Now begins November, the time of public rotting pumpkins.

I was at a gathering of idealists with an open mike time, for suggestions about how any one of us could help with the great healing. Many suggestions were ripped from the headlines, from what was generally and loudly being worried about.

One woman stood on the grass we were gathered on and said anyone can compost for the Earth by burying some vegetable matter wherever. Not to dig up and use on one's own garden, but to improve that soil right there, helping to make up for our general human soil overuse and scraping away.

Burying has a thematic relationship to Hallowe'en. So one might start a tiny tradition of burying the jack-o-lantern rather than letting it rot on the porch.

Do it with a child and the child later remembers it as part of Hallowe'en, and as an adult does it with a child, and we start to hallow the soil a bit as part of our all Hallow's Eve after action.