First Monday with Characters

Edited by
Morris Dean

Rolf Dumke, greeting trick-or-treaters

On Halloween night, a couple dozen normal-looking neighborhood kids aged between four to fourteen rang our doorbell trick-or-treating. They were dressed nicely as devils and witches, with gargoyles’ faces or with store-bought plastic monster visages, some as cowboys or with other costume party uniforms that were handy, but out of place for Halloween.
    It shows that Halloween in Bavaria is still stuck in a quandary: is it a kind of costume party like carneval, or what?

    The witches actually have a revered time to appear in the Walpurgisnacht before the first of May, on the Brocken in the Hartz Mountains in mid-Germany – apparently since over a thousand years ago. It was presumably the witches of the Walpurgisnacht who inspired Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth singing around a kettle, “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble....” The witches also play a creative role in Goethe’s Faust.

Illustration by Harry Clarke for Goethe's Faust

    For today’s generation of German female-libbers, the witch outbreak on Walpurgisnacht is seen as an empowering symbol for female rights.
    Halloween isn’t necessary for a German witch presence.

    Last night’s outstanding figure was a tall, strikingly beautiful mother dressed in a tall peaked witch hat and flowing black robe, accompanying her girls in the background – two small witches coming to trick or treat. I also gave her some candy, although she protested. I argued that regardless of size, a witch is only as good as her spell, and she had plenty of that.
    So I had fun as well, be it a displaced Walpurgisnacht or not.

Ralph Earle, returned from Sufi retreat

Mosquitoes

As if a great king asked me
to watch over his treasure,
then I was beset by mosquitoes
with no indoors to escape to.

                What shall I do, I cry,
                hoping the King will hear.

Be patient.

                How can I be patient?
                Everything is wrong.

Are you doubting
My Providence?

                No.
                But these
                mosquitoes.

The Rogers, in rain and out of internet service

We are in the rainy season here in Costa Rica so I’m afraid there isn’t much to tell. We do our shopping or anything else we need to do in the morning. Until around 11 AM we have sunny skies. Then the rain moves in about 1 or 2 in the afternoon. November is the start of our summer and they are calling for it to be very dry. The rain we get today will be needed to carry us over until winter.
    Here is a story about CR and their internet. The house we are renting came with internet. On the road where we live, only the school on top of the hill and us had DSL. It seems we are too far out to receive service. The man that was renting the house before however, worked for Israeli secret service. So some how he got ICE (the internet service, pronounced “e-say”) to put in a high power transformer to kick out more juice. It has worked just fine for the past 6 years. It was our luck that after six years of lighting-storms it picked now for one to burn out the transformer.
    Not being involved with the Israeli government; we were informed they could no longer provide service because they no longer had transformers that size. Now we are trying to get the man next door to let us cut a tree down so we can get a beam on a tower at the foot of the mountain. I’m not sure what we did without internet, I guess we just kept a happy thought about the world and went on about our business. We sure do feel cut without now.
    Anyway, I could not contact the owner of the property next door. So we ran a cable from my landlord’s house as he is higher up the mountain than our house and has a receiver (you can just see in the center of the inset photo; see cable in photo below). Total cost for getting my new internet was $228. It was high, but I was beginning to worry about falling asleep – Janie had reached the point of wanting to kill someone.

James Knudsen, stepping outward with his dad's Panhard

From the cramped confines of a dusty garage to the bright sunshine of the back patio, a distance of only 15 feet, as the cockroach crawls, but the first step towards something, somewhere, with someone new.

André Duvall, at last at Whitaker Point

Whitaker Point (officially known as Hawksbill Crag) is a rock outcropping near the Buffalo River in the Ozark Mountains in Newton County, Arkansas. It overlooks a breathtaking mountain and valley scene, and has been featured numerous times in various instances of tourist publicity for Arkansas. I've seen it for years on postcards and in television advertisements outside of the state promoting Arkansas travel. I still have my Arkansas History textbook from fourth grade, which features Whitaker Point on one of the covers. Although I've hiked many trails in Arkansas, I'd never been to to this location until this October. The hike is mostly shaded, and passes by a waterfall that one can walk behind. The most difficult part of the trek was actually the drive to the trailhead, which involved navigating narrow dirt roads and a very steep incline with sheer drops on one side and steep ditches on the other side. There were times that oncoming traffic created dangerous conditions in the ensuring tight squeeze. My friend and I took our time getting to the trailhead to increase our safety on the road. Below is a photo of the point with a backdrop of Autumn colors. The trees hadn't yet reached their peak, but they had begun to change.

Jim Rix, harmoniously

My relationship with Heather has had its ups and downs but last month for a brief time we were in Harmony!

Siegfried, sharing the bed (a little)
    When we return from a few days away we let Siegfried spend the first night we're back on the bed with us [queen-size], which means we ourselves are relegated to quite a bit less bed. Cozy.

Morris Dean, recently at the Salt Lake City Temple
    A visit to Salt Lake City from October 23 through 27 piqued my interest in Joseph Smith & Brigham Young, in their curious history – fascinating because of the bizarre religion they spawned, whose followers seem, nevertheless, in many ways to live admirable, family- and community-oriented lives. Yet I remember reading in Jim Rix's book, Jingle Jangle: The Perfect Crime Turned Inside Out, about the predominantly Mormon jury in Phoenix, Arzona who convicted an innocent man (Ray Krone) of murder, mostly because of the so-called expert testimony of dentist Raymond Rawson, whom the prosecutor managed to make sure the jury was aware had been a Mormon deacon or something. Ray's lawyer, Chris Plourd, had summed it up: "They're Mormons and they stick together."
    But, then, Krone's jury was not the first, or only, or last jury to screw up. There are many ways to be curiously and disappointingly human. And, if we need any more evidence, we have this season's political campaigns, and tomorrow's elections.

Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean