None of these snaps are stellar examples of photography.  They’re meant for a quick flip through, to enjoy the autumn colors.

I didn’t have much free time this autumn, to walk through the woods while the leaves were doing their amazing color transformation.

 

Sugar maples are my favorites – – creating an incredible number of variations in shades and patterns.

I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch, to compare the loose leaves, to leaves of books – – like a visit to a big library, there’s always going to be just too many to look at and take in.

And the maple leaves are already coming down and fading – – we need some clever tree botanists to improve their shelf life.  Keep the colored leaves on display longer.

Arboriculturist is the term for a tree botanist, I think, making me a humble arboricultourist.

The leaves get stamped by librarians, and anyone else walking, Expired, and turn to brown, way too quickly.  The show is done, and the woods are dun.

When the pages of old documents and books have begun turning brown, the librarians and archivists call them “foxed.”

Well, no good.  Yet another thing that needs fixing.  I think foxes are beautiful, and using them to describe splotches of mold/fungus/rust in dusty old books is highly inappropriate.

I thought of how to replace this term without slandering foxes.

“Warthogged”?  Warthogs are grayish, not brown, so that won’t work.

 

 

I think I found the solution in a fish market.

Monkfish.  Delicious, but ugly as homemade sin, it’s amazing the fisherfolk don’t throw them back in the ocean.  They look like dead blobby aliens, that the harbor patrol pulled up, bloated and brown, after a couple weeks underwater.

And as big-mouthed bottom-feeders, perfect for our current times.

So we’re going to call the paper leaves with brown splotches “monk-fished,” and this term works well with old manuscripts.

“Brown” has positive attributes, of course.  People associate it with Earth.

Down-to-earth, soil, wood, wholesome, organic.

Plain, wholesome.  Good ol’ Charlie Brown.

President Reagan used to wear brown suits, I think it helped project an image of reliability.

 

 

But perhaps in modern/urban days, brown has a less positive image.  The sky in Atlanta or L.A..  The administration packed with brown-nosers.  Remember in “Reservoir Dogs,” when the robbers are assigned color codenames?  Quentin Tarantino, that arbiter of good taste, objects to being called “Mr. Brown,” which he associates with…organic waste, although he used a different term.  (Tim Roth was “Mr. Orange,” and remained silent, it was good he didn’t ask for “Mr. Taupe,” since that’s French for “mole.”)

Brown is also the color of dead leaves, once this colorful time has wound down, and they’re just a heap of decaying cellulose.  Well, here’s a handful (maybe a peck, certainly not a bushel) of autumn leaves, still dressed up for their last hurrah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1963 “Ugly Brown” Lee Hazlewood  https://youtu.be/lRyekqsdgx8