3 Ring Binder

Local schools closed Monday; trick or treating postponed Wicked Local Posted Oct 30, 2011 @ 07:36 PM Local Public Schools will be closed Monday, Oct. 31 due to the safety hazard of low-lying power lines and remaining debris, the Superintendent announced Sunday evening. In addition, the Local Police Department postponed Halloween trick or treating until Friday, Nov. 4. The hours will be 5:30 to 9 p.m. Our traditional homage to the Halloween gods before . . . and after Santa's Revenge. Don't screw with Santa. Happy Halloween !

Having grown up in Salem, I was surrounded by the folklore of the Salem witchcraft trials. Say No to Drugs, but practice the Dark Arts at this school.  Witchcraft Heights Elementary School is the actual name of this school. It is where my husband, my neighbors, and many of my friends attended elementary school. (I managed to complete my elementary education under the tutelage of the Sisters of St. Chretienne  at Saint Anne's School before it closed. My husband missed that educational advantage by one year.) In addition to the crazy-ass name for an elementary school, the good folks of Salem Town seemed to go through a witch renaissance - if you will - in the sixties and seventies. One particular area of town, Witchcraft Heights, is graced with some interesting street names. I didn't grow up in Witchcraft Heights, but I did practice cheerleading at Gallows Hill Park. (Oh yeah, I was a cheerleader in middle school.)  And our high school took full advantag...

Today's song inspired by a little more than frost on my pumpkin s (via FB friend)! Say, who is that mask-ed squash? I just love his voice.

In the past week we've gone from tremendous to tacky to traditional in our search to spend our family time wisely. We spent an entire Saturday afternoon with giant images and powerful sounds of the Metropolitan Opera's Anna Bolena. It was very good. We spent the following Thursday night with ghoulish, ghastly geeks at Witch's Wood , a "Halloween Scream Park." It's been operating next door for many years; this is the first time we've been remotely tempted to go. It was kind of fun. Thanks, Groupon. We spent some time on Friday afternoon hiking through our local conservation areas reveling in the gorgeous fall weather, a bit of Saturday morning at the pumpkin patch picking the perfect pumpkins and performing press poses, and an hour on Sunday carving colorful squash characters.

Welcome to the 223 rd edition of the Objectivist Round Up, a weekly collection of blog posts written by Objectivist bloggers. Objectivism is the philosophy discovered and defined by Ayn Rand. You can find out more about Objectivism at the Ayn Rand Institute . To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. Ayn Rand, Galt's Speech,  Atlas Shrugged . Read. Think. Enjoy. Ryan Kavanagh presents Comments on Queen's University Academic Plan 2011 posted at Ryan Kavanagh's blog , saying, “Most of my concerns revolved around judging students, faculty and staff based on some group trait (i.e. ethnicity or gender) rather than on individual merit, while o...

“I am unshaven and have been in my pajamas all day.” “I am putting on a bra and going to the library.” “Happy Anniversary, Darling.” “Happy Anniversary, Dear.” This is not a staged representation of the lifestyles of the relatively well-off and totally obscure, but an accurate portrayal of an actual encounter on the stairs today. This is why we work: We are both terribly exciting people and sparkling conversationalists, and we each expect the same from our significant other.

We just finished reading The Crucible for school. My daughter was initially confused about the young girls' behavior and their motivations. As we read further, she became outraged at the injustice perpetrated on the accused innocents by the cowardly minister and pompous judges. This is of course only right, but still, her vehemence surprised me. Knowing that the book was written as a metaphor about the injustice of McCarthyism, this line from its author also surprised me: In the countries of the Communist ideology, all resistance of any import is linked to the malign capitalist succubi, and in America any man who is not reactionary in his views is open to the charge of alliance with the Red hell. Arthur Miller, The Crucible , 1952 Mostly it surprised me that sixty years later it seems as if both the malign capitalist succubi and the Red hell now occupy  this one, same country. The questions to me remain: who will next be on trial for practicing witchcraft? And how many wil...

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You got a job out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you got to work on the roads the rest of us paid for; you were hired by employers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe at your work place because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your home, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you got a job and worked your way up, or came up with a successful idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. Never forget: you owe the rest of us. The first sentence is hers. Elizabeth Warren, running for the Senate in Massachusetts, didn't add the last sentence, nor did she level her threats at the middle class worker. Rather, she targeted her c...

I bought this book for my now 18 year-old daughter when she was about 4 or 5.  Molly Bang's pictures are memorable and the story is explosive with the colors of extreme emotion and gentle with the child's angry state. I remember my daughter, like Sophie , used to get very, very angry and would take herself out of the situation and go somewhere quiet to calm down. She still does this. It is a great skill to have.  Around the same time, I bought her this book . The title kind of says it all. It's a little crazy tale that seemed  appropriate for my less-than-dulcet-toned child in that Emily uses her vocal talents for good! Apparently, I'm not very subtle in my book as gift buying. Despite the fact that these books are for ages 2-7, I sometimes want to break them out (of their "Children's Books to Save" prison under the stairs) and enjoy their sweet simple and timeless wisdom for myself.

As I work my way back into the everyday life this morning, I wanted to share this stunning serigraph from Eyvind Earle that captures autumn. While I didn't see anything this spectacular, his use of color and shapes evokes the memories of a great, extended weekend - half with friends and half with my honey.

Gearing up for my annual Girls Weekend, I was at the store today to stock up on a few necessary grocery items. (Okay. Let's face it - it was for garnishes for my fantabulous Girls Weekend drinks.) Seeing no standard limes, I picked up a bag of ugly looking tiny Key limes and inspected them. Suddenly, up from my hands wafted this most wondrous smell!  It was them! They had the most splendidly sweet and citrusy subtle scent of a sultry summer soirée.  I wanted to bathe in them! (It's happened often enough that you could say this is my standard reaction when I really like the smell of something.) Then I spied the big, uniformly green, regular limes for much less in the next aisle.  I wondered aloud if I should put back the more expensive bag of little discolored ones in favor of the pretty standard limes. They were going to be for decorative touches after all. My daughter chimed in and said, "But did you smell these limes?" holding up the bag of Key limes. She k...

This isn't a story about my husband in social situations; this is about our real fish out of water. Early Friday evening, I went to check my email at my desk in the living room.  My desk is in a little dark corner behind the free-standing bookcase. You really can’t see me unless you know I'm there.  I like it that way. Anyway, this isn’t about me, but the location of my desk behind the bookcase, the location of the betta tank on the bookcase, and flippy/floppy sounds that pierce the darkest corners of the night. So, I'm sitting there waiting for my email to download and I hear something rustling over near the stairs (my desk is in the corner and butts up against the landing on the dog-leg staircase). I figure it's a bug that somehow got in the backdoor and is now looking for a way out. I hear it again. I think, why is the bug in this darkest corner of the living room when bugs usually seek light? It must be a moth. I read my email. I hear it again. This time, it's...