Ray Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree”

Stephanie Pouliotte writes for Geek’d-Out! on the origins and various renditions of Ray Bradbury’s classic Halloween story: It’s an important holiday after all, one that allows us to freely explore our obsession with the macabre and the unexplained, to experience “the rawness and nearness and excitement of death” as Bradbury put it. And children, he … Read moreRay Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree”

“When Death Comes”

When death comeslike the hungry bear in autumn;when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;when death comeslike the measle-pox when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:what is it going to … Read more“When Death Comes”

Drawing the Death Card at Sky Meadow

Just returned from the Spring 2024 Metamodern Spirituality Lab gathering at Sky Meadow, a spiritual retreat center in Vermont’s beautiful Northeastern Kingdom. The Lab has been a wonderful immersion in Serious Play; restoring an abandoned medicine garden to its original form and purpose, designing and enacting an elaborate welcoming ceremony/pilgrimage for the weekend participants, another … Read moreDrawing the Death Card at Sky Meadow

Thanksgiving/Day of the Dead in Cicely, Alaska (Northern Exposure, 1992)

The good people of Cicely, Alaska enjoy their eccentric, Day of the Dead-inflected version of Thanksgiving in this scene from Northern Exposure (1992). As explained by Marilyn Whirlwind (Elaine Miles), the indigenous people of Cicely do not regard the orthodox Thanksgiving as a day of celebration. In fact, they carry a lot of ancestral anger … Read moreThanksgiving/Day of the Dead in Cicely, Alaska (Northern Exposure, 1992)