It’s hard to believe that our baby girl turns fourteen today. The chubby-kneed toddler has evolved into a slim, graceful long-legged young lady. However, she’s still her sweet, smart, funny, and beautiful self—and Bunny still sleeps on her bed.
Eileen
I rarely catch what my daughter brings home from school, but this year is apparently an exception. It’s certainly slowing down Santa’s progress. I hope I didn’t send out the flu along with all those homemade cookie plates and packages.
Leah
Ahhh… relaxing with the dog on the sofa. That’s how my husband ought to have spent his birthday today. But instead he spent it making…
…this table tennis cake to share with his fellow sportsmen.
Jimmy
Will you receive a lump of coal or a golden walnut this year?
And today is a good day to read about the discovery of the true author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” who was NOT Clement Clarke Moore (the naughty plagiarist).
For this week of Advent, the verse we sing at the dinner table while lighting the first candle.
Light the Advent Candle One.
Now the waiting has begun.
We have started on our way;
Time to think of Christmas Day.
Candle, candle, burning bright,
Shining in the cold winter night,
Candle, candle, burning bright,
Fill our hearts with Christmas light.
Brian
While a few weeks of the season still remain to us, a poem for fall, from our family dinner-table verse book.
Anne Clair
On Veterans Day my son and daughter and I made a visit to my father’s gravesite, a beautiful setting in all seasons but especially poignant in fall, when we recall those who have been willing to risk their lives for something larger than themselves. Veterans Day following so close upon Halloween, we took candy corn—one of my father’s Halloween favorites, which he enjoyed every year from the bounty of his children’s trick-or-treat bags—and tucked them invisibly into the grass, an offering which perhaps only birds and beetles will appreciate, but an offering nevertheless.
Today is the birthday of Jana, the kind of person everyone ought to have for a friend and neighbor. Yet she remains genuinely unimpressed by her contributions to the world around her. Happy Birthday, dear Jana! Guess what’s in the bag.
Jana
This coming Sunday, October 28th, is the last day that Fletcher’s Boathouse will be open for canoe rentals. I had hoped for an end-of-season family excursion gliding up the Potomac River to gaze at autumn color, hawks and herons, and lichen-covered boulders reflected in the leaf-sprinkled water. However, it looks as if all will be rained out (or possibly snowed in) with the approach of Tropical Storm Sandy, which is already wreaking havoc further southeast. Let’s hope it’s short-lived.
Here is a poem for this bright and watery season.
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries—roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay—how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
—Mary Oliver
Eugenie
Aunt Mary
Today is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, and in many places this is commemorated with an annual Blessing of the Animals in local churches. But Fluffy, Fido, and Goldie will have to wait until the weekend. Washington National Cathedral holds its ceremony on Sunday, October 7th, at 2:30 pm, on the west steps. In Woodley Park (our neighborhood) there is a choice between the front lawn of All Souls Episcopal Church on Saturday, October 6th at 3 pm, and St. Thomas Apostle at 10:30 am (where there will also be coffee and donuts for the people and treats for the animals). A Google search will undoubtedly reveal a blessing near you.
Today is also the birthday of writer and humorist Roy Blount, Jr., author of several books suitable for this day (as well as many other books on a wide variety of subjects): I Am Puppy, Hear Me Yap: The Ages of Dog; I Am the Cat, Don’t Forget That: Feline Expressions; Am I Pig Enough for You Yet?: Voices of the Barnyard; and If Only You Knew How Much I Smell You: True Portraits of Dogs. He is also a contributor to Unleashed: Poems by Writers’ Dogs, a gift for anyone who loves both dogs and poetry.
For a sketch, a riddle, and a mini-bio of Blount, please see Language Lover.
