My Hallowe'en includes the apostrophe

This is the time of year I usually rant and rave about how every spell-checker on the planet decides that Hallowe'en, spelled properly, deserves a little squiggly line underneath.  I won't do that this year.  In a world of lol's and rotflmao and emoticons (which, by the way, survives the spell-checker just fine) I suppose it is kind of selfish of me to expect people to add that cumbersome apostrophe every time each year someone types out Hallowe'en.

Moving on...

This year I wasn't as prepared for my favourite holiday.  Lots has been going on and Hallowe'en snuck up on us.  Although preparations were mostly last minute, we were able to put on a pretty good show.

I was an accident victim, my daughter was Zombie of Green Gables ("Zombie with an 'E'").  Her friend was a broken doll and my son was scariest of all.  He was a door to door salesman!

For a rushed job, we decorated in style.  The boy wanted a puking pumpkin, so there was that...

Note the Pumpkin Ale to the left.

There was the unearthed grave, right on our front lawn:

We had a pumpkin that I was still carving as children came to the door:

I also managed to gouge a goodly chunck of my finger in the process, but what's Hallowe'en without a little blood?

  Tricksie the Hallowe'en Cat made her annual appearance:

And this was new - A lovely Dr. Seuss Tree full of skulls:

The best part...

They're all infant-sized skulls.

Happy Hallowe'en

So...what have YOU been up to lately?

Busy, busy, busy....

Let's see -

There was a visit from my sister.  She lives in Newfoundland and spends much of her time at sea as a marine engineer working for the Canadian Coast Guard.  She returned to Ontario to visit friends and family, but she also returned to say goodbye to this:

This is the home we grew up in and where, until she passed away in January, my mother lived.  Well, the farm sold recently and with the closing looming, it was time for one last visit.  It was an emotional farewell.  I walked the property one last time the day before the closing.

There were still apples in some of the trees in the fence line.

The property hasn't been properly farmed since my dad passed away 16 years ago.  The back field was overgrown with small trees and shrubs and the rail fence along the south length of the property had seen the toll of sixteen winters.

My steps brought me to the river's edge and, given the recent wet weather, was wide and deep.  During my walk I scared up a deer and watched with delight as she bounded across the property.  I got a little bit of video of her, but no clear photos.

At the north east corner of the property is the old railway bridge.  When I was at the farm there were two trains a day, every day.  Rail service discontinued along this line many years ago (20 years?) but I still slow down and look for trains as I approach the crossing on the sideroad.  It's now found reuse as an ATV trail.

The farm has sold to a young Mennonite family and it's my fondest wish that the farm returns to being a working farm.

It was with a heavy heart that I pulled the door to the house shut for the very last time.  I felt as empty as the house.


To contrast, there was a really nice write up in the local paper, The Fergus-Elora News Express last Tuesday regarding my recent reading at Roxanne's Reflections. They don't have a link to this particular story, otherwise I would link to it here.  As it stands, here's a link to the weekly paper's site and I'll post this scanned photo of the article:

I know I mentioned the story in my last post, but it was a very nice write up and it was well received in the community.  Earlier this week I walked into a local toy store and one of the owners said, "Hey, it's Local Writer!"

The other big event, of course, was Hallowe'en.  This year I won't go into my annual rant about how the damn spell checker tells me that when I spell Hallowe'en (there it goes again) correctly, with the appropriate apostrophe in the appropriate place that I am doing something wrong with that squiggly red line under the correctly spelled word.  No, I definitely won't be ranting about that this year.

The whole family dressed up this year:

There's Baron Samedi, accompanied by Lady Macbeth (with her dalmatian, Damned Spot), Executioner Boy, The Stylish Witch and, of course, Willow, the Hound from Hell.

We had some impressive pumpkins on the carport roof:

And I don't even want to talk about the really, really bad thing that happened in our driveway at the bottom of our front steps:

And finally, one last little bit of business.  I wanted to share a little review of Evolve Two that was done over here at the Innsmouth Free Press website.  In general, the anthology received a fairly good review, though some stories were panned.  Others weren't.  Here's what they had to say about my story in Evolve Two:

The last piece of the first section, David Beynon’s “Symbiosis”, is one of the stronger pieces in the book, largely because of its streamlined (emotionally potent) structure and extraordinarily effective writing. It’s a prototypical “down and out” interchange between two characters in a world gone mad with paranoia, that’s chosen to focus its wrath on an easy target: vampires. And it’s got a great premise, which Beynon himself put best in his wrap-up: “‘Symbiosis’ arose from a news story about thermal imaging used to screen for spiking levels of fevers of clientele at a nightclub in Singapore. I wondered what they would do if they discovered someone registering as room temperature.”

Pleased to see the Symbiosis has been so well received.

Hallow's Eve

It's that best time of the year.

Once again I'll need to get my spell-checker rant out of the way.

Hallowe'en.  Okay, spell-checker - take that squiggly red line and shove it.  Hallowe'en is the correct spelling, regardless what some listless Microsoft code jockey with the latest Wiki-dictionary decides.  The word itself is a contraction of Hallowed Evening - hence the need for the apostrophe to denote the missing letters.  It's one little keystroke to make the word correct.  And actually I don't mind if you lose the apostrophe.  Take it out if you want, but don't you dare turn around and tell me I'm wrong when I include it.

End of annual Hallowe'en Spell-checker Rant.

The front porch is decorated.  The kids' costumes are ready.  Trixie the Hallowe'en Cat has found her way down from the attic to the eves of the carport.  Pumpkins are waiting to be transformed into Jack O'Lanterns.  Everything is ready.

Hallowe'en is my favourite holiday.  I love that it gives us all permission to feel like little kids again.  We get to dress up and travel about in disguises and ask strangers for candy.  We spend 364 days of the year telling our kids to do the opposite.  But the thing I might like best of all is that eerie hint of the supernatural.  Maybe, just maybe, there is another world layered on top (or beneath, or beside) the one we see each day where wonderful, magical and scary, impossible things could happen.

At Hallowe'en, at least, we open ourselves up to the possibility.

Hallowe'en

My favourite holiday.  Just as the air turns crisp, the leaves fall from the trees and snow starts to peak around the corner, you really need something to celebrate.  Hallowe'en has always done that for me, so today I'm talking about Hallowe'en followed by a little rant about laziness.

In what has become an annual pilgrimage for the Beynon family, we headed on the Thursday before Hallowe'en to Tim Murton's Twilight Zoo.  My daughter and I attended Tim's workshop this year and made Trixie, the albino black cat.  Each year the trip to the Twilight Zoo is a treat as we get to see perennial favourites and there is always something new to delight.

This guy has greeted us at Tim's front gate ever since we started visiting the Zoo.

He hangs menacingly off the building, sneering at all who pass through  the gates.  Inside the gates are a host of witches, sharks, skulls, mushrooms, ghouls and cauldrons.  This rock group - I'm assuming they're the Grateful Dead - makes me laugh every time.

Every year there is something new and impressive.  I was most impressed by this:

The Unicorn is my daughter's new favourite.

On to Hallowe'en.  Pumpkins and Jack O' Lanterns are always fun, but consensus on what ought to be carved can be difficult for a family of four.  Through discussion and compromise we came up with this cyclopean vampire.

We mounted him on the carport roof for better street appeal.  Here he is lit up:

Next were costumes.  My daughter loves Garfield and my son is taken with Ninjas lately.  Their little buddy looked great as a particular square-panted character.

My wife gave out candy this year and looked fabulous as the neighbourhood witch.

I, of course, had to do something with some back story.  I got to wondering...what would happen if Toy-land's happiest couple, Raggedy Ann and Andy, broke up?  How would the divorce weigh upon Andy?  How would he deal?  I figured he would leave and join a carnival and, as everyone knows, the carnival life can be a rough one.  After years on the road, filled with bitterness over the idyllic life he'd squandered, I figured Andy would look a little like this:

I present, Really Raggedy Andy.

And, yes, I did scare a few children.

Now on to the rant.  During the course of this blog post I have typed out the word Hallowe'en six times so far and guess what?  Every time I type Hallowe'en the spell checker tells me I've typed it incorrectly.  But I haven't.  The spell checker wants to see "Halloween" - look at that, no red squiggly line underneath but without the apostrophe, Hallowe'en is spelled wrong.     And where the hell does the spell checker get off telling me that "Hallowe'en",  spelled completely and correctly, is wrong?

Have we become so lazy with our 144 character text messages and our r u ok and lol's etc, that to add a simple apostrophe is too much work?  I shudder to think of the day one of my kids comes home from school with a spelling test where they've had a point deducted for including the time-tested and true apostrope in Hallowe'en.

Maybe next time I'll talk about why Pluto is still a planet, regardless of what some astronomers think...

Happy Hallowe'en!

It's that time of year again!

All the ghouls and ghosties and witches and princesses and superheroes and werewolves walk the earth tonight.

It's a funny night for parenting. Consider - we all, as parents, spend a considerable amount of time teaching our children the perils of taking candy from strangers and then for one night only we throw that all out the window and encourage it. Guess that just adds to the scariness of the night!

I have finished my collection of winter related poems and submitted for the CBC Literary Awards (deadline is tomorrow). Now I can move back to the scary story I was working on - kind of fitting, this being Hallowe'en and all.

Have a safe and scary day!

Spooky....

Last night a full,ripe moon hung in the sky forever...




Just in time for Hallowe'en a full October moon drew my son and I onto the front yard with camera in hand. My son asked me to take a picture of him in his favourite tree, lit by the light of the moon. Below is the result:






Please note the ghostly 2nd image looming over him...

God, I love this time of year!