Scenes From November

  Cormorants on the pilings . . . 

. . . an airplane in flight . . . 

. . . the Woodrow Wilson Bridge illuminated by the setting sun . . . 

Ring-billed Gull

 

Blogging for the Year

 

November is over. 

(When I came up with the idea for this post, I guess that I must have forgotten that November has only thirty days, because I thought that I would be writing on the last day of November, and I would start with “November is almost over.”)

But anyway, November is over.

The political text messages for Breana have (mostly) stopped coming. 

The Halloween decorations have all come down (except for that one house that I drive by occasionally that has had a twelve-foot skeleton in the front yard for over a year). 

And I have reached the point when I realize that I have done pathetically few blog posts for this year, and try to make up for it.  I will probably do that with photos.  I didn’t start this blog to post pictures.  I start it to write.  But I haven’t had time to write much in recent years.

And so I will post pictures, like this tree:

or perhaps the long view of the tree:

Or maybe I will do nothing at all.

An E-Bike Submerged in a Stream

 

Halloween 2024

Well, another Halloween has come and gone.  In the past, I have blogged quite a bit about Halloween, which one can read by clicking on the appropriate tag below.  

This year I don’t have too much to say.  Once again, Halloween did bring out the brief flickering of my old desire to write weird fiction.  I happened to read the Wikipedia entries on the jack-o’-lantern, and from there the entry on the will-o’-the-wisp, and all the attendant legends, and thought that there was a lot of material there to inspire a story.

But, once again, I came up with nothing. 

Also, I have been wondering when people should take down their Halloween decorations.  As of yesterday and earlier today, I was still seeing numerous ghosts, skeletons, and giant spider webs in people’s yards.  The situation is starting to feel a little like the phenomenon of people leaving their Christmas lights up well into January or February (or March . . . ).  

Perhaps the answer would be to leave decorations up until the end of the similar but unrelated holiday, the Day of the Dead, which is, um, actually two days. 

For the Sake of Bipartisanship

  In light of my last post, I have been thinking that I should note, for the sake of bipartisanship, that there are probably also a lot of crazy text messages being sent out by the Trump campaign—and I really, really, really, really don’t want to know what any of them say.  

Breana and Kamala and my iPhone

 

A few years ago I go a new cell phone.  And, as I suppose is bound to happen, at least one other person had the number before me.  And, as I suppose is bound to happen, I continue to get messages for that person or persons.

Some of the messages are intended for the parent or guardian of one of two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom have Turkish-sounding names, and who are presumably brother and sister. 

The messages concerning the boy are only rare texts from his healthcare provider, offering resources should he be having trouble navigating puberty or whatever.   

On the other hand, I get a surprising number texts and recorded phone calls from that Fairfax County Public School System about the girl having unexcused absences.  And since it is all automated, I can’t talk to a real person to explain that I have no connection to any of it.

And then there are the messages for a woman known only as Breana.

Is Breana the mother of the children with Turkish-sounding names?  I don’t know.  But I do know, thanks to the text messages intended for her, that her two major passions in life seem to be handbag fashion (there are many texts from the Coach outlet) and Democratic Party politics.

(I should note here that, although I have been deeply interested in politics since middle school, I do my best to keep any politics off the blog.  And, as I get older, I have mostly lost the desire to talk about politics even with my closest friends.  But now must bring in some political content in order to finish telling this stupid story that I have for some reason decided to put on my blog.)

As it is now the end days of a presidential campaign, I get text messages multiple times daily intended for Breana from the Kamala Harris campaign asking for money.  They are very annoying, yet I do get some entertainment out of the ones that sound as if they were written by some kind of unhinged stalker, for example:

[Failure to respond will result in an automatic “NO” answer] Are you voting for Kamala Harris? [URL]

Begging on my hands and knees: We need 1 more gift to boost turnout for Kamala! Donate $20=$200: [URL]

We’ve asked you SIX TIMES if you support Kamala Harris…but you still didn’t complete the poll?! Reply via personal link>[URL]

And then there is my personal favorite, which was sent not once but twice:

We asked you to sign Kamala Harris’s birthday card, but you ignored us. DON’T ABANDON HER: Sign LINK>>[URL]

The next logical step would seem to be a message stating that if Breana doesn’t donate $100 in the next hour Kamala Harris will commit suicide.