November // Side A

November.

The month of autumn skies and early sunsets, and featuring the extra hour of sleep rudely taken from me in the spring.

The month in which pie is elevated to its proper status as the finest of desserts.

The month unfortunately taken over by the early playing of Christmas music.

The ensuing argument, "there are no Thanksgiving songs".

Yes, there are.  Page 993 of the LSB.  Vince Guaraldi's Thanksgiving Theme.  But I digress.

The music I listen to in November isn't holiday related.  It's my after-dark playlist, which is especially perfect since we have more moments of waking darkness each day.

Black Cadillac by Shinedown

The first song on my playlist, this intro and song sets the mood for the rest of the playlist.  The Amaryllis album might be my favorite, but this track is a gem.

Favorite lyrics: "I got a mind full of inspiration, and I ain't livin' in the past no more", and "So feast your eyes on the big, blue sky. . ."

The Last of the Real Ones by Fall Out Boy

This song is brand new, only about two weeks old.  It's all of the creative lyrics and great beats you expect of Fall Out Boy, with a little more polish and guess what, still a long title. Favorite lyrics: "I was just an only child of the universeAnd then I found you."



How Did You Love by Shinedown

One of the reasons I enjoy listening to this band is their lyrical depth.  It's poetry in rock music, and this is where two of my favorite things combine is the most excellent way.

Favorite lyrics: "You can have a sound of the thousand voices calling your name

You can have the light of the world blind you, bath you in grace
But I don't see so easily what you hold in your hands
'Cause castles crumble, kingdoms fall and turn into sand."

Mess is Mine by Vance Joy

This song describes one of my favorite aspects of relationships, be the romantic or otherwise: the idea of bearing one another's burdens.  This applies specifically in the context of marriage, when one's mess truly is the other's, they are each other's, mess and all.  Late night listening brings out my deeper thoughts.

Favorite lyrics: "Well hold on, my darling.  This mess was yours, now your mess is mine."



Car Radio by Twenty One Pilots

Ukulele screamo rap doesn't float everyone's boat, and I understand that.  This song fits with the rest because of its lyrics, and the message of hope in the darkness.  It's also relevant because I was listening to it on a late drive home one night. . .through my phone speakers, because get this: the radio in the car didn't actually work.  Go figure.

Favorite: "Sometimes quiet is violent."  "I find over the course of our human existence one thing consists of consistence, and it's that we're all battling fear."  "Peace will win, and fear will lose."



There's the first half of my November suggestions.

Check it out here: Life of Pies Mixtape (and comment if you follow me because my followers are anonymous and I'd love to know pls and thx)

Drop your favorite Thanksgiving and after-dark songs in the comments. -->



- Grace 

Fields of Green Turned Gold

Harvest is beautiful in photos.  It is orange moons and fainting sunsets.  It is also golden fields and green tractors; well, they should be green.

Unfortunately, harvest is not just the aesthetics of frost on fields.  Harvest is the frost on the truck windshield which you have to scrape off to drive to the load-out field before the first truck.

Harvest is chaos of noise from two tractors and an auger, and a truck driver holding a conversation with my dad above the rest of it.  But it is also rolling up polywire fence for the livestock and hearing the soft hum of the combine across the section.

Harvest is wearing four layers for the 6:30 AM truck, and a wearing a t-shirt by the 4:30 PM load.  It is keeping my hair up in a hat and still brushing out corn chaff that night.  The evil, pink glitter gets everywhere, including the pockets of nearly every sweatshirt I own.

Harvest is taking food out to the fields during the day, and eating supper late.  To make the first part of this operation work as smoothly as possible, we have a map on the wall by our fridge on which each field is numbered.  Snacks and coffee to field 14 it is.

Speaking of coffee, harvest is not the time to bring up the coffee consumption of those special few running the equipment.  The number of beat-up thermoses you've poured in the past twelve hours might be high, but I promise you- they don't care.  They're running on caffeine and ever-present fear of bad weather or breakdowns (because, you know, those two things can never come at the same time).
Give them coffee.
Say nothing.

Harvest transcends all other schedules.  For instance, I had homework to do this week, but I did none of it when we were loading trucks.  This makes for a slightly-stressed me, but I had the least amount of farm work in our family this fall, so I don't worry too much.  For the record, the homework is done, for now anyways.

Harvest, however, is not.

- Grace