So glad El Dia de Los Muertos(Day of the Dead series of events) carries on and on and on – this year best ever, biggest, longest pagent I’ve seen! Wonderful altars remain yet one more day. Take pics if you want to save the visuals. I’ve seen only a few yet enjoyed them a great deal. Putting names of my own dear departed on the tree at the Arts Council, adding my Mom and Dad and Wayne’s Grandma Neal and my Cousin Barbara to a Rosita’s Cantina set created in Jungle Vibes’ window wherein skeletons played poker for most of a month – one shooting another. A LIVELY scene?

Best for me this year was the procession (which is because I missed the poetry of remembrance, which I dearly love). Meeting friends carrying mementos of recently departed friend, Rich Samson, seeing organizer, Margie Helm’s face light way up as she gave closing remarks from the stage outside the Arts Center with St. Vincent’s Abraham Solar in white face. Walking for blocks (just me!) behind the living percussion instruments, the Aztec dancing women, as they returned to their car; all those seed pods clicking. So joyful! Am glad I was able to dance with them at an Earth Day event in May sponsored by Evelina Molina and her North Bay Institute for Green Technology in Santa Rosa. A bit like Greek folk dance, the movements aren’t difficult and the energy is fantastic! I get to be an Aztec dancer!

Of course, every All Hallow’s Eve, we all relish the little kids in costume. Delighted by a hand-made marionette costume, its girl happy to demonstrate how the puppet dances, young girl with a clear umbrella with streaming “rain,” little girl bumble bee just too cute for words. Delight, amazement, on and on into the night. It doesn’t stop for many hours these last few years. Trick or Treat Trails downtown fade off into the dusk to be blended into endless parties on D Street, B Street, side streets brimming with happy, decorated bodies, candy bags and wild and wilder Halloween displays, often taking up entire front yards, entire interiors of houses full of happy imbibers and munchers. An old trick but a good one, a mound of “dirt” tasting suspiciously like brownie mix – at a house guarded by a young green genie who granted wishes. My friend, Barbara Arhon, asked for 2 million dollars but the Genie said that was a bit too much, but I recalled when as a child I asked my sleeping Mother, “I’d like a million dollars and a large box of chocolates please,” the Genie, like my slumbering Mum, said “Well, OK, yes.” She had said “Yes, dear,” so it happened if only in my imagination.

Never fails to amaze that even in this (decade?) of turmoil and strife, Petalumans come out in huge brigades in search of good times…the force is with us. Now let’s face off with the Holidaze and do it with good will – and lots of style.

Santa arrives by boat November 28th at the Turning Basin – noon?