Sunday, October 07, 2018

Summer in October

I attended the Fall 2018 edition of The Writers Showcase at the Olde Brick Theater in Scranton last night. It was a good turnout, and I got to catch up with some old friends. The readings ran until a little after 8:30, but I wound up hanging out and talking with my friends until nearly 10:00. Some of the things I heard - stories told to me in confidence - left me feeling like Hamlet's father's ghost.

But that I am forbid 
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word 
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, 
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, 
Thy knotted and combined locks to part, 
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine. 

Speaking of which, there's a dead porcupine in front of my house, hit by a car. Poor woodland critter was probably forced out of its normal territory by the almost-complete local road project. It's been many years since I've seen a porcupine of any sort, alive or dead. There are quills blowing all over the street adjacent to the one with the dead fellow. I've never seen quills before, either. I picked a few up out of the road - they're clean, and I figured nobody else needed them right now.

Porcupine quills, approximately 3-5 cm (1.25 - 2 inches) long

It was a warmish night last night, no jacket required, which is unusual from the end of the first week of October in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Today is unseasonably warm, in the 80s with high humidity - weather more like summer than fall. This is apparently the new normal, and conditions are expected to get much worse as time goes by.



an IPCC special report on the impacts of 
global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels
 and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways,
 in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change,
 sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty

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