GK: It's fall in Minnesota and the trees are turning color and our team is headed for the American League playoffs and life is good. We don't have to go around in shorts. The days get shorter and so there's more privacy. But the new body scanners have arrived at the airport, the kind you walk in and put your hands on top of your head, and they look at you on a screen and you have no clothes on. A TSA person is looking at your naked body. It's big government violating your civil liberties, but I am a liberal and I think that if it motivates people to lose some weight, then it's worth it.
Up near Two Harbors, about 3 hours northeast of here, the colors are at their peak, the birches and aspen turning golden and the oaks and sumac turning red. As you learned back in 7th grade, the trees go into a resting state and shut down the photosynthesis process and the green chlorophyll fades from the leaves and they turn color.
V-formations of Canada geese are flying overhead and here comes one now (SFX) ----- and the hawks are out hunting (SFX) mice to fatten themselves up for winter and up at Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi, the beavers are cutting trees (SFX) to make a dam trying to hold the river back, but it can't be done and we can't hold back winter either.
Ol' man winter
Dat ol' man winter
He sure is sumpin'
He keeps on comin,
He jes starts snowing
He keeps on goin' along.
He don' plow highways
He don't thaw plumbing
An' dem dat plows 'em
they know it's comin
But ol'man winter
He jes keeps goin'along.
You an'me, we shovel our walks
All the way out to the mailbox,
Start the car
Insulate!
Wish we lived
In a warmer state.
I hate winter,
A six-month season
Ah'm tired of shovelin'
An' scared of freezin
But ol' man winter
He sure is coming' along.