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Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

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Halloween 2020, Day 4

Halloween 2020, Day 4 – from The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf (2020) This year I fell in love with the middle-grade novel The Girl and the Ghost, which is based on Malaysian folktales about the pelesit, a shape-shifting spirit bound to serve a single master. In the novel, young Suraya inherits such a ghost from her witch grandmother and learns that this pelesit is loyal – and jealous. Hanna Alkaf offers genuine chills as well as laughs, but most importantly she delivers a thought-provoking, heart-warming, life-affirming story of loss, grief, friendship, and family. The characters feel so real!  Don’t let the middle-grade classification of this story fool you; The Girl and the Ghost has much to offer readers of all ages, including plenty of ghosts, graveyards, and spookiness. You can read a longer excerpt from The Girl and the Ghost here or listen to sample from the audiobook here.     View the full article  
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Halloween 2020, Day 3

(Artwork is “Jack-o-lanterns” by NocturnalSea.)   
If you’re looking for more Halloween festivities, check out the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2020 Halloween Poetry Reading, which is already underway and will continue updating throughout the month. Images! Audio! Spooky poetry!
And speaking of poetry… - excerpt from “Henry’s Shade” by “Susan,” originally from October 1894, as published in Schabraco and Other Gothic Tales from The Lady’s Monthly Museum 1798-1828, edited by Jennie MacDonald (2020).
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Halloween 2020, Day 2

Here’s a Halloween-relevant article by Kim Taylor Blakemore at CrimeReads: “The New Gothic: Feminist and Unapologetic - Tracing the Evolution of Gothic Heroines from the Mid-20th Century to the Present Day Through 7 Novels.” 
On a related note, this is a timely reading list from Emily Wenstrom at Book Riot: “5 Modern Authors Upholding the Gothic Feminist Tradition in 2020.” One of the works recommended is one of the stellar “must read” novels of the season, Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia. Here, have a taste: - from Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) Chilling, no? A longer excerpt is available here: “Read an Excerpt from Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Haunted House Mystery.”
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Halloween 2020, Day 1

(Art is “Jack O Lantern” by TheArtistJW.)
It seems like 2020 hasn’t just been a year, it’s been a decade! The next few weeks won’t be easy, either. But I won’t let 2020 rob me of my very favorite holiday ― or of the chance to celebrate it with my friends throughout the whole of October.
This is the fifteenth year I’ll be counting down to Halloween with daily posts. I look forward to sharing quotes, images, links, book reviews, reading and viewing recommendation lists, and various creepy odds and ends with you. I hope you will consider every post a spooky moment of escape, a bite-sized treat (not a trick!) each day. (Source is “The Hooting Of The Owl” by Yesterdays-Paper.)
Because 2020 marks the 100th birthday of Ray Bradbury, it seems fitting to start this countdown with the words of that great October Ambassador himself.
So welcome to my October countdown… and welcome to the October country… Also… And… (Source is “Imps And Pumpkins” by Yesterdays-Paper.)
And from one of my very favorites, “Usher II” (1950)…

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Tomorrow It Begins!

Tomorrow is October! This will be the fifteenth year I count down to Halloween with daily “spooky posts.” I hope you’ll join me. Throughout October I will also be rereading one of my all-time favorite books, Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October (1994). It recounts (from the point of view of the dog Snuff) the story of a very eventful October and has 31 chapters, one for every day of the month. In recent years I’ve started treating it as an advent calendar of sorts for Halloween. It’s simply brilliant.  Here are a few atmospheric quotes. “Such times are rare, such times are fleeting, but always bright when caught, measured, hung, and later regarded in times of adversity, there in the kinder halls of memory, against the flapping of the flames.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October “I felt a strong desire to howl at the moon. It was such a howlable moon. But I restrained myself.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
“I took Jack his slippers this evening and lay at his feet before a roaring fire while he smoked his pipe, sipped sherry, and read the newspaper. He read aloud everything involving killings, arsons, mutilations, grave robberies, church desecrations, and unusual thefts. It is very pleasant just being domestic sometimes.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
And here’s one of my favorite passages. Snuff is describing Sherlock Holmes, disguised for his investigation as a woman, playing his violin with Romani travelers in their temporary camp:

“He played and he played, and it grew wilder and wilder–

“Abruptly, he halted and took a step, as if suddenly moving out of a dream. He bowed then and returned the instrument to its owner, his movements in that moment entirely masculine. I thought of all the controlled thinking, the masterfully developed deductions, which had served to bring him here, and then this ― this momentary slipping into the wildness he must keep carefully restrained ― and then seeing him come out of it, smiling, becoming the woman again. I saw in this the action of an enormous will, and suddenly I knew him much better than as the pursuing figure of many faces. Suddenly I knew that he had to be learning, as we were learning other aspects, of the scope of our enterprise, that he could well be right behind us at the end, that he was almost, in some way, a player – more a force, really ― in the Game, and I respected him as I have few beings of the many I have known.”   ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October 
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Long Live the Halflings!

Today is the anniversary of the Long-Expected Party celebrating the eleventy-first birthday of Bilbo Baggins and the coming of age of Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. It was on this day that Bilbo gave his infamous birthday speech, saying “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve,” before disappearing from the Shire forever.
Also on this day, according to the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, 99-year-old Samwise Gamgee rode out from Bag End for the final time. He was last seen in Middle-Earth by his daughter Elanor, to whom he presented the Red Book. According to tradition, he then went to the Grey Havens and passed over the Sea, last of the Ringbearers.     And now, in honor of the Baggins Birthdays, the departure of Samwise, and Hobbits in general, here is the song of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s (and, for that matter, world literature’s) greatest heroes, Samwise Gamgee, when in Cirith Ungol. In this very difficult times, I find myself returning to these verses in particular. They are the epitome of Hobbits and of hope. In western lands beneath the Sun
the flowers may rise in Spring,
the trees may bud, the waters run,
the merry finches sing.
Or there maybe ‘tis cloudless night
and swaying beeches bear
the Elven-stars as jewels white
amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey’s end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell.  - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

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In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What They Seek Now.Native women were highly visible in...

In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What They Seek Now. Native women were highly visible in early 20th-century suffrage activism. White suffragists, fascinated by Native matriarchal power, invited Native women to speak at conferences, join parades, and write for their publications. Native suffragists took advantage of these opportunities to speak about pressing issues in their communities — Native voting, land loss and treaty rights. But their stories have largely been forgotten.
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