Halloween is always a strange time in my household. This year I had to do my 4-hour commute to teach a course on material folk culture in Washington DC, so I focused the class on Halloween-related crafts: house decoration, costumes, foodways, pumpkins. When I walked into the dept. office, the secretary looked up at me in dismay (no, I didn't have my skull tie on yet). Hurricane Sandy hadn't caused
much damage there, but, alas, a big leak had developed in a 3rd-floor bathroom, which then soaked the floor and caused the plaster ceiling in my classroom to collapse. She hadn't bothered to arrange for another classroom, as she was pretty confident that, what with the storm damage in Cephiro (what storm damage? the local headline was
Area sports schedule disrupted) I'd surely fail to materialize.
The classroom was conjured up, and the class went off, and we got done early and my students (many already in costume) went to do more convivial things. And I made it home to Cephiro by midnight. The pumpkin I'd carved the night before was still burning brightly.
It looked rather Tennimonesque when I finished the carving, or an intimidating relative of the Addams Family:
But when you got a candle inside, it looked much more cheerful. Some people said it even looked like me.
