It's fall and that means back to school. We put together this week's

episodes for the educators in our audience, especially those of you who may be

looking for a little slowdown treatment on those classroom

classics from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoyed these selections as learners of any age. I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. A friend recently posted a picture of herself as a child on Instagram with the caption back to school energy.

She grins widely in pigtails.

She and I are in the middle of our lives.

That universal feeling of starting a new school year,

though, returns us to a youthful head space.

Looking at the picture,

I remember my mother's late August ritual of shopping for school clothes, new kicks, and fresh school supplies.

A serious nostalgia overcomes me whenever I see composition books with the black and white marble

covers and iconic yellow number two pencils.

So much of my wistfulness is tied to seasons. Early fall air or brisk winter

wind or a gentle warm breeze in late May alert my senses to impending change. But isn't it true

that change is always present or that something is always just over the horizon.

To some extent, being on the verge of a rapidly evolving world

puts us at its whim.

We are simply along for the ride.

Time is the river that never dries up,

that is always in motion. Yet cycles of

elections and global conflict appear as if we are going through the same debates

and battles again. For sanity's sake, it helps to

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