Words by Grace E Hall

Thanksgiving (arguably the best time of the year: feasting and happiness, fall weather and everything) is here.  Please enjoy a yummy Pie and Turkey; for I will be enjoying some too and subsequently will not have a blog post.   I'm thankful for all my followers this Thanksgiving and all the other things God has given me in my life.  Is there something you are especially thankful for?  If you would like, feel free to share in the comments.   Whether eating cranberry sauce or stuffing, glistening boiled ham, a pudding alight with dancing flames and set amid a wreath of holly, or participating in a simple moment of gratitude, happy thanksgiving!

Snow is great, even though it is at this time of year a very obscure sort of concept, a thing which is used as an advertisement on coffee-shops and candy-wrappers long before it becomes a reality—if it ever does. I am used to this. Imagine my surprise therefore when I stepped outside of the school building on a bleak Monday to behold two or more flying flakes decorating the skies! Of course there was no chance that it would stick to the ground, but the grey atmosphere and piercing wind gave a pleasant wintry effect. I saw another flake, and another. A true flurry, a third flake drifted down after them. “O wow!” I could not help but exclaim, laughing and hurrying forward. A passing college student smiles down at me. “Yeah, I’m from Florida, so this is pretty unusual. . .” I didn't mention that snow in November was pretty unusual for us Alabamians too. I was too busy rejoicing inwardly.   Who knows? Perhaps the early snowflakes herald a nice cold winter for us! But what...

The endless street seemed more endless than ever, and the echoing crunch of their footsteps was a lonely sound. Even the strange patterns of the pipes and aqueducts were no longer quite the oddity of interest that they had been, and the blackened substance coating them had become sort of a settled mystery. Jingle longed for the procession of empty gaping doors and shadowy windows to end, and she longed to feel the sun on her face and hear the wind and birds; the “hollowness” of this place---it's deadened look and feeling—was giving her a nasty lonesome sensation somewhere near her stomach.   Beach marched slightly ahead, eyes locked grimly on the guiding tracks in the road, noticeably avoiding eye contact with the ancient structures surrounding them, while Gary straggled behind, jaw slack with wonder as he craned his neck to see into the shadowed corners and crumbling passageways. Jingle hovered somewhere in the middle, sometimes (like now) wishing dreadfully to be gone and...