Our Halloween was chill and wet. Still, 11 Trick or Treaters braved the weather. I did another post of them in color but I kind of like these black and white photos as well. I know it is stretching it to enter them in Cee’s black and white Tongues and Tails challenge. Not all of these beasts have tales, but I guarantee they all have tongues.
Click on first photo to enlarge all. Which do you prefer, color or black and white?
Trick or Treaters
We only had 11 Trick or Treaters who braved the drizzly Halloween weather to visit us for treats. this was half the crowd we had last year. Unfortunately, I snapped the first, a baby who called me “Mama” and smiled and held his hands out to be picked up and only later discovered there was no SD card in the camera. Sad. He was such a cutie and would have walked right in to spend the evening if his mom hadn’t stopped him. The photos I did get are not great as for some reason my camera, only 6 months old, seems not to be focusing with the same precision as before. Double Sad. Here are the cuties, as I caught them. They were a bit soggy but with the exception of one, a pretty happy bunch. Can you identify the kids who came last year who returned this year? There’s a link to last year’s meangerie above, captured in orange.
Click on the first photo to enlarge all.
The Death of Halloween
What if we threw Halloween and nobody came?
If no one came to trick or treat, who might be to blame?
Perhaps they threw a party and we were not invited.
Perhaps the little kids are scared that they might be bited!
Are small girls scared of zombies, little boys spooked by ghosts?
Are all the big boys scared as well, in spite of all their boasts?
So in spite of Reese’s Cups, Hershey’s Bars and Snickers,
no chocolate biters are in sight, no chewers and no lickers.
It seems that Halloween has died. Yearly hauntings are no more.
We might as well eat all the treats, give up and lock the door!!!
After an hour of waiting in vain for Trick or Treaters, just as I was trying to post this post, three groups of them showed up at our door. Halloween has been rejuvinated. Photos to follow. If you need a link to them, HERE they are.
The Rest of the Trip to Big Spring
Click on first photo to enlarge all and to read captions.
A Halloween Primer
Bloodcurdling screams of banshees and the moans of other specters
are signals to skirt graveyards and other creepy sectors.
Do not go close to water. La Llorona* lingers there.
Hobgoblins roam on Halloween. Please take extra care
that you aren’t impeded by your costume’s girth and weight
so just in case, you can maintain the proper speed and gait
to insure escaping witches, vampires, ghosts and ghouls
who inhabit Halloween and make up all the rules.
Heed well my past instructions of where you should not go.
Get home before the witching hour. These warnings you should know
lest you become another statistic of the night
set aside for horrors, for hauntings and for fright.
Halloween is filled with fun: the costumes, pumpkins, candy,
and if you heed my warnings, everything should turn out dandy.
Just stay away from witches of the authentic sort—
the kind with real black three-inch nails and a genuine wart.
Make sure the vampire’s fangs aren’t real, that ghost is in a sheet.
Assure the authenticity of every friend you meet.
It does not do to make new friends. Be guided by your fear
and do not talk to strangers on this one night of the year.
*In Latin American folklore, La Llorona (pronounced [la ʝo.ˈɾo.na], “The Weeping Woman”) is a ghost of a woman who lost her children and now cries while looking for them in the river, often causing misfortune to those who are near, or who hear her.
I was premature in my posting of spooky Halloween photos. Go HERE to see scary photos.
The prompt words today are costume, weight, bloodcurdling and signal. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/rdp-wednesday-costume/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/31/fowc-with-fandango-weight/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/31/bloodcurdling/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/daily-addictions-2018-week-43/signal
We took a day trip to the Ozarks today to the most beautiful area with the most generic name ever—the Big Spring area of the Current River! In spite of the uninspiring names, wanted to share a few of the 300 plus photos I took today. More to follow… (Relax. There are only 15 here.)
Click on first photo to enlarge all.
Cee’s FOTD Challenge
Human Conditions
What some see as a plank, others see as a sliver.
What starts out as a rivulet can swell into a river.
But there is a dead center closer to what’s real—
a place optimists overlook and pessimists overfeel.
Some may have solutions that others find absurd
and as a result, simply let go unheard.
But as we spend time bickering o’er who is right or wrong,
more sinister plans of nature flow rapidly along.
There’s a reason we are labeled as the human “race.”
Most problems exist because we cannot slow our pace.
We speed too quickly forward, not considering the end
of all the natural balances that we choose to bend.
The food we grow is excess and we throw away
forty percent of it, every week and day
while people starve around us. We can’t find a solution
to world hunger, extinct species, global warming or pollution.
Each plastic bag we use is the beginning of a motion
that takes it down that rivulet to river to the ocean
where it will join the others—the flip flops and the dishes
that are killing off our coral and our mollusks and our fishes.
We choke our air and wonder why we cannot breath.
Our youths lack a direction. They question and they seethe.
What choices have we left them as we export all their jobs
and give them all devices that turn them into blobs?
If there were a grand plan for ridding Mother Earth
of every single species that had a use or worth,
I think it would be planned by man and not by evolution.
Increasingly we seem to be mounting a revolution
It’s as though we’re pre-conditioned, as though we have a need
first of all, to bring an end to every other breed,
and then to do ourselves in to restore the motion
of evolution once again. To see what is her notion
of what might work the next time in building a global order
that knows its place in things without straying ‘cross the border.
Perhaps billions of years from now, nature will proudly flout
another scheme for nature that this time will work out!
The prompt words today are dead, center, rivulet and globe. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/rdp-tuesday-dead/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/30/fowc-with-fandango-center/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/agnostic/(actually, rivulet)
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/daily-addictions-2018-week-43/globe
Matt’s question of the day: Aliens have finally visited Earth and are ready to make contact with humans! There’s just one thing: the aliens unknowingly landed on Halloween. What happens next?
For Matt’s prompt: https://normalhappenings.com/2018/10/30/thirty-first-contact-daily-inkling/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 