Watched Heartland (1979) this morning. Wanted something slow and calm, and this fit the bill. Definitely worth your time. Though, be warned, there are a couple of scenes I don’t think the Humane Society would have cleared. But it’s a film about ranching, after all.

Halloween is easily the best night of the year in our neighborhood. It’s like living in an 80s movie. I got a counter to keep track of the number of kids that came through.

thumbs up

I don’t know what mailing list I got put on, but I’ve now received several free issues of Architectural Digest and Bassmaster.

Nick Cave says something I’ve often heard from Christians:

Freedom finds itself in captivity. Disorder, randomness, chaos and anarchy are where the imagination goes to die, or so I’ve found.

So it is with matters of faith and the freeness of belief. I experience a certain vague ‘spiritualness’ within the world’s chaos, an approximate understanding that God is implicit in some latent, metaphysical way, yet it is only really in church - that profoundly fallible human institution - that I become truly spiritually liberated. I am swept up in a poetic story that is both true and imaginative and fully participatory, where my spiritual imagination can be both contained and free. The church may appear to some as small, even stifling, its congregation herdlike, yet within its architecture, music, litanies, and stories, I find a place of immense spiritual recognition and liberation.

Cave appears to be talking about art–but I’ve heard this deployed in other contexts as well. My question, whenever I hear this is always: Do you mean something like the creative freedom that can be found, say, within the sonnet form? Or do you mean that true freedom can only be found within the rule of the Church? The former I can get with. The latter sounds quite Orwellian to those of us who aren’t Christians. Again, I believe I understand what is meant by most of the people who say this sort of thing. The phrasing, though, makes some of us twitchy.

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:

After:

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.