Fall doesn't just mean back to school, overbooked calendars and a sense of growing panic as you wonder how to pull off all those to-dos and stay sane.
The tempo of our social lives also picks up: dinner parties, cultural events, mini reunions with friends who, as the weather cools, desperately want to talk about something other than "How was your summer?"
To help you shake off the last vestiges of the season - call it "deck brain" - here are a few key talking points that will be front and centre this fall. Add your own opinions and stir. Let the smart talk begin!
1. Religious rabble-rousing in North America
It used to be that politics and religion were two subjects you stayed away from, but no more, now that a growing number of provocative or just plain wacky things are being done in the name of religion.
An obscure Florida pastor who, as my father might have said, couldn't get himself elected dog catcher in most counties, has held the increasingly undiscriminating media (we'll cover anything!) hostage by threatening to burn the Koran. Fox News broadcaster Glenn Beck recently called for more God in daily American life (which would pretty much make it all God all the time.) And the murky debate about building the Islamic Cultural Centre near the site of Ground Zero ate up even our Canadian editorial pages.
Is all this because, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this week, "that's the world we live in right now"? Or is there still a vast majority of people out there who want to spread common sense and practise random acts of tolerance?
2. Harpothermia
The newest Canadian disease suggests Canada is cooling big time on our Proroguer-in-Chief. As even Stephen Harper's supporters shake their heads over his summer of silly mistakes, look for, as they say in the medical dictionary, signs of shivering and mental confusion.
Their lead eroded, Mr. Harper's Tories are plunging into cold waters indeed. Canadians don't like to be dictated to, and as election talk escalates, we could see a real debate about democracy and what makes a good leader. Which brings us to Iggy. On the bus or off the bus, this is the Liberal leader's last remaining chance to show us he's become a full-dimensional politician, one with a heart, a brain and, far more importantly - a plan.
3. Letting go
This is an issue that parents of kids of any age can obsess over, whether it's dropping your kid at preschool (don't hang around!) or the university dorm (don't hang around!). We've been tsk-tsking over hyperparenting (otherwise known as helicopter or velcro parenting) for some time now, but this fall there's a spate of articles and books out about what we've done to our twentysomethings (or what they've done to us).
The New York Times magazine recently devoted a controversial cover story to the delayed development of today's grown kids. (I ask the question "How do you know your kids are really grown up?" in the September issue of More magazine.) American psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is the go-to guy, having coined the term "emerging adulthood" to describe the years from 20 to 30.
Later this month, in her new book Home Free: The Myth of the Empty Nest, Canadian author Marni Jackson tells us how it really feels to loosen the grip on your grown child. Are you letting your child grow up? If not, why not?
4. Television
We've gone from lamenting the vast number of channels and the appalling emptiness of what's on offer to spending whole dinner parties gleefully dissecting Mad Men or Modern Family. Throw in the controversy over whether the proposed right-wing news channel Sun TV should get special status from the CRTC, and you've got a television-really-matters moment. Tell me again what happened in Episode 5?
5. Material life
Has the recession, and our fear that it ain't over till the fat lady pays off her credit card debt, permanently changed our attitudes toward wealth, conspicuous consumption - and, even more significantly, what we can live without?
New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks we are in "a postexcess moment, when attitudes toward material life are up for grabs." That may apply more to Americans than Canadians. Still, savings accounts may be the newest status symbol: How much have you got for that rainy day?
6. Margaret Atwood
I mean, really! Is the novelist nothing more than a septuagenarian nuisance, meddling in politics, taking on Stephen Harper, signing a petition because she doesn't like the "process" around the proposed acquisition of the Sun News licence?
Or with 80,000-plus Twitter followers, and a place so secure in the Canlit pantheon that she doesn't give a fig what anyone thinks of her, is she the canniest and coolest voice on the scene, growing more powerful with every tweet? (I do a mean imitation of Margaret Atwood's voice, so by all means, ask me to pull off this party trick at your next social gathering.)
Topics I didn't get to: terrorists among us; on-fire Toronto mayoralty candidate Rob Ford (separate topic); Tony Blair; and Conrad Black's late September - will he walk for good? - hearing. There's clearly no end of zeitgeist-approved conversational starters.
In the meantime, how was your summer?