My biggest electric Jack O' Lantern, and one of the two last ones I bought, probably in 2018. They used to be in the living room to keep my mom cheered up, as she liked pumpkin lights.
As I start to write this article, it is the day after Halloween. Halloween is a fun US holiday, that is rooted in many traditions brought here by our colonial forbears -- the Scotch-Irish (Ulster Irish people who colonized the Appalachian and Allegheny Mountains) and English colonists in particular brought with them some customs that became Americanized over the centuries, and it's become a fairly big holiday here in the US today.
Halloween has also spread worldwide. I have seen social media posts from friends and acquaintances in places like Norway and Germany, who have gone to Halloween parties. Some social media influencers posted pics of themselves in Halloween costumes.
Although there are some similar folk traditions in non-British and Irish regions -- Friesland's and Northern Germany's Laternelaufen and Austria's Laternenfest being a couple of them (where young people carry lanterns from house to house on St. Martin's Eve, November 11th), most of the Halloween traditions in America came from Scotland, Ireland, and England. German immigrants in the US appear to have adopted the Halloween traditions of their Ulster-Irish, Scottish and English neighbors.
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
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Here in the US, what we now know as Halloween is a combination of a bunch of diverse folk traditions -- Scotch-Irish folk traditions (the idea of putting out lighted turnip and pumpkin lanterns to ward off the spirits of the dead), All Saint's Day (a Catholic holiday that celebrates the saints -- hence the name "All Hallow's Eve"), the UK traditions from All Souls Eve (the night before All Souls Day, when in Victorian Britain young people would go from house to house to ask for "Soul Cakes"), and -- more recently -- the Latin American traditional holiday the Day of the Dead has played a part in Halloween also.
Trick-or-treating developed from some Scotch-Irish and British traditions. The jack-o-lantern pumpkins developed from the older, carved turnip traditions brought over by the Ulster Irish in the 1700's. America's larger pumpkins were adopted as the turnip lantern's replacements.
REAL TRICKS TO 'TRICK OR TREATING'
Some rural areas of 19th Century America saw actual tricks played on Halloween night. My grandfather, who grew up in rural northern Wisconsin, remembered tricks being played on farmers. One farmer work up in the morning to see his wagon had been disassembled, and then reassembled on the top of his barn!
So -- yes, kids, there really was a "trick" in "Trick-or-Treat"!
Boo! One of my electric pumpkins placed in a tree, looking out towards the street.
FREEZING NIGHTS BEFORE HALLOWEEN
This Halloween it was COLD, maybe 33F (+2C). But it was OK otherwise. One problem I was having during the week before Halloween was that I was really tired all the time. I think it was left over from the little sleep I was getting during the period just before the trial we dealt with at work (something I wrote about last week here in my blog).
The lack of good sleep knocked my energy level back a bit.
I also wasn't eating enough good food for more than a week, and I don't think that helped.
The night before Halloween I had a good meal of beef stew, and I went out -- in the COLD -- and put out my electric Jack-o-Lanterns and cleared away a path to my front door (my hedge has grown out a lot over the past couple months). I got the candy in its bowl, set it near the front door, and then got my dancing pumpkin puppet out of the closet, because last year when I left the puppet in the closet one of the trick-or-treaters said "Where's the puppet?"
They even went back to the street so I could get my puppet, and then open the door the right way, with the puppet looking out and saying "Trick Or Treat, give me your candy!" to the kids.
So, this Halloween, I was ready. And so was my dancing pumpkin puppet.
When the last of the trick or treaters had gone, I went out on my bike, riding through the neighborhood armed with my Nikon camera. A house a few blocks away from mine had a really cool display, with a giant skeleton monster that lit up and moved!
Another house in the area had a cool laser display of a spider dropping into its web.
I had maybe 15-18 trick or treaters, in four groups. The last group was a neighbor and his wife, who brought up their young son. I gave candy to the son, and then to the neighbor and his wife. If the parents come up with their kids, I always give some candy to the parents. I don't eat much sugar, really, and I always have candy left over after Halloween, so I have no problem giving the candy away. Also, I think giving the parents a candy bar or two is a good, neighborly thing.
After all, how often do neighbors see each other over something fun like Halloween trick-or-treating?
Finally, my cousin showed up. He still gets some of my mail, which is directed at my mother's estate, because he lives in my mom's old house. I hadn't seen him for a few months, and we talked a lot.
When trick or treating was over, I went for a bike ride around the neighborhood, and took a couple pics of one neighbor's really cool display, with a massive pumpkin monster out front of his house.
Then I went home and inside the house, as by then it was just below freezing.
My Halloween 'treat', which arrived on my porch early Halloween morning. An XHDATA D-328, which cost $15 US, along with another $9 shipping. Not bad for a good performing SW radio with worldwide FM band coverage (64 MHz to 108 MHz) and good MW performance, too! In this pic you can just see the alligator clip that holds my 25 foot / 8 meter indoor wire antenna to the XHDATA's whip antenna. This radio works terrific with an external antenna. Even 3 meters / 9 feet of wire helps bring in SW stations. I have an article in the works on this radio and another XHDATA I got two weeks or so later.
Early in that morning I tuned around on my XHDATA D-328 AM-FM-SW radio, which was delivered early Halloween. The XHDATA is a very cool, inexpensive, and old-school looking radio that I'm writing an article about that I hope to post later on this week.
I was able to hear a MW DX station from Southern Oregon (KAJO 1270, Grants Pass) and some stations out of China and the Far East on SW, by adding a wire to the whip antenna. Adding a MW loop antenna brought in some DX, too. The XHDATA is a fun little radio, and works quite well, considering its size and cost.
RAIN, AND SOME HESSIAN FOOTBALL!
The last couple days it's been 50F (8C?) and rainy, which is a respite from the cold. I have been able to crack open my bedroom window to sleep a little better, without freezing in the process. :-)
Later this morning as I write this there will be an NFL game broadcast from Frankfurt, Germany. As any German knows, Frankfurt is in Hessen, a state in the west-center of Germany. Some of my German ancestors may have been Hessians, although the ones I can actually track, or trace, came from Ansbach in Bayern. In colonial American days most German immigrants, like my German ancestors, were called "Hessians", a holdover term from Revolutionary War days, when the British hired "Hessian" mercenaries (German regiments from Hessen & Bayern) to help them fight the war. After the war, many "Hessian" soldiers stayed on in America, after taking an oath of allegiance to the US. For a few decades afterwards, Americans referred to all German immigrants as "Hessians". I guess the American colonial people back then didn't know their German geography. :-)
Anyway, there will be an NFL game in Frankfurt later on this a.m., which will start about 6 a.m. local time.
Last year there was a similar German NFL game, staged in Munich, where the Seattle Seahawks played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It was a good game, even though Seattle lost. The Tampa Bay quarterback, Tom Brady, played well, and it was the last game on the radio I heard him playing. Brady has since retired. There are some football fans here in the US who don't like Tom Brady, but I am not one of them. The guy was an excellent player, and played well even at age 45 -- showing people that age can be overcome if you dedicate yourself to your health, and to your trade.
This time around, the Frankfurt game is being played by a couple Eastern US teams. It still should be cool to hear on my radio.
Until next time, I hope all who celebrated had a cool Halloween, and all the Catholics had a great All Saints' and All Souls' Day, and my Latin American readers had an OK Dia De Los Muertos.
THIS BLOG REACHES 100K UNIQUE VISITS!!
Last but not least, some time in late November this blog reached the 100,000 visit mark. That means my blog has been viewed, read, or visited 100,000 times since I started blogging in 2015. I know that there are blogs out there that get a lot more visits, but I always feel humbled to know that all of you out there are reading these articles.
The most popular article on this blog is, amazingly enough, the article on Powersound pickups. It's probably because a lot of guitar players who have Ibanez guitars (and there are a LOT of Ibanez fans out there) are aware of Powersounds, which were installed as stock pickups on a lot of Ibanez guitars up until a few years ago. There also is so little information on Powersounds out there -- at least from anyone who uses them and has figured out how to get the most out of them. Apparently my article has fulfilled a service to Powersound pickup guitar owners. :-)
That article alone has been read 7,290+ times.
Some of my other popular articles are my articles on the Realistic DX-375 (5340+ readers), the Realistic DX-370 (3040+ readers) and my article on the Sangean PR-D5 power button issue (3580+ readers). My article on the analog-dial, Realistic DX-350 radio got 3368 readers. The fact that my articles on these radio and guitar pickups could draw so many readers is humbling, really.
I hope some of the articles here have helped you in your DX hobby or guitar hobby, and I hope that the non-hobby articles have still been informative and entertaining. The fact the name of the blog is a bit unusual and difficult to remember probably doesn't help with the stat counts, but I'm leaving it as is. "Interrock" was going to be the name of a band I was going to put together. The "nation" part of the name was going to be a reference to fans of the band. The band, of course, didn't happen. The name, however, was carried forward with this blog.
MYLES GOODWYN OF APRIL WINE, RIP
I shall end this article on a sad note: Canadian 70's-80's rock musician Myles Goodwyn died several days ago of undisclosed causes (he was fighting diabetes). Goodwyn led the pioneering, 70's Canadian rock group April Wine, which was one of the first Canadian groups to benefit from CANCON, the early 1970's Canadian law that stated that 10% of all music played on Canadian radio needed to be of Canadian artists or songwriters. The law was a boon to Canadian musicians, and virtually created the Canadian music industry.
The law led to a 'second wave' of Canadian rock and pop artists like April Wine, that were able to become known not just in Canada, but in the U.S. as well -- all helped by CANCON.
I had a chance to interview Myles Goodwyn in the 1980's. He said that without CANCON, there would probably be no Canadian record labels, or Canadian music publishing. I suppose by today that would be different, but in the early 1970's when CANCON was implemented, there was no Canadian music industry to speak of. That obviously changed through the next three decades or so.
Most American rock fans were unaware of the Canadian rock scene -- which had bands like the Wackers, Mahogany Rush, A Foot In Coldwater, The Dudes, Crowbar, Fludd, Painter, Moxy, Chilliwack, Downchild Blues Band, the Stampeders (who had some cool rock hits), Brother, Brave Belt, Quebec singers like Robert Charlevoix, folksingers like Valdy, and others -- until some of the bands who benefited from CANCON, like April Wine and Rush, began to become popular Stateside. Then the US began to look north.
Here is April Wine's official video for their first big American hit, Roller. It's off First Glance, an album that Goodwyn named that way because he realized that the album would be America's 'first glance' at his band, even though they had several Canadian albums previously -- none of which sold in the US.
This is the opening track from First Glance. I think it got some airplay on KISW Seattle, but don't quote me on that. It should have. The cover shown on the vid is the US LP cover.:
Here is a track called Gimme Love, from one of April Wine's earlier Canadian albums, which was released in the US a couple years before First Glance but got zero airplay, and few, if any, sales.:
This is an 80's FM rock hit by April Wine called Enough Is Enough. I'm sure it got airplay on KISW, which was more rock heavy than a lot of other stations in the US. Myles Goodwyn was able to write rock songs that pop-tinged just enough to be radio-friendly hits.:
I'd like to close this with one of my favorite April Wine songs, Silver Dollar, the closest thing I think they did that sounded like an anthem. It was the last track on First Glance, and I always thought it should have been an FM rock hit. The cover shown on this vid is the Canadian LP cover.:
RIP Mr. Goodwyn. You helped put Canadian rock and roll on the world map. And being half Canadian myself (my mother was born in Edmonton), I think that is a good thing. :-)
I don't have any new cat pictures, but my Squeakers is doing better. She still wants me to watch her eat. She doesn't like football -- when I took a radio in to listen to a game while watching her eat she wouldn't eat. Doesn't like my acoustic guitar, either. I already know she dislikes bagpipes intensely. :-)
But here's a pic of a rarity: A Thanksgiving holiday decoration! They're rare as hen's teeth -- or should I say turkey's teeth? A neighbor put this one up last year, and I never got a pic of it. This year, I managed to get one. So cool to see a holiday decoration for a holiday that doesn't seem to get many of them.
I hope to get another article posted before Christmas.
Until then,
Peace.
C.C., November 1st and 6th, and December 10th, 2023.
Obviously, I was delayed in posting this. I had some car issues, and also didn't feel well for a couple of days after Thanksgiving. But, here it is. With some extra content as well.
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