10/31/11 -- Halloween

I remember trick or treating several neighborhoods every year when I was growing up in Amherst, NH. Not nearly my favorite holiday, but it was cool to get goodies from folks. I used to spread the haul out on the kitchen counter when I got home, gobble up the good stuff (like Milky Ways and Milk Duds), then put the crap candy away for later. Sick? My stomach felt like five pounds of poop in a three pound bag. Awesome!

Someone somewhere along the way told parents that a nut was putting razor blades in candy bars, and kids were not allowed to go to neighbors homes.

To my knowledge, the razor blade thing never happened anywhere in this country. Not once.

But scared folks bought into it and now Halloween is an even shittier holiday. No neighborliness. No strangers saying, "Hi!" (Hi!). No fun.

I have no idea what we can do tomorrow to make Halloween special again. I'm all ears.

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I do think being kind to each other is a good start (fucking cliche machine you are, Sweeney)

And being aware of how tenuous our national way of life is. That's true not just right now, but many times over the last two hundred plus years. Our freedoms have been threatened almost constantly since America was founded. Plenty of books to read about that subject. We've always come through. Not always for the better, but the USA has always been a city on a hill for the world to live up to.

Today, the day before Halloween, I'm gonna watch Pats-Steelers go at it hard and clean and think about how awesome this country is, warts and all. I love it more than ever, no matter what should happen.

In other nations, corruption and bullshit is expected. Here in the States....well, we don't go for that shit.