Figure 1 – Autumn comes to Dean Park, Shrewsbury, MA a few years back, (c) DE Wolf.
It is October, and you can smell it – apple cider, sugared doughnuts, and pumpkins. I saw a swan gourd yesterday that was quite obscene. There is a certain damp chill to the air, but the sun is making a last glorious display ahead of winter. My favorite holiday is coming fast upon us. Halloween. So it is time to dust off an put up The Hati and Skoll Halloween slide show.
In Massachusetts, we are never far from witches and we have not always treated them so well. So if you run into one on a Halloween’s night, it is best to be deferential and kind. Though still cross about this Salem thing, they mean us no harm. They are not MacBeth’s crones. They delight in the spirit of the world. They speak a very ancient tongue. And seek only to make the world a better place. Give them candy if they utter the incantation, “trick or treat.” And remember what Tibullus (55-19 BCE) said,
“I myself have seen this woman draw the stars from the sky; she diverts the course of a fast-flowing river with her incantations; her voice makes the earth gape, it lures the spirits from the tombs, sends the bones tumbling from the dying pyre. At her behest, the sad clouds scatter; at her behest, snow falls from a summer’s sky.”
