Charlie Brown, The Great Pumpkin Has Been Found
By Donna Chapman he fall harvest of the pumpkin patch has begun, yes Charlie Brown the Great Pumpkin has been found. The Jack ‘0’ Lantern of all time weighed in at one ton in Topsfield, MA this week and is currently the record holder sitting in a throne of glass waiting to be professionally carved! This news sent me on my quest for the great pumpkin. Every year about this time I head over to Estes Berry Farm and give my sister and brother-in-law a hand in the fields of pumpkins. Which leads me to this article, I never realized the different colors, shapes and sizes could be so daunting! To think we just seemed to plant the seeds and here we go picking them up, and sending them off to market. After loading two or three trailers you have your daily workout. Time is of the essence during pumpkin season. Fall means frost, which can damage the pumpkins left on the vine. Diseases can kill a crop of pumpkins, which seemed to be the issue last year for many farmers and created the pumpkin shortage. Not to worry this year a lot of local growers have a great crop of pumpkins this year in all sizes and shapes. We have so many vast varieties to eat and carve Rachel Raye would be proud. Starting with a soft pink shade to support breast cancer awareness, small orange pie pumpkin (you know the “Chucky” kind) that you can cook and use in your muffins, pies, and cookies, to the gross green pimpled variety, white baby boos and little bears. The names alone send you a little Halloween message. Check out your local farm stand, or farm for your pick of the crop. Dare to be different and look for a colored pumpkin that fits your style. Paint it, carve it or just group them with a lot of mismatched, odd shaped varieties and enjoy the beauty and bounty of the fall harvest. This crop certainly shows a unique variety to decorate with for the serious pumpkin buyer, these names speak for themselves; Red October, Moonshine, Speckled Hound, Knuckle Head, Jack Be Little, and Orange Smoothie. Speaking of Orange Smoothie, try this pumpkin smoothie recipe you can make with just a blender in your kitchen or dorm;
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Pumpkin Spice Smoothie 1 banana ¾ cup vanilla yogurt ½ cup pumpkin (canned) ¼ cup oatmeal 1 tablespoon honey pinch of cinnamon and ground ginger Blend all ingredients together until smooth. If needed add milk or water. You can add or adjust honey to your sweetness level.
Arts&Features
Zanne Langlois & the Portland Poetry Scene By Tiffany Crockett same time. Connection: we all share a common interest:
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nother week of poetry and interviewing the hidden gems I find in the Portland area. Recently I had the honor of sitting with Zanne Langlois, a local poet, who has competed nationally in poetry contest and slams. She is the current Champion of Champions of the Cantab Slam in Cambridge and has to defend her title on Oct 10th. Zanne also has competed in Women of the
poetry. Resonance: poems evoke a strong emotional response so, a bunch of people listening to poems together are likely to be feeling the same thing at the same time. Vulnerability: there’s not much out there more vulnerable than reading your poetry in front of a bunch of people. Trust: When you get off stage after doing a vulnerable poem about some feeling / experience that you feel like only you have known, someone comes up to you “I feel like spoken word creand tells you that they’ve ates a situation wherepeople experienced the same who might otherwise never thing.“ spoken to one another can The following poem love and be loved, even it it’s is from Zanne’s chapbook, in 3 minute increments.” Birthmarks. Birthmarks for me, speaks about an entering and departing life that has taken place in Zanne’s life. I really enjoy her idea of how a birthmark comes to be. In the third paragraph she says that a birthmark is when one soul stains another when brushing by.
BIRTHMARK
In our grief, we are apt to ascribe Traits of the recently departed to the newly arrived. The baby has her uncle’s eyes. He used to look just like that when he was perplexed. Her laugh is a more buoyant version of his. Worlds in Denver as a storm poet, has made it to finals for both indys and nationals team for the past two years, Every time I have heard her read I am left with my mouth wide open and my soul moved. Zanne moved here about 15 years ago, she is an English teacher at Falmouth High School, and is the adviser to school Poetry Club, and a damn good poet. After teaching for a bit she decided to take a year off and get her Masters Education at Harvard Graduate School. What kept Zanne going while at Harvard was the weekly readings at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge. Every Wednesday she would take four hours off from school and go to what, for her, was a church like experience. At first, Zanne suffered performance anixety when performing at Cantab, and her hand would shake when holding her poetry. It was that moment where she started to experiment using her memory to recite poetry rather than bringing her poem on paper to the stage. In 2003, Zanne moved back to Maine and slowly but surely found another poetry community. Zanne currently reads Tuesday nights at Bull Feeney’s, Sunday’s at Dobra Tea with Rhythmic Cypher, occasionally at Mama’s Crowbar on Mondays and then sometimes makes the mad dash to Cantab in Massachusetts. When asking Zanne to touch on whatever else her heart desired, she decided to elaborate on the poetry community. “The poetry community, though not without its share of small dramas, is one of the tightest communities I’ve been part of. I think it was to do with the fact that all the five conditions necessary for intimate connection between people are met in an open reading.” She went on to further describe these 5 conditions, “Proximity: we’re all in the same room at the
They missed meeting on earth by mere months. And while I’m not usually a believer in traveling spirits, I am soothed by the thought that maybe their souls met in passing. Perhaps the one who left, having traveled too far down the road to turn around suddenly remembered he had all our joy tucked in the pocket of his overcoat, and seeing her going the other way, handed it over, saying “Here, bring this back with you. I didn’t mean to leave with it.” And he gave her as much of himself as she could carry. I think of these passed-on attributes as birthmarks: Stains one soul leaves on the other as it brushes by. I suspect it is nothing as supernatural as that, but perhaps no less magical. Some traits are immediately apparent— the shape of the eyes, the shade of the hair— while others are latent, lurking just under the skin. These are the traits we nurture into fruition; because we look for them, they are there. Still others we carve out with the sharp edge of our longing. Our grief is a hollowed out spot in our hearts exactly the shape of the one who has left us. We feel this space echo with loss, and we look for something to fill it, and if we have to stretch and tug to make what we find fit, so be it. After all, the resulting shape is a thing of beauty. This is an inheritance— perhaps welcome, perhaps not. Some of it, a gift to her, some of it, a gift to us, but all of it, a gift handed over on a road where one walked into darkness and the other walked into light.
10 • October 9, 2012 •
Beacon