Turning to Scrapple

“A cornmeal porridge infused with rich, piggy goodness.”

-Anon

It's definitely getting that late fall look out there.

The day before Halloween. Sun below the horizon until 7:30. I reckon all that changes in two days when we "fall back" an hour. I love the change, maybe going back to my early days as a lawyer when I worked all the time. Panama City sits almost on the line between central and eastern time, so deep winter sunsets came at 4:30 or so, even that far south. Some primeval part of me always associated stopping work with the setting sun, so I'd make myself call it a day closer to six than to seven or 7:30.

Peg dislikes the time change because it means driving home in the dark, and she leaves so early for the hospital that she may not see the sun all day by December. The solution to that is to work less---I think that's coming, or has already arrived.

Speaking of Halloween, what malignancy in this country has changed the source of that fun, chilling fear? When I was a kid, it was all about ghosts, the dead rising and walking the earth, forces of nature that are a part of us to the extent we'll one day be the dead ourselves.

Memento mori, as the hat a lady wore at yesterday's mediation reminded. Or isn't "memento mori" a thing, a reminder of one's inevitable demise? If so, was her hat playing that role? I'm a little confused.

Anyway, this morning's paper included a story asking the question of whether Halloween decorations have become too scary.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/style/halloween-decorations-scary.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE8.Sske.BSIP4xERy8dm&smid=url-share

It seems there's less emphasis on encounters with the afterlife than the gory means of sending someone there, often with a healthy dose of sado-masochism thrown in for good measure. Maybe now that we've banished death, trading wakes and funerals for "celebrations of life", the old Disney Haunted House variety of scary doesn't resonate. In my own life I've observed family sitting in the kitchen for hours at a time drinking and watching slasher movies, as if watching someone cower and suffer might give them something to feel, however ersatz. All part of the national illness.

A little while ago I realized I'd run out of granola, and decided to take a run at cooking the scrapple sitting open in the fridge before it spoiled. Of course, one can't ever be sure if scrapple's still edible by aroma, given that it gives off its own peculiar smell emanating from all the parts of the pig that were unfit for a hot dog.

Here's how properly cooked scrapple should appear, if you were to order it down in Harrisburg or Lancaster.

Crunchy on the outside, a little gooey in the middle; with a little ketchup, it's nature's perfect breakfast food.

Or it should be, if done right. We've had a chronic problem with our store-bought scrapple falling apart in the pan or the air fryer, an apparent consequence of Wegman's practice of freezing the stuff. This morning I figured that maybe with a little vegetable oil heated to the cusp of bursting into flames, and a covering of panko crumbs, things might go differently.

I was wrong about that. The hot oil just dissolved the stuff into a soupy, oily sludge. The panko crumbs started to pop like popcorn and launch all over the countertops and the chef. The experiment could only be called a success to the extent it effectively ruled out trying to cook scrapple this way.

Naturally, I ate it anyway. The first stirrings of my violated GI tract promise an interesting morning ahead.

My Facebook feed reminded me that this time last year Peg and I were steaming into the harbor at Patmos, with a day of hiking up to the Monastery of St. John the Theologian to follow. Seeing the photos left me missing P (although she only left the house a couple hours ago), missing the Aegean, and most of all missing those last fleeting days before darkness fell over the country, perhaps for good. I laughed when we crawled into the taxi in Athens the morning after the election to ride to the airport, and the radio on cue began playing "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by REM. It was beyond my imagination just how bad it would become, or how soon. To pull up another overused song lyric, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.