An Undying Hate of War

Greenwich Village, 1920s

In honor of Veterans Day & the Armistice,
Please listen to Eleanor Roosevelt:
"I have sketched briefly the short trip to Europe after World War I, and yet I think that trip had far - reaching consequences for me. I had known Europe and particularly France, with its neat and patterned countryside, fairly well. The picture of desolation fostered in me an undying hate of war which was not definitely formulated before that time. The conviction of the uselessness of war as a means of finding any final solution to international difficulties grew stronger and stronger as I listened to people talk. I said little about it at the time but the impression was so strong that instead of fading out of my memory it has become more deeply etched upon it year by year." ~ from her Autobiography

~ And ~
Please click to read my Fortnightly Blog Post
[a few days early for Veterans Day]:

"Angel of the Hills"
featuring the last couple of letters that
my Great Uncle Samuel Gordon Lindsey
wrote home from France before
losing his life in World War I ~ July 31, 1918
at the Battle of the Ourqc River at Sergy,
part of the Aisne - Marne Offensive

Previous & Additional & Related
Veterans Day posts:

Armistice Day

Wartime Soldier, Wartime Child

"The same war continues . . . "

94 Years Ago Today

Flanders Fields ~ What Have We Learned?

War Horse

Point of Balance

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Instead of Poppies

Veterans Eve

Martinmas

Pale Battalions

A Form of Madness

An Undying Hate of War

Angel of the Hills

Drummer Hodge

Winging Wildly

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Day of the Dead ~ 2009

Uncle Samuel

Too Soon For Snow

JSL's Side of the Story

All Souls Observed

What better way to observe All Souls Day than with a Baptism, to honor the dearly departed with a celebration of the newly arrived.

For the past year, I have been filling notebook after notebook with letters, photographs, receipts, and certificates from parents, grands, greats, and beyond. Between these clear protector sheets reside The Dead. Over a century ago, poet Edith M. Thomas (1854 - 1925) asked the haunting question:
"Heart throb, heart throb, wonder past knowing,
Where did you come from, where are you going?"
The following poem answers solemnly that the dead have gone nowhere, "They are about us always . . . ":

Nothing is Lost

Nothing is lost.
We are too sad to know that, or too blind;
Only in visited moments do we understand:
It is not that the dead return ---
They are about us always, though unguessed.

This penciled Latin verse
You dying wrote me, ten years past and more,
Brings you as much alive to me as the self you wrote it for,
Dear father, as I read your words
With no word but Alas.

Lines in a letter, lines in a face
Are the faithful currents of life: the boy has written
His parents across his forehead, and as we burn
Our bodies up each seven years,
His own past self has left no plainer trace.

Nothing dies.
The cells pass on their secrets, we betray them
Unknowingly: in a freckle, in the way
We walk, recall some ancestor,
And Adam in the color of our eyes.

Yes, on the face of the new born,
Before the soul has taken full possession,
There pass, as over a screen, in succession
The images of other beings:
Face after face looks out, and then is gone.

Nothing is lost, for all in love survive.
I lay my cheek against his sleeping limbs
To feel if he is warm, and touch in him
Those children whom no shawl could warm,
No arms, no grief, no longing could revive.

Thus what we see, or know,
Is only a tiny portion, at the best,
Of the life in which we share; an iceberg’s crest
Our sunlit present, our partial sense,
With deep supporting multitudes below.

Anne Barbara Ridler (1912 - 2001)

Iceberg: Above & Below

Readings for a Soulful Day

"Our effort, I suggest, can be dedicated to this: to assume the unity of Life and Death and let it be progressively demonstrated to us. So long as we stand in opposition to Death we will disfigure it. Believe me, my dear Countess, Death is our Friend, our closest friend, perhaps the only friend who can never be misled by our ploys and vacillations. And I do not mean that in the sentimental, romantic sense of distrusting or renouncing life. Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love. . . . Life always says Yes and No simultaneously. Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer. It stands before eternity and says only: Yes."

from Rainer Maria Rilke's (1875 - 1926)
"Letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy"
Epiphany, 1923

Transformations

Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;

And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)

~ See also Edna St. Vincent Millay ~

Cemetery Photos ~ Charleston, South Carolina

Thanks to my friends
Ruth for sharing Rilke's letter
& Claude for sharing the Hardy poem.

Readings for a Hallowed Day

The Night Before: All Hallows' Eve

Thanks to Cathy Lindsay & Karen's Halloween
Trick or Treating In New England ~ by Raney White

The Morning After: All Hallows' Day

Illustration from Cat Cafe
Sleepy Hollow by Margaryta Yermolayeva

James Baldwin: “Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return” (91). ~ from The Fire Next Time

John Green: "There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does" (12 - 13).

“Our fearlessness, shall be our secret weapon, the tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself, and even after that, when the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us. They will robot-laugh at our courageous folly, but something in their iron robot hearts will yearn to have lived and died as we did: on the hero's errand” (202). ~ from The Fault in Our Stars

Aldous Huxley: “The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which he tries, forever vainly, to comprehend” (79). ~ from The Doors of Perception

Tennessee Williams: "We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it" (107). ~ from The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

"The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love - love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love." ~ Tennessee Williams

~ See also November 2016 & November 2017 ~

Thanks to Cathy Lindsay & Boo Crew
The Little Witch, ca 1916
by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (1888-1960)

2025

Whatever Autumn Has to Say

Sara Teasdale for Halloween

Cartoon from Cat Cafe

Sometimes for Halloween, instead of a full moon, you get a waning crescent that does not even appear until 4 a.m., long after the trick - or - treaters have gone to bed.

Here's a poem in celebration of what we used to call "the fingernail moon" (no, not the one on your thumbnail, the one in the sky)!

Dusk in Autumn

The moon is like a scimitar,
A little silver scimitar,
A-drifting down the sky.
And near beside it is a star,
A timid twinkling golden star,
That watches likes an eye.

And thro’ the nursery window-pane
The witches have a fire again,
Just like the ones we make,—
And now I know they’re having tea,
I wish they’d give a cup to me,
With witches’ currant cake.

found in the collection:
Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems (1907)

Thanks to Cathy Lindsay & Halloweenaholic

Late October
Bois de Boulogne

Listen, the damp leaves on the walks are
blowing
With a ghost of sound;
Is it a fog or is it a rain dripping
From the low trees to the ground?

If I had gone before, I could have remembered
Lilacs and green after-noons of May;
I chose to wait, I chose to hear from autumn
Whatever she has to say.

found in the collection:
Dark of the Moon (1926)

both poems by Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933)

~ Previous ~ Crescents ~

We All Need Friends on Halloween!

"A friend is someone who likes you."
~ Joan Walsh Anglund ~
(1926 - 2021)
[Please! Credit where credit is due!]

More on friendship:
"Someone Who Likes You"

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

Favorite Halloween Pictures
~ here & above ~
From This Is Halloween

If You Build It

Thanks to Halloweenaholic & Cathy Linsday
for sharing this illustration.
If you build it, they will come? Well, not always. Down through the decades, I have tried to make Halloween come to me, with varying degress of success. I was so envious a few years ago when one of my friends had to decline my Halloween invitation because she was expecting "well over 100 trick or treaters, which tends to overwhelm me."

It's true, her neighborhood is The Chosen One! That's how it was when we lived in West Philly -- a constant stream of visitors and all the neighbors out on the sidewalk with their treats! Kids actually rode the trolley to get off at the stop closest to our corner! Some people hated it, but I loved it!

Then we moved to a street where ALL the Halloween action took place a couple of blocks over, so if we wanted to see any Trick or Treaters we had to walk over there. Same here in West Lafayette, where all the fun is a few blocks away and no one comes to our end of the long steep hill -- except for maybe one lonesome child or a couple of Purdue students. Sad!

So for those on the busy fun streets, I know you will be tired but try to enjoy the human drama and spectacle. Take it from me, this holiday is deeply anthropological (see Backe and Parker). It's what makes the world go round! Just ask Silver Ravenwolf:

"Our children carve pumpkins with delightful chatter and adults find solace in a night where they can be whatever they want to be. We have little doubt about the joy this holiday brings to the American people. We will forever love the haunted house, the vampire costume, the harvest moon . . .

"Much of society . . . was centered around [harvest festivals and holidays] . . . These special days carried a sense of excitement that grew through the preparations and reached a crescendo of joy and laughter through family and community functions. In the fall, vegetables were carved, breads were baked, costumes were fussed over, and fires or candles were lit for the dead. Halloween was a time to overeat, tell jokes, gossip with the gang, drink too much, do a little fortunetelling and, finally, to have a wonderful time scaring...everyone with...tales of the mysterious and unexplained." (33, 38)

Come one, come all!

Friday the 13th!

So many Halloween Happy Cats
~ like these ones ~
by Margaryta Yermolayeva

Just Beware!

Signs can be so much fun! When I saw the above retro metal sign on a nearby neighborhood fence, it gave me such a laugh that I had to order some for Halloween. Thankfully, amazon did not let us down. Despite the compromising infiltration of so many ghosts and goblins into the supply chain, we were able to acquire as many as we wanted.

We kept one for ourselves and shared a few others with friends and relatives. In keeping with our troubled times, the cautionary message is somewhat menacing, in manner of Kafka, yet somewhat absurd in manner of Flann O'Brien, not to mention, eerily existential. I offered to get my kids one, but they said “No, we have the spider!” I guess it sends the same message!

Last year, part of the seasonal decor.

Now, a year - round feature!

And while we're on the topic of wariness,
how about this very old shot gun shell
that I found in my grandmother's jewelry box?

"Dangerous High Explosives!"
Here's what Gerry found under the old paint
when he refinished the little doll table that
my grandfather made for me 60 years ago!
Such an unexpected legacy from my grandparents . . .
Just Beware!

A Vintage Aluminum Boo!

October Light, Day & Night

Mosaic Path, 2018
by Erin Hanson, (American, b. 1981)

Linocut Moonlight Motif
by Robert Gillmor (British, b. 1936)

Thanks to my friend Nikki
~ who has an artistic eye for natural beauty ~
for sharing these stunning evocations of the season!

P.S.
Happy Full Hunters Moon

Imprints

March 2016 ~ Amelia Island, Florida

"I couldn't even walk head up . . . for fear
of missing something precious at my feet."

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh ~
(1906 – 2001)

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See my recent posts

"Only Collect a Few (Imprints #3)"

"The Leaves Conferred (Imprints #2)"

"Shadowy Sidewalk Imprints"

October 2019 ~ Prague

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

~ A Wet Leaf ~

Halloween, B & W

Wreath ~ On Facebook

The Addams Family ~ Thing

Kliban Cats

With a Little Blue ~ Todd Young (detail)

With a Little Orange ~ Trick or Treat 2020 (detail)

With a Little Fire!

Magical Cat

The Real Thing: Fuqua & Lester

Black & White Skeletons
All Souls

Black & White / Color

Channel of Peace

St. Francis ~ Blessing the Animals

Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi,
as sung at the funeral of Princess Diana:

"Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there's despair in life, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, only light,
And where there's sadness, ever joy. . . . "

Contemporary lyrics & arrangement
by Sebastian Temple

Most excellent sermon for the day
by The Rev. Nancy C. Tiederman

Ellie brought her stuffed frog princess,
whom she has already blessed with numerous kisses!

Lester (front) and Fuqua,
blessed in absentia, via photograph

A little stuffed friend for Ellie!

See also:
Animals Are People & A Horse Is Human

Autumnal Watercolors

Early Autumn Watercolor by Julie Windhorst

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Readings from John O'Donohue

"Summertime grows into autumn. Autumn is one of my favourite times of the year; seeds sown in the spring, nurtured by the summer, now yield their fruit in autumn. It is harvest, the homecoming of the seeds' long and lonely journey through darkness and silence under the earth's surface. Harvest is one of the great feasts of the year. It was a very important time in Celtic culture. The fertility of the earth yielded its fruitfulness. Correspondingly, when it is autumn in your life, the things that happened in the past, or the experiences that were sown in the clay of your heart, almost unknown to you, now yield their fruit. Autumntime in a person's life can be time of great gathering. It is a time for harvesting the fruits of your experiences. . . .

"Within the harvest circle, you are able to gather lost moments and experiences, bring them together, and hold them as one."

from Anam Cara:
A Book of Celtic Wisdom, 166 - 67

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"Change arrives in nature when time has ripened. There are no jagged transitions or crude discontinuities. This accounts for the sureness with which one season succeeds another. It is as though they were moving forward in a rhythm set from within a continuum.

"To change is one of the great dreams of every heart – to change the limitations, the sameness, the banality, or the pain....

"At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it?"

from To Bless the Space Between Us:
A Book of Blessings, 47 - 48

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Julie's technique: Tracing the Leaves

Was such still dwelling there?

Here are a couple of favorites that Ellie and I
often stroll past on our autumnal peregrinations:

Situated just a few blocks apart, one always reminds me of the other. Not that I've ever lived in -- or even been inside of -- either place, yet the following poems from Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost capture my curiosity to know what these houses may have witnessed over the past century or so:

Emily Dickinson's Home Poem #440

Years I had been from home,
And now, before the door
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, - just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch
My hand, with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.

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Robert Frost's "Ghost House"

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad—
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

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As I mentioned a few days ago, here is the house
that represents my all - time fantasy renovation project:

It turns out, upon closer examination,
that several other houses in the vicinity
share a similar, angular, stately style:

The Falley Double

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And these two ~ ABOVE & BELOW ~
that I never fail to admire on the drive
between Lafayette and Indianapolis

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P.S.
These ones also
give me a strangely aching heart.