Last Day of October

For some, the most salient thing about today is that it is HALLOWEEN! And its being Halloween does make me want to reread Harry Behn's wonderful poem that begins, "Tonight is the night when dead leaves fly/like witches on switches across the sky."

But for me the most salient thing about today is that it is the last day of the month of October. Tomorrow, November first, I will begin a NEW LIFE, as I do on the first day of each month: I will leap into new regimens of fitness, frugality, and productive work, regimens that will most likely (if the past is any predictor of the future) peter out in a few days, but will still leave me with all kinds of accomplishments I would never have had otherwise.

The last day of the month is significant for me, too. This is the last hurrah for October, the last chance to accomplish whatever I can of all that I meant to do when that new life began thirty days ago. October can still be salvaged! It is not too late!

So today I am going to:
1) Do the FINAL revisions on my paper on the teen novels of Rosamond Du Jardin and send it off to the Children's Literature Association Quarterly
2) Put finishing touches on the talk on "Truth and Children's Literature" that I'm giving this afternoon as part of DePauw's week-long Arts Fest, whose theme this year is "Art and Truth"
3) Make some notes for myself in the aftermath of my talk on artistic integrity at Marquette last Friday so that I can have another frantic burst of revision on the talk before I give it again in some other venue
4) Write up reviews of three children's picture books for the Children's Literature website
5) Deal with accumulated emails and otherwise clear my desk for tomorrow's NEW LIFE!