Holiday To Do

Ellie's List, a year ago

Brian Bilston
Clever British poet, b 1970

Ellie follows Bilston's advice:
Get It Down In Writing!

Sometmes The North Pole
is Closer Than You Might Think!

Don't be listless -- or list less!

November Personified

Such an elegant personification of Autumn!

Golden Autumn (1925)
by William Henry Margetson (1861 - 1940)
More by Margetson & others

"The Professor happened to come home earlier than usual one bright October afternoon. He left the walk and cut across the turf, intending to enter by the open French window, but he paused a moment outside to admire the scene within. The drawing-room was full of autumn flowers,dahlias and wild asters and goldenrod. The red-gold sunlight lay in bright puddles on the thick blue carpet, made hazy aureoles about the stuffed blue chairs. There was, in the room, as he looked through the window, a rich, intense effect of autumn, something that presented October much more sharply and sweetly to him than the coloured maples and the aster-bordered paths by which he had come home. It struck him that the seasons sometimes gain by being brought into the house, just as they gain by being brought into painting, and into poetry. The hand, fastidious and bold, which selected and placed--it was that which made the difference. In Nature there is no selection." [Or perhaps there is?]

"We had a beautiful autumn that year, soft, sunny like a dream. Even up there in the air we had so little wind that the gold hung on the poplars and quaking aspens late in November."

both passages by Willa Cather
from The Professor's House
(Book 1, Chap 6, p 61 & Book 2, Chap 5, p 200)

*****************

"It is another glorious autumn day, but there is a bite the air that tells you there won't be too many left. Winter is waiting impatiently round the corner."

by Richard Osman
from The Man Who Died Twice
(Chap 4, p 22)

*****************

Such a stylish personification of Winter!

Autumn may be mellow,
but still she prefers a fashionable scarf,
something new for the season!

Saved ~ on Facebook
Poem by Emily Dickinson ~ Art by Dee Nickerson

The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on.
[emphasis added]

*****************

P.S.
Some Schubert for the early evenings:
Fantasie in F minor & The Trout Quintet

Connie Converse

As a trusted counselor once advised me:
You're a writer, you're supposed to be sad.

How Sad, How Lovely
Album by Connie Converse (August 3, 1924)

Title song: How Sad, How Lovely

How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the day gathered in
To a single light
And the shadows rising
From the brim of the night
Too few, too few
Are the days that will hold
Your face, your face
In a blaze of gold
How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the lights going on
In the shops and the bars
And the lovers looking
For the first little star
Like life
Like your smile
Like the fall of a leaf
How sad, how lovely
How brief

Music & lyrics by Connie Converse

For further thoughts on
Connie Converse & John Keats
see my recent post

"Half in love with easeful Death"

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

Peg's Mosaic

Mid-Century Modern Mosaic
by my sister Peggy Carriker Rosenbluth
Happy Birthday Peg!

Some Sister Poems For the Day

The Elder Sister
When I look at my elder sister now
I think how she had to go first, down through the
birth canal, to force her way
head-first through the tiny channel,
the pressure of Mother’s muscles on her brain,
the tight walls scraping her skin.
Her face is still narrow from it, the long
hollow cheeks of a crusader on a tomb,
and her inky eyes have the look of someone who has
been in prison a long time and
knows they can send her back. I look at her
body and think how her breasts were the first to
rise, slowly, like swans on a pond.
By the time mine came along, they were just
two more birds in the flock, and when the hair
rose on the white mound of her flesh, like
threads of water out of the ground, it was the
first time, but when mine came
they knew about it. I used to think
only in terms of her harshness, sitting and
pissing on me in bed, but now I
see I had her before me always
like a shield. I look at her wrinkles, her clenched
jaws, her frown-lines—I see they are
the dents in my shield, the blows that did not reach me.
She protected me, not as a mother
protects a child, with love, but as a
hostage protects the one who makes her
escape as I made my escape, with my sister’s
body held in front of me. (1984)

Ode to My Sister
I know why they say the heart is in
the heart. When you think about people you love,
you get warm there. I want to thank
my sister for loving me, which taught me
to love. I’m not sure what she loved in me,
besides my love for her — maybe
that I was a copy of her, half-size —
then three-quarters, then size. In the snapshots, you see her
keeping an eye on me, I was a little wild
and I said silly things, and she would laugh her serious
laugh. My sister knew things,
sometimes she knew everything,
as if she’d been born knowing. And I
so did not know — my wonder went
along with me wherever we’d go,
as if I had it on a tool belt —
I understood almost nothing, and I
loved pertinding, and I loved to go into the
garden and dance with the flowers, which danced
with me without hardly moving their green
legs, I was like a music box
dropped on my head. And I was bad —
but I don’t think my sister thought I was actually
bad, I was her somewhat smaller
littermate — nor did she need
my badness to establish her goodness. And she
was beautiful, with a moral beauty, she would
glide by, in the hall, like a queen
on a barge on the Nile, she had straight black hair
that moved like a black waterfall, as
one thing, like a black silk skirt.
She was the human. I aspired to her.
And she stood between the god and me.
And her hair ( pertind) was like a wing
of night, and in my dreams she could hold it
over me, and hide me. Of course,
by day, if the god wanted you for something,
she took you. I think if the god had known how to
take my curly hair from my head,
she would have. And I think there was nothing my sister
wanted to take from me. Why would
she want to, she had everything —
in our room she had control of the door,
closed, or open, and the light switch,
dark, or bright. And if anything
had happened to me, I think my sister
would not have known who she was, I was almost
essential to her, as she to me.
If anything had happened to her,
I think I would not be alive today,
and no one would remember me,
as if I had not lived. (2016)

Both poems by Sharon Olds
American poet, b. 1942

Additional posts: FN ~ QK

Birthday treat:
A heart-shaped piece of candied ginger!

Winging Wildly on Armistice Day

Ghosts of the Ancestors,
watching over the household,
on Veterans Day and everyday

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless;
the singing will never be done. (1919)
[ellipses in original]

By Siegfried Sassoon (1886 — 1967)

Our Current House Ghost, Thomasina

Our Previous Lace Ghost, Constance:
Owl ~ Samhain ~ Atwood ~ Childhood

P.S.

The Girl Who Feeds The Birds, 2024
By Elen Bezhen
See Ravenous Butterflies
On Facebook

Kingsolver & Solnit: Save Something

Inadvertent leaf fall,
right on the top of my Americano!

I love these twin quotes
from Kingsolver & Solnit:

“They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love."

Rebecca Solnit (b 1961)
From "A piece for all hard times"

Truth and love have been smacked down, so many more times in history before today. Truth, because it’s often inconvenient, and love because it is vulnerable.

But truth is like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse: it’s still there. And love stays alive if you tend it like a flame. If you feel crushed by unkindness today, it’s a time for grieving, reaching out to loved ones, noticing one bright color somewhere in the day. Remembering what there is to love. Starting with the immediate, the place and people we can tend ourselves, and make safe. We can’t save everything all at once, but it’s still worth saving something. Because there are so many of us to do it.

And we are all still here today, exactly as we were yesterday. Like gravity, and carbon, and the sun behind an eclipse.

Barbara Kingsolver (b 1955)
posted and shared a year ago,
the day after the 2024 presidential election.
True again this year, as we regain some hope
hope with the first quarter - term elections.

~ 2025 ~

Whenever we go to England in the autumn,
we find a recent harvest of fruit.

~ 2016 / 2017 ~

P.S.
Remember what Rose tells Finn in The Last Jedi:
"That’s how we’re gonna win.
Not fighting what we hate,
but saving what we love."

More Kingsolver: QK ~ FN ~ KL
More Solnit: FN ~ KL

Viewing the Moon from Home

"Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home. Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year. At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town. These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my hometown."

Henry Rollins (b 1961)
American singer and writer
Longer version posted previously

Earlier Moons

September ~ October

And the Almost November Moon
on my recent post

Black River of Loss

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

P.S.
Remember, remember, the 5th of November!
Guy Fawkes ~ Bonfire Night

Mini Saga ~ Grandpa Lindsey

A Girl & Her Granddad

Paul Jones Lindsey
4 November 1895 - 11 June 1983
More about Paul: FN & QK

Maybe you already know about this writing exercise, but I only learned of it a few months ago when my friend -- poet and earth - mom and all-round goddess -- Tammy Sandel texted me one day and said, "Let's write some mini-sagas!

A minisaga, mini saga or mini-saga is a short story based on a long story. It should contain exactly 50 words, plus a title of up to 15 characters. However, the title requirement is not always enforced and sometimes eliminated altogether. The form was invented by writer Brian Aldiss (1925 - 2017) at The Daily Telegraph, which has held several mini-saga competitions, as has BBC Radio 4.

Minisagas are alternately known as microstories, ultra-shorts, or fifty-word stories. The concept truly induces the writer to choose each word with utmost care. Prepare to edit severely! I'm posting mine today in honor of my Grandpa Lindsey's 130th birthday. I could be wrong about this, but I always thought I was his favorite; maybe he made every kid feel that way:

Presents for Me
Because I really wanted them, Grandpa bought the black corduroy sneakers with red plaid saddles -- like the classic black and whites -- except better! Mom asked, what about the other kids? Another time, he arrived, orange cowboy hat on head, little  brown purse on arm.  For me?  No, mine, he laughed!

*************

That's it!
I hope it captures the essence!

I no longer have the shoes or the hat,
but I do have the purse. It may not look like much,
but I felt super stylish back in 1965!
I think it was already vintage then
-- now even more so!

Something else that Grandpa got for me — just because I really wanted it — was a Springerle rolling pin. I’ve had this rolling pin nearly 60 years, even though I’ve only made the actual cookies a few times. I guess I love it for the memory more than for the cookies. I was only a child, but I saw that rolling pin and couldn't stop asking for it until my grandpa finally surprised me with it!

Perhaps it's time to make another batch of Springerle
-- maybe this Christmas.

Photos from Previous Posts

Riding the train to Kansas City in 1966

Sitting on the front porch in 1981

Recent Posts about Grandma Lindsey
Sewing Box Lost Forever & Belonging to Rovilla

More about Rovilla
FN & QK & KL

Reading in a Cozy Room

Cozy Autumn by Rita Kónya

Autumn Book Blogs

Halloween Favs
Skeleton Flowers

Museum Favs
Redheaded Readers

Angels & Demons & Cats
Eternal Sunshine & Da Vinci Code

@Kitti's List

Our Snug Little Reading Room
Or, as Aidan says, "Can we watch tv in that cozy room?"
Lush autumn hydrangeas right outside the window!

Overthinking on All Souls

Farewell All Hallows ~ All Saints ~ All Souls

Halloween in Scotland ca 1911
by William Stewart MacGeorge (1861–1931)

Two Readings for All Souls Day
An eerie thought: year after year as we cycle through the months, we encounter the day that eventually will become the date of our death. We skim right over it, never giving it a thought. How could we? It would take morbid Thomas Hardy (or one of his characters) to think of that:

She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year . . . her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation? . . . some time in the future those who had known her would say: 'It is the ——th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died'; and there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement. Of that day, doomed to be her terminus in time through all the ages, she did not know the place in month, week, season or year.

from Chapter 15
of Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman
by Thomas Hardy

Another overthinking pitfall is the dreaded insomnia rabbit hole. The moon rolls by, the hours roll by, memory after memory . . .

“Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time . . .” (p 58)

from Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Ray Bradbury

Additional Autumnal Ray Bradbury:
The Halloween Tree ~ Moundshroud
The Pedestrian ~ from Dandelion Wine

On Facebook ~ August 26

Not Really There

Dream lore claims that the
dead come back on Halloween
and there you were

Two Poems for All Saints Day
After You Died

I dreamt of an overgrown crumbling churchyard,
maybe someone’s funeral, was it yours?
But no, you were there,
somberly dressed, a mourner.
Why didn’t I make my way over to you?

But then the dream leaves the graveyard,
arrives at my house, where many helpful people
are setting out a feast.
Observing their dreamy kindness,
I feel so grateful, so lucky, so sad.

But you are not there, at this after-party.
I look for you. Maybe if I had made my
way to you, at the crumbling graveyard,
you might be here, now —
at this gathering, so deep and meaningful.

I could have talked to you at last.
Why didn’t I? a dream voice asks.
And then another voice, another me,
says you weren’t really there.
But what if I had made my way over to you?

UVA Cemetery & Columbarium
Blue Sweater Halloween

I put on the sweater—and then,
time passed —forward, backward— not sure which.
The trick-or-treaters came to the door.

The sweater—hand-me-down from my son
how strange to see you, in my dream,
in his blue cashmere quarter zip.

You are leaving, walking to the next house.
I hold in my hand, a twenty-dollar bill,
folded into origami—

I meant it for the kids, for you. Treat.
But now I see you have turned away—
in my sweater hand-me-down.

I call your name, but can’t catch up.
I only see you from the back, blue cashmere
walking away. I remember when you died—

—now, you are here, but leaving—
or maybe that is me, from behind
in my son’s blue sweater. Trick.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author's note: Many thanks to my friend Jan Donely -- artist, writer, teacher, perception checker -- for her assistance on this creative endeavor. Remembering dreams has never been my strength, nor interpreting them, so how could I be sure if was writing poems, or merely recording dreams? I turned for advice to Jan, who kindly observed: "You are writing down a dream, but I believe a poem is being carved out of the dream."

Out of a thousand unremembered dreams, these two -- the graveyard and the blue sweater -- were unshakeable. In the past I have remembered a couple of other vivid dreams as visitations from the dead -- my father; my maternal grandparents. This time, however, "visitation" doesn't seem the correct word -- perhaps simply a "sighting." Whatever the meaning, a couple of things I've learned along the way:

1. When someone recently dead appears in your dreams, it is not necessarily because they have come with a message for you from the other side, but more likely because you have something to tell them.

2. When someone from your past appears in your dreams, they are probably a stand - in for someone in your present. If that's me in the blue sweater, what message am I trying to tell myself? What is the message from my psyche?

Halloween Midnight

1929 Magazine Cover
by Sarah Wendell Campbell (1906 - 1960)

A Clear Midnight
This is thy hour O Soul,
thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art,
the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing,
pondering the themes thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death and the stars.

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)
Additional Whitman posts:
QK ~ FN ~ KL

Greeting Card Design

The Eve of the Eve

The time draws near,
the eve of the eve
expect visitors . . .

The Last Chance

The myna bird speaks
of love. His whistle
cuts into the bone
ears of a whitetail's
head stuffed above
the bar.

Fifty miles the county's
dry. You stop here
to tell yourself
go home but hear
the black experience
of a goddamned bird

whose hello sucks
at the marrow
of your bones.
You wonder how a soul
can pass from
his beak and break

upon your face, split
the whiskers you grew
to be wise in. You wonder
at his avalanche of words,
the last drink you took,
the dance on your skin

you can't beat time to.
You wonder, but you
do not ask. You
listen hard with
your cracking eyes.
He asks about your life.

You tell him lies
while he preens
a feather, lets it drop.
Your life is sour
on the glass. Crow
made the earth and all

things therein, brought fire.
This bird's a ghost
you tell your sins.
Nobody is listening.
Outside the sun falls
into the brittle grass.

by Jim Barnes (b 1933)
in Sundown Explains Nothing, 2019 (p 139 - 40)
Additional posts: FN & QK & KL

Halloween on the Porch

They Sit Together on the Porch

They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.

By Wendell Berry

There's just something about a porch at Halloween!

The vintage newspaper illustration at top
hearkens back to my grandparents' front porch
in Southeast Kansas when I was a little kid.

The brightly lit porch above
makes me think of the house where I lived
when I did the most trick - or - treating,
during my K - 4th grade years,
in Neosho, Missouri.

The Naoko Stoop Illustration below
brings back my Philadelphia days, 1993 - 2001.

I love this color scheme with just
black & white, orange & teal!

Hearth and Home magazine cover
by Florence E. Nosworthy (1872-1936)

Halloween Happy Cats

"Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat."

Mark Twain

The Wink ~ Louis Wain ~ Poster

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Halloween Cats by Margaryta Yermolayeva
More at Celebrate the Seasons

Witch's Helpers

To The Witch's House We Go

Cats of the Corn

Jack, Jill, and JOL

On Facebook
Master & Margarita
All Hallows ~ 2021
If You Build It ~ 2021 (& fb)