Looking for a reason to smile?

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Did you hear it last week? Could you feel it? It happened on Friday afternoon, at exactly 4:02 p.m., the sun slipped across the equator and started shining directly down onto the land and waters of the southern hemisphere. At that moment, fall officially began. The season has changed. The days will soon be getting dramatically shorter and cooler. Bring it on. Fall is my favorite season of the year.

With the beginning of fall, we plunge directly into the major league baseball playoffs. Within a month, the World Series will be history. Last season, the series between Chicago and Cleveland was one of the most exciting we have had in years. Like many fans, I don’t follow every team or obsess about baseball during the entire summer, but I sure look forward to the playoffs and the World Series. That’ll make me smile.

Since the Cincinnati Reds finished last in their division (ouch), I’m going to start rooting for the Cleveland Indians. I’ve always been loyal to our Ohio teams. If the teams in southwest Ohio don’t make it, I’ll cheer for those folks in the northeast part of the state. As a devoted Reds and Bengals fan, that feels like a double-ouch, but with the baseball season rapidly winding down, we can now immerse ourselves in the frenzy of football. Who Dey?

I have always loved the change of seasons. Whether it’s the renewal that comes with the planting and new-growth of the spring or that special feeling of thanksgiving that comes with the fall harvest, each season brings a sense of anticipation.

It’s impossible to flip through the channels on your TV without realizing that a new season is coming to television screens across the country. As usual, I’ll be disappointed with the many of the brain-dead comedy shows that television will offer. However, I have to confess that I am hooked on a few television shows. Two of them are the most loudly criticized programs to air on TV; “Survivor” and “The Walking Dead.”

People complain that “Survivor” brings out and celebrates the worst in human behavior. To be successful in the competition, contestants will be pressured to lie, cheat and steal. How creatively they lie, cheat and steal can make the difference between winning a million dollars and just going home with a sunburn.

Unless you have been living in almost total isolation, you probably know that “The Walking Dead” is about zombies. Yes, zombies. It is disgusting. Zombies eat people. There is no way to watch a program where dead, rotting, gruesome-looking zombies are eating the living without it being just all-out nasty and gross.

That is why I refused to watch “The Walking Dead” for five years. Then, I watched the Golden Globes award show a few years ago. “The Walking Dead” won the award for the best series on television. As time went on, the show kept being nominated for various awards. I put it off as long as I could, but my curiosity got the better of me. I went to Netflix and tuned in to season-1; episode-1.

They never even mentioned what caused the zombie apocalypse. In the first episode, Rick just woke up in a hospital and everything had changed. His world had turned upside-down. Horrible things were happening on the streets of Atlanta. The dead were walking and killing. People were fleeing the horrors that terrorized those who still lived. Okay… I watched the second episode; then the third. I got hooked.

I’m not necessarily proud of it, but I am a fan of “Survivor” and “The Walking Dead.” With the new fall season, new episodes are going to arrive this month. I’ll get to see who gets voted off the island every week and who gets eaten by the dead. (That still just sounds gross.)

In Wilmington, there is always more to the fall season than what we see on television or national sports. This past weekend, we celebrated community and friends with the fourth annual Murphy Theatre Dancing with the Stars. The grand old Murphy Theatre was packed with a standing-room-only crowd. Our 10 stars, friends and neighbors from around the county, had been working and practicing for nearly three months and their efforts certainly paid off. It was a wonderful, fun-filled night!

Soon the downtown will be filled with children and parents as they trick-or-treat their way from one business to another. Superheroes, princesses, goblins and maybe a zombie or two, will be celebrating fall as they collect treats around town. Fall is always a time of joy and smiles.

Then, we celebrate Thanksgiving; immediately followed by the annual HoliDazzle parade. The smiles will just keep piling on. If you can avoid the zombies, the joys of fall just keep building and building.

Ohio is always a great place to live and fall in Wilmington, with all of our celebrations and fall sports, will always put a smile on my face.

Randy Riley is president of Wilmington City Council.

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By Randy Riley

Contributing columnist

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