Although it was 70ºF two days ago, autumn has arrived today.   Leaves are falling like snow; Canadian geese are flying overhead and, as you can see, taking a break in nearby Calvary Cemetery, visible from our south windows; and flurries of real snow may fall tomorrow night. 

        I don’t really mind winter.  Cities look better with a veil of snow.  But then I don’t mind missing it either and soon I, too, will be flying overhead.

        Many of the graves date from the Nineteenth Century and most of the rest from the first half of the Twentieth.   It is almost full, but there is still room on the side toward Chicago.

        I’ve never lived near a cemetery before.  It is a sobering experience, particularly appropriate in this elegiac season and for a man who will soon be 65.  Cemeteries are good neighbors.  Quiet and peaceful.  This one is well maintained.  The monuments are interesting.  And for a little while the place is full of birds.

        I’m 550 pages into the Hitler biography.  350 to go.

        I stopped this afternoon at August 24, 1939, when Hitler learned that Stalin had agreed to a nonaggression pact.  The plan to invade Poland on September 1 was already being implemented, a plan opposed by all of Hitler’s top generals who thought Germany was not ready for war.

        At 3:00 a.m. Hitler and his associates went out onto a terrace.  The night was filled with Northern Lights, which cast an eerie red glow.  The architect Speer later described the scene.  “The last act of Gotterdammerung could not have been more effectively staged.  The same red light bathed our faces and our hands.”

        Hitler said, “Looks like a great deal of blood.”

        As I walked down to the post office I could feel the moment--all the people who would soon die--as though the world were holding its breath.