October Thoughts

Okay. Super.

2011-04-29T16:44:00.000-07:00

So, I'm moving to WordPress. You can find me here from now on:

http://octoberthoughtspdx.wordpress.com/

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Blogspot/Blogger. I know a lot of people who use it and are perfectly happy. In fact, I'm happy here, too, but I think I might be happier at WordPress. It seems to be a little more flexible with design and doesn't seem to have as many ads so I guess that's it.

Thanks, all.

Free speech, hatred and the Patriot Guard

2011-03-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

I think we can all agree that Fred Phelps and his church members are some of the most vile people on earth, certainly some of the more disgusting American citizens there are. They do not spread the love of Christ, they spread only hatred. Their actions make me ill and embarrass me as a Christian.

Where we might disagree is over today's Supreme Court ruling that they are, in fact, afforded the right to free speech and can continue their protests at military funerals. Yes, that's right. I agree with the ruling. I wish the Court had imposed some sort of restriction regarding the distance they must keep from the mourners and the volume at which they might hold their protests and the size of their idiotic signs, but it is what it is.

That said, I would encourage you all to head on over to the Patriot Guard website, sign yourself up and get the contact information for your state's captain. You don't need a bike. You don't have to hold any particular political affiliation. You don't have to be a Vet to stand with these men and women in shielding the families and friends of our fallen soldiers from the hatred of Westboro as they lay their loved ones to rest.

Perhaps not all of you are biker-friendly. My experience with them has been limited, though my dad was a proud member of the Ant Hill Mob of Northern Wisconsin. In my experience, the vast majority of bikers are good people who love their families, their country and their bikes, pretty much in that order.

http://www.patriotguard.org/

State captains:

http://www.patriotguard.org/LeadershipContacts/StateCaptainsContactsPage/tabid/57/Default.aspx

I'm writing.

2011-02-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

It's been a month and a half since I lost my job. In that time, I've sent out scores of resumes, done easily a ton of laundry, reconnected with some old friends I hadn't seen in an age and I've been writing.

That's the exciting part. Writing.

I hear myself say it like a grand announcement. Like other people say, "I'm getting married!" or "I just won the lottery!" I say, "I'm writing!"

Some people take it as just that, the announcement they've been waiting for years for me to shout out. Others, mostly those who haven't known me for decades or don't know me as well, don't seem to get the importance of this statement.

"I have something to tell you."

"What is it? Are you getting married?"

"No."

"Are you pregnant?"

"Still no."

"Ahh. You're a lesbian!"

"Wrong again. I'm writing."

"Oh."

I completed the short story for the competition and, once it was accepted by those folks, posted it on Smashwords. I'm working on another short and, when that's done, I'll work on a follow-up to the first one since the people who've already bought it are asking about what happens next.

The novel is still on my plate. It seems to have taken on a life of its own and I'm just along for the ride. The main characters seem to be doing things I didn't anticipate so that's turning into a bit of an adventure. It might be a series of novellas so heads up for those.

I'm writing.

The blank page is every writer's greatest adversary. We complain about not having a place to write, or time, or peace and quiet so we can think. We use these things as excuses not to write. "Oh, I've got tons of errands to run, dirty dishes in the sink, we're almost out of dog food, the back yard needs to be raked...."

But, when it comes right down to it, we're just scared of that blank page.

Here's the next part none of us will admit: when we do actually manage to get the words on the page, we're terrified that they're not good enough. That you won't read them. That the effort we put into getting them there in the right order won't matter.

Lemme tell you, I'm reading a book right now that's an okay book. Interesting premise, easy to read. Not great. Won about a gazillion awards. And, as amused and entertained as I am by said book, I can't help but thinking, "I could TOTALLY have written that."

So, I'm going to. Not that particular one, but another one. A better one.

NYC Midnight

2011-02-13T18:51:00.000-08:00

As previously stated, I'm currently unencumbered by gainful employment. It was sudden, unexpected and now, here I am. I went from working 40+ hours a week and carrying a full load of college courses to being an out-of-work college grad in about twelve seconds.

What's that mean? Lots of spare time, hardly any money.

So, I posted on Facebook, jokingly suggesting that one of my wealthier (read: employed) friends might want to consider sponsoring my entrance fee for a short story contest that was coming up. Key word there was "jokingly". But my friends never cease to surprise me and I got a couple offers and, after considering the reality of it for about another twelve seconds, I took the cash.

I feel slightly guilty about taking money from friends, but my contest sponsor and I have a little bit of backstory that made me stop feeling guilty and start feeling flattered: he wrote for me back when I was going to be a journalist and was on the editorial board of my college paper. He's a phenomenal writer and, nearly twenty years after the last time he read anything I've written, to have him say,"Yeah, I think you're good enough to win this thing"...well, that means a lot to me.

So, cash changed hands and we shared a chocolate chip cookie at the Lucky Lab and I signed up for my first post-college writing competition.

I was assigned a genre (fantasy) and a kicking-off point (home improvement) last weekend and set off to write a short (2,500 words) story to be submitted no later than yesterday. I don't think I've written a short story since high school. Of course, I also haven't finished anything I've written since then, either, so this at least limited the damage I could do on the page.

I wrote. I avoided talking animals by morphing a dog into a minor Norse goddess. There's a wise old man who's lost his power and a young boy setting out to claim his birthright. There's a magic hammer. There are dwarves. I was well outside of my comfort zone.

The one thing it didn't have before I hit "send"? An ending. I'm assured by other writers in the competition that this is not the biggest fault a story can have. One of my fellow writers, when asked the premise of his story, answered with,"Four words: squirrel with a shotgun." You kind of get the picture of what the quality might be for some of the submissions.

No offense meant to the guy with the squirrel. I kinda want to read that one.

Now we all wait. The next round isn't until April, at which point, those of us who advance to that round will be assigned a new combination of genre/topic and will get something like 48 hours to write our next masterpiece. Should be interesting. I'd like to have the novel mostly done by then and I'm thinking about doing ScriptFrenzy (screenwriting along the lines of NaNoWriMo) in April, too.

I did about 800 words on the novel yesterday and spent today with a new pile of library books and haven't opened a Word file all day. Woke up thinking I need to get the idea for the Other Book sketched out, but I don't want my writing to wind up like my knitting: lots of stuff on needles, but no scarves to wear when it's cold out.

November and beyond...

2011-02-08T00:24:00.000-08:00

November dawned and I started a new adventure. Or I revisited an old adventure. No matter.

I started writing again. Not that you'd know from looking at the blog.

I took up the challenge of NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. See, this group of folks from San Francisco that call themselves the Office of Letters and Light expect that writers actually write. Furthermore, they expect writers (even poor writers like myself) to write 50,000 words in the month of November.

Fifty. Thousand. Words.

As many of you are aware of my adoration for the month of October, I have an equal distaste for November. Dark and dreary, we take our Halloween costumes off and wait for Thanksgiving to hurry along so we can brighten our world with Christmas lights. But that in-between time, November, is awful.

But this past November turned out to be different for me. I picked up my pen.

I drank gallons of coffee, found myself in a half dozen coffee shops I'd never been in before, I learned to sort out the wifi capabilities of my laptop in pretty much every corner of Portlandia.

And I wrote 50,000 words. Actually, I wrote a few extra, just in case.

Then December dawned and I stopped. I had such great momentum, but I ran headlong into my last set of finals before finally attaining my bachelors degree. And then the holidays hit. And then I had a few dental issues of which we will not speak. And then I lost my job. And then I had more dental work.

It wasn't until about two weeks ago that I settled down and read what I'd written in November. It's not terrible. I started to clean up what's there and add to it. I sent it to a friend of mine who does a little editing on the side. She kinda likes it, too.

So, with all the free time in the world, I'm setting about the task of actually writing a novel. Admittedly, it's got a mind of its own. It seems that I almost have to wrestle the characters onto the page. I have to force them to speak. But if I don't, who will?

October 31, 2010

2010-10-30T23:47:00.000-07:00

Halloween will be here in a few short minutes. It's about 11:40 as I write this and I'm incredibly disappointed in my television viewing choices for this evening. Watched Hilary Swank in "Amelia". One of my other options was "Titanic" for the umpteenth time. Where are the scary or semi-scary movies?

Where are all the Draculas and their daughters? Where are the Frankensteins and their brides?Where are Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price and Christopher Plummer and Lon Chaney? Where is Hitchcock? Where is Murnau? Where ARE they?

They, my friends, have been replaced by brooding Bella Swan and her sparkling vampires. Incredibly, not even they are on t.v. tonight. The only vaguely-Halloween thing on is something starring Bette Midler. Seriously. And the scariest things I've seen for weeks have been campaign commercials.

Now, I know there's yet another installment of the Saw franchise out there, in 3D no less, but that's not what we want, is it? We want suspense. We want fear. We want something that isn't just gross for the sake of being gross.

Wasn't that the appeal of "Blair Witch"? We never actually saw the witch. We just saw a bunch of kids in the woods who'd gotten the crap scared out of them. And the classics like "Dracula's Daughter" relied not on gore but on long pauses and deep shadows to set the viewer on edge. Hollywood, are you listening? We're not all 14-year old boys. Nor are we all 14-year old girls. Keep your sparkly vampires and your crazy clown things to yourself.

Unless it's Pennywise from "It". We'll keep him. But we'll read the book instead of trying to stay awake through the four-hour miniseries with John Boy from the Waltons and a kid I went to high school with. I wonder if they still get residuals.

Anyway.

This has turned out to be a fairly complete October. I acquired some fresh cider from a local producer, went to a pumpkin patch, decorated a pumpkin, wore an awesome costume for almost an entire day, ate a big pile of caramel and have had the opportunity to reconnect with some friends I haven't chatted with since last October. I've even managed to spend a little time with a Druid and a couple pagans and got myself invited to a Samhain ritual. I know, right? Shocking to some of you. Not sure if I'll go, but the invitation included info about a vegan/vegetarian potluck. I do like a good potluck, but what does one wear to such a thing?

I was reminded over and over of things from my childhood: Elvira and Vincent Price, the voices of Halloween, of the Frankenstein coatrack that I avoided for years, of a series of orange plastic pumpkins used to tote trick-or-treat candy home. I was reminded of costumes of years past, mine and those of my friends and family, including my mom's collection of witch costumes over the years. I was reminded that we were gluing plastic spiders to our faces long before Martha ever considered doing such a thing.

And I'm reminded of the magic and mystery that surrounds Halloween. It's been said a million times that this is when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, when the profane becomes the mundane, when we may be offered a glimpse at what came before and, quite possibly, what lies ahead.

Thanks for coming along on another October journey. You're all what makes October well, October for me.

Cheers.

October 30, 2010

2010-10-29T22:13:00.000-07:00

I sent most of the day wearing a green wig and night elf ears. And purple fuzzy boots and tiger-striped leggings and a red tabbard and a purple cape.

I had a good time with it, those silly ears and that silly wig and the spectacular costume my mom worked so hard on, feathered shoulder pieces and all. But it wore me out. I'm exhausted. My real ears hurt. My real hair is a hot mess. I'm still wearing the boots mainly because it seems like so much trouble to try to take them off. I'm just not good at costuming.

I am, however, very good at eating candy and decorating pumpkins. I'm not sure where these talents came from. Other people can play the violin or carve things from deer antlers or run really fast. I can decorate a pumpkin like nobody's business.

Anyway.

I had a conversation yesterday with someone I don't particularly care for. He's a vendor at the hotel and I see him nearly everyday. And nearly everyday, I find some reason that would justify my strangling him with my bare hands. But yesterday, in the inclusive spirit of October, I had an actual conversation with him.

And he told me, in not so many words, that he's a sort of medium. He can read people. He can easily identify other mediums and reach out to them with his mind. If he'd told me this in, say, April, it would have confirmed what I've believed for nearly a dozen years: he's a real whack-job.

But he didn't tell me in April. He told me in October. Somehow, this makes it more believable. So, yes, I believe him. He told me he didn't grow up with this gift, but after a near-death experience when he was in the military, he realized something was different.

Well, of course he did. He came near to the borderlands between the worlds. He was close to crossing over. That changes people. He came back with a gift. I'm not sure how useful it is to him, but it's still a gift.

He told me a story of going to a psychic fair with some friends of his who wanted to test him out. He knew immediately which of the psychics there was most powerful and focused on her. She was in the middle of a reading with someone else, he wasn't even near her. But when he focused on her, her head popped up and she nearly knocked her chair over getting to her feet. She marched over to him. "You!," she pointed a finger at him. "You have a gift and you're not using it properly!"

Regardless of what our talents are, we should all ask ourselves if she would call us out the same way. Are we using our talents properly? Are we even able to identify what our talents are?

October 29, 2010

2010-10-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

Okay, so at the last possible minute, my workplace decided that we will, in fact, be holding a pumpkin decorating contest.

Poop.

I'm ill-prepared. I had an idea months ago but can't possibly pull it together in time for a noon judging - TOMORROW. This could get very ugly.

I know I can put something together, but I doubt that the quality will be to my usual pumpkin decorating standards. I mean, how do you follow the infamous Phyllis Diller pumpkin? You have to be better and better each year. Feathers and sequins, people.

And rumor has it that the maintenance department has already wired theirs for electricity. I'm not kidding.

So, sometime tomorrow morning when I should be working, I'll drag our my bag of rhinestones and glitter and see what kind of magic I can work. That's just what I do.

And I will remember that the jack-o-lantern was once a turnip, not a pumpkin, that held an ember from the Flames of Hell - the only light poor Stingy Jack would have to navigate an eternity on Earth, for he had tricked the Devil into not taking his soul, but was too much of a sinner to be let into Heaven. Man, we have some complicated Halloween lore, don't we?

October 28, 2010

2010-10-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

So, my friend Sarah downloaded a bunch of Christmas music for her iPod today. She's ready to move on.

But we have a couple more days before we leave October behind. And about three weeks worth of October-ness that we haven't yet covered.

Does it seem to anyone else that there's more creepiness this year than there has been in the past? Everywhere I turn, some other creepy thing happens. For those of you on Facebook, the evidence of this is posted there - the giant knife, the pile of wheat. Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of the guy with the chainsaw at school tonight.

I think, with Halloween looming on the horizon, maybe I'm just more open to seeing, identifying and pointing out the creepy in the mundane.

One of my bosses received a balloon arrangement today that scared the hell out of me. I'm hoping it deflates before I go in tomorrow. I know it's just a few balloons lashed together, but I don't want to be in the same room with it.

What's creepy in your world?

October 27, 2010

2010-10-26T22:42:00.000-07:00

The end days of October are filled with monsters. They're everywhere. This is the point at which we normally talk about vampires and werewolves but, thanks to Stephanie Meyer and the entire Mass Media World, I'm kinda over them.

What I've been thinking about for the last week or so is the zombie. Unfortunately, I missed the ZombieWalk last weekend here in Portland. And there was a headline on OregonLive about the students at U-Dub playing some sort of zombie-tag between classes. There seems to be a real resurgence of zombie activity so I want you all to be prepared. Pretty mush all I know about protecting oneself from zombies is to keep salt around. Throw the salt on the ground and the zombie will stop chasing you and start counting the grains of salt - hopefully long enough for you to get away. That's all I got, kids.

Thankfully, my friend Sean had some spare time whilst serving his country and wrote the following, which I've stolen and reposted here for the good of the group. With apologies to Sean, I've taken the liberty of editing a bit for our decidedly mixed audience.

Be prepared:

If zombies were polite enough to come at you one at a time and waited while you changed magazines, killing them wouldn't require much thought. Unfortunately, they simply lack the higher thought processes required to contemplate things like the Law Of Armed Conflict. However, the Geneva Convention says nothing about eating your enemy so maybe they do have the law on their side.

We respectfully submit that the perfect zombie-killing weapon is something that kills them while they are way the F over THERE. Artillery is always your best option. If you happened to be so armed, APERS rounds are a good choice. Next in line would be an HE round with an air burst, preferably using a high angle trajectory. White phosphorous is a good choice too because you get obscuring smoke to confuse them plus the satisfaction of knowing they are getting burned to s**t. However, it will stink.

In the absence of the Noble Artilleryman (who could bring refinement and sophistication to even a zombie fight), you are forced to employ the tactics of the Brave, but None-Too-Bright Infantryman.

First and foremost, always take the high ground when possible. If you can sit and pick them off from a cliff, building or other high spot, always use that to your advantage. However, the old football analogy about the chicken being involved in breakfast but the pig is committed bears remembering at this point. If they surround you, you are the pig. Literally and figuratively. Always protect your means of egress.

The most basic infantry tactic is to use suppressive fire (translation: shoot like a mofo) while another team works themselves into place to assault the objective. Against the living, this works fairly well because most living people want to stay that way and a s**t load of bullets coming their way is definitely prejudicial to living.

Zombies don't care. They won't keep their heads down. They'll just keep coming at you. The obvious problem here is if you are in a tactically weak position and they get to you before you run out of bullets, you are F'd.

However, suppressive fire as a tactic does have its uses against zombies. Pretend you have two teams. Team A is in a tactically ok position. This means they can hold their own for a while, but will need to exfiltrate if things get too heavy. However, there is a tactically superior position some distance away. Team A can lay down suppressive fire while Team B maneuvers. Team A isn't really suppressing the zombies so much as killing them and keeping their attention while the other team moves.

Once Team B is in position, they can cover Team A's exfiltration, or both teams can commence to shooting because now you have them flanked. A good flanking maneuver is always fun because now the enemy has to deal with fire from two directions instead of one. Makes the whole situation a bit more manageable.

The important thing about choosing another position is the directions of fire for both teams should be perpendicular or close to it whenever possible. If the good idea fairy says he thinks he should take a team behind the horde of zombies so you can attack them from the opposite side too, kill him first because he is a fool. That configuration is stupid. Don't do it.

The question has been raised regarding the use of smoke against zombies. Smoke is a good way to hide what you are doing from the enemy (hopefully to their detriment) or to just confuse the s**t out of them because they can't see what is going on.

Also, smoke coming out of smoke grenades has a very strong smell to it, so it may confuse whatever sense of smell they have. Artillery rounds probably do too, but the author makes it a point to never get close enough to artillery smoke rounds to smell them. It's just bad practice.

The most convenient means of employing smoke is with an M203 Grenade Launcher. If you don't happen to have one, find the person who can throw the farthest and the most accurately. That big dumb dude who claims he was a quarterback when he played high school football may be your only bet.

You will want to place your rounds close enough to the zombies that you can't see them anymore, but your view of the world around you is otherwise unobscured. The smoke screen may take from a few second for grenades to a minute or so for artillery smoke to build. Don't spend much time thinking about this, just move like hell once you can't see the zombies. Best if you can be quiet at this point too. Smoke doesn't do much for hearing.

Another tactic that bears consideration is explosives. You can throw them, drop them or leave them in place until the zombies chance upon it. You can also rig booby traps to protect a position. Explosives and the knowledge to use them is a convenient thing to have. They are highly effective and very entertaining at the same time.

If you can get your hands on some Claymores, do so. Or you can improvise them with a few materials. We won't go into details on improvising claymores here. If you have the materials, particularly the explosives and the knowledge to use them, you'll know what to do. If you have the materials but lack the knowledge, best to leave well enough alone.

There are three important things to remember employing claymores against zombies. First, they should be placed about head level. If you place them low, you'll just have a bunch of zombies with missing legs coming at you. The second thing to remember is the claymore is marked "FRONT TOWARD ENEMY". Point that side at the zombies. The final thing is the claymore does have a back blast area of about 50 meters.

The importance of fire discipline cannot be overstated. If you have a s**t ton of ammo, you will probably be ok for quite some time. However, if ammo is limited or the zombies are many, you'll want to ensure you maintain some degree of awareness over how many rounds you have left.

Whenever possible, employ the one shot, one kill strategy. If you can manage more than one kill per shot, even better.

If you can, change magazines after the last round has been chambered but before it has actually been fired. Sometimes there may be a pause in the action. Check your magazine. If you are down to a few rounds, change out.

If you are using a weapons such as a lever-action rifle, re-load whenever possible. Those two or three rounds you jam in while hiding behind that wall may mean the difference between life and death.

And finally, break contact before you run out of ammo. If you run out of bullets before you run out of zombies and can't exfiltrate, you are F'd.

It pays to plan ahead. Happy hunting. Or defending. Or whatever.

October 26, 2010

2010-10-25T21:07:00.000-07:00

Fall has finally really hit us here in the Pacific Northwest. 'Bout time.

The winds picked up yesterday. Aside from a drop in the temperature and a color change for the leaves, the wind is how we know it's official.

Where I am, in lovely Portland, Oregon, the winds come in from the east, down through the Columbia River Gorge. They sweep away what's left over from summer and bring us full on into autumn, heading swiftly toward winter.

We pull on our sweaters, tug our hats down around our ears and wonder where our gloves went after the last time we wore them. We start to settle in for the winter. We eat soup.

This is late October. Welcome.

October 25, 2010

2010-10-24T22:05:00.001-07:00

I made the mistake of going to the bookstore today. I was looking for a copy of Irving's Sleepy Hollow. Somehow, I didn't have one. I'm not sure how this happened.

Well, now I have one. And I also have Syrie James' novel Dracula, My Love, which I'm hoping is not a trashy romance. It's supposed to be the secret journals of Mina Murray Harker, one of the main characters in Bram Stoker's Dracula, chronicling her love for both her husband and the Count.

And because I just couldn't help myself, I picked up Dracula: The Un-Dead. I didn't realize until I got it home that it was co-written by the great-grandnephew of Bram himself. It picks up 25 years after the original and follows the story of Mina's son Quincey as he discovers the Dracula story (and his parents' history) for the first time.

It's dangerous to mess with something considered classic. Elizabeth Kostova did fairly well with The Historian, but she did something unique in that she took the Count and reminded us that his history is anything but fiction. And she good tepid reviews.

There's tons of vampire fiction out there right now. The Books of Which We Do Not Speak Because the Vampires Sparkle have sold a bazillion copies (thought the movies continue to get worse). Another little young-adult series, The House of Night, has its eighth book due out in January. I looked briefly at Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I don't know that I'm ready for it. Maybe after I get through the ones I bought today. Variety says the movie's already in pre-production with Tim Burton's name attached to it. What's more October than a vampire movie with a Tim Burton credit?

The vampires once relegated to a couple weeks at the end of October, are everywhere. Year-round, they're everywhere. True Blood, Vampire Diaries, the American remake of "Let the Right Ones In". You can't get away from them.

This all brings me back to where I was twenty years ago. I hadn't yet read Stoker and was just starting to read Anne Rice. I didn't see it coming just yet. I didn't imagine the nights when I would read Dracula on my break at work and then have to run from my car to the house when I got home because I was so freaked out. I didn't foresee my world filling with vampires.

I've been writing them for years now. Quite poorly, mind you, mostly because I haven't ever really put my heart into it. I think I'm finally ready. After all the vamp-schlock that's been unleashed on us over the last, what, five years? I'm ready. And I've got an angle I finally feel good about.

I'm reclaiming the vampires. Watch out, Edward Cullen. I'm coming for you.

October 24, 2010

2010-10-24T00:47:00.000-07:00

We're a week out from All Hallow's Eve.

I spent most of today in a Celtic Myths class. Lots of talk of ancient warriors, of ghosts, of druids. Lots of talk about how one culture borrows from another to make itself more palatable. The Christians borrowed from the Pagans and the Celts and the Druids. Now the Pagans and the Celts and the Druids borrow from the Christians. It's all very confusing.

What's not confusing is that there's a little darkness to it all.

Joe sent me an email today with the lyrics to a song one of his bands did yeeeears ago. It was based on the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but seems appropriate here. Thanks, Joe.

Hallows Eve 
Advisary 1990

The black vail of night surrounds you its a quest to survive
Something wicked this way comes to deprive you of life
His evil presents, a cry in the night
The dreaded omen of doom
Running through your imagination and from the truth
Your heart is pounding, there's a chill in the air
Don't get excited
His pounding hooves, enticing your despair
Better get ready, he's commin

I can hear their voices call to me from so deep in the wood
I can hear there cries o how they howl
I can feel there screams of pain 
I know they'd run if they could
But there is no place that I don't prowl
Timeless voices, familiar screams
Their blood on my hands
Can't get away on hallows eve
There's no escape from the damned

Shadows creeping deep into my soul
From this chaos of death
Stealing life and light from all I see
Smell of death the taste of fear
The things that should not be
No morbid glare at the defeated souls
Passing judgment, over me

The dark shroud of night engulfs you
Take your final breath
Its a whisper ridding on the breeze
The fridged whisper of death
The bridges boundaries are all that save you
Make a run for it all
Fragmentation of his face in the morning
To the ground they fall

October 23, 2010

2010-10-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you all suffered through my Warcraft Brewfest story. Well, the next WoW holiday is upon us: All Hallow's End. I won't bore you with all the details, but I will tell you that one of the tasks is to drop a pumpkin onto the heads of each of the current ten Warcraft races.

That's what I just finished. however, in the middle of it, I also managed to drop one on my own head so for the next 45 minutes or so of game time, I'll have a jack'o'lantern in place of my normally green-haired night elf head. I guess that's the risk I took.

Anyway, the whole thing reminds me terribly of our dear friend Ichabod Crane. Would it truly be October without the Legend of Sleepy Hollow?

We watched the cartoon version every year on t when I was a kid. I remember covering my eyes until I was at least nine.

There are a dozen versions out there, my favorite being the 1999 Tim Burton/Johnny Depp piece. It's not terribly faithful to the original Washington irving short story, but the horses are gorgeous.

And, in reading up on Ichabod and his many forms, I'm seeing he was played by Jeff Goldblum in a 1980 tv movie. I'm gonna need to find that. Seriously. Who could possibly be more perfect as Ichabod Crane? The IMDB page says Dick Butkus plays Ichabod's rival, Brom Bones. I'm not kidding. Jeff Goldblum and Dick Butkus. Why is this NOT on Netflix?

October 22, 2010

2010-10-21T23:42:00.000-07:00

Carrie emailed me this morning before I was even awake. Dunno if he's usually up that early or if the mere thought of October brought him out of a deep sleep.

He wanted to remind me about the leaves. October is the change of color in the leaves on trees all around us. I hadn't forgotten, it's just that it seems the leaves here are taking their time in turning.

I gauge the change in weather here not in the daily temperatures, but in the color and number of leaves left on the tree in my next door neighbor's yard. A week ago, it was still entirely green. Monday, there was a hint of red. Today, it's half red. By Sunday, it will have added a bit of orange, I imagine, as the weather is turning colder. I heard one local weatherman ask if yesterday was the last 70 degree day. I kinda hope so. I like gloves and hats and scarves and sweaters and wool socks.

The leaves are just starting their turn here even as we're running out of October. How are the leaves where you are?

October 21, 2010

2010-10-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

October, above all else, is about the changing of the seasons. The weather grows colder, the leaves turn and fall from the trees.

And the birds fly south for the winter.

I left work a little early today. Well, a lot early, actually. Couldn't be helped. I had an appointment to keep elsewhere.

But as I was driving out, I saw those birds flying south. They were too far away and I'm not terribly good with bird identification anyway, but I would assume they were Canada geese. They were flying in a V formation.

Anyone know what that's called?

Well, I do. It's called an echelon.

And do you know why one side of the V is sometimes longer than the other?

Wait for it.

Because there are more birds on that side. Duh.

October 20, 2010

2010-10-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

Apparently, our friend Steve is an actual urban legend. Maybe this is super-lazy of me, but I'm just going to cut and paste what he sent me today.

I actually was the recipient of a razor blade in the candy bar. It was a bite size snickers. Someone had unwrapped it from the end so you couldn't tell and slid the thing in flat through the end of the bar so unless you were really checking, you wouldn't catch it. But those bastards didn't know my Mom. Her Halloween Rule (She Who Must Be Obeyed) was that you did NOT eat any collected candy until you got home and SHE checked it out. Nada. And she always made sure there was at least one snitch in the group if you were trick or treating with friends. So, you didn't cheat. I was about nine I guess. Got home, dumped the haul on the dining room table and she went to work, checking for anything untoward. I remember the gasp from her and her telling my Grandmother, LOOK AT THIS!! Sure enough. There was an actual mini Snickers with a razor blade slid right into it. I still remember how evil that thing looked all covered in chocolate. Just waiting for some me to bite down.....

Mom called the police but I'd gone to so many houses, I had no idea where it came from. The cops took it and I guess did a search to see if they could find where it came from. I never heard anything else about it. But I had a lot more respect for my Mom's caution after that.

This is not one of those Snopes deals that can be looked up and disproved because it came from a friend of a friend of your next door neighbor's college roommate's girlfriend's boss's cousin. This is from Steve. Steve is One of Us.

And kudos to his mom.

October 19, 2010

2010-10-18T23:12:00.001-07:00

Okay. So, two of you eat the black jelly beans. And I should have known which two. You know who you are.

I'm guessing you're the same people who ate those little sesame seed hard candies that I've ever truly understood.

Me, I like Smarties and SweeTarts and Bottle Caps if I can find them. I've only recently come into my own with my love of chocolate. I think this comes as a result of being a child in the desert - chocolate melts and makes a big mess, Smarties do not. As a young trick-or-treater, I preferred Pixie Sticks and the occasional Bit'o'Honey.

Of course, I'm also old enough to remember when people would give you homemade popcorn balls (which were IMPOSSIBLE to stuff into the bright orange trick-or-treat pumpkin we were carrying). And there were those other granola-slingers who wanted to give us apples. Because, in addition to the nine pounds of candy we were toting around, we needed four pounds of apples. Those people were just asking for flaming bags of dog poop in their porches (not that I condone that sort of thing).

This is your warning bell, homeowners. You have one more weekend before the Big Day to do your Halloween candy shopping. Don't disappoint us.

October 18, 2010

2010-10-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's the small thing that make October what it is.

Somewhere over the course of this month, you will go somewhere, maybe a bank, maybe someone's office, and you will find a candy dish.

This dish will not be filled with the usual Starlight mints or Hershey's Kisses. It will be filled with orange and black jelly beans.

And the orange ones won't taste like orange or pumpkin. They'll just taste like...sweetness. And the black ones? Well, no one knows what they taste like because no one ever eats them.

October 17, 2010

2010-10-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

I survived the family pumpkin patch outing but managed to come home sans pumpkin. Go figure.

That was not my biggest disappointment of the day, though. I wanted a caramel apple and I didn't get one. I kept thinking, I'll go get one when the line dies down a bit. It didn't and I didn't.

Happily, I know that if I feel totally desperate for caramel apple, I can head down to the grocery store for T. Marzetti's apple dip.

Mmmm, caramel dip. Crisp, tart apples. Fall. October.

October 16, 2010

2010-10-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

I'm preparing for the annual family pumpkin patch outing.

I'm hoping it will be better than the ones of my childhood. Those memories are filed with mud and tears and the overwhelming desire to go home.

For years, I didn't go. I boycotted the entire affair. I eventually found myself in possession of a drivers license so I went on my own (usually to the closest grocery store) to get my pumpkin. Then I found my way to the closest pumpkin patch, choosing a nice, dry day.

Recently, I've found better and better pumpkin patches. I like the one out at Kruger Farms on Sauvie's Island. I love Bauman's in Gervais, near Mt. Angel.

This year's will be a new one for me, some place out in Sandy. I won't post the name until after we get back just in case it's awful. I understand they have some sort of hay maze and a pumpkin slingshot so it can't be all bad. If all else fails, I always have FarmVille.

Is there anything more symbolic of October than the pumpkin?I think not.

It's one of the last things still on the vine during the harvest. I grew a few a couple years back. I might grow more next year. Eventually, I'd like to fill my back yard with pumpkin vines and fig trees. And maybe a hazelnut tree. Still thinking about that one.

It's also a thing of fairy tales and wonder. Would Cinderella ever have made it to the ball without her pumpkin carriage?

October 15, 2010

2010-10-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

I have this big pile of apples. I've been meaning to do something with them. What to do....

Apple sauce. The easiest apple sauce ever.

Peel 'em.

Chop 'em up.

Throw 'em in a microwave safe bowl.

Nuke 'em.

Maybe throw in some cinnamon. Maybe not. Maybe squirt a little lemon juice on them. Maybe not. My grandma used to toss in some of those little Red Hot candies - they add a little color and a little kick.

Stir 'em every couple of minutes.

Keep nukin' 'em until they start to fall apart.

Then you've got a choice to make. You can put 'em in the fridge and treat them like normal apple sauce.

Or...

You can take a big scoop of the hot apples, plop a big scoop of vanilla ice cream and maybe a handful of granola and eat 'em that way. I prefer this way. Takes less time. Sometimes I add a little caramel sauce.

And now I'm hungry. Great.

October 14, 2010

2010-10-13T22:17:00.000-07:00

I'm amazed, as I think we all must be, at the rescue of the Chilean miners. This has nothing to do with October, I know, but I think we all need to take a moment and think of how wonderful this October day has been for them. Are we as thankful as we should be for what we have?

I'm thankful I live in a city with an amazing farmers market. Scratch that. SEVERAL amazing farmers markets.

My coworker Chrissy was telling me today about some soup she made from a squash she bought at the market a couple weeks ago. I would like to note that she did not bring me any of this soup.

She went to the market stall of her favorite vegetable wrangler and asked him which squash she should buy. "Which one would you buy?" she asked him. And he sold her something that looked like a pumpkin but wasn't, something he grew and harvested himself.

She took it home and pondered it for a while. Then she cut it in half, sprinkled with with olive oil and sea salt and roasted it.

She scooped it out, simmered it with chicken stock and turmeric and added a little sour cream. "To give it a little tang," she tells me. A little wrist action with the stick blender, some homemade croutons and a scatter of bacon bits and it was done.

Again, she did not bring me any. But she told me it was so good that she couldn't bring herself to throw away the half-cup that was left when she and her husband were done with their dinner.

That's October, friends. The harvest, the comfort of a homemade meal, a little time with a loved one.

Bonus

2010-10-12T22:22:00.001-07:00

Word for the day:

SOCKTOBER.

October 13, 2010

2010-10-12T21:31:00.000-07:00

Lucky thirteen.

Years ago, I bought myself a ring with the tiniest diamonds ever to have been set in a ring. They're so tiny, I literally have to hold the ring up to my eyeball to see them. I'm certain the jeweler must have been an elf or a sprite or something equally tiny.

Each little speck of diamond is set into a leaf that makes up the band of the ring. Thirteen little leaves with thirteen little diamonds.

Sarah would be proud.

Sarah Winchester was, above all else, an occultist. The heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune, Sarah consulted mediums and psychics and was told that she would be forever cursed by those killed by the Winchester Rifle (that's a fair few haunts, I'm guessing) unless she moved west and built a house. And kept building.

Build she did. For 38 years she built, often without the help of architects or engineers. Some believe the plans she drew by hand were dictated to her in her "seance room" by the very spirits she meant to appease.

The number 13 appears in the house's design over and over: windows with 13 panes, staircases with 13 steps, 13 bathrooms. Chandeliers that were originally manufactured with a dozen arms were reworked to have 13.

Thirteen is a magic number. We can speculate that the cultural significance of 13 comes from early cultures that relied on a lunar calendar. When followed, the lunar calendar offers twelve full months and one, shorter, bonus month.

Traditionally, there are 13 steps to the gallows, 13 players of a rugby team and there are a whole bunch of 13s built into the Great Seal of the United States. Conspiracy theorists always want to blame that one on the Masons.

Then there's that thing about the Pope issuing an order for the Templar Knights to be rounded up on Friday the 13th.

Here's a fun one from Newsweek's Charles Panati specifically about Friday the 13th, but I think we can use it here:

The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil — a gathering of thirteen — and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath.

Happy Wednesday the 13th.

October 12, 2010

2010-10-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

'Tis the season.

I started thinking about Christmas today. I went to Target for DayQuil and Emergen-C and ended up looking at Christmas cards. I went to drop a daily events report at the coffee shop in my hotel and left with a mint mocha.

My apologies. This happens every year and I think I over-Martha'd yesterday and that triggered it. I want a candy cane and some gingerbread and maybe some cocoa.

I can do nothing to stem the tide (staunch the flow?) of fall and winter holiday commercialism. In fact, for every moment I rail against it, there is another moment I spend wallowing in it.

Does anyone know when Santacon is this year? I'm hoping sometime in the middle of November.

October 11, 2010

2010-10-10T21:55:00.000-07:00

I'm watching the Martha Stewart Halloween special on the Hallmark Channel. Her co-host is Brendan Fraser. They're both completely ridiculous. She's currently wrapping him up as a mummy. This seems incongruous.

C'mon, Brendan Fraser. You won a Screen Actors Guild Award. For crying out loud.

Aside from the silliness of her show, Martha does Halloween right. She drills holes in pumpkins with actual drills. She glues spiders to her face (though my mom was doing the same some 20 years before anyone knew who Martha was). She makes fantastic costumes out of coffee filters and tin foil.

She makes pumpkin cookies and breadsticks that look like fingers. And I remember an episode of her show years ago where she made gigantic eyeballs that rolled around in her front yard while trick-or-treaters rang her doorbell. I couldn't find a pic of those, but I did find these other, horribly gross, eyeballs on her site.

Those front yard eyeballs would most certainly put Martha on our House of Crap Map.

Oh, the House of Crap.

Every neighborhood has one. There's one down the street from me. It's been lit up for weeks now. And, for those of you in Portland, you know my obsession with the True House of Crap, the one at 51st and NE Alameda. I have a friend that believes that those people just make up holidays to decorate for.

The other True Great House of Crap in Portland is, of course, the Davis Graveyard. Please, please, please check out their site. They have pictures of past displays, their event schedule (open house next Sunday!) and t-shirts and coffee mugs 'n stuff to purchase. I wholeheartedly encourage those of you who have seen their display to purchase something because I KNOW it can't be cheap to put on a show like that.

They also, along with none other than Rob Zombie, helped out with an episode of ABC's Extreme Makeover show with an episode filmed at the Oregon School for the Deaf. It'll air on Halloween.

And for those of you wondering what a House of Crap is, think Clark Griswold. Think "Deck the Halls". Think all-the-holiday-decor-goes-on-sale-the-day-after-the-holiday-and-has-to-wind-up-somewhere.

October 10, 2010

2010-10-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

First off, I'm a little sideways. We're 10 days into October and I can't find my Concrete Blonde cd. No good.

But I do have Van Morrison. Van's good for a few October songs.

Moondance:

Well, it's a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
'Neath the cover of October skies

And all the leaves on the trees are fallin'
To the sound of the breezes that blow
An' I'm trying to please to the callin'
Of your heart strings that play soft and low

And all the nights magic seems to whisper and hush
And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush
Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love?
Can I just make some more romance with you, my love?

Well, I wanna make love to you tonight
I can't wait 'til the morning has come
And I know now the time is just right
And straight in to my arms you will run

And when you come, my heart will be waiting
To make sure that you're never alone
There and then, all my dreams will come true, dear
There and then, I will make you my own

And every time I touch you, you just tremble inside
And I know how much you want me that you can't hide
Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love?
Can I just make some more romance with you, my love?

Well, it's a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
'Neath the cover of October skies

And all the leaves on the trees are falling
To the sound of the breezes that blow
And I'm trying to please to the calling
Of your heart strings that play soft and low

And all the nights magic seems to whisper and hush
And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush
Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love?
Can I just make some more romance with you, my love?

One more moon dance with you
In the moon light, on a magic night
All the moon light, on a magic night
Can I just have one more moondance with you, my love?

October 9, 2010

2010-10-08T22:27:00.001-07:00

This one's gonna go on for a while so get a snack if you need to.

Witches, continued.

Okay, so I should preface this by saying I'm Lutheran. That's where my theology is. Sometimes, when I wander off into rarely traversed territory, people wonder where I'm going so I think it's important to tell you where I come from.

But, aside from being Lutheran, I recognize that there are other systems of theology, other religions that are much, much older than Judaism or Christianity. Many of them are what I would term "Earth religions", those that have some basis in the elements. Many others have multiple layers of deities or, perhaps, none at all. There's just a lot of stuff out there with more being discovered (rediscovered) everyday.

So, I'm taking this class about the Goddess religions in pre- and early-history. It's taught by a woman who was raised Catholic, holds multiple advanced degrees in religion and theological studies and attended Mt. Angel Seminary, a Benedictine seminary here in Oregon. She's also a practicing Wiccan and helped to found a women's spirituality group here in Portland called SisterSpirit.

In my small group tonight, we spent a little time talking about the burnings of witches during the time of the Plague. Many of these women had been healers, offering herbs and whatnot as cures for common ailments. When the Plague came and, suddenly, they were unable to cure people, they were branded "witches" and put to death in a myriad of horrible ways.

Thankfully, enough of us are enlightened enough now to not burn people who prescribe herbal tea for our ailments. I surely would have been burned at the stake. I don't know how many times I've told someone to have a cup of tea when they get the sniffles.

But what is the link between witches and October?

Specifically, it's Halloween. Halloween has often been referred to as the "Witches New Year." Well, okay. When darkness falls on the evening of the Samhain, it's the beginning of the Celtic New Year. How did we get this mixed up? Honestly, I believe that it's because, secretly, everyone wants to be Irish.

No matter. It's the time when it is believed (apparently both by the wiccan-before-it-was-Wicca peasants of the british Isles and by the Catholic Church) that the veil between the worlds is at it's thinnest.

The Catholics, as was their custom, co-opted Samhain and named it All Hallow's Eve (Halloween) and followed it with All Saints Day. They all serve the same purpose. Where Samhain was said to be a time to honor one's ancestors, All Saints Day is, well, a time to honor one's ancestors.

Where does that leave us?

With an incomplete understanding of a religion older than Christianity.

With a holiday that seems to celebrate ghosts and demons, but was intended to honor our ancestors.

With a Halloween store that thinks that jars of eyeballs and bags of fingers are an accurate portrayal of witches.

Tomorrow, less politics and religion and more Octoberiffic goodness.

October 8, 2010

2010-10-07T23:04:00.001-07:00

I ordered my ears today. I had to get them online since I couldn't find any at the store.

There. That's quintessentially October. Jar full of eyes. Bag of fingers. Ears you can buy on the internet.

I went to the Halloween store today after work. It was full of all sorts of supposed-to-be-creepy stuff. But no ears. Rather, not the ears I'm looking for. I'm sure they had other ears. Probably on the shelf next to the eyes.

Where did we come up with this stuff? And how did it become associated with October in general and Halloween in particular.

Witches.

More tomorrow...

October 7, 2010

2010-10-06T23:05:00.000-07:00

We got started talking about superstitions today at work. Is there any time of year more prone to superstition than October?

Melissa says that her grandmother would look at her chipped nails and tell her that someone is jealous of her. She also says you shouldn't sweep with a broom after dark.

Branon wouldn't play football without a rubber band around his wrist. And he had a number of other little rituals for various sports he played.

Amanda says that if you hit your funny bone, it's bad luck to rub it.

In my house, we don't sew on Sundays. My mom tried once. It did not go well.

There are a billion others out there. Betcha don't walk under a ladder without thinking twice about it. No hats on the bed, no shoes on the table. Walking into a spider web, while sticky and problematic, is good luck.

What are your superstitions?

October 6, 2010

2010-10-06T00:00:00.001-07:00

So, in June, one of my little internet friends talked me into trying World of Warcraft. Man, what a bad decision that was.

Now, I'm an uber-dork. I'm a level 65 Night Elf Hunter on Nazgrel and I've spent the last two weeks working on getting all my Brewfest quests in so I can become a Brewmaster. At level 65, this was no easy feat. It required the elf (who I've named Cascadia) to eat a big pile of cheese and sausage, drink a bunch of beer, ride around on a really big goat, catch and tame something called a wolpertinger (the name of that particular quest was "Does Your Wolpertinger Linger?") and, finally, talk five other level 80 players into helping her get to the final "boss fight", a fight that she was too little to gain access to on her own.

Tonight, with but 18 minutes left in the WoW Brewfest holiday, I reached my goal: I am now Brewmaster Cascadia.

Total, utter dorkdom. What on Earth could it have to do with October?

October, my friends, is when we start to turn to the darker, deeper, richer, maltier beers. Spring and summer are for hops and light, crisp beers. October is for me.

Give me a beer that carried the spices of the holiday season: the allspice, the nutmeg, the cinnamon. Give me those chocolately malt flavors. Give me, at the very least, your wheat beers.

Keep your hops.

No, actually, give me a pocketful of hops that I can carry around and smell. But when you give me a beer, make sure it's balanced with hops and all the Other Things.

That, my friends, is October.

October 5, 2010

2010-10-05T00:11:00.001-07:00

I forget every year. The first Monday in October should be reserved for national pride for it is the day that the Supreme Court reconvenes.

But I always forget until I see something on the news about it. Oops.

Today was soup day. October is perfect for soup. The weather (here, at least) ha turned just chilly enough to start thinking about soup. I had some sort of corn chowder for lunch today. My mom had tortilla soup for dinner. It's time for soup.

Soup and the Supreme Court.

October 4, 2010

2010-10-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

My feet were cold all day today.

You know what this means? It's time to get the wool socks out. And it's also a little past the time I should have started knitting them.

Here's a pattern you might want to check out if you get a wild hair (hare?) and decide to try: easy socks. This one looks pretty easy, too: more easy socks. I didn't create either of these patterns, nor have I tried them, so I accept no responsibility for how they turn out if you try them. Unless they're fantastic, then you should make me a pair as a thank you.

October is time for socks. Put your sandals away, for crying out loud. Nobody wants to look at your toes anymore.

I've started dragging my sweaters out, too. Socks and sweaters. That's totally October.

October 3, 2010

2010-10-03T00:41:00.000-07:00

October is the time of the harvest.

Nowhere is this more evident than at the local farmers' market. I was lucky enough to have a little time today to spend at the PSU farmers' market. Tomatoes in dozens of hues, carrots the size of my arm and the first pumpkins of the season were displayed alongside every type of potato and onion you can imagine. And mushrooms! Mushrooms in shapes I've never seen.

Years ago, I worked at a hotel that, among other things, was home to a vineyard and winery. With the fall harvest comes the fall crush. This, I imagine, is how it has been all over the world for thousands of years. Fall lends itself to a hearty bottle of wine and an even heartier meal. Something with meat and potatoes. Something slow-cooked all day. Something with maybe a little rosemary in it.

Happily, this also helps us build up what I will politely call our "winter coat" for when it gets cold. Man, I feel sorry for the skinny people sometimes. They must get so cold in the winter.

October 2, 2010

2010-10-01T22:04:00.000-07:00

In addition to all the things mentioned yesterday, apparently October is the time when men I barely know and may never have met in person profess their love for me over the internet. Three different ones today. You know who you are.

I mention this not to call them out for being overly October-motional, but because I feel the same way. I love everyone just a little more in October. And I especially love people who share my love of October.

Anyway.

I spent a lot of time looking at hotels and national parks lodges today. I guess most people like to travel in the summer. Something about "nice weather". I prefer the fall.

I've been to Minneapolis a couple times in the fall. Gorgeous. The original October Thoughts were born in Wisconsin on what I would call the ultimate road trip. Last fall, I went to Alaska. I look forward to a time in my life when I can take the entire month of October off to travel and write.

Until then, I'm content to settle for a weekend of traveling in October every few years.

For those of you who don't know, this is my last semester of college. I will graduate (officially) in December is a BS in Arts & Letters and Social Science with a minor in Film. I'm at 15 credits this term, most of them crammed into October. I'm in class five days a week. Last semester, I struggled to make it to campus one day a week so this is going to be an uphill battle.

But, somehow, I've managed to clear a weekend to go somewhere. The current plan is Seattle but it seems to be changing minute by minute so suggestions are welcome.

One of the places I'm looking at staying is the Arctic Club. I guess, as I look at my memories and my history through the lense of October, I want to spend a little time with someone else's history. Might want to hit the Klondike Gold Rush Museum while I'm there, too. I'll post pictures if it all comes together.

I'm rambling here.

I think my point is this: how I view October now is formed by my past experiences of October. What do you remember from years past that sets October apart from the other eleven months?

October 1, 2010

2010-09-30T21:06:00.001-07:00

October is here.

People started asking me about October Thoughts sometime in June. I love you guys. I really, really do.

October is so many things to each of us. October to me is a series of memories from my childhood. It is the fragrance, a flavor, a sight that triggers those memories.

October is family and friends, pumpkins and apples, the swirling hem of a black cloak and Lon Chaney.

October is when I settle in and write something after months of thinking I need to write something and finding myself unable to come up with the words.

And October is when I reconnect with all of my October friends.

Welcome home.

A cymbal-ic wooden spoon

2010-03-20T21:04:00.000-07:00

He handed me a wooden spoon. I took it and just looked at him, dumbfounded. What was this all about?

And then he picked up the cymbals.

Oh. Wait. How..?

How did he hear me say it, from across the room, when he was involved in another conversation, with kids running around making noise? Does he have some magical sense that makes it so he hears every word I say if I'm within fifty feet of wherever he is? Is that possible?

Was this a peace offering? Was it the world's strangest form of an olive branch?

Or was it me just trying to make something out of nothing?

ha!

2009-11-17T18:03:00.000-08:00

Turns out I can blog from my phone. This is a whole new world.

October 31, 2009

2009-10-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

October is coming to a close again. We have but hours left until the dreaded November arrives.

What is October to us?

October is...

falling leaves and changing colors

the change of the seasons

the end of the harvest

hunting season

football season and the local high school homecoming game

the World Series

an abundance of candy

orange plastic pumpkins and the enormous effort it takes to shove candy through the tiny hole in the top

little kids dressed up as ghosts

Mary Shelley and Frankenstein

Peter Boyle and Young Frankenstein

Ichabod Crane and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin

Apple pie

Apple sauce

Apple cider

the orange of pumpkins

the search for the perfect pumpkin

and the perfect pumpkin patch

Pixie Stix and Bit'o'Honeys

Concrete Blonde

Rocktober

Dracula, Bram Stoker and Anne Rice

Family and friends and time shared together

Warren Zevon and the Werewolves of London

Van Morrison's Moondance

George Romero and his zombies

The Mummy

Elvira

the unmistakeable voice of Vincent Price

wool socks

superstition and Superstition

black cats

spiders

plastic spider rings

the school carnival

trick-or-treating

my grandmother in a pirate costume and my mother as a witch

the Frankenstein coat rack

strangely enough, donuts

corn mazes

that East wind out of the Gorge

Sarah Winchester

Haunted houses - real, imagined or created

the spooky graveyard and the wandering spirits once housed there

Disney's Haunted Mansion

Chex Mix

Martha Stewart

Caramel apples

bats

witches and our misunderstanding of Wicca

Galena, Ill., and Ashland, Ore.

pumpkin-flavored anything

and so much more...

Happy Halloween, all.

And Happy October.

October 30, 2009

2009-10-29T23:05:00.000-07:00

The race has begun.

Do you have your costume yet?

I got all ambitious after Halloween last year and I ordered one online. It's a super-cute costume and an incredibly good idea. However, it made me look like an ass so I sent it back.

So no, I don't have a costume.

I have a couple ideas, but it might be too late to assemble the pieces needed. Ahh, well. The best laid plans...

When I was little, my grandmother made costumes for me. They were wonderful costumes. I was a genie and a ballerina and a black cat and a white elephant.

And then for a few years, I didn't dress up. But then I started working at my current job and ran headlong into a group of incredible costumers.

I arrived one morning at 6 a.m. to find one of my coworkers dressed as a giant carrot. The year after that, the sales office dressed as the seven dwarves. We're still removing fake blood stains from when the restaurant servers were an ER crew. And the Elvises, oh, the Elvises. And really, can anyone ever forget the year that Rocky, who is lily-white, transformed himself into Mr. T?

It's estimated that we Americans will spend $4.75 billion on Halloween this year. I'm guessing the majority of that is on candy and costumes.

As for me, I think I still have my devil horn barrettes from last year.

Cheers!

Oh, click here for the first ever recorded use of the word "hauntrepreneuers". Happy Rocktober.

October 29, 2009

2009-10-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I share a birthday with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

That's right, Mary "Frankenstein" Shelley.

Mary's little story, written on holiday near Geneva, Switzerland, has become one of the greatest monster stories of all time. For nearly two centuries, Mary's "Modern Prometheus" has captured our imaginations both on the page and on the screen.

Frank has never been as popular as, say, Dracula, but he's had his fair share of the spotlight. Boris Karloff's 1931 screen portrayal is credited as being the key to Frank's longevity and popularity.

But I think it was Peter Boyle who pushed him over the top.

Please see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu1DMSqTLyk&feature=related

And, my personal favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lojDOBX8BY

I swear, I don't know how they ever made it through the filming of "Young Frankenstein", but I am so very glad they did.

How is this not the funniest stuff ever put on film?

October 28, 2009

2009-10-27T22:40:00.000-07:00

What are the traditional symbols of Halloween? The pumpkin, the ghost, the full moon, the witch's hat, the black cat.

The black cat. What is it about the black cat that links it so inextricably to Halloween?

Here's a great article from the San Fran Chronicle about the phenomena of the black cat. Are black cats good luck or bad omens? Read and discuss.

Edgar Allen Poe wrote about a black cat he befriended (or who befriended him, I'm not sure). You can find his story here.

And, if you can't click the links, I hate this treat for you:

Janet Jackson's "Black Cat"

All the lonely nights I spend alone
Never around to love me
You're always gone
Cause you're hangin out
Breakin' the rules
Oh the man has come
Looking for you
You're a rebel now
Don't give a damn
Always carrying on
With the gang
I'm trying to tell you boy
It's a mistake
You won't realize
Til it's too late

Don't understand
Why you insist
On ways of living such a dangerous life
Time after time you stay away
And I just know that you're telling me lies

Black cat
Nine lives
Short days
Long nights
Livin on the edge
Not afraid to die
Heart beat
Real strong
But not
For long
Better watch your step
Or you're gonna die

You're so together boy
But just at a glance
You'll do anything
If given a chance
Scheming, plannin lies
To get what you need
So full of promises
That you never keep

Don't you tell yourself
That it's okay
Sick and tired of
All of your games
And you want me to stay
Better change
Makes no sense to me
Your crazy ways

Black cat
Nine lives
Short days
Long nights
Livin on the edge
Not afraid to die
Heart beat
Real strong
But not
For long
Better watch your step
Or you're gonna die

October 27, 2009

2009-10-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

Today's topic: It was a Dark and Storm Night. Discuss.

After work tonight, I had to go out to PCC Sylvania to take a math test. With the overcast sky and the half moon, it was incredibly dark out there. What a creepy campus. I'm glad I chose the web course instead of the two nights a week wandering around in the dark out there.

But it would be a near perfect location for an aspiring horror film producer to set up shop. Just a thought.

I've been in some creepy places over the years. I even worked in one for quite a while. But this time of year lends a sharpness to the creep factor. Our imaginations run a little wilder and a little darker. Perhaps, with the thinning of that veil between worlds, we regain a little of our instinctive fear of the dark and the things we cannot see. Deep down inside, we remember a time before cell phones and electric lights. We catch a glimpse of what lurked just outside the ring of firelight.

And we walk a little faster through the parking lot and lock the doors as soon as we're in the car.

October 24/25, 2009

2009-10-24T23:18:00.000-07:00

I went to get my hair adjusted last night. My friend Gary is truly a miracle worker.

At his station, he had easily six different kinds of candy. I took a little trick-or-treat pack of Starburst. But when I opened them, argh, two cherry ones. Under normal circumstances I do not eat cherry candy. It tastes like cough syrup. But I ate these. It's October, after all, when all candy is good candy.

I'm far, far, far past the age of trick-or-treating. I have a job. I make enough money to buy my own candy. I have a car. I can go to the store anytime I want and get gobs and gobs of whatever candy I think I might want.

But it's not the same.

I think the magic of trick-or-treating lies in the fact that it's completely a crap shoot. You don't know what you're going to get. You could get a whole bag of full-size Snickers (not likely) or you could get some crazy health-nut bag of granola bars and apples. Or you could get a handful of Sweetarts in the little 3-fer packages, a few Tootsie Rolls, some mini-versions of actual chocolate bars and some of those taffy's that you can't quite identify the flavor of but you know they're for Halloween because they're in orange and black waxed paper.

When I was very little, trick-or-treating like you see in the movies was this mythical thing that just did not happen in my world. We would go to the elementary school Halloween night and go from classroom to classroom and that was it. Of course, this was in the middle of the desert. No sense in letting kids lose in the desert in the middle of the night where they might encounter truly horrific creatures.

So, I missed out on the real experience of trick-or-treating until we moved to Portland when I was 10. And at that point, I was on the verge of being too old. I went with my cousins a few times, with my youth group a couple times and then that was the end of it.

Until last year. Last year I went with Joe and Stacy and Angie and the kids to Stacy's parents' neighborhood. Stacy's dad and their neighbors compete to see who can make the best spiced wine for the parents of the neighborhood while they're accompanying the trick-or-treaters. How is this NOT THE BEST IDEA EVER?

So, aside from it being a picture-perfect trick-or-treating neighborhood where every walkway is lined with carved pumpkins and dancing skeletons and any number of other decorations, there's spiced wine! Hot spiced wine!

Now, normally I would not suggest that you all run out and get yourselves mugs of hot spiced wine right before you stumble through the streets in the dark with teeming masses of small children asking strangers for candy, but I have to say, I think this is the way to go. After a little wine, you won't care what those stupid taffy's actually taste like.

October 23, 2009

2009-10-22T22:37:00.000-07:00

October is when I turn into the West Coast version of Martha Stewart. I do things like try to make butternut squash soup or use spray glue to "glitter" things.

I have grand plans for October, as I do each year. I'm going to the orchard to pick my own apples. Then I'm going to bring them home, cook them up and can some apple butter for Christmas gifts.

I'm going to bake a huge chocolate-pumpkin cake and stencil a white sparkle-sugar spiderweb onto its top.

I'm going to have the best Halloween costume ever. Martha showed me how to make it using twine and some coffee filters. And glitter, of course.

I'm going to find more time to spend with my loved ones. I'm going to walk through the falling leaves wearing the hat I just knitted. And I'm going to finish the scarf to go with it. I'm going to live in an October picture book.

But what happens is that all my grand plans kind of turn to mush as I start to realize that there are, in fact, only 31 days in October.

So, what does the plan become?

Enjoy every last minute until midnight next Saturday. Then look forward to making plans for next October.

October 22, 2009

2009-10-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm tired and I miss Warren Zevon.

Werewolves of London

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking thru the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's
Gonna get himself a big dish of beef chow mein
Hoowwwlll, the werewolves of London, Howwwll

If you hear his howling around the kitchen door
You better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated last night
Werewolves of London again
Hooowwwl, werewolves of London, hooowwwl

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him, he'll rip your lungs out Jim
But hey, I'd like to meet his tailor
Hooowwwwl, werewolves of London, howwwll

Well, I saw Lon Cheney walking with the Queen
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Cheney Jr. walking with the Queen
I saw a werewolf dringing a pina colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect
Hooowwwwl, the werewolves of London, Hooowwwwl

October 21, 2009

2009-10-21T07:15:00.001-07:00

I'm a little late posting this because the power went out last night. Nice. Very October.

I tried to watch Beowulf on my laptop, but I got to the part where the lights in the grand hall go out and the monster appears and decided that it probably wasn't a good idea.

But isn't that an inherent part of October? Scaring ourselves and our loved ones? I'm pretty sure it is. Perhaps I'll expand on this theme later, but right now I have to get ready to go to work.

October 20, 2009

2009-10-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

Today I take a cue from my dear friend Rebecca. Several years ago, she started doing her own October Thoughts. This was both reassuring and inspiring to me. She reassured me that I wasn't the only crazy out there and she inspired me to keep going at a time when I was just about done. Seriously, how long can one person drone on about the wonders of October before being involuntarily committed to some sort of October rehab facility?

Ha. Fifteen years and counting.

Anyway, Rebecca's Thought a couple days ago (or was it just yesterday?) was that when October rolls around, she is flooded by school memories.

Come to think of it, so am I.

So much of what I bring to the October table is from those formative elementary school years I spent in lovely Morongo Valley, California. It was there that I watched horror movies on Movie Macabre (hosted by Elvira herself) on Sunday afternoons. It was there that the Greatest Halloween Party Ever was held. It was there that Holly and Brenda and I watched "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" while laying on the shag carpet in front of their tv.

It was there, in a school built mostly of temporary classrooms situated around a sandy playground, that my mother first glued a plastic spider to her face and became the witch in the school carnival.

I think a lot of us feel this way. So much of how we think of October and, more specifically, Halloween, is formed when we're little. When you look back over your childhood, how many Aprils or Septembers do you remember? When you look back over your October memories, how many fall between the ages of six and twelve?

What's your favorite childhood October memory?

October 19, 2009

2009-10-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this by saying I'm watching a very bad movie on the SciFi (or ScyFy as I think they're calling themselves now) channel. It has Jeremy London in it so I didn't have terribly high expectations.

I'm really only watching it because I've been fascinated by the resurgence the werewolf has made over the last year. This last year that has seemingly revolved around vampires with the fourth book in the Twilight series being released last August, the first Twilight movie last November, True Blood on HBO and The Vampire Diaries on the CW, and the upcoming second Twilight movie and The Vampire's Assistant hitting theaters soon.

But where vampires go, werewolves soon follow. Watch for it over the next year or two. I predict a dramatic shift from vampire to werewolf.

Werewolves seem to be, like vampires, a worldwide phenomenon. They appear in the writings of Ovid, Virgil and in ancient Greek mythology. They appear across Europe, from Denmark to Serbia and back to Wales and Ireland. They're in Haitian folklore and Native American oral tradition. You'd be hard pressed to find a place on earth that does not have some legend or story that references a werewolf by some name or other.

Have I ever seen one? Sure. I saw one just the other day. He was drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.

God bless Warren Zevon.

October 18, 2009

2009-10-17T22:12:00.000-07:00

My mom made the trip to the pumpkin patch with my cousins today. I did not.

It poured rain. There was mud.

My memories of going to the pumpkin patch when we were all kids are memories filled with mud and crying and someone getting hurt and someone being blamed and me just wanting to go home.

I was much happier getting my pumpkin from the grocery store.

But, with a drivers license and a car came a new freedom for me. I could go to the pumpkin patch by myself. On a day of my choosing. When it wasn't raining.

So that's what I did for years. There was even one fantastic fall when I worked in a building directly across the street from my pumpkin patch of choice. What fun that was.

But that little piece of October World is gone now, replaced by an office building that was completely unnecessary. Another half-empty office building surrounded by half-empty office buildings.

I've tried a couple other pumpkin patches. They tend to be crowded and crazy. I thought I might have finally reached the point where I was just too old to go.

Last year, I grew my own. I didn't do too bad. A couple decent sized pumpkins and about a dozen of the minis. Next year, I'm going to take a shot at the white ones and the Cinderella pumpkins. Watch out!

A couple weeks ago, Bridget and I made a trip out to Bauman Farms in Gervais. They have renewed my love of the pumpkin patch. I wish I could live there.

"What are you going to do with the money you make when you finally sell your first book?"

"Oh, I'm going to buy a farm and grow pumpkins."

And there you have it. The dream. The October Dream.

October 17, 2009

2009-10-16T22:44:00.000-07:00

That very first year of October Thoughts, oh so long ago, was a much simpler time. The six of us would load into the van and hit the road and we would begin our discussion of what the October Thought for the Day would be.

Usually, it wasn't so much a discussion of what the Thought would be so much as a discussion about whatever we'd picked.

It was something that brought us together. Well, except Tim. He just put his headphones on, curled up in a ball and went to sleep. but the rest of us bonded over a shared love of Chex Mix, popcorn balls, Frankenstein and the image of a witch flying across a full moon.

But, like I said, it was simpler then.

We would make simple pronouncements:

"The October Thought for the Day for today, October 17 is a little kid dressed up as a ghost, wearing a bedsheet."

And that would be it. What's more October than that?

But then the internet complicated it. There's just so much information. Though I'm not sure why you'd need this, EHow has even posted instructions for how to make a ghost costume from an old sheet. Seriously.

This one tells you how to get your ghost costume/sheet to stay on. Something about this little video struck me as terribly funny. I'm not sure why.

But this one is even sillier.

October 16, 2009

2009-10-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

I've been writing these for a long time, but I still hesitate to invite anyone new into our circle. There's always the possibility that someone new might think I'm completely insane.

Perhaps I am. On a yearly basis. For 31 days in the fall.

It's this time of year that one of two things happens: I either start to see things differently, or I start to see things. I'm not entirely sure which.

A tree branch twisting in the wind under the pale moonlight becomes the arm of some monstrous creature that must be avoided at all costs.

That dog barking down the block? That might be a werewolf.

I'm pretty sure I saw a witch on the skybridge when I was going from my awful lab class back to the parking garage earlier tonight.

The problem here is that I know that this is not entirely my fault. This is genetic.

In the backyard, there's a plastic bag that the winds brought in and got stuck in a tree. My mother is convinced it was put there by a creature she calls the King Rat for some nefarious purpose. Neither of us is sure what that purpose is, nor have we gone out to take the bag out of the tree. King Rat might be out there. Waiting.

It is during this time of year that I feel most sorry for people who have grown up. When you grown up, you slowly lose your imagination. Thankfully, part of me will always be seven years old and scared silly by a Frankenstein mask affixed to an coatrack wearing an old raincoat.

October 15, 2009

2009-10-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

Donde esta el House de Crap?

We're halfway through October, people. You'd best be on the look-out for one of the most Octoberiffic things of all: the Halloweeen House of Crap.

You know where they are. They spring up about this time every year. Cardboard tombstones suddenly appear in your neighbors' yard (as they did here fully two weeks ago), plastic witches and ghosts are hung in the trees, entire arbor vitae are draped in fake cobwebs.

As we've discussed in years past, there are certain qualifications one must fulfill to truly consider themselves eligible for the House of Crap title.

1. You must have some sort of illuminated plastic figure.

2. You must have something made out of plywood and painted by hand.

3. For the Halloween House of Crap title, you must have a ghost, a witch and something that resembles either a werewolf or a vampire ie., something with fangs.

4. Extra points are awarded for the sheer volume of your display: when I drive by and roll down my window, can I hear either a soundtrack of wind blowing or other creepy sound effects, or can I hear the buzz of electricity from the extension cords used to run all those illuminated plastic figures?

5. Something must be hung from a tree or a lamp post.

6. Extra points if you have something mounted on the roof (that is not a permanent installation).

If you're in the Portland Metro area, the one you really don't want to miss is the Davis Graveyard. These people seem to have devoted most of their spare time to the pursuit of the above title. It is not to be missed. If you're still unclear as to what, exactly, a House of Crap is, check out their website.

My personal favorite will always be the house at the corner of 51st & Alameda in NE Portland. These people go all out and they do it for every holiday. A friend of mine actually believes they make up their own holidays to celebrate just so they can plug in the twinkly lights. I'm not so sure he's wrong. Unfortunately, they do not have a website. I used to have a link to a story The Oregonian did about it a few years back but I seem to have misplaced it. Oops.

So get out there and find your local Houses of Crap (or create your own) and send me the pics. Everyone loves a good House of Crap.

October 14, 2009

2009-10-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

The wind came back today.

Living where I do, in lovely Portland, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge, I've come to expect these winds. They are October winds.

They come in from the East. Some years, they are the warm winds that remind you that summer was here not long ago. Others, like this year, the winds bring the first chilled notes of winter. The local news just had pictures of snowfall just a half hour east of here. They're saying that in some areas, this it the earliest snowfall in recorded history.

We're in for a long winter, I believe.

Where did we put that hot cider?

The wind signals change: the change of seasons, the change of wardrobe. For me, the wind brings a little introspection. I look back over my year and wonder where the time went. I started January with that stupid back injury, spent the spring in the John Wilson Room at the Multnomah County Library (a truly magical place) and learned to knit over the summer. As summer turned to fall, I learned to love Alaska while drinking champagne and eating my weight in chocolate ice cream.

And now the winds are here. And I'm trying not to look ahead to Christmas.

October 13, 2009

2009-10-12T22:01:00.001-07:00

The number 13 got to me today. In the occult world, this number is not considered unlucky as it is in polite society. The number 13 represents a new beginning.

In many of the old Earth-based religions, the lunar calendar is still observed. Following the cycles of the moon, there are 13 "months" or mooncycles that occur in the year.

I have a ring that I wear sometimes that has 13 tiny leaves on it. I didn't notice it until months after I'd had it. I think of it now as my Sarah Winchester ring.

Oh, Sarah. Our dear, departed Sarah.

Sarah Winchester married the heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune and, upon his death inherited nearly $20 million. Haunted by the deaths of her daughter (only a few weeks after birth) and her husband, she consulted with psychics and mediums. One of these told her to go West and build a house for the spirits who haunted her - the spirits of those killed by the Winchester Rifle.

And build she did. For nearly 38 years, Sarah employed a team of carpenters to build, and sometimes rebuild, her grand mansion in San Jose, California, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The house still stands and they're more than willing to offer you a tour for the right price. They offer special flashlight tours every Saturday in October and every Friday the 13th for those of you who are especially brave.

How do I like the number 13 to poor, haunted Sarah? She did it herself by adding windows with 13 panes, chandeliers with 13 arms, and 13 bathrooms. Before she died, Sarah wrote her will in 13 sections and signed it 13 times.

So, there you have it. The number 13 comforted Sarah. She found solace in its meaning.

For more info on the house, check this out.

October 12, 2009

2009-10-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

I just read a story on Reuters about Edgar Allen Poe's funeral. Seriously. It was today. I missed it.

Seems at the time of his death, his surviving brother made no announcement and, as a result, fewer than a dozen people attended the service. Incredibly sad when you consider he's become a part of the American lexicon and has captured our imaginations for generations.

In honor of the recreation of his funeral, I give you one of Poe's most recognizable works, "The Raven":

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

October 11, 2009

2009-10-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

I made an attempt at butternut squash soup today. It is the right color, but that's about the best thing I can say for it. I should have stuck to the apple sauce I was going to make.

Apple sauce is easy, friends. Get yourself a microwave-safe bowl. Peel some apples (doesn't much matter what kind you use - I prefer apples that are a little more tart). Chop them up. Maybe add a little cinnamon, maybe not. Go with your heart.

Dump the apples into the bowl. Nuke them for a minute. Stir. Repeat until they start to fall apart and get all smooshy.

We learned last year that if you throw a little granola and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the mess you just made, it's like ghetto apple crisp. Or skip the granola and add a little caramel sauce. Either way, it's a big bowl of October in about 15 minutes.

October 10, 2009

2009-10-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

October 10th is the day I celebrate my writing anniversary. This is the day I started what Angie and I used to call the "Yellow Story" (written on a yellow legal pad, later enclosed in a yellow peechee folder), my attempt at young adult romance - written long before I was a young adult. It was awful, but it kept us entertained for a year or more.

And, while I'm distracted by the heat and humidity of summer and rarely find inspiration in the winter or spring, I find in October a wealth of ideas, words, phrases, storylines. The characters fight to get to the page, trying desperately to get my attention before winter sets in.

There's plenty of Octoberiffic reading material out there. Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the Vampire Chronicles. A lot of you are reading the Twilight books. These are not October books. They're August books - books you read quickly at the end of summer before you have to go back to school.

October books are a little weightier, a little denser, a little more difficult. They require you to pay attention. They require you to carry them with you to work, on the bus, to the corner diner. October books are really rather demanding.

October books, like October herself, expect that we will think deeply about them, that we will discuss them at length, that we will study them with a fervor we reserve just for them.

What are your October books?

October 9, 2009

2009-10-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

Today, I give you Van Morrison:

Well, its a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
neath the cover of october skies
And all the leaves on the trees are falling
To the sound of the breezes that blow
And Im trying to please to the calling
Of your heart-strings that play soft and low
And all the nights magic seems to whisper and hush
And all the soft moonlight seems to shine in your blush

Chorus:
Can I just have one a more moondance with you, my love
Can I just make some more romance with a-you, my love

Well, I wanna make love to you tonight
I cant wait til the morning has come
And I know that the time is just right
And straight into my arms you will run
And when you come my heart will be waiting
To make sure that youre never alone
There and then all my dreams will come true, dear
There and then I will make you my own
And every time I touch you, you just tremble inside
And I know how much you want me that you cant hide

Chorus

Repeat 1st verse

One more moondance with you in the moonlight
On a magic night
La, la, la, la in the moonlight
On a magic night
Cant I just have one more dance with you my love

October 8, 2009

2009-10-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was rough. It started out okay. I managed to find two socks that matched. In my house, this is a major victory.

But they were unruly socks. They were socks that did not want to be worn. And they made me very cranky.

So, at lunch, I went to the store and bought new socks. Those of you who know me well know that I DO NOT NEED any more socks. I used to work in a sock store, for crying out loud.

Which is probably part of the reason those unruly socks made me so mad. They were top of the line. You know, the fancy ones with the bright yellow toes. But they wanted to twist around and slide down in my shoes and misbehave.

But I got new socks and changed them out in the parking lot and it was like I could start my day all over again. Is there really, truly anything better than a new pair of socks?

October is usually about the time I start looking for new wool socks. I haven't quite made it that far yet, but I will soon. There's a new sock store in town that I need to get to as soon as I can.

I'm also trying to knit socks but so far, they're just a hideous mess. But the yarn is really gorgeous. It came from here. And yes, I know I can get socks at Wally World for $2, but what's the fun in that?

Put yer silly sandals away. It's October. Go put your socks on.

October 7, 2009 - a slight departure...

2009-10-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

The call came in the middle of the night. It didn't come as a shock as I'd been expecting it for some time. He was newly out of the Academie, into his first posting. And with his pedigree, I knew his number would get pulled quickly.

"Sis, I need you."

I swung out of bed, narrowly missing the dog. "I'm on my way. Three days, maybe four with the trains. Can you hang on that long?"

I could hear a quake in his voice. "Yeah. Yeah, I can make it."

"You know where to go to ask for refuge. Don't be a hero. Just go. First light, you go." I was looking for my heavy boots. I'd probably need them. These things usually required a sturdy pair of boots.

"But what if-"

"You go and you ask the first person you see in vestments to take you to the Abbas Praesul. Keep asking until they get it. The younger ones won't. It's not taught anymore. Just keep asking. Don't do anything stupid."

"Okay. Alright. Four days?"

"As soon as I can. I'll be at the Basilica at dawn. They'll need to know I'm leaving and they'll want to offer a blessing. " The dog was fully awake now and didn't appear pleased. "Take your dog with you," I told my brother. "You're always safer with the dog."

My dog yawned, stretched and repositioned himself next to the door. At least he was ready.

"Jess, how are they manifesting?"

There was a crackle in the line as he answered. "Hallucinations, mostly. Stuff moving around. It wasn't much at first, but they're getting bolder. They changed the color of my car." The line crackled again.

"Jess, you need to get off the phone. Stay off the phone, stay off the 'net. Four days."

The line went dead before I was finished talking.

October 6, 2009

2009-10-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

First, let me start by saying I missed mentioning one of the United States' most quintessential October events: the opening of the Supreme Court is always the first Monday in October. For those of you who are especially dorky, I found this rather interesting. Yes, someone is blogging the Supreme Court (and it's a pretty decent read).

This just goes to show that October is many things to many people. In March, ask 50 random people what October means to them and you'll get mostly answers like "Halloween" or "pumpkins" or "autumn" and maybe one person of the 50 might say,"Oh, the opening of the Supreme Court!" And that one person will most likely be a lawyer. Or me.

Over the years, the majority of the answers I've gotten to the above question have been related to two subjects: food or the occult. Happy October.

We like apple cakes, candy corn, hot cider, soup, casseroles and comfort food or anything that tastes like pumpkin. In equal measure, we like vampires, witches, ghosts, werewolves and any number of other unexplained or folkloric creations. What does that say about us as October People?

We are both well-fed and well-read. That's my guess, anyway.

What does October mean to you?

Cheers!

October 5, 2009

2009-10-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

Lots of apples this weekend. Bridget and I went to Bauman Farms Saturday for the giant pumpkin drop (the video is posted on my Facebook page if you want to see it) and, while I'm all about the pumpkins this week, they seemed to be more about apples.

There was apple cider. There were apple cider donuts and apple bread. There were a dozen or more different types of apples.

I love apples. This is the time when they're at their best. We've gotten used to a world where produce is no longer seasonal. Watermelon in January is not uncommon. Does anyone remember getting oranges in their Christmas stocking and thinking it was a great treat? And yes, we can have apples year 'round.

But they're best now. The leaves are starting to turn, we're not quite to the first frost, and they're perfect.

I've been looking for my mom's German Apple Cake recipe but I can't seem to find it. I think I might also try my hand at canning apple butter, but I'll need a few more apples than I currently have. Anyone fancy a field trip to Hood River next weekend?

Cheers!

October 4, 2009

2009-10-03T21:55:00.000-07:00

I'm watching Harry Potter. I know this comes as a shock to some of you.

I just finished the first one and am about 45 minutes into the second one. This is about when the spiders appear.

I bought a spider ring for my mom at Walgreens today. It's not the traditional black plastic spider ring that we've been cutting apart and gluing to our faces with eyelash glue yearly since the late '70s (take THAT, Martha) but instead is a lovely creature made of tiny spring legs that wibble-wobble when you move your hand. It's even got glitter.

Spiders are October creatures. As the leaves begin to fall, they seem to multiply. I doubt there are more spiders now than there were weeks ago, it's just that we can see them more clearly. Even their webs are more visible in the morning dew, crystallized in elaborate, elegant exquisite patterns.

Spiders are also the world's greatest spinners and weavers. I've tried a bit of spinning myself and really have only come up with a bit of a mess, a collection of spindles and a bit of brightly colored wool. Weaving will have to wait until after I'm done with school.

Until then, I'm content to let the spiders weave and admire their craft.

Cheers!

October 3, 2009

2009-10-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

As was pointed out to me by some wacko I talked to on the phone today, the full moon is coming up Sunday. She would know.

This full moon is unusual as it is designated the "Full Harvest Moon". The FHM is the full moon that occurs closest to the autumnal equinox and usually falls in late September. This October Full Harvest Moon will not happen again until 2017. The full moon that usually falls in October is the Hunter's Moon (which will be in November this year). Happy hunting. Or harvesting. Or whatever.

The full moon brings something out in all of us. There's something wild, something primal that is triggered by her light. It is the light of the full moon that trigger's the wolf's howl and the change of man to werewolf.

And the moon has long been tied to the earth-based religions. Witchcraft.org says,"This is a time when the Moon is at its most powerful, and the magic most potent. Performing any positive spell at this time will achieve good results. This is the ideal time for healing, guidance and completion spells." As a general rule, I don't cast spells. I know people who do, or who have, but I wouldn't trouble them for whatever trivial matters I might have. Happily, I can report that there's a service on the web who will cast your full moon spells for you for a fee:

http://www.calastrology.com/full-moon-spells.html

We attribute evil and darkness to the full moon, especially at this time of year. I think it's simply because it casts more light and makes it easier for us to go out and cause trouble. And because there's more light, we're more apt to get caught. Funny that.

Cheers...

October 2, 2009

2009-10-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it takes me a few days, maybe as long as a week, to really launch fully into October. Not this year.

The pumpkin spice lattes have been calling to me for weeks. The Concrete Blonde cd went into the player this afternoon. Chrissy gave me a fantastic pumpkin candle yesterday that I'm enjoying right now. Chef offered to make pumpkin soup for me if I peel the pumpkin. I say that's a pretty fair deal.

One of my ten bosses has a jar of candy corn on her desk. Rather, it's on a bookcase across the room from her desk, out of convenient reach. But I can see it from my desk. This presents a problem.

I heart candy corn. And it's so early in the month. But I'm not the only one. My buddy Brad, currently halfway around the world, had his first bit of candy corn for the year yesterday (or is it today? maybe it was two days ago?) I get that time change all sorts of mixed up.

No matter the time, the candy corn is out there waiting for us. Wikipedia tells me that Candy Corn Day is October 30 so we're a tad early in our Ode to the Corn.

And, so you know, Eileen told me years ago that candy corn in Hindi is "Mit-ay Muck-ay." The spelling is most likely totally screwy, so forgive me if you're fluent, but this is the literal translation. I'm not sure how many parts of the Hindi world celebrate the changing of the seasons with candy corn, but there you go.

Candy corn is the sweetness of Halloween candy and the colors of the season: the orange of the glowing jack'o'lantern, the yellow of the autumn leaves, the white of the first frost as we head toward winter. It might be the perfect October candy.

Cheers!

October 1, 2009

2009-09-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

October 1, 2009

Some people write Christmas letters. I kind of envy them. They sit down, pour out a couple hundred words and send them off to everyone they’ve ever met and are done with it.

That’s right. They send one letter. In December, of all things.

I, on the other hand, have chosen a slightly more difficult path. Welcome to October.

It’s been a year since we all last met. What a year it has been, but I’m going to ask you all to focus on the topic at hand: October.

It was the fall of 1994 when this all began, in a blue Ford van circling Lake Michigan. It was 1998 when I finally caught up with the technology that has brought these Thoughts to you all. This year, we’re changing it up again. Instead of the daily email, I’m going to post to my blog at http://octoberthoughtspdx.blogspot.com.

I know this is a huge change for some of you, so if you freak out and want to still get a daily email, just pop me a message and I’ll add you to that list. Simple enough.

October is so many things. For me, for these last fifteen years, it has been a time to share with friends, contemplate all things Martha, to eat things I shouldn’t eat and, most importantly, create this magic October community.

We all have our own vision of what October is. For those of us still living our lives by the academic calendars of our respective schools, it’s probably just about the time when things settle into a predictable routine. For the sports fans, it’s the switch from baseball to football. For the crafters, it’s time to glue autumn leaves to any and every flat surface.

Wherever you fall in this October Spectrum, it’s time to savor every minute because, if there’s one thing we’ve learned over the years, it’s that 31 days rally isn’t enough time to contain all that is October.

Ready, set, go!

Alaska

2009-09-15T19:26:00.001-07:00

I think I could be very happy in Alaska. There's a simplicity there that's tempered by the harshness of the climate and the land. A harsh beauty, if you will.

I caught the White Pass and Yukon Railroad at the end of the line in a place seen by few people I know. Tormented Valley, they call it. Depending upon the season, the winds there reach 100 mph and the temperature drops to -65. But it is stunning in its beauty.

I have a friend, a sometimes very strange friend, who has a piece of property in Alaska and lives there part-time. He's got that same harsh beauty. There's a savage grace to him at times, and at times a quiet sadness, probably due in part to things he's experienced and things he's been a part of that he probably wishes he hadn't.

I could be very happy in Alaska....

Family

2009-08-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

The last week has been a very strange one.

I reconnected with an older brother and a younger sister I barely know. We didn't grow up together and live hundreds and hundreds of miles apart, but it seems like we know each other in spite of it.

Eric is eight years older than I, Kasy is sixteen years younger. The only thing we really have in common is our father, who I barely, vaguely knew.

Strange that I should feel so close to them. We share something that is inexplicable.

I envied my friends who had brothers and sisters, even as they tried to beat the crap out of each other growing up.

I'm seriously considering a kind of pilgrimage to the homeland sometime in the spring. Perhaps it's ill-advised, delusional, that I should expect that we will magically have this pre-fab relationship. It's hard to be both cautious and open at the same time.

But when I was little, I sometimes thought that someday my real family would come get me. Weird, because my mom was always my real family and she has always been with me. I never fit in with all the aunts and uncles and cousins on her side of the family. They knew it and I knew it.

And now, closing in on the age of 36, my real family has reappeared. I'm hopeful.

Touch

2009-04-06T21:02:00.000-07:00

There's this guy who's been in my head for years now. Not in my head like a crazy voice, but a guy I know who I can't stop thinking about.

It's torturous sometimes, this not being able to Not Think About Him.

I try to ignore him, to erase any thought I have regarding him. I try to move on.

But here I am again.

I had a dream last night. We were both standing at the bar, waiting to order from the bartender. It was a bar I didn't recognize, but it seemed we were both comfortable there.

We weren't there together. We just happened to be in the same place at the same time.

We stood at the bar, maybe a couple feet apart. Waiting. Waiting.

And then he reached over and took my hand. And I felt myself smile. I didn't look at him for fear that the moment would be broken. Try not to draw attention to it, my mind raced. Maybe no one will notice and you'll be able to hold his hand for a long time. Maybe all those people who interfered before will leave us alone as long as we stay quiet.

Maybe they'll leave us alone if we stay quiet.

This is what I woke up thinking.

Life story

2009-03-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

"I remember when my mom got into a car accident when I was two," he tells me from across the table. I can barely hear him over the awful karaoke happening only feet away from us.

"You remember things from when you were two years old?"

He nods. And then he proceeds to offer me his life story as my next writing project.

I know he's trying to help me. I'm a writer who does not write. I explain to him my theory about writers and crazy people. Crazy people listen to the voices in their heads and do what the voices tell them. Writers just write down what the voices say.

He laughs, but I'm not sure it's because of my wit or because of the karaoke.

I try to avoid writing about people I know. It's been a jynx in the past, and is one of those things that has great possibility for pissing people off. I've done it in the past to mixed reviews.

In fact, I wrote about him briefly years ago. It didn't turn out terribly, but it was half fiction when it was finally printed.

But to sit down with someone and have them lay out the pieces of their life to that you can try to make enough sense of them so as to commit them to the page? That's a huge responsibility. And I am honored that he would trust me enough to offer.

In the end, I'm a lazy writer and his story may never be published. But it offers us both an opportunity: for me to write, and for him to come to terms with his past.

An evening with Che Guevara and Steven Soderbergh

2009-03-14T19:19:00.001-07:00

Silly me, I didn't have dinner first.

I had a conversation with a friend a few days ago about how Portland is not the center of the universe. That's fine, I guess. He tends to be a bit of a wanderer. He's got a bunch of stamps in his passport, but he always ends up back here.

I like the idea of travel. But my sort of travel is born of working in hotels for a decade. I like clean sheets and upgraded rental cars. I like a morning paper to be delivered to me each day. I like working elevators and toilet paper that doesn't give you splinters.

Most of the time, I'd just rather be here. I like Portland, center of the universe or not.

Where else can you see Soderbergh's epic Che in its entirety with the director there to take questions afterward?

The answer? Probably not anywhere else in North America. At least not anytime soon.

The "Roadshow Version" of Che runs just short of four and a half hours. With the intermission built in and the director's Q&A following, it was about a six hour commitment.

Honestly, I am incredibly glad I went. I know virtually nothing about Cuban history other than the relations between Cuba and the US make it illegal for me to travel there. I know Che as the guy on the artsy kids' t-shirts. I know Fidel Castro as a tyrant and a Communist.

Admittedly, only parts of Che's story are told in the movie. "We could have taken it to HBO, presented it as a 10-hour miniseries and made a lot more money," Soderbergh told his audience afterward.

It's been released in Japan as two separate films and has done "really well" according to Soderbergh. Part one follows Che's travel from Mexico City into the jungles of Cuba, leading rebel fighters over mountains and through rivers. It ends earlier than I expected, not with their arrival in Habana but two hundred miles from there when they hear of the flight of Batiste. Part two follows Che in his failed campaign in Bolivia nine years later.

But what was the most important thing I cam away with?

Benicio del Toro, who plays the title character, is a producer on the film. In pre-production for nearly a decade, neither he nor Soderbergh were sure it would ever get done. "The only thing worse than doing it and fucking it up", Soderbergh told him,"would be to not do it at all."

A lesson to us all.

A beginning...

2009-03-07T15:56:00.000-08:00

I used to live in coffee shops. I wrote, I drank coffee, I existed as part of what I thought was a uniquely Portland subculture.

Then I stopped. I'm not sure why. I just wasn't there anymore.

My favorite coffee shop haunt has changed hands now and not what it once was. All my overly-caffeinated brothers and sisters have gone their separate ways.

It's been over a decade since I regularly spent time sipping lattes and writing anything at all.

But here I am. I'm back.

And this time, there's pie.