Remembering is an act of resistance. Gaslighting is ineffective against a firm memory. The lies unravel when someone is keeping a close record. Want to be a true subversive? Then get the facts straight and tell the story. Footnotes help, but be wary of the oft-quoted sources. You can see who they're working for... I'm reminded of this every time I turn on this machine these days.

Martinmas On November 11th at 11 in the morning, we practice a moment of silence for two minutes to remember the day we reached an accord and agreed to lay down arms after the brutality of World War 1. Over a century ago we stopped fighting. Soldiers came home. It was a time very like this. A time of deep economic divisions.

This was the first weekend with no garden tasks. I had every intention of writing pages of prose and poetry. But did I? Nope... Instead, I had a weekend off. I made six pints of apple butter. Roasted a pie pumpkin and turned that into ginger pumpkin soup. Also made another round of spiced pumpkin seeds, since I seem to be out already...

The Hunter's Moon rises full today at 4:17pm. The time of rising and setting varies by latitude. Those further north will see moonrise a little bit later, further south a bit earlier, but still somewhere around 4-5pm local time. However, the Moon will turn full at the same moment all around the globe, but at different local times. It will be full here in Vermont at 8:19am.

Yesterday, the clocks all changed. No, I'll not use passive voice. Except for the Apple things in this house, the clocks do not change themselves. To spring forward and fall back, I have to wander around the house setting some dozen clocks, ranging from the phone system and thermostat to the enormous wall clock in the dining room. That one alone can take ten minutes to change, most of the time spent trying to convince it that it wants to go back on its wall hanger.

The Day of the Dead In Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom, he says that a “man” does not fear death. “Fear of death is our animal nature,” he claims. I don’t know that any part of that is accurate. To be sure, we have a very unhealthy relationship to death. We tell ourselves stories of our mastery of death, of death’s defeat, of our eternity on the other side of the demise of the body.

All Hallows: An Entanglement Today is All Hallow's Eve, Hallowe'en, with all the sweet treats, riotous good fun, and spooky debauchery that entails. Tomorrow is All Saints Day, All Hallows, a reincarnation of the ancient Irish festival called Samhain, which means “end of summer”. Samhain is one of the few clear remnants from at least one of the cultures we now name Celtic.

Tomorrow is All Hallows' Eve, Hallowe'en, the night before Hallowmas, All Souls' Day, the Christian reincarnation of the ancient festival of Lemuria, the Roman festival of the dead, merged with the ancient Irish celebration of the end of summer, Samhain. These days, we hardly remember that it was once a sacred festival. But, while the theme of death does sound rather sober, both Lemuria (originally celebrated around May Day) and Samhain (originally a weeklong fair centered on the annual livestock cull) had their boisterous elements.

The word pagan is not unlike the word witch. Both were pejorative labels for outsiders. Both would likely earn a body substantial abuse. And both have been reclaimed in late modern times, though it would be more accurate to say that these words have been redefined, almost completely. Witch means nothing of what it once did and what its equivalents in other languages still do mean.

Odds are few of you are as involved in the pagan community as I am. Though this is the fastest growing spiritual path, both in the world and in my own country, it is still a very small community. Moreover, even within this small community, I am in the minority in thinking that it might be good for the planet if more people embraced a pagan ethos of one variety or another.

It's the last week of autumn in my calendar. Just as well, because they're predicting snow by Thursday. The forecast started out as "well, it's going to be cold enough so if stuff falls from the sky, it might be snow". This morning that turned into "best dig out the snow shovel". I think they're being alarmist. Though, to be fair, it really hasn't stopped raining since it started a week ago.

An Observation ...after a week of footage from last Saturday's No Kings march The irony of the second No Kings rally, one that garnered repeated commentary from the Trump apologists, was that this was a gathering of old white people. Angry old white people. Boomers. The images bore that up. Grey pates as far as the eye could see. Lots of paunchy bodies that nicely filled out all those poofy costumes of frogs and unicorns and whatnot.

It’s raining and 45°F, and I have to walk half a block between my house and my garage. I’ve been awake since 3am and I’m gritty eyed with exhaustion. My arthritis and heart problems are both exacerbated by the short sleep and the cold damp so that everything aches. I have a pile of laundry that needs doing. I haven’t been to the grocery store in two weeks.

It is the time of year when I am increasingly compelled to define my path. What does a witch do? What does a witch believe? What does it mean to be a witch? I find that the definition often leads to more words in need of definition, bound up as they are with the world outside this culture, outside of normal dialogue and expression and experience, or simply outside normally accepted connotation.

The Harvest Moon west dark yesterday at 8:25am my time. Today, begins the 13th and final moon in my annual round, the Hunter's Moon. Many folks seem to think this moon is named for the hunting season. This is neither temporally nor mythically correct. It is not yet hunting season, if by hunt you mean "pursuing and killing animals for food".

The Harvest Moon goes dark today at 8:25am. So, tonight there will be no moonlight to wash out the Orionid Meteor Shower which hit its peak intensity at 2am this morning but will still be going strong until the 23rd. You may still be able to see these meteors as late as the 26th. This is an early morning shower, with 15-20 meteors an hour and best viewing time between midnight and dawn.

Friday, I got my first heating oil delivery of the year. It was a bit of an ouch... but necessary. It is definitely getting into furnace weather. (I turned it on a week or so ago.) It was 28°F Saturday morning. There was dazzling frost on the State House lawn where the No Kings rally was setting up. People were wearing actual coats...

We often talk about resource depletion in terms of supply. Except supply is not really depleting, is it. The Earth has the supplies. The absolute amount of oil in the Earth’s crust is vast. Same for critical minerals like iron and copper. The problem is that most of it is inaccessible, and not just at current levels of technology. All oil and mineral reserves are difficult to access, to be sure, yet one can envision technological innovations that would bridge our way to some of them in some technologically advanced future (if we believe in such a future).

We had our first frost last Friday with a sustained low of around 26°F that lasted half the night. Most of the veg garden died. Some of the trees finally decided to get going on fall, those that aren’t already bare, that is. The honey locust is dotted with gold droplets amongst the green. The changed leaves are not staying on the tree very long, though, so my veg garden is already carpeted in golden honey locust leaves — which is almost as lovely as the white carpet of honey locust flowers that fall in the early summer.

Ever since reading Becoming Native to This Place by Wes Jackson back in the late 1990s, I have sought to define what that means for me. Wes defines it mostly in terms of food production, but there are also elements of spirituality and philosophy even as he writes about farming. Food is certainly the central fact of life. At its root, being native is eating from and feeding the land.

Today is Indigenous Peoples's Day in my part of the world. It is actually a holiday in my office, so I'm in the kitchen rather than at my desk. For me, today is Apple Day... making apple-tomato chutney, applesauce, apple butter and probably some apple bread... because I went to Burtt's yesterday. But I'm not at the bank because it's... well, I don't know.

Daniel Winard was sentenced to 24 months in prison for knowing endangerment in the storage and disposal of hazardous waste without a permit.

As you can see, I've pulled this out of the compost heap and brushed it off. Mostly as a way to force me to write poetry. Because I have become lax on that... and that makes me sad... I also restarted the AllPoetry Wednesday Word contest. But this time I'm keeping the rewards to the minimum. I figure that way anyone who enters is actually inspired by the word bank and not just barfing up AI hash in hopes of claiming a prize.