Posted 8/8/01 Some things never change: Sunday Night, by MaryHelen Swanson The 21st century is upon us and life is swirling by in a flurry of technology. Change is a given. People are born, people die, our world looks different today than it did yesterday and we are told it is inevitable and we must accept it. But some things, very few, never change. I hope that I may never have to get through August without the pleasant nightsong of the lowly cricket at my back door. This little black insect with his constant chirping noise was the culprit that made our mothers and grandmothers shriek. The fear was that the critters had gotten in the house - they said crickets wreaked havoc with stored clothing. And maybe so. But the sound of the proverbial late-summer jumper at my back door this week was music to my ears. It meant that some things donít change, and that, in a world of never-ending transition, was comforting. The sound meant that summer had crested, was on the downslide, but there is still enough left (and donít we know that) for last minute vacations and warm-weather relaxation in preparation for the onset of the nine-month winter. Now is the time for sweet corn and ripe tomatoes, pickling cukes and canning peaches. Canít you just smell all those wonderful aromas? Now is the time to gather fistfuls of wildflowers, sneezing or not, and decorate our homes with the bounty of the earth. Now is the time to catch a pail of late-summer sunfish, enjoy a lemonade on the front porch and watch the kids swing on a rubber tire from the old oak tree. (Well, thatís the Norman Rockwell version, ours may be slightly different). If the time ever comes that I donít hear the cricket calling to me with his persistent squeak, Iíll know something is amiss in this world. Iíd almost forgotten about the insect and his incessant noise, with the summer silence that follows the chorus of the spring peepers in May. But there he was the other night - reminding me that . . . ahhhh, some things never change. ©Post Review