This is the ninety-seventh installment of West Wind, your weekly drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season.
It’s also All Hallow’s Eve! This is the beginning of the triduum that makes up today, All Saints Day tomorrow and All Souls Day on Sunday. Tomorrow and Sunday are also Día(s) de Muertos in Mexico and other parts of the world, and since I claim Mexican heritage, it will be celebrated in our house too.
We set up an ofrenda somewhere prominent in our house, but don’t set out food or candy because our cats would re-create the scene from Coco where Dante gets up on the table and starts eating the offerings. Plus we don’t have a GF/DF/EF recipe for pan de muerto, so there you go.
It’s also time for our yearly rewatch of Coco, which is one of the best Día de Muertos movies out there. It’s also one of the only ones, the other being The Book of Life, both of which excel for entirely different reasons.
For most of my wife and I’s marriage, though, we didn’t celebrate it at all, mostly because the ofrenda would have only held one or two pictures. Almost all of my extended family was still alive, and on her side there weren’t many pictures of those that had passed. Then came a period of a few years where it seemed like death caught up to us, and more pictures were added every time it was set up. But, that is life, or rather, death, and that is why these few days are so important.
Tonight is also Halloween night, which is something else we haven’t done much in our family, mainly because candy has so many allergens that it just isn’t worth the effort of going out in the cold and dark.
Knowing that, though, helped us find the Teal Pumpkin Project, an initiative to hand out allergen-free treats and/or non-food tricks to visitors. We’ve chosen to do the latter for our All Saints Trunk-or-Treat at our church tomorrow, where a teal pumpkin container will be available for any child that needs something special. I know it’s a bit late for tonight, but consider doing something similar for your house or neighborhood, to give kids with allergies an opportunity to celebrate too.
And on top of all that, it’s Friday, too! I thought about writing up another Gast for today, since they’re very scary, but I decided to go with the quintessential Halloween vegetable for today’s Florabeast. No, not candy corn. Something much sweeter.
Very finally, it is almost NovNovemberEmberWords November, which means Counterbalance α will begin very very soon. I will be writing every day, to keep up that ideal 1,667 word pace, but will only release chapters five days a week. I also plan to let the West Wind blow at least three times per week too, which means you’ll be reading a lot more from me in the next little while.
The first two chapters will be free and posted here, each probably about 2-3K words. The third chapter will be a newsletter exclusive, meaning you’ll get it in your inbox but it won’t be posted publicly. And after that, you will need to be a CSL supporter to read the rest. You can join in anytime, and I hope you will! This project is going to be a lot of fun.
Have a fun and save evening, no matter what you’re up to. Enjoy the rest of your day!