POSITIVELY FRIGHTFUL

Some people go all out

Halloween is a fun holiday with costumes, masks, jack-o-lanterns, treats and tricks. And candy. Lots of candy. When I was a kid we had two full evenings of trick or treating, giving us lots of time to hit other neighborhoods – or our own more than once. We dressed up, went begging in bunches door to door, and sorted out the chocolates from the suckers and the Good & Plenty. My neighborhood didn’t give out a lot of chocolate and many a mask was a brown paper bag with a face drawn on and a pair of eye hole cutouts.

By the time my kids were trick or treating, their begging hours were pretty much reduced to one short evening, everyone seemed to have a costume and the parents had to sort the candy in case there was anything – ‘unusual’ in it.

Costumes were my specialty. I loved helping my girls put something fun together. We all love to dress up. And carve pumpkins.

Would you believe the original jack o'lantern was - a turnip?

POSITIVE NOISE

by Mauverneen

I’ve been house/dog sitting for one of my daughters these past two weeks while she and her husband are out of town. I often dog sit for another daughter who only lives a few minutes away and it’s easy enough to just go back and forth to let the dogs out but this one lives about an hour away, so I’ve moved in for the two weeks.

There is a small lake behind the house, and it is the Red Roof Inn for the migrating geese. They are noisy birds, squawking and honking when they land and when they take off and when they are just sitting on the water. I wonder if they ever sleep. They are making noise when I fall asleep and making noise when I wake up in the morning. But I enjoy it. In a way it’s comforting.  

Positively Open and Shut

by Mauverneen





Paris

I have a fascination with doors and windows. I’m not sure what that says about me but whatever the reason, they are the objects of a number of my photos.



Doorways are portals to other rooms, other lives, other worlds. Doors invite. They beckon. They ask to be opened. But they can also hide things. Who knows what lies on the other side of a closed door? Some doors are beautifully carved, some colorfully painted, some plain and utilitarian, with peeling paint, scuff marks and dents. But they keep the flies out and the dog in. And we open and close them without thinking and get berated if we leave them open. You’ll let the cold in or the heat out and you weren’t born in a barn, were you?

Positively Tuesday

by Mauverneen

Well it’s Positively Tuesday again. The one day a week to try and not say anything negative. At all. All day.

I came up with the idea because I was tired of hearing so much complaining – nobody likes their job, or their boss, or their co-workers, or their weight, or their hair, or their neighbors. The news is depressing, the looming election does nothing but get everybody riled up, and of course nobody is ever happy with the weather. It’s either too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry.