h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yesterday I completed a project for the youngun's school. Today I started another project for a neighbour's Christmas show. Today a neighbour brought me some brioches from the neighbourhood bakery in return for our weekly vehicle sharing (one internal combustion engine is more than enough for two families). Tonight I welcomed a goodly number of neighbourhood children (most of whom I either knew by name or at least knew what family they where a part of) and their parents (most of whom I also know). The air was wonderfully calm, so I managed to blanket most of the neighbourhood with my fog machine. It was a wonderful evening ended with some Guinness and Jamieson's and a quiet reading of Mervyn Peake's 'A Reverie of Bone' (in honour of the cow pelvis which formed one half of a particularly tribal looking multi-media Jack-o-lantern this evening).


All in all, it was a wonderful evening of community fun (much like most evenings in this neighbourhood).


I was very saddened and angered by this story I saw when I read the news between the visitors and the Guinness: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2008/10/31/halloween.html

The first sentence is misleading:

'Concern about neighbourhood safety is prompting several groups and communities in Saskatchewan to try to curtail trick-or-treating.'

If you continue to read the story, you learn that in fact the movement seems to be lead by a church group, and the advice from police is the same advice that police departments offered when I was a kid in the Sixties. If the people of Humboldt Saskatchewan, pop. about 5000, are so scared of their neighbors, maybe they should come to Edmonton (over a million in the metropolitan area) and see what community is like. And as for the anti-Hallowe'en church groups, maybe they should realize that what they offer really doesn't appeal to people anymore, if it ever did.

As a footnote, I went to Edmonton's 'Scarecrow Festival', a supposed alternative to trick or treating (or something. I'm not sure what it was trying to be). It was a horrid, cheap, shoddy, tacky, overpriced, flaccid opportunity for small time operators to cash in on single parents, home-schoolers, and a few elementary school classes.


No, give me the community we celebrate here each Hallowe'en (and every other day) before any church groups or indoor regimented 'party' organizers are allowed to steal real community spirit.

I better post this -- my old Toshiba portege is starting to overheat. Anyway, a wonderful Hallowe'en celebration done the old-fashioned way: giving to the children of the community with no thought of a return.h

Have you checked out the movie "Hell House?"

I think it "might" appeal to your suspicion of organized religion...

You've been going back a few months.


I don't believe I've seen Hell House. Unless it was back in my university days which I now only dimly recall.

It's a documentary done about the "haunted house" alternatives some churches offer at Halloween. The upshot is that after showing the viewer the horrors of sinful choices (abortion and the like), the viewer is routed through a "hell" room of horrors, asked to choose to accept Christ as their personal savior, and then find themselves in a room being prayed over (laying on of hands sometimes) and recruited. They had a wonderful interview with Ted Haggard, pre-scandal.

Ah! Yes!


actually, Ah! No! I've not seen it, but I have read about such amateur productions. I seem to remember they become very popular with non-church-going youngsters who spend their time laughing uproariously at the ridiculous displays, get bored, and then go trick-or-treating.


The 'Scarecrow Festival' I mentioned in my original post was not that sort of thing. This was just a feeble attempt to remove the traditional event from its usual venue (the neighborhood) and place it into a 'safe' venue (a building used for agricultural exhibitions situated between a number of busy streets and railway tracks, far from residential areas). It is sort of like, for example, deciding that the World Cup Final would be 'safer' if it took place with only two players per side, in a basement room somewhere with no public seating and no television coverage. And no ball. Or goals. And 27 referees.