The October Country

JoeDaddy September 30, 2018, 3:50 PM

The best month!

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Dr. Jay September 30, 2018, 3:55 PM

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond . . . nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”

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rabbit tobacco September 30, 2018, 6:07 PM

I had a friend who believed you needed moonshine just like you need sunshine.

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bob sykes October 1, 2018, 5:13 AM

Moonshine is fine, but I prefer bourbon.

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BillH October 1, 2018, 7:48 AM

Yankee talk. Here in the deepest south November’s best. Hell, we’re forecast for 90° highs and that delightful southern humidity as far into October as the eye can see. I will admit the days get shorter and the nights get longer just like everywhere else in the mid-latitudes.

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ghostsniper October 1, 2018, 7:57 AM

That’s because you haven’t had the right kind yet Bob.

Yes, fall is starting. As in, the leaves are FALLing.
Not robustly yet, that will be a few more weeks, but still.
My Stihl blower is tuned, gassed and ready and has had a few minor workouts so far.
It’s the sycamores that cause the most grief cause their leaves are so big.
Big enough to trip over. Or, if rained on, surfboarded across the deck.
They are jaggy on the edges, much like their relative the maples, so they get hung up in the cracks between the deckboards, too big to fit under the bottom rung of the railing without a direct full speed assault. Stack 3 or 4 sycamore leaves together and you have a problem that requires effort, like maybe a boot in it’s ass.

By mid Nov I’ll have all the leaves on 1-1/2 acres of our property that is lawned stacked up in 2 or 3 huge piles. I’m talking 5′ high by 20′ in diameter piles. Because of the overhanging branches and not wanting to burn the lawn I can’t burn. So I turn the blower end for end, yank the little pipe and install the big one, and start mulching them leaves. That takes 2 days. I do not install the bagger and just blow the mulch all over the lawn. When that’s done I break out my Harley with blades – my Craftsman lawn tractor with dual blades powered by a 22 hp V2 Honda engine. Yeah, it sounds like a Harley too. Barump-a-rump…. Then I go back n forth over and over reducing that mulch to molecular size. Yeah, over the winter when not covered by snow the lawn has a dark brown hue rather than the light brown most people have but that mulch is breaking down and come spring next year it will start feeding those wakening grass blades and by May I’ll have to break out that Harley with blades again. This is our 13th winter here and we love every minute of it, as long as there is propane in the tank, stacked hardwood in the yard, and the larder is packed to the rafters.

One of the cool things about snow is while sitting around the firepit on Christmas eve on vertical log “stools” you can just sit your brew right down in it and it stays frosty – the minus 30 degree air helps too – but after you’re 13th one it don’t really matter cause that’s when the good stuff comes out of the crawl. Yeah, moon in a glass gallon bottle slammed with marachino cherries 2 months prior. DaWgEeZ!!!!

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bob sykes September 30, 2021, 5:18 PM

Three years on. I am open to trying good moonshine.

Yes. Sitting by a fire in the snow, letting your brew chill down, your life long girl next to you…

You got it, ghostsniper.

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Jack October 1, 2018, 8:24 AM

I love October and November. The earth finally receives a break from the stifling heat and the deer seasons begin to open, the best time in all of creation to enjoy a chilly morning sunrise and watch the earth come alive. Even with a bit of cold it’s a comforting time.

After November, I want it to be early May again when the pompano begin their runs.

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JiminAlaska October 1, 2018, 9:20 AM

Last night I dropped a friend off at the airport in Fairbanks, she’s returning to Japan. Driving back home during the first hour of the first day of October I noticed the aurora dancing overhead and my Jeep’s thermometer moving 2 or 3 degrees above or below freezing as the road’s elevation changed with the terrain.

Back home I increased the draft on my banked wood fire in the stove upstairs, went out and snapped a few shots of the Northern Lights dancing overhead, came back in, opened the doors on my Vermont Casting’s Defiant stove, and poured myself a shot of Jameson’s as a nightcap, sat in the dark watching the flames dance.

One October’s my birthday and I tipped my glass to the four score years behind me, life’s been good and Octobers are grand up here on top of the world.

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ghostsniper October 1, 2018, 10:22 AM

HB, JA!

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LadyBikki September 30, 2021, 2:17 PM

While I love fall, with its dance of colors…ruby, burgundy, saffron and orange, it is not my time of year.
Born in December, winter is my season.
Fallow fields, their rippled furrows glazed in ice, and trees that have shed their glory, sleeping deep.
Frosted moon, stars glittering in an ebony sky and an occasional wind swept cloud.
Short days and blissfully long nights.
Blanton’s bourbon by the fire pit.
Yes, winter has my heart.

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gwbnyc September 30, 2021, 3:04 PM

Thirty Seconds Over Sullivan County, NY October ‘19

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3838565346fec5c2f19d138c1c2c98d4e51b6e8eeed5da18327d1a02eb4cd76f.jpg

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Terry September 30, 2021, 7:14 PM

What are we flying in? Looks pretty interesting.

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- Vanderleun September 30, 2021, 9:08 PM
  
  I might be thinking Confederate Air Force WWII bomber bombardier seat.
  
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  - Vanderleun September 30, 2021, 9:09 PM
    
    Actually, the “Thirty seconds” word combo makes the WWII bomber guess closer.
    
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- COL B October 1, 2021, 6:59 AM
  
  Looks like the Collins Foundation’s B-24 Liberator “Witchcraft”. Last B-24 flying in the world. I took a flight in her from Stinson Field in San Antone to Temple, Texas. The bombardier position requires one to lay on your belly with one’s chest on a short padded stool to use the bomb site.
  
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  - gwbnyc October 1, 2021, 7:29 AM
    
    the video shows the prop spinners low out of the leftside window. if it’s a 24, I believe they’d be shown high, or not at all due to the depressed camera angle.
    
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- gwbnyc October 1, 2021, 7:18 AM
  
  A B-17, kept local to NE, I *think*. I have an old pal involved in such efforts.He flew for awhile with a C-47 crew, the aircraft’s provenance taken to D-Day. Decked out in original scheme w/invasion stripes.
  
  He has other adventures.
  
  The foto is a screen shot from the brief video I have, I mailed it to V’der Leun some months ago.
  
  shot with an iphone.
  
  Norden sights cost about 75K each, I saw one in a NYC fleamarket (where I once purchased a Luger) for maybe $300.00.
  
  ∞

PA Cat September 30, 2021, 3:27 PM

My grandmother used to recite a poem by Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885) round about this time of year:
O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather.

When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless, vagrant,
And golden-rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers hour by hour,
October’s bright blue weather.

O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October’s bright blue weather.

Jackson is an interesting writer. She was born in Amherst, MA, which explains the New England-y imagery in the poem. After her first husband was killed in an accident in 1863, she moved to Colorado seeking a cure for her tuberculosis. There she met her second husband, a railroad executive. Jackson became an activist on behalf of the Ponca, Sioux, and other American Indian tribes during her years living out West. Her poem may be typical of the nineteenth century in its emphasis on the joys of friendship as well as nature (Hunt was a close friend of Emily Dickinson, who had also grown up in Amherst), but it still catches the atmosphere of a New England autumn.

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TC September 30, 2021, 8:00 PM

I love that book…

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Margot October 2, 2021, 8:46 AM

October’s Heaven Scent

I hope heaven’s like October
‘Cause, October, you’re the one
Who gives us skies of indigo
That greet the autumn sun.
A collage of fallen leaves
Tumbling through a wood,
Stirring up that smell of fall
That makes me feel so good.
And a patch of ripened pumpkins
To make a million pumpkin pies
Or friendly jack-o-lanterns
With glowing mouths and eyes.
I hope heaven’s like October,
The air just has that feel
Of wishes and remembering
And makes them seem so real.
If heaven is like October
There’ll be a gentle storm
But I’ll have a cozy house
And fire to keep me warm.
I’ll hear a lonely whistle blow
From a train way down the track,
If heaven’s like October,
Then I can live with that.

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gwbnyc October 4, 2021, 6:35 AM

the aircraft:

https://www.eaa.org/eaa/events-and-experiences/aluminum-overcast-eaa-b-17-bomber-tour

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gwbnyc October 4, 2021, 6:40 AM

NTSB report of the Collins crash:

https://cdn.planeandpilotmag.com/2021/04/Report_ERA20MA001_100356_4_14_2021-1_00_18-PM.pdf

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pbird October 12, 2022, 9:15 AM

https://youtu.be/JyDZ_2r91ss

remember this?

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jwm October 12, 2022, 10:52 AM

Autumn in here the Southland is a much more subtle affair. If you’re coming from the East, you can miss it the first couple of years you’re here. It whispers in the smell of the mornings, the deepening gold light in the afternoon, and the thinning heat of mid-day. The ocean water is still warm from summer, and surfing the deep green autumn swells rolling in through the thin fog is like flying on a sheet glass roller coaster. Today, this Wednesday, is all of that.

JWM

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TrangBang68 October 12, 2022, 2:24 PM

That crazy, funked out poet Gil Scott Heron wrote:

And now it’s winter
Come on, sing if you know the words
Seemed like winter in America
A time when all of the healers done been killed
Or been betrayed, say
People know that something’s wrong
Everybody oughta know winter
Seemed like winter in America
The truth is there ain’t nobody fighting
Because, well nobody knows what to save
Brother, save your soul
Lord knows it’s winter in America
The Constitution, a noble piece of paper
With free society
Well, they struggled but they died in vain
And now democracy is ragtime on the corners
On the cord, hoping it’d rain
Yes, he’s been a-hopin’ for some rain
But it just don’t look like rain

Cousin Gil was afraid of white bread Tricky Dick Nixon, but the sons of Bull Connor on the left are ushering in “winter in America”

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The October Country

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