three kids back-to-school shopping. Three separate women in the store exclaimed that I was “a hero.” How did they know my secret identity?

Monday marks the first day of classes at UNC, and I’m thinking of the freshmen in particular. Forget butterflies: the excitement and nerves in my belly on my first day were like a Molotov cocktail.

There’s a gradual entry to the neighborhood pool where the littlest kids play, and I like to stand in the water up to my shins and cool off, even though I suspect someone is peeing in close proximity.