Armistice Day

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind"

-Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions

One of my favorite Vonnegut quotes. World War I is long over. I wonder if the veterans of World War II heard the voice of God at the end of the war. Or maybe just the scream of the atom echoed in their ears at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

November!

November must be my second favorite month, right after October. From my desk at work I can only see a window if the manager across the hall has his office door open. So when 5 o'clock rolled around and I happened to steal a glance of the world, I was shocked to see it was almost pitch black outside. WHY MUST WE SCREW AROUND WITH DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME?! But when I walked out the lobby door I was greeted with the slight smell of a wood fire and the cool dark night. It was then I realized I love November. As I drove home the full moon hung low over the small towns, lighting up the grey autumn clouds. The tangle of bare branches in the pale light. Most trees having yielded their leaves to the wind on the weekend. Straight out of an Andrew Wyeth painting.