Students, The Final Yard Sale, and Enthusiasm

We have found that as the weeks progress, the world grows quieter in the lead-up to September — not because our schedules are less hectic, but because, with summer’s initial enthusiasm behind us, we’ve stopped expecting the world to entertain us. Days gather into a pleasant sameness: weather too mellow to discuss, afternoons better suited to detours than to-do lists, and evenings where we realize, at bedtime, that the things we meant to accomplish have politely seen themselves out. Around town, we spot the early death throes of the season — bins of discounted pool toys, the first ceramic pumpkins elbowing into the Back-to-School aisle, and sunsets slipping back before 9 p.m. Summer, like the aunt who came to visit “just for the warm weather,” is finally packing her bags, and we are quietly holding the door.

Syllabyou, Syllabus
While ordering an iced latte at a local coffee shop this week, we noticed the tables were more crowded than usual, stacked with spiral notebooks and the faint whiff of ambition. Students have emerged from their summer routines — a rotation of naps, lounging, and occasionally looking up from their phones to eat — and are brimming with the brand of optimism only a fresh pack of pens can provide. Planners are being filled, pages tabbed, and elaborate goals set to last, if history is any guide, until roughly Labor Day.

The syllabus is less a schedule than a statement of faith — a promise of future structure, discipline, and maybe even a hand cramp or two. The feeling is contagious; even those of us without a single credit hour to our name start redownloading language apps we abandoned last spring, convinced that being able to order gelato in Italian will prove crucial before Halloween. We’ll almost certainly abandon the effort in favor of streaming a seemingly vital television program, but for now, the spirit is strong, and we are determined to cling to this aspirational energy — if not as long as possible, then at least until the pens run dry.

The Final Summer Yard Sale
Just west of Bangerter and north of South Jordan Parkway, we stumbled upon a yard sale that seemed less like commerce and more like installation art. A single folding table held a stack of VHS thrillers, a few coffee-stained mugs, and a cardboard “YARD SALE” sign printed in a font size more appropriate for ransom notes. We assumed it would vanish in a day or two. Instead, it has lingered for more than a week, acquiring a thin film of dust, a loyal spider tenant in one mug, and the kind of gnat population that suggests long-term tenancy.

There is no cash box, no seller’s chair, and no sign of life in the house behind it — curtains drawn, lights off. The questions pile up: is it a trust-based economy experiment? A minimalist protest against yard-sale chit-chat? Or did someone simply abandon ship halfway through and let the wind sort it out? The longer it sits, the more it feels like a neighborhood fixture, like those free-library boxes — except this one offers mugs of dubious cleanliness and VHS tapes that require a machine most of us last saw in 1998. We hope it stays forever; the mystery is worth more than anything on the table.

The Return of Autumnal Sports
August marks the annual awakening of a certain kind of fan — the one whose last recorded interest in sports involved a local figure-skating scandal two decades ago, yet who now delivers preseason football predictions with the gravity of a foreign-policy briefing. Baseball standings suddenly share equal billing with global headlines, and even Little League baseball gets the kind of breathless coverage usually reserved for royal weddings.

We find this charming. Expertise that blooms overnight and fades just as quickly gives conversation a fresh edge, and there’s something admirable about people who dive headlong into enthusiasm without signing a multi-year contract. By the end of the month, many will quietly retire from their brief but brilliant sports careers, returning to their regularly scheduled lives — until next August, when passion, like peaches and pollen, makes its inevitable and unstoppable return.

And so the month ambles on, fueled by good intentions, unsolved mysteries, and sudden enthusiasms — proof that even as summer slips away, we still know how to keep ourselves entertained.