Samhain: When the Summer Goes

My Beautiful House Ghost Constance Chauncey
Previously Incarnated as
Victorine of 814 and Priscilla of Pine
In The Book of the Year: A Brief History of our Seasonal Holidays, author and anthropologist Athony Aveni writes that "Halloween is the modern day version of Celtic Samhain, literally when the summer goes" (127). What a lovely translation! -- "When the summer goes." How perfectly those words capture the tone of All Hallows, All Saints, All Souls, and all the time-honored festive customs that have become our collective psyche's way of tuning into the cosmos, turning with the sun, bidding farewell to the summer, and greeting the Wiccan New Year (called Samhain, pronounced "sow - en).


Just last week, in connection with the ginkgo light (click or scroll down), I was quoting from one of the best children's Halloween books ever -- The Witch Family -- a clever little story of two clever little girls, Amy and Clarissa, whose drawings can shape the reality of their choosing. If they want the Halloween sky to look a certain way, well, then, they just draw it that way! If they want to befriend Little Witch Girl and fly wildly through the sky with Old Witch on Halloween night, they just insert themselves into that picture, and away they go!

Here are a couple more favorite Halloween passages from The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes:

"Amy sat back and thought, 'Yes,' she said. 'It has to be dark, very dark. And the sky must be the Halloween sky. And the moon must be the Halloween moon. And the clouds, the Halloween clouds. Everything will be scary and spooky and windy "' (137).

"Halloween shadows played upon the walls of the houses. In the sky the Halloween moon raced in and out of clouds. The Halloween wind was blowing, not a blasting of wind but a right-sized swelling, falling, and gushing of wind. It was a lovely and exciting night, exactly the kind of night Halloween should be. Amy's rapture was complete. She looked up at the sky" (144).

"What a Halloween it had been! How could she wait a whole year for the next one?" (177).

Or, as Barry Manilow sings:

"Oh how I hate to see October go . . .
It doesn't matter much
How old I grow
I hate to see October go"
(nice slide show).

Also by Anthony Aveni, Stairways to the Stars: Skywatching in Three Great Ancient Cultures [Stonehenge, Mayas, Incas], recommended by a tour guide on one of the bus trips I took on the Yucatan Peninsula a few years ago.

Capturing the Ginkgo Light

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LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE
"CAPTURING THE GINKGO LIGHT"

Inside Looking Out
Outside Looking In
Not long ago I mentioned an old childhood classic, The Witch Family on my book blog. This little novel ~~ also an October favorite for Halloween ~~ contains the following descriptive ginkgo passage, which I can appreciate even more, now that I have lived in a tall brick city house, just like Amy's:

"Amy's house was a high red brick one. In front of it there was a tall and graceful ginkgo tree whose roots made the worn red bricks of the sidewalk bulge and whose branches fanned the sky. The ginkgo tree has little leaves shaped like fans that Amy and Clarissa liked to press and give to their dolls. The fruit of this tree is orange, but it is not good for eating. It has an odd fragrance that grownups do not like but that children do not mind, for it makes them think of fall and Halloween" (14, The Witch Family, Eleanor Estes).
City House / Urban Tree Ginkgos During Soccer Season, 1995

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THE FORTNIGHTLY KITTI CARRIKER:
LITERARY BLOG OF CONNECTION & COINCIDENCE:
"SWEET BASIL EVERMORE"

Sustained Silent Reading

SSR (Sustained Silent Reading)
We always loved this acronym for the quiet time / reading period at Ben & Sam's grade school.
It's always nice to reread an old favorite, especially on a summer afternoon like today, when I pulled out The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes, the story of two brave creative girls whose drawings can shape reality (in manner of Harold and the Purple Crayon). I first read this book back in 2nd or 3rd grade and have never been without a copy, though I don't recall the last time I actually sat down and reread it from front to back (it doesn't take long).

A few memorable features have stuck with me over the years:

1. the butterfly poem
(currently featured on my Fortnightly Literary Blog):

"Non. That means no.
Oui. That means yes.
And papillion. That means butterfly.
Oui, non, Papillon -- a very pretty rhyme" (127)

2. the way Amy, who loves written correspondence, signs all of her letters: "I love you and you love me, Amy"

3. the Spelling Bee: an amazingly literate bumblebee named Malachi who can communicate by spelling aloud (often in puns; always in all - caps). E.g., BEEHOLD! BEEGIN! BEE STILL!

For a few fun titles, good for SSR
READ THE LATEST POST ON MY BOOK BLOG:
"BEEHOLD! BEEGIN! BEE STILL!"
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