October 2026 Monthly Blog
We are living in a house with a bag of 200 chocolate candies of various types. It is a constant call to the weak. It doesn’t matter if one takes shots, pills, or writes down every morsel that one eats – the bag’s call to each of us is insidious, evil, charming, and so delicious. Every bite of candy celebrates October as the opening fanfare to the holiday season. Three months of goodies, three months of goodies, three months of goodies. Oh, how lucky we can be! I love it. There’s a certain thrill to this time of year – a quickening of the spirit – how glorious!
I was on TikTok, cruising, and could see the scenes of leaves changing colors for the fall. It reminded me of when I was a youngster and we lived in West Englewood, New Jersey. My father’s weekend task was to rake the leaves. Then my brother and I along with the neighbor kids would jump in the pile that sat under the huge oak tree, screaming out our favorite baseball team in respect to which was playing in the World Series. I seriously doubt that any of us knew much about the game but instead repeated the family favorite.
My father had one of those huge cans in which he would dump the leaves after wheelbarrowing them to the back. Then he’d burn them and we’d get marshmallows to burn on a stick. Gummy, gooey, melted sugar would go in and around the mouth while we laughed. Good times and good memories.
I can’t remember the address of that house. We moved so many times once I hit fifth grade that the house numbers and streets of the earlier moves get muddled together. I did try to look up the house on Google to see if the big oak tree was still there. The tree’s branches were too high up for any of us to climb the tree and it was far enough from the house so that none of us tried to climb out an upstairs window with the help of the tree. It stood like a sentinel on the front yard. If I located the right house (I used the elementary school as the center of my search and went a block east from the school), and I think that I did, the tree is still there. I wonder if children on that block still jump in the leaves.
Speaking of TikTok: have you noticed how many different types of journals/organizers/planners are being advertised? Apparently in order to advertise these one has to have impeccably polished fingernails, but I digress. These journals seem to be geared towards people who collect the usual ephemera from trips or special occasions such as ticket stubs, a photo, a postcard, and the like. Then one has a special glue applicator to paste the souvenir into the journal along with a specific color highlighter to underline, a special pen to print the title on the underline, and stickers that you’ve designed and cut out with a Cricut. I’m falling into this memory gatherer even though I’ve subscribed to a “declutter” app. This makes no sense. Even I can see that. Obviously my memory bank is rich with stories from long ago. But do I need to paste evidence of them in a journal? Who’s going to look at the journal and will that person have any idea of why the memory was important to me? What is it about our times that this has become so popular? Is it because our technology is moving us along so quickly that we need to hold onto the past a bit longer and with more emotion? I just really wonder about all of this. Meanwhile, I still have to declutter my closet!
Folks, our next meeting is October 25th on Zoom. Check the letters to our members for the Zoom link. We’re reading Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie. If you don’t have time to read the book (it’s a good one), then take an hour and watch one of the adaptations on television. You can find them on BritBox, YouTube, Prime, and the Yellow Iris adaptation from the short story that inspired the novel on Acorn, BritBox, and Hulu. We hope to see you!