Halloween Cheers from the English Club

English Club members in masks they made (guess which is me);(upper far right) librarian Alla and PCV Stacey put up a poster with some of the masks.

The English Club was one year old on 19 September. We've held 44 meetings in all, 32 in 2010. We've focused on many themes and events: Winter, MLK and Taras Shevchenko, Valentine's Day, Women's day, Easter, the environment and Earth Day, the Global Village, "We are the World," travel and geography, flags of the world, national pride and national anthems, celebrating English language books, books from Toledo and books we want to buy (and did buy), May in the park, summertime and river days, and now we're back to Fall and turning into winter. On the agenda, Autumn poems and Halloween.

At our 24 October meeting we talked about Halloween, carving pumpkins, dressing in costumes, and “tricks or treating.” Ukraine doesn’t have this ancient Celtic tradition, so the topic fascinates. We also made masks. Fran showed examples of different styles of masks, we chatted about that, then went to work. Stacey, our TEFL volunteer at School #3, a good teacher and creative whiz, helped. We did a pretty good job, leaving a poster for the Library as our Halloween exhibit. We were rewarded with Stacey’s homemade pumpkin pie, a rare and welcome treat.

So the English Club is on to harvest holidays,Thanksgiving, and Christmas. To everything there is a season, and that has characterized our English club meetings, too.

Next week we’ll read from the poetry anthologies in the English book collection, which makes me wonder if we also have Poe. I love the idea of Poe readings for Halloween, like they do at the Boyd County Library in Kentucky, the best of the best libraries in America, thanks to the fantastic work of cuz Amanda Stein. I'll read my mom's poem about "tricks or treating" with Loren. It's always a special time of year, filled with memories of my growing up in Rochester, and my kids and their kids dressing up to go tricks or treating. Now little Philip is carrying on the tradition. So many costumes (many of them homemade by my mom), so much candy, so much wonderment. May the good spirits reign!