Sunday – Sunny but cold
It is a chilly 22 degrees F in New Ipswich this Sunday morning. A heavy killing frost covered the lawn. Yesterday I brought in the Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans) which I will attempt to overwinter in the house. It is the last of the plants that I kept outside over the summer. I ignored chores today, but did work on the three online puzzles, Wordle, NYT Mini-crossword, Connections and Waffle. I bombed on Connections which is often the case since it requires insight into the designer’s mindset. The attic was vermin-free for a change, no dead mice for the crows.
Armistice Day
In 1954, President Eisenhower signed a bill adopting the name Veterans Day instead of Armistice Day. I recommend reading this Substack posting by Doktor Zoom – Fine Here Is Your Bloody Kurt Vonnegut, On An Armistice Day When There’s No Armistice In Sight. It includes this passage from Breakfast of Champions from Kurt Vonnegut, one my my favorite authors.
So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two. I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not. So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things. What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is.
An interesting side note, Vonnegut was born on Armistice Day, November 11, 1922. Besides Breakfast of Champions I would recommend that people read Slaughterhouse Five and also Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Happy Armistice Day.
Temple Town Hall Jam
There is a monthly acoustic music jam held once a month, on a Sunday at the Temple Town Hall in Temple, NH from 14:00 – 17:00. The jam today was very well attended and I was glad to see that Dave and Ellen Hedman were in attendance. They were the founders of the Monadnock Mountain Music Jam which was originally held at Silver Ranch in Jaffrey, NH. The current venue is run under the auspices of the Temple Recreation Department.
