After the fun spookiness of Halloween comes the more reflective holiday of All Souls’ Day. In Mexico it is called Dia de Los Muertos, and it is a day for remembering, celebrating, and, weather permitting, even picnicking with those who have passed on.
So today I am thinking of your Great grandma Billie and Great grandpa Lowell, my parents. They were hard working, happy people who could make just about anything fun.
I am thinking of your Great grandma Mona, Grandpa Nelson’s mom, who raised three kids on her own while teaching inner city middle schoolers about literature and history. She introduced me to live theater and political activism.
My brother Jim loved his wife Christy, son Kyle, and having fun whenever he could.
My brother Tim survived several tours in Vietnam and loved his wife Bridget, kids, camping, and fishing.
I don’t like to focus on their deaths, but rather on their lives and all they taught me about how to live. But that’s too deep a pool to swim in right now.
Last Thursday, also known as Halloween, was wet and chilly. I expected that we’d be inside for the evening.
Grandpa Nelson was happy to stay inside, but Auntie Bridgett wanted to get out and do some “Reverse Trick or Treating”, where we walk around the neighborhood and hand out candy. It’s always fun seeing kids in costumes and chatting with folks.
We got to see all the houses lit up in their spoooky glory, looking shinier with the rain.
We met Cindy, who had a heating pad under the blanket on her lap, so she could stay warm while handing out candy. She even had a tube on her banister, so folks could catch candy as it rolled down to them!
On the way home, we stopped for a ‘mocktail’ at Eris, our buddy Tony’s bar. We chatted a bit, then headed home to watch some classic horror. For me, Bêla Lugosi in Dracula is a Thumbs Up, but the older, silent “Nosferatu” is a Thumbs Down.
We are having lots of rain here in Portland, so I imagine the evening’s Halloween activities will be mostly inside. It is the beginning of “Doing things inside” season, after all.
Cold outside, good food inside. Yummy salmon quiche!
Grey outside, bright inside.
And we just keep getting up, cooking, making stuff, reading, learning and taking care of each other … whatever the season.
It is monster movie season, as usual. But with it also being a rather tense Election season here in the States, none of our household was feeling the need of adding more terror to the mix. So we have focused on animation, both drawn and stop-motion, for our Halloween entertainment.
I avoided “Hotel Transylvania” for years because it just looked too silly. But it is really fun. Dracula, a widower with a just-come-of-age daughter, has created a “safe space” for monsters, where they can vacation away from villagers with torches and pitchforks. There is also a nice culture clash storyline with a human fellow who wanders in. No gore, no stress, lots of fun animation and puns galore.
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” has been Auntie Bridgett’s favorite her whole life. It is sweet, with Linus faithfully waiting in the pumpkin patch for his unorthodox hero to arrive. Every year, I get irritated at Lucy’s casual cruelty to Linus and Charlie Brown, only to see her redeem herself when she fetches her broken hearted little brother from the Pumpkin Patch and tucks him into bed.
Our choices are not all so lighthearted, though. Frankenweenie features a boy who uses his newly-acquired scientific knowledge to bring his dog back from the dead. This year, because we lost our dear Mousie, it felt sad and a little too close to home.
Paranorman, a stop motion animation created by Laika Studios here in Portland, is also a favorite. A little boy who sees (and is very polite to) ghosts is tasked with keeping the local witch spirit in her place. The crisis brings out the best in some and the worst in others, and the characters are delightfully quirky.
For me, the darkest of all the movies we watch is Coraline, also created by Laika Studios. The girl who wishes for a perfect world with attentive parents and fun activities gets what she asks for, and it takes help from a bossy cat and odd neighbor boy to get her out of it. Neil Gaiman wrote the original story, and it is wonderful, deep, and scary.
This is what we have been entertaining ourselves with these getting-darker evenings, as it gets too chilly for after dinner walks.
Have a wonderful weekend, stay warm, and we’ll chat later.
When we lived in Salinas, we had parties a lot. Every holiday we made treats, decorated, cleaned like mad, and had a dozen folks over to have fun.
Harold and Mr. Ross-Riley in Salinas
It was so much fun!
Me as Sybil Trelawny and our cookies, eyeballs, and ‘finger’ sandwiches
And this past weekend, we had a party at our new place. I didn’t take pictures of our guests, because I didn’t want to put anyone on the spot.
So we baked, decorated, and cleaned like mad, and then the neighbors came. Stacy and John and Bella, and Jonathon from next door. Four humans not related to us, here in our house.
Wise Owl Auntie Bridgett and Grandpa ”Charlie Brown”
We even played Halloween trivia (Stacy and Bella won) and gave homemade voodoo dolls for presents.
Mouse checking out The Assistant…
We talked about food, history, books, and cats. Bella and Stacy gave Mouse lots of love and scritches, because they are good cat people.
After plenty of food and wine and conversation, the guests headed off and we tidied up, happy to have had our first, but not our last, party here in Portland.
Auntie Bridgett has been writing her new comic, AuntieBeeswax, for the Willamette Week newspaper for a few months now. Readers have gotten to know cheerful, eccentric Bee, her cats, her chickens, and her hive of honey-makers.
And apparently, they like what they see!
We found this out in a sort of backwards way. Today is the day the newspaper comes out, and we were going to pick one up this afternoon. But before we had a chance, Bridgett began getting alerts in her phone.
Where was AuntieBeeswax?
Our friend Jack, who originally placed Auntie Bee in the paper, has been laid off due to budget cuts. The part time (probably lower-paid) person the newspaper hired to manage the design dropped the ball, and left Auntie Bee off the funny pages. And people noticed!
We are sad for the slip-up, but it is good to be missed. And I’m sure all will be right in the end.
And just so YOU don’t miss it, here is today’s comic!
Auntie Bridgett makes Zines, which are hand-made magazines, called Art-O-Rama. She has printed them every two months, every year since 2012. That’s 42 Art-O-Ramas so far! She sells them on-line (at squareup.com/store/bridgett-spicer) and at the Sidestreet Arts Gallery.
Each zine has a different theme, and she draws and writes about it. Some themes have been Imaginary Friends, Creativity, Monsters, and Eat, Drink and Be Merry…. all sorts of things.
Stuffties!!
Four years ago at Halloween, she was drawing in her sketchbook and this cute little witch appeared. I immediately started thinking of a story about her, and Auntie Bridgett put the story in her zine! I was so pleased!
So here it is, the full story-poem, with Auntie Bridgett’s drawings. Enjoy!
I love that Auntie Bridgett and I can work together and be silly sometimes.
Dear Liza 