Happy Halloween . . .

Photo by Porter B.

On Sunday the sun was warm and brilliant.  I was sitting at a picnic table with a man with whom I'd just filmed an interview.  He was reminiscing about interviewing he'd done himself years ago as a merchant marine.  He'd been set the task of tracking down and recording conversations with men who'd been part of a submarine surveillance program during WWII.  

"The military had commissioned sailing yachts all along the coast.  Each guy would sail around in a 15 square mile box, climbing up the mast to look for sign of U-boats.  And they saw them, too."

Of course decades later the men were long scattered, but he'd manage to track down one, who'd know of a couple of others, and those would know of one or two more.  

He said, "My favorite part was when I'd say, 'Well, Joe Bates said that . . . '  And the old man would say, 'You talked to Joe Bates!?  He's still kickin'?  You don't have his phone number do you?'  And, I'd say, 'Yup, I've got it right here.'  And these guys were just so tickled to find out what the others were up to and get back in touch with them after so many years."

Tonight was the cub scouts Halloween party.  Porter looked like a mysterious traveler in my old gray wool Swiss army cape with its high-peaked hood pulled over his eyes.  Nico concocted something out of long purple gown, some pirate gear and a beat up cowboy hat.  Earlier he'd said something about ductaping a question mark on himself, but seemed to let that drop.

I brought along my recording equipment, since I needed to tape some interviews for the Demos project.  I'd been doing man in the street taping in Mystic during the summer, and last month Joe and I spent a day button-holing the lunch crowd in downtown Providence, but it's October now and getting cold for catching foot traffic.  So with Monica assisting I dragooned some of the cub scout parents into taking part.  

I'm sure they're still unclear on what it is I do for a living.

We were invited to a dinner held for the French teachers that are visiting with students on an exchange program.  So for the first time we left Nico and Porter home by themselves -- to put themselves to bed even.  (The neighbors had been clued in.)

And I ate well and a little too much, and drank red wine and talked about art with a music teacher who looked as though he might daren't eat a peach, but who told me of the time he spent bringing music to a women's prison.

Mom and Dad came for the weekend, after closing up the cottage in the Poconos for the winter.

I hiked with Dad down through the back woods -- out over the railroad tracks and down to the river.  He's become obsessed with native grass prairies and so we lingered in the glades and clearings.  He'd stroke the fall-brittle stems and rattle off the names: little bluestem, sweet fern, switchgrass, deer tongue,  sweet everlasting, false indigo.  He was struck by how few invasives there were.  These are like the prairies that he works to establish down in Pennsylvania.  The seeds of the deer tongue were nutty, like little sesame seeds.  

We tasted apples from three trees near where the Green family cemetery sits.  The first tree was drooping with smallish apples that were delicious; the second tree's apples had a bitter skin but sour-sweet flesh; and the third and largest was heavy with large green apples, astringent and inedible.  Maybe I'll try them again after the frost.

We found a freshly dead white-footed mouse upon the trail under the pitch pines.  It had no head, like a little macabre Halloween decoration.  Dad said that it's a telltale for great horned owls.  When they're not hungry, they'll kill prey and eat only the brains.  Only five minutes before we had startled an owl from a perch and it had flown off above a bog.  Probably it was the same gourmand. 

While Monica was off in New York with her mother and sister, the boys and I were camping with the scouts.  

A ropes course meant a climb upwards 35 feet into the trees.

And a nerve-fraying walk 

upon an uneven log

too far above

the pine-needly floor.

And then a rope descent

as you slip down

like a spider playing out

its silken tether.

Photos by A.B.

A dying,

and snail

encrusted

crab

suspires

on the sand.

I have 

flipped it on its back,

and shroud-white gulls 

with yellow hatchet beaks won't fail to notice.

Photos by A.B.

Family is visiting from California.

While Esperanza and Lila slowly shopped in soon-to-be-hibernating Watch Hill, Anna and I walked out Nappatree spit.

Monarch butterflies sip the goldenrod on their way to Mexico.

The stripers were schooling and the water was turbid with cormorants.

Photos by A.B.

It was the 2nd grade social at a corn maze in Preston.  So, filled up with pizza and ginger brew, they ran around in the labyrinth looking for the hidden stamp stations.  

One of Porter's teachers told me a story from the day before.  (A few nights ago at the house Porter had drawn an illustration for a book they'd been reading about a family of field mice.  He got out the pastels and drew a life-sized picture of a fearsome great-horned owl.)  Well, Mrs. Long told me how she had hung it up in the classroom.  Then this past week some bird rehabilitation people had come to the class to do a presentation.  They had a sawhet owl, and a red-tailed hawk and they had a great horned owl.   And the great horned owl stared at Porter's picture, mesmerized, and began hooting and humming at it, just as though it were real and it was trying to get it into conversation.  

A final irony was that Porter's illustration for the story wasn't meant to be of a real owl, but instead portrayed a realistic decoy that had fooled the story's main villain, Mr Ocax, the great-horned owl.

The cat purrs

in brief contentment.

Photo by M. Gallego

People think that picking a mushroom is like uprooting a plant, the woman told us.  

What you've got is the "fruiting body".  

It's like plucking an apple from a tree.  

The actual creature, 

the mycelium, 

she said, 

is safely beneath the surface.  

Today was the mushroom festival at the Nature Center.  

A fine combination of gourmet pleasures and mycological edification.

Time to climb over the back fence and start looking for the fungal delicacies of the New England forest.

Outside is all warm rain 

and wet, slippery light.

Inside is dry 

and internet connected.

Monica was in D.C. yesterday, meeting with the folks at the Global Youth Leadership Institute about their efforts to start a program for middle-schoolers.

It's kind of like outward bound, but

 anchored in history and cultural diversity.

They were on the tallship Amistad doing a workshop for educators.

So Monica got to see what they do.

And they got to meet Monica,

and maybe she'll be getting drawn into their orbit as well.

photos by M.G.

It's happening again.  The psychotic and kleptocratic beast whose public face is the Bush administration is gathering itself to growl into action.  The American plutocracy may be a flea-bitten lion past its prime, but it is still a lion and the other powers that be -- the elected officials, the important people, the mainstream journalists, the economists are all either part of that lion or the jackals and buzzards that follow along.

The treasury department demands that we transfer 700,000 million dollars to private industry next week -- and these dollars shall be dollars owed by the American people collectively to foreign governments or to whomever happens to have money at the moment to buy the debt that will create out of thin air.

It is bad, but it is necessary they say.

And our objections?  The million voices raised to say, "Wait, what are you doing?  This doesn't make sense!  This is wrong!  Can we at least go over the facts!" --  are like the noise of mice and sparrows and crickets in the grass -- of no consequence to lions and jackals -- except perhaps as a snack when times are tough.

In the parables a million sparrows and crickets and mice might be more powerful than a lion and a pack of jackals, but in reality, not.  And I am not hopeful.

Porter and Nico and I stood upon the roof to sweep the chimney clear of last year's soot and creosote.  Nico was nervously pleased to be aloft and Porter was ecstatic (since I'm typically pretty cool to his plans to get atop the house).  He looked over the domain and said wistfully, "I wish I could come up here every midnight."  Then he fell silent, thinking I know not what.  It may be I'll have to relent despite the wear on the shingles.  I had Porter tie the knots upon the gear.  He has the knack for rope that I never have.  And sure enough his fisherman's knots held up through all the pulling and tugging and yanking as we swept that chimney brush up and down the flue.

It is 45 degrees outside this morning.

58 in the house.  

I pulled the flannel-line pants out of the bureau where they've lain folded for months.  

The rich, papery redolence of fallen leaf is what strikes you as you step out the door.  

And the blue jays grow noisy again.

Kiernan, Aidan and Nico were playing with leggos on the floor.  Kiernan's mother was patiently explaining to him that she had to "run home to feed the baby."  Nico stretched on the floor and deadpanned: "Well, that's pretty silly.  You should take the car."  I could see she was still in that explaining-mom mode as started to say to Nico, "No, I mean . . . " but then she caught herself and broke into laughter.  

The other woman standing nearby also laughed and remarked, "Oh, he took what she said literally!"  

 I said, "Don't take anything Nico says at face value," but I could tell she really didn't recognize that Nico was joking.  I know she herself raised an autistic child and she works with special needs preschoolers every day -- so maybe it's not surprising that she took it that way.  We all build up our own filters to be ware of, I guess.

Tree swallows wove in the air a twisty pattern -- skimming and skirting the dunes and wrack of Napatree Spit.  At the dockage of Watch Hill harbor, the 200 gracile, slate-blue birds compacted abruptly into an unruly flock, circling and fluttering awkwardly between uncertain perches on swaying bayberry and dune rose.  Then they rose into the overcast sky and flew across the Pawcatuck estuary westward toward Mystic.  

May they eat a million mosquitos on their way to the hills of Honduras.

 

First week of school finished and the boys seem untroubled.  

They settled easily back into a routine with homework and early breakfasts and teachers to get to know.  

The boys are charming and smart is what we hear.