Remembrance of Halloweens Past

Tis the season for "ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night." For me, All Hallows' Eve evokes the nostalgia of youth. My hometown, Haddonfield, NJ, was perfect for Halloween. A small Quaker village located seven miles across the Delaware River from Philadelphia and first settled in the late 17th century.

Its name derives from the fact that most of the town's land made up the fields of Elizabeth Haddon. Daughter of a wealthy Quaker, she came to the colonies at the turn of the 18th century to manage her father's holdings. There she fell in love with and married an impoverished Quaker minister. Their love story is the theme of "The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth" from Longfellow's Tales of the Wayside Inn.

During the Revolution, England's mercenary Hessians retreated to Haddonfield after the Battle of Red Bank. Many were laid to rest in the town graveyard. Elizabeth Haddon is buried there too, close to the marker pictured above. Many a dark night, I sat in that graveyard delighting in the disquieting darkness and macabre melancholy.

Stories abound of a headless Hessian who was buried there. Each Halloween night, he wanders the dark recesses of town searching for his head. In my youth, a rite of passage was to walk alone in that graveyard late on Halloween night only to be scared witless by the older kids. The next year you helped frighten the next group of neophytes.

Many years later, I was dating a woman who loved Halloween. One October 31, just before midnight, I took her to the graveyard to relive the past. In the interim, halogen lights were installed on the Quaker meeting house and the fire station that border the graveyard. They were to ward off young ne're-do-wells which apparently I was back then. Rather than savor the eerie darkness and whispering trees, the illumination allowed us to read inscriptions on the gravestones. Thomas Wolfe was right; you can't go home again. As ever - BB

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before." - Edgar Allan Poe

End of the World

Armageddon, Apocalypse, Last Judgement, Rapture, Big Crunch...time's up; we're outta here. Will the earth collapse in a conflagration of fire and brimstone? Will dolphins fly from the oceans as they bid mankind, "So long and thanks for the fish"?

For millennia, man has pondered the world's demise, but today, the end has become big business. Programs on it fill our airways. Volumes fill our bookstores. Films fill our theaters. So who's to blame?

Nostradamus - I've read the original "Centuries" and they are as ambiguous as Dylan's lyrics. Maybe "the transgressor" mentioned in Century IX was Quinn the Eskimo?

The Maya - 2012 is approaching which some say the Mayan prophesied as the end of time. Their descendants deny this; claiming Mayan eschatology differs from the Western European concept. Therein lies our misunderstanding of their cycle of time.

The Bible - various prophets have looked at the old and new testaments for a clue to our end. William Miller used the Bible to predict the day of the world's demise in 1844...twice. Erroneous both times, his followers still believed in the concept, but credited bad interpretation for doom's no-show. They went and formed the Seventh Day Adventists.

The true imminent doomsday is the loss of the daily newspaper. Sure, we can get news from the Internet or TV, but what about eating at a diner? Imagine sitting in a diner without a paper to read. Eggs, scrapple and cup of coffee without a sports page? It's unthinkable! This is what Nostradamus referred to as "The grandeur of the translator will come to fail." Where's the History Channel when you need it? As ever BB

Adam & Eve on a raft, wreck'em, mystery in the alley & moo juice"

Scrambled eggs on toast with a side of corned beef hash and a glass of milk in diner-speak.

Come Together

Here come old flat top, he come grooving up slowly

Compromise - to come together in agreement - parties involve themselves in a process of give and take to reach a plan that works. Over the past few years, this concept has become vestigial in American politics.

Historian Shelby Foote postulated that one of the causes of the Civil War was Americans failing to do the thing for which they have true genius - compromise. The vitriol apparent in current debates on health care, foreign policy, the economy, or any topic you wish to insert, hearken back to those dark days.

Actually, I use a misnomer. A debate is an interactive argument in which facts, logic and rhetorical persuasion are used to support or negate a proposition. Today, political discourse has deteriorated to chaotic chauvinistic calumniation. Both sides are culpable.

Demagogues speak as if imbued with papal infallibility. To change one's opinion, or to compromise for the greater good is anathema. Displaying the ability to change his/her opinion, or just consider a different point of view brands a politician with the stigmata of "Waffler."

This unilateral discourse bodes ill for our future. George Washington and John Adams often paraphrased the popular 18th century play Cato: "We cannot command success, but we deserve it.' I'm not sure we deserve it anymore - as ever BB

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed and are right." H.L. Mencken