I am a Jack-o-lantern traditionalist: no stencils or fancy carving tools, just a pencil and a small knife. Here’s this year’s pumpkin.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that a neighborhood cat has taken up residence in our backyard. Today I built him a house out of (mostly) scrap. We put a brooder heater in there to keep him warmish over winter.

Cool story of how Paul Sellers was commissioned in 2008 to make credenzas for the White House cabinet room with only a month lead time. As you’d expect from him, the result was beautiful.

Repaired and refinished a cedar chest I picked up over the summer.

Before: Auto-generated description: A wooden chest with a rustic appearance is placed on a concrete floor, surrounded by some chairs and a work light.

After: Auto-generated description: A wooden chest with a multi-toned wood grain design is placed on a concrete floor in a garage.

Every year since Darcy was two, we’ve gone to Huber Orchard to get our pumpkin for carving. It’s one of our favorite traditions.

Really good TED talk on humanity’s relationship with fire and how (as an animist might say) we have fallen out of right relationship with it. Pyne also has written a related book that looks interesting.

Auto-generated description: A grassy field is bordered by a line of trees with autumn foliage under a partly cloudy sky.

The Excesses of God
Robinson Jeffers

Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.

Wendell Berry, Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013-2023

The Given Life, part 3

After we left Springville church, we started attending Peerless Trinity Pentecostal Church. A digression: you’ll notice both of the churches so far include a reference to the Trinity in their name. The reason for this is to distinguish ourselves from the “Oneness” or “Apostolic” Pentecostals. I think we were close to the same numerically in our local area, but on any larger scale the Oneness Pentecostals outnumbered us significantly. Oneness Pentecostals are so named because they deny the Trinity.

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The private property on the northeast side of Murray Forest is being logged. I’ve spent most of my time on the other side. However, my special spot is, I think, just over the line into private land and now I’m worried about its destruction.