Welcome to November. Thanks Julius and Augustus for inserting yourselves between June and September.
(N.B. September is special in that it's spelled with 7 different letters and 9 total letters -- numbers which correspond elegantly to both its root meaning and its calendar placement.)
Cool and cloudy, and now rainy.
Creatures are knocking at the door as dusk descends.
(Ray Bradbury would like this, but Halloween, like The Fourth of July, is not optimized for Paxton.)
Theme in Yellow
BY CARL SANDBURG
I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.
~~~~~~~~
Halloween Party
BY KENN NESBITT
We’re having a Halloween party at school.
I’m dressed up like Dracula. Man, I look cool!
I dyed my hair black, and I cut off my bangs.
I’m wearing a cape and some fake plastic fangs.
I put on some makeup to paint my face white,
like creatures that only come out in the night.
My fingernails, too, are all pointed and red.
I look like I’m recently back from the dead.
My mom drops me off, and I run into school
and suddenly feel like the world’s biggest fool.
The other kids stare like I’m some kind of freak—
the Halloween party is not till next week.
We added our truck and trailer to the fleet (of 2) moving vans that moved Irene's stuff from her little house on the prairie west of Elgin to her lovely new home in a fine neighborhood in South Elgin. Irene has lot of friends helping.
Bri and the kids down for the afternoon.
The major technical trailer hurdles were overcome, and construction almost completed. A fading backyard balsam was rendered into firewood for Bri's outdoor fireplace. Meanwhile, the kids, with Mimi's help, got to run the office, climb trees, hula-hoop, play at the park, etcetera.
The trailer may not look impressive, but it is revolutionary, and will surely be copied by multitudes of old people who no longer like lifting heavy things.
Hard freeze forecast for tonight, therefore time to harvest beets. Fifteen to twenty gallons of Beta vulgaris, many small because planted too close together (or left unwatered for a long dry month), but some of decent size. Still, overall, today's haul, made with frozen fingers through soggy gloves, should result in quite a few quarts of rather delicious (if you like this sort of thing) food.
Tonight, as part of dinner, "Pastel de Elote" from the family cookbook—recipe supplied by Mary Jane. Roughly translated the name means "corn cake." Here's another version (not quite so good) of the dish:
Actually cold today, with leaden skies and an insistent wind.
All nine screens employed over the summer (a relatively small percentage of windows in this house) were hauled down, lowered through exterior basement tornado door, and replaced by nine storm windows—which had to be hauled up (more like work), washed (a lot like work), and hoisted back up onto washed (a lot like work) windows that the screens formerly overlaid.
But, even though it was a lot like work, it is part of our annual fall ritual, and we (mostly) enjoyed it. Plus, on the plus side, conditions inside the house are more pleasant, and the furnace runs less frequently.
Actually glad to see that cold weather is still possible.
Not heavy, but enough to end the growing season.
Here's another memorization candidate:
(Important to remember that holiday gatherings are the time for declamation.)
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
—Emma Lazrus
Not bad for an untended garden—except I don't know what the little flat ones are. The seeds planted were all collected from last years's harvest (not store bought) so the little flat ones could be a former hybrid that has reverted back to some ancestral type. We'll have to see if they are edible.
Clear, calm, and cold today, gloriously bright after all the cloud. Good chance of frost tonight (only ten days late) so the rosemary bush has been brought onto the porch.
Attendance at the first annual Whitewater Grocery Company annual owner's meeting this evening, along with about about 200 other folks who are hoping for a quality store in town. Interesting table mates, including a beef and chicken farmer from nearby who hopes to sell through the store. We have arranged to visit her farm soon and then sign up for a beef, chicken, eggs subscription. Overall a surprisingly fun evening.
And what’s this with having to wear a coat?
But Pax loves it. On our ride/walk to the prairie this afternoon he wanted to run—galloping, stretched out, hell bent for leather. I don't think I've ever seen him run faster.
We did have lots of rain early on, and even something close to sleet, driven by a whipping wind. The chilly temps ultimately penetrated the house, causing the furnace to turn on for the first time this year.
So, time to put the storms on the windows that now have screens.
Pax says "think snow," but I reprimand him and say, "no, think ice."
West coast of Michigan and up through Manitoulin and onto the North Shore and into Georgian Bay—all getting clobbered by heavy rain. Manitoulin has a rain advisory and a wind advisory. Here in Whitewater we have a rain forecast and a wind advisory. (Did we pull the pier parts up high enough?)
So far today, however, calm, cloudy, and cool. Sue returned Buddy to his rightful home, while I did quite a bit of high level engineering (which consists of staring at the rudimentary ice boat trailer for long periods of time hoping an idea might occur).
I do get the feeling that Pax actually misses Buddy even though they are competitive eaters.
All day rain. Never heavy, but never ending. The ground is wet.
Sometimes a quiet, rainy Sunday feels just right—allowing for simple pastimes like reading and writing, sewing, practicing a musical instrument, taking a nap. For some reason, the television has not been on for weeks, perhaps because of news-weariness, perhaps because we have good books at hand and in the queue. For some reason, having the TV off right now feels just right.
“Who Says Trump and Poetry Are Incompatible?”
We know a poem can be maniacal, the best ones
Always unpredictable. Don’t poets sometimes rave?
Pound for example: profound, but mad as the Hatter,
And maybe a traitor. As for the tweets, if Dylan Thomas
Were still with us, might not he tweet his late-night sullen art?
Perhaps only poetry, after prose has failed us,
Is brave and big enough for this Trumpian time.
Think of Wordsworth, The world is too much with us,
Or Arnold: And we are here as on a darkling plain.
Dickinson would tell us to turn the TV off, the phone
And iPad too: The Soul selects her own Society.
Did Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwock foretell our president
Come whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbling…
But if I had to choose one poem to give to him,
I’d give him Angelou: You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
—from the New York Times
Insistent south wind sending swirls down the road. Locust almost bare. Same for the sugar maple, and Vi's magnificent crab. Big ash out back long gone. The front yard birch has turned yellow and is beginning to shed, and the three white oaks have turned brown. And all this without a frost.
The grass, however, is lush and green.
The Bluet" by James Schuyler
And is it stamina
that unseasonably freaks
forth a bluet, a
Quaker lady, by
the lake? So small,
a drop of sky that
splashed and held,
four-petaled, creamy
in its throat. The woods
around were brown,
the air crisp as a
Carr's table water
biscuit and smelt of
cider. There were frost
apples on the trees in
the field below the house.
The pond was still, then
broke into a ripple.
The hills, the leaves that
have not yet fallen
are deep and oriental
rug colors. Brown leaves
in the woods set off
gray trunks of trees.
But that bluet was
the focus of it all: last
spring, next spring, what
does it matter? Unexpected
as a tear when someone
reads a poem you wrote
for him: 'It's this line
here.' That bluet breaks
me up, tiny spring flower
late, late in dour October.
High near 80. Perfect for washing the truck and, once the sun got down a bit, cutting some grass.
And walking the dogs.
Lunch at Legs in Cross Village (indescribable place [though I might try tomorrow] overlooking Gray’s Reef and the entrance to the Straits of Mackinac). After a drive of about 25 miles on a twisty 1.5 lane "tunnel of trees" high above Lake Michigan, from Harbor Springs. After a wind-whipped look at the big seas coming into Little Traverse Bay north of Petoskey. After a walk around the now deserted (required by association by-laws) Bay View Association. After a luxurious breakfast at our 110-year old Tarrace Inn.
The patio at Legs, high above Lake Michigan.
The patio at Legs.
High above Lake Michigan along the "Tunnel of Trees."
Littel Traverse Bay, rather kicked up.
Somewaht typical Bay View Assn. architecture.
Just a bit of what you will find in Legs, a Polish restaurant in the absolute middle of nowhere, drawing throngs of customers from around the world.
Now enjoying a blustery but warm south wind on the long veranda of the Terrace Inn above Little Traverse Bay between Petoskey and Harbor Springs.
Inn built in 1911. Restaurant about the same age.
...plus lunch
Cidery, distillery, winery—plus a good long walk along Lake Leelanau and whitefish for lunch at Knot Just a Bar, in Omena.
Now at the Habes’ place on Lake Leelanau, near Traverse City.
...this morning—almost as good as Mimi's renowned lemon cake, which was last night's piece de resistance.
So, waffles, along with sausages, the making of Halloween decorations, a reprise of Dooly and the Snortsnoot, and a good bit of fun at the Starin Park playground (Mimi brought towels to dry thing off), and then back to Oconomowoc and a return of the loan. Oh, the joys of grand-parenting!
Busy Barns, UWW, cake baking, art projects, book reading. And all on a rainy day.
...as day descends to dusk. (But after a warm and sunny afternoon. )
Chores and errands, errands and chores.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
—Robert Frost