"I think Peggy is perpetually negative."
This is a classis Noonan piece, demonstrating yet again that if the word "maudlin" did not already exist we'd have to invent it for her.
Doesn't one always feel sort of gloomy and/or anxious as the golden fall turns towards November? I know I do.
I felt that in the piece as well; but still, I think it is more that events are catching up to the clock. We see campaigns begin the day after elections end, our stores are sold out of winter clothes by the end of September, we buy our houses with interest-only loans while we buy our furniture with no payments until 2007, our kids get out of diapers one day and into pre-kindergarten the next, late night TV programming inundates us with ads for diet pills and regimens, burial insurance and vacuum cleaners as though the world can't wait to watch us waste away, turn to dust and get the mess cleared off the planet before we stink up the place.