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Spring seemed like small compensation for the brutal barn-crushing winter. Summer lulled us into letting our guard down for a one-two punch of successive monster storms from the tropics. So what of fall, which is scheduled to arrive in a drum roll of

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Spring seemed like small compensation for the brutal barn-crushing winter. Summer lulled us into letting our guard down for a one-two punch of successive monster storms from the tropics. So what of fall, which is scheduled to arrive in a drum roll of thunder this week? Fall, the season New England wears like a cockade in its hat, is supposed to be our time of year with its neon sugar maples, harvest festivals, corn mazes and pumpkin patches, Halloween hijinks, politician populated sidewalks, and that revered New England invention, the Thanksgiving feast. If extreme weather tries to mess with fall, it is not something we will soon forgive.

We need to get outside and draw the line, make a stand, and ultimately push back against Nature’s year of bad behavior. Better to sit in the stands than on a couch for a sporting event. Better to exercise on the hiking trail than on the treadmill. Better to pick our own apples than buy them at the store. Better to claim the natural beauty of the year’s most spectacular season for ourselves — no matter how weather-whipped and wimpy 2011 has left us — than to let it pass us by.

Fortunately, our community makes it easy to make the most of fall. Almost every weekend, from now on into the cold weather, features special events out under the open sky, including this weekend’s 15th Annual Joseph P. Grasso Marching Band Festival at the Newtown High School stadium on Saturday and the first Victory Garden Harvest Festival on Sunday at Fairfield Hills. People will also be roasting pig and riding motorcycles in support of the Newtown Hook & Ladder on Sunday. Check The Bee’s calendar of events and you will find it is crowded with events in the coming weeks, not the least of which is the 50th Labor Day Parade, which, true to form for this crazy year, is taking place on Columbus Day weekend.

In a year that has confused us all with its anomalies and extremes, let us regain a little of our confidence and our sense of place in the span of this world by getting out into it, deriving, if we are lucky, the true “meaning of the rolling hills” that grace our remarkable community.

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