OK back to what’s happening this month that needs our attention, my favorite website.

There are a bunch for September. Maybe everybody is back from vacation having survived car trips and the kids home from school, so now you can focus on being aware or celebrating or smirking, whatever seems appropriate. Some are very serious and valuable. Some are downright silly. So, let’s look at a few:

Food—Better Breakfast month, National Chicken month, National Honey month, National Rice month, National Mushroom month, National Potato month, Whole Grains month, National Papaya month and, my personal favorite, National Blueberry Popsicle month. Really? A specific flavor of popsicle gets its own month? Does poor cherry get a nod?

The irony of highlighting all these various foods that we are encouraged to celebrate and, I suppose, partake in, is that it is also National Childhood Obesity Month. Humm. . . want to deal with childhood obesity? Perhaps we should not be venerating blueberry popsicles? Just a thought.

A little nostalgia—It is also Classical Music Month, National Piano Month, National Sewing Month and Save Your Photos Month. Wow, this is like my mom all wrapped up in one month. Sadly, September was also the month that she died, seven years ago, so we’ll pause to do a Barbara Manning Remembrance.

She was an excellent pianist, a classical music major in college and a great piano teacher her whole life. I’m a piano player (big difference) and, even though she was my first teacher, I’m more of the play by ear, rock it out, gospel and blues person. Bach and I never found much common ground.

Mom was an expert seamstress. When you raise four girls on a Baptist preacher’s salary, you best learn how to sew. Later in life she took professional tailoring classes and created a beautiful coat that was perfection in its seams and stitches. My younger daughter now proudly wears that coat, fifty years after its creation.

Save Your Photos. Oh wow. Our mother believed that nothing happened in life until you took a picture of it. She inherited that gene from her father, who fancied himself quite the photographer. My husband is a photophobe, but he would stand still for family pictures only because his mother-in-law, whom he adored, would insist. My parents had an entire room full of albums and boxes of pictures from the beginning of time. My sister, Kathy, has undertaken the herculean task of scanning and categorizing all of Mom’s pictures. Every month or so, she’ll bring a stack in for the rest of us to look through. So, hats off to Kathy for helping our mother “save your photos”. Which by the way also incorporates Fall Hat Month. Like we should be told to go get out our fall hats?

Now here’s a couple that are vague but interesting—Self Improvement Month and National Courtesy Month. They could go hand in hand. I would definitely vote for the whole “let’s be more courteous to each other” concept. Try it for a month and see how it goes.

And, of course, it is International Square Dancing Month. Isn’t that on your calendar? So, grab your partner and promenade and do-si-do right around the circle and grab your blueberry popsicle. Yeah, I’m still kind of stuck on that one.

For the more somber and extremely valuable topics to bring a spotlight on, there is Baby Safety Month, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome Awareness Month and National Suicide Prevention Month. Hopefully it goes without saying that attention must be paid to the safety of our youngest persons and that women must be vigilant about monitoring their health. And, the most dangerous disease of all, that of despair and hopelessness, can be overcome by people reaching out loving arms and listening ears to those who can’t find their way. Understanding should be just a phone call away.

So, that’s September. I hope it got you excited and enthused about beginning your fall season in a state of awareness, celebration and preparedness—it’s also National Preparedness Month, so go with it.

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Glenda Stansbury is Marketing Director of InSight Books and Co-Founder of InSight Institute Certified Celebrant Program. She is also a speaker, a trainer, and an observer of life, and one of Doug Manning’s adorable and talented daughters. You may email Glenda at OrdersAndInfo@InSightBooks.com.