Happy Halloween

It's Halloween! And my dad's birthday too--happy birthday pops! He says he wants to dress up and go down to Madison WI's famously wild State Street Halloween festivities because they are always wildest when it falls on a Saturday. Thinking about his plans reminded me about a Halloween many years ago wherein my sister Angelica and I drove in from Milwaukee just for this purpose. We dressed up as Sailor Moon and Sailor Jupiter because we watched it every day back then. Mom sewed our skirts for us! We went down to the State Street madness with Dad who was wearing his George Bush mask. At some point he was surrounded and carried off by a group of undergraduates and we never saw him again. It was probably a Saturday night Halloween.

Here in Brussels we woke up to a very appropriately spooky fog over the city, perfect for Halloween. Yesterday we had off for All Saints Day, this being a very Catholic kind of place. We took a day trip to see Ghent; more on that later. I am not sure what actually happens for Halloween--it is not such a big deal here as in the States. Some people have spiderwebs and pumpkins out and I've heard from neighbors that children do trick or treat so I have some candy ready for that. Miles brought his Chlorr of the Mask, er, mask to Brussels with us and he's going to creep people out with that again this year.

Last night Phil and I went to see Vijay Iyer at Bozar. He played old stuff and new stuff and closed the program with two pieces dedicated to fighting global fascism: a version of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" going into a tense "Imagine." I listened to his album Uneasy for a solid 14 months starting in January 2025. I can't say it got me through it because it didn't and obviously I am here now. But it was the closest thing to what was going on and there were days when I didn't want to hear anything else. I've never heard him solo before.