End of October Miscellany

Today, I have many things on the brain.  Can they make a unified post?

--On this day, in 1962, my parents got married--yes, during the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.   I wrote about it here.  Love and the Threat of Nuclear Annihilation:  maybe some grad student 100 years from now will write about my work in those contexts.

--The rest of the nation enjoys Halloween weather--or Christmas weather, if you live in Denver.  We're back to summer:  humid and sweaty.  I've lived in South Florida long enough that Halloween sweating feels normal to me.

--Long ago, I wrote a disjointed poem with Halloween images.  I still like these two lines:

Heat drapes itself over Halloween,
a candle scorching our pumpkin insides.


--Kathleen writes a post about Halloween weather, but she actually has traditional Halloween weather.  She's got great art with this post--wow.  I clicked on her link to see more work by the artist Kathleen Lolly.  Wonderful!

--This article at The Washington Post made me want to grill pumpkins.  Don't delay, though.  The Post only allows free access for 2 weeks.  And soon, the pumpkins will be gone.  Christmas is just around the corner, after all.

--As we approach the last day with our RIFed colleagues at work, I keep thinking about Halloween images and the downsizing workplace:  ghosts and zombies and werewolves . . . I feel like I have more than I can use.  I'm thinking of a series of poems, but my spouse has challenged me to write a long poem.  He's observed that most of my poems are of a similar length.  He's right.  Maybe I'll challenge myself.

--I'm also working on a poem inspired by Hirsch's "I Am Going to Start Living Like a Mystic" (a great poem on its own but also part of this beautiful larger blog post).  My poem:  "I Am Going to Start Living Like a Hospice Chaplain."  Many days my job duties feel more like hospice chaplain duties than department chair duties.  Or maybe any job I took would draw those qualities out of me; maybe I would always frame my duties that way (at least recently).