Ornoth

Our move over the holidays from Pittsburgh to Austin was a long, hard road… both literally and figuratively. Here are some of the lowlights (plus a couple highlights) from the hectic, stressful, and eventful month gone by.

Final week at Hobart Street

Boxing up Hobart Street produced an unanticipated cat fortress!

Closing the book on the Hobart Street apartment

Hell is real... especially in Ohio!

Home at last, after a 1,450-mile road trip

Orny broke a couple chairs out of the moving trailer to make the wait for our movers more comfortable

We successfully moved our huge pile of mess from one place to another

The lease on our new Austin home began on December 15, but there was no way Inna and I could finish packing up our belongings that quickly, so we made arrangements with movers for December 28th.

The overwhelming sensation in December was stress. All the packing, selling, giving away, donating, or trashing all our belongings took time and the dust we kicked up caused my asthma to start acting up.

Then there was the weather. A week-long arctic blast brought record cold and wind chills below -25°F, and of course I’d prematurely sealed up the box containing my winter coat and boots. It was like the northeast -- where I’ve lived for my entire life -- was taking one final, vicious swipe at me for daring to move south.

The brutal cold snap laid bare some of our old apartment’s frailties. The window in our spare bedroom fell apart in my hands. The jerry-rigged kitchen sink plumbing gave way on Christmas Eve, and the landlord’s Christmas Day repairs only revealed further downstream blockages, presumably due to frozen pipes, so we were left with no water in the kitchen. All this trauma happened while Inna was out of town for four days, visiting family. It made me very glad we would be getting out of that death trap, if only Mother Nature would let us! But all this sure made it easier for us to leave Pittsburgh.

During the bitter cold, I had to post no-parking notices and claim four parallel parking spaces in front of our house that would be required for the 28-foot U-Pack trailer that we’d be loading into. Although it was a nerve-wracking wait for other people’s vehicles to move on, I was finally able to clear the space and the trailer was dropped off on time.

That night before loading day, Inna and I stuffed our cat Begemot into the car to go set up a temporary household in her mother’s condo a couple blocks away. But in the middle of a quick stop to pick up Indian food on busy Murray Ave, the car refused to start! This did nothing to assuage my anxiety about setting off on a 1,450-mile road trip in a 14 year old car!

After some worried fiddling, we managed to get the engine to turn over and drove our reduced household over to our temporary digs. But Begemot immediately hid himself in an inaccessible corner of the basement. And after we fished him out and confined him in our bedroom, he kept us awake the entire night while he suffered his own sneezing/asthma fits and freaked out over being in an unfamiliar place.

That was our segue into:

Week at Mom’s

After our first sleepless night at mom’s, the cold snap broke, and we went back to the apartment to meet four guys from “Zooming Moving” of Salem, Ohio who would load our belongings into the trailer. They seemed smart and fast, taking 2½ hours to load our 155-ish boxes and pieces of furniture into less space in the trailer than we believed possible. It was magical watching our place rapidly clear out, then seeing everything stuffed trash-compactor style into a tiny section of our trailer (FYI that was a clever bit of foreshadowing, there). When we asked them at the last minute, they even squeezed in four chairs that Inna had feared she’d have to give away.

Once the trailer was locked and the guys gone, Inna called and arranged to have U-Pack pick it up. I visited my oral surgeon for a previously-scheduled followup that was painless but carried disappointing news. Afterward I circled back to the old apartment and found the trailer had been hauled away, so I pulled down the parking signs and went across town to visit El Burro: a favorite burrito joint.

That was on Wednesday the 28th, but we didn’t plan to leave Pittsburgh until the following Tuesday, to avoid being on the road over the New Years holiday. So we had a week to close up the old apartment and hit up some favorite places, which included ice cream at Bruster’s, lunch at Pamela’s diner, and dinner from Thai and Noodle Outlet. For Inna in particular, it was the end of an era, having lived in that apartment for 12 years!

On one hand, it was a major relief that we could stop working like slaves; all the packing and planning was finally done and over with! We even had time to run a load of laundry! And we watched with delight as our stuff traveled to Ohio, then spent the holiday weekend in Arkansas, and arrived in Austin on Monday, eight days earlier than our promised delivery date!

On the other hand, we found ourselves with too much time and nothing to do, combined with the uncomfortably cold temperature of Inna’s mother’s condo. The waiting was especially hard on Inna, who -- having committed to the Austin move -- was eager to hit the road.

And I had time to reflect on how even the holidays had been out to get us this year. Halloween featured my oral surgery; Inna twisted her ankle during our Austin trip over Thanksgiving, and our old apartment’s electrical panel went bad the night we returned; a frigid Christmas featured frozen water pipes and hectic packing while Inna was away visiting her father; and we were spending New Years living out of a suitcase at Inna’s mother’s condo, while our new house and all our stuff was already waiting for us in Austin!

But time passed, the calendar ticked over to 2023, and our long-anticipated departure date finally arrived.

The Drive

Between our fatigue, a stressed-out cat, and our 14 year old car, we allocated three days for the 1,450-mile drive down to Austin. We’d made reservations at Red Roof Inns along the way, relying on their open policy toward pets. Setting out, we were tired and nervous, but happy that things had gone as well as they did.

We left Pittsburgh on Tuesday January 3th in steady rain that tapered off the further we went. The three of us all fared well, and after nine hours we pulled into our motel in Nashville. I downed a terrible “jalapeno cheez chicken” from the Mexican place next door and settled in. The room was garbage, with broken lights, thermostat, and faucet. Bigi’s stress-response asthma was really bad. Then at 5am a group of assholes came around screaming and pounding on doors, and took three body-slams attempting to bust our door in. It was very reminiscent of our horrifying experience at our Austin motel in November. What the fuck is it with you Southerners that you turn into raving murderous assholes when you go to a motel?

After a horrible night we set out on the middle leg of our journey. Inna did most of the driving on a sunny day, enjoying the 75 MPH speed limit through memorable towns like Bucksnort, Tennessee. In the middle of Arkansas we had our one worrying car malfunction when our tire pressure monitor signaled too high air pressure. But it reset after we pulled aside for a lengthy stop, and we proceeded more gingerly. Our motel in Texarkana was less run-down, but I was so wary about the guys hanging out in the parking lot that I couldn’t eat. Fortunately we didn’t have any more overnight visitors, but the cat’s asthma made for another rough night.

On the final day we got up and showered, then faced our shortest drive of the trip, all of which improved our moods. After seeing a bunch of beaver-bearing billboards advertising “Buc-ee’s” truck stop, Inna decided to stop and check one out. It’s kinda of like Pittsburgh’s Sheetz -- a local favorite convenience store -- only with the ridiculous size, decor, and attitude of a huge casino. We definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore! Then, as Austin came into welcome view, we reflected on how well both the car and cat had done on the road trip; the latter experiencing only one outburst in response to Inna’s singing along with her chosen tunes.

Arriving midafternoon on January 5th, our first stop was of course the new house. After discovering that the real estate agent’s promised lockbox was nowhere to be seen, we found the key literally under the doormat and let ourselves in, giving the place a quick once-over. I got our fiber internet router set up while Bigi began to to settle in; meanwhile, Inna made a grocery run and tried to track down the king-sized mattress that FedEx was supposed to deliver for us.

We’d reserved a hotel in Austin in case we got in late, and decided that was preferable to sleeping on the floor, so we bundled poor Bigi back into the car. Our room was fine, but we had another restless night and checked out early the next morning to spend the day at home, watching for our mattress.

Taking up residence

Watching for deliveries proved very fruitful, as we received not only our mattress, but also Inna’s laptop, which we’d dropped off at an Apple store in Pittsburgh for repairs, and a huge grocery bag full of useful stuff (including notably non-Heinz ketchup) from Inna’s former Pittsburgh/now Texas friend Traci.

After making my own grocery run, I was hanging around and saw a kid park his car at the end of our cul de sac and jog between our house and the neighbor’s. I shrugged it off as a local picking up something he’d forgotten. But ten minutes later Austin cops swarmed the area, took possession of the car, flagged me to tell them if I’d seen anything, and started a manhunt complete with search dogs! Day One in our new house, and there’s both criminals and police crawling around our property. I’m afraid Bigi was the only one of who was feeling secure in our new home. But hey, it was January 6 and a delightful 78°F!

Over the next three days we worked to slowly make the place more livable. We didn’t have anything to sit on, but procured our new mattress, bed sheets, food, trash bags, a dish rack, and started laundering things. Bigi’s asthma receded and he became more adventurous, but – in characteristic feline style – he also managed to cover himself in ashes while exploring the fireplace.

Getting our stuff home

Meanwhile, our stuff had been sitting at a shipping warehouse for a week, and we were eager to have it delivered. Because our house is on a steep hill and a narrow dead-end street, U-Pack couldn’t drop our trailer off at the house, so we had hired another moving company -- a national chain ironically named “Two Men and a Truck” -- to transfer our belongings into a smaller truck and shuttle it from U-Pack’s depot to the house.

Since the trailer had arrived early, we got the movers to bump our job up to Monday, but when we met them at the facility, they showed up in a truck that was even bigger than the trailer! And that was the smallest truck they had. No way could they move our stuff, nor would they move it into a smaller rental truck like a U-Haul. We were completely screwed. After much wrangling, their chief agreed to use a company minivan the next day to shuttle our stuff from the top of our hill down to our house. To add one more frustration to the day, I grazed a low retaining wall trying to back out of our insanely un-navigable driveway and knocked an exhaust tip from our Accord.

The next morning – January 10th – we met up with the movers and they shuttled our stuff from the U-Pack trailer into their big truck. That was when we learned the downside of the “amazing” packing job that Zooming Moving did back in Pittsburgh: lots of damaged belongings. Three pieces of wooden furniture were broken and more than half of the 22 plastic bins we’d used had been crushed. Fortunately, not much stuff had actually spilled out, so I used plastic wrap to patch together the shattered bins. But our poor stone “Boo-boo Buddha” statue – so named because he had originally come with a chipped knee – was now fully decapitated! The only good news was that our two big glass desktops had somehow arrived intact.

After loading and the 20-minute drive to our place, I showed their driver why U-Pack hadn’t dropped our trailer in front of our house: the steep, curving descent down our street, the overhanging tree branches, the sloping narrow driveway, and the limited space in our cul de sac for turning around. While using a panel van to shuttle our stuff would suck, we thought it too dangerous to try to bring a huge moving van down that hill.

But the driver was a young Black guy fresh out of high school, and he fearlessly wanted to try it. I told him it was all on them, but he actually managed it. He parked the van at a precarious tilt and chocked the wheels.

The movers still had to carry our stuff down the driveway, but they were able to unload, saving us the extra time, expense, and damage that using the minivan would have required. It wasn’t quite as magical seeing all our stuff pile up in the living room. But despite all our pointless worrying, the entire job was done in just over four hours, leaving us shoulder-deep in a fortress of cardboard boxes, broken plastic bins, and randomly-scattered furniture.

And with that, our long-anticipated move south and the month-long moving ordeal was finally complete! Even after so much stress and all the trials thrown at us, we were now in our new place in Austin, complete with all our stuff, including Inna’s car and Bigi the cat.

Our next step was to begin digging out from the mess, but we put that on hold long enough to enjoy a well-earned celebratory dinner at Inna’s favorite: Lupe’s Mexican restaurant.

Life since then…

It’s been a week and a half since our stuff arrived, and we’ve had time to address most of the mess and begin getting comfortable in our new base of operations. In the wake of our move, there’s lots of organizing, arranging, and decorating to do, but we can thankfully say that the hard work is complete and behind us.

In addition to literally “getting our house in order”, Inna and I have made our first few expeditions afield, starting to explore all that Austin has to offer. We’re really excited to start going places, seeing people, and doing things… Finally building the new life that the two of us have dreamed about for so very long.

Stay tuned for our further adventures!

May featured two interesting events on strangely divergent ends of the spiritual spectrum.

The first was Vesak, which is the biggest holiday in the Buddhist calendar. Traditionally, the May full moon marks the date of the Buddha’s birth, the date of his enlightenment, and the date of the passing of his physical body.

For whatever reason, the American Buddhist groups I’ve associated with have never bothered to observe this occasion. However, the active Sri Lankan expatriate group here in Pittsburgh has organized an annual observance in accordance with their customs, and invited other local groups to contribute in their own ways.

So on the 15th of May I made my way down to the community park by the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum to join about a hundred others in my first observance of Vesak. Ironically, the downtown streets had been blocked off, so I had to hop off the bus and walk an extra half mile to get there. The reason: a big procession of Christians carrying idols and chanting the Lord’s Prayer. Very strange synchronicity.

One thing I have to say about Buddhists: their celebrations really suck. The observances included chanting, recitations from the dhamma, and a dhamma talk: all very stolid, head-y stuff. The most demonstrative display was by some beautifully elegant traditional dancers, who did an excellent job, though they too were pretty sedate.

When the talking was over, there was a procession down to the banks of the Allegheny for a peace ceremony that featured releasing rose petals and water into the river, to disperse throughout the world.

For me, the observance and opportunity for reflection were nice, but almost comically staid. Still, it was heartwarming to be able to participate in such an important community event, having had been offered no such observances by my American Buddhist communities.

A week later, at Inna’s prompting, I found myself driving into the remotest parts of the Berkshire hills of Western Massachusetts to attend a huge week-long pagan festival: the Rites of Spring.

I approached Rites with a twofold purpose. On one hand, nature—wood, wind, rock, and sun, and especially the solar holidays—are an important part of my spirituality. But I’ve always preferred to honor those in silence and solitude; so Rites was something of a test to see whether there is any room in my veneration of nature for community. And failing that, my fallback plan was to simply go my own way and treat it as my own five-day woodland meditation retreat.

In the end, I wound up balancing involvement with the community with solitary reflection and a good helping of meditation. I observed a few of the big community rituals, but felt more turned off by the people than spiritually moved. Inna and I did bring our drums to one of the fire circles, and that was fun. I summed up my feelings at one point: “Nature is majestic and mysterious and magical enough without all the dumb human inventions like magical energies and mythical beings and healing crystals and blah blah crap.”

My community experience was saved by a dear old friend who had coordinated the Sandwich Retreats back at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center. Whispering Deer is an amazingly wise and lovable woman who shares the Buddhist teachings with a different audience at Rites, albeit translating it into their vernacular. Her series of workshops meditating on the four Brahmaviharas and mindfulness of the body gave me something familiar, trusted, and interesting to work with. It was really cool seeing Whispering Deer teaching the dhamma on her own, and I was delighted that Inna chose to join me in attending.

Of course, I also found time for about seven hours of solitary meditation practice, usually on a granite rock or dock on the shore of the pond. I spent those hours enjoying the opportunity to observe and integrate with the sun, woods, and lake around me, and contemplating why the veneration of nature is something I find so difficult to share with others.

But another important aspect of the trip was the opportunity to connect more deeply with my partner. The trip took Inna and I out of our daily routine, and we had a couple long, quiet conversations that brought us closer together. And that was way more valuable to me than all the silly neo-pagan hoopla.

Apparently I’ve never related this story here. With the Santa Speedo Run making its frostbitten-hamhock trudge up Newbury Street in 16° snow flurries as I type, it might be a good time to reminisce and share this classic holiday tale.

Friday December First of 2000. I went in to work as usual at Sapient’s Cambridge office. At the time, I was one of several frontend developers embedded within a huge team working on an online stock brokerage system for JP Morgan Chase and Brown & Company.

That morning we had a guest in our daily team meeting: Jerry Greenberg, one of Sapient’s two founders and CEOs. He gave us the usual little pep talk and then—since the company’s holiday party was that evening— asked for a show of hands of who would be going. Just about everybody raised their hands… except Ornoth.

It will surprise no one that I dread corporate holiday parties. The period from Halloween to New Years has always been a stressful and unpleasant time for me, and I’ve never been a fan of the party scene. So I had hoped to quietly let the event pass, in hopes that no one would mark my absence.

Fat chance! Jerry’s eyes scanned the team and he muttered his pleasure at the team’s response. Then they landed directly on me and my hands, which rested uneasily at my sides. “Ornoth? You’re not coming?” O fuck.

Before we go any further, let’s add a little bit of context. By this time, I’d been with Sapient for six years, participating in four dozen projects; helping grow it from a 100-person company to over 3,000; going through its IPO; and seeing it named to the S&P 500. Of course, Jerry had known me all that time. He and Stuart had actually discussed my hiring back in 1994, since I was the first guy they hired who had long hair! So Jerry felt pretty comfortable that he knew me.

All that matters because out of that 120-person team, I had more tenure than anyone else on the project and a longer relationship with Jerry. They viewed me as the grizzled veteran of old-school Sapient. But here I was, being confronted by Jerry about not attending the holiday party!

“Well, uh… It’s really not my thing…”

That might have gotten past my peers, but not the CEO. “Naw, Ornoth. Come on…”

We went back and forth a bit, with him trying to pressure me into committing while I danced around the fact that I didn’t want to go, even if the CEO was publicly asking me to in front of all my coworkers.

Then it hit me. There was one shining, simple, graceful way out that would enable me to save face and still avoid that inane party!

Since Sapient had grown so big, they had actually issued tickets for the party. No ticket: no entry. And the deadline for requesting tickets from HR had passed the previous week! Slammida!

“But Jerry, I can’t go… I don’t have a ticket.” Jerry (and everyone else in the room) knew I was reaching, but what could he do about it?

It was then that our eyes met, and I saw the sharklike look of a salesman who had just cornered a reluctant mark. With calculated slowness, he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out… his ticket to the holiday party, then walked over and placed it in my hand. I was out of options and dumbstruck.

As he walked back to his place in the circle, he defused any tension by joking that now he might have a difficult time getting into the party himself. Everyone laughed while I surely turned beet red. He’d called my bluff and beaten me, winning the amusement of the whole team in the process. Even I admired the panache with which he’d shown me who was boss.

And there was nothing else for me but to show up at the goddamned corporate holiday party. Worst of all, there was no way I could quietly not make an appearance, because now it would be marked by more than a hundred people!

Sheesh!

On the first day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      A false sense of security.
 
On the second day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      One smashed glass ornament in shards on the living room floor.
 
On the third day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      Another smashed glass ornament in shards on the living room floor.
 
On the fourth day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      One more smashed glass ornament in shards on the living room floor.
 
On the fifth day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      One miraculously whole glass ornament wedged under the love seat.
 
On the sixth day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      One smashed glass ornament in shards under the love seat
      and a miraculously whole glass ornament on the living room floor.
 
On the seventh day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      Nothing, ’cos I was home to supervise the little bugger!
 
On the eighth day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      Nothing, ’cos I was home to supervise the little bugger!
 
On the ninth day of Christmas teh fluffeh gave to me:
      Three smashed glass ornaments in shards
      and the entire Christmas tree lying on the living room floor.

Today is a very special day of the year.

I live 800 feet northwest of the tallest building in New England, the 790-foot Hancock Tower in Boston. Yes, that means that if the Hancock were to fall in exactly the right direction, it might just scrape the Vendome. Of course, as we saw with the World Trade Center, skyscrapers tend to fall straight down, rather than topple over sideways, as a more rigid structure might do.

During the winter, the sun is low enough on the horizon that my apartment falls into the Hancock’s shadow for about 20 minutes each morning. There’s also sometimes a “Prudential eclipse” in the afternoon (it’s 1600 feet west-southwest of me), but that’s less of a concern.

During the summer, however, the sun is higher, enough so that its path goes above the Hancock, so its shadow no longer quite reaches my windows.

Today is the first day of the year without a “Hancock eclipse”. After the fourth snowiest winter in 125 years, I’m really looking forward to a month of sun-days!

Do holidays make any sense to you? They really don’t to me. One day we’re looking for rodents, the next we’re Irish, then we’re looking for egg-laying rabbits. One day we wear disguises and teach our children extortion, the next we celebrate the land’s bounty, then we give it all away to our friends, followed quickly by staying up all night and getting drunk. All this really makes sense to you?

It doesn’t to me. If you ask me, the only holidays worth sincere observation are the ten solar events of the year.

Ten? There are only two solstices and two equinoxes, no? Well, yes, but there’s more, too. Let’s have a little astronomy review, shall we? Let’s begin with what everyone already knows.

There are two equinoxes: spring (vernal) and fall (autumnal). Those are the times when the Sun passes directly over the equator, passing from the northern hemisphere to the southern, or vice versa. It’s also when day and night are roughly equal in length. They fall, respectively, around March 20 and September 23. These were important dates to the Celts, whom I’ll refer to a couple times here, and the church absorbed these observances under the names of Eostar/Ostara and Mabon, respectively.

And there are the two solstices: summer and winter. These are the longest and shortest days of the year, and the days when the Sun is as far north/south as it will get before heading back towards the equator again. However, they are not mathematically halfway between the equinoxes, usually falling on June 21 and December 22. The pagan holidays of Litha and Yule were again confiscated by the Christian/Borg authorities.

Few people realize it now, but there are also four cross-quarter days, each of which was roughly halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Who cares? Well, those nutty Celts did, because they actually observed the change of seasons with these cross-quarter days, which match up with reality much better than the solstices and equinoxes. To them, the latter were mid-season events, not the borders between seasons.

Modern-day wicco-pagans are familiar with all this, since they too celebrate these solar holidays, but they don’t quite get it right. Somehow the traditional dates for their observances that don’t synch with the astronomical reality.

For example, Imbolc (aka Solmonath, Candlemas) is the Celtic beginning of spring. It happens February 4th, which coincides (not accidentally) with Groundhog Day. But Wiccans traditionally observe it on February 1 for some reason.

Similarly, Beltane (Whitsuntide, Walpurgisnacht) is the beginning of summer. It happens on May 5, but wiccans, who seem to have a penchant for round numbers, celebrate it on the last day of April.

Lughnasadh (Lammas) heralds autumn on August 7, but wiccans think August first is close enough.

Finally, there’s Samhain (Hallowmas), the wicked wiccan new year, observed on Halloween, October 31. Never mind that the cross-quarter day is actually November 7th. Ah, those nutty wiccans, playing fast and loose with their own holy days!

That, of course, only accounts for eight of the ten solar events I mentioned. There are two more. What could they be?

Well, all the holidays I’ve mentioned so far are tied to the seasons, which means they’re an attribute of the Earth’s 23-degree axial tilt. The other two days are different; they’re a function of the elliptical nature of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Because it’s elliptical, there must be a point at which the Earth is closer to the Sun than any other time during the year, and a similar furthest point from the Sun. These are called Perihelion and Aphelion, respectively.

The interesting thing is that those of us in the northern hemisphere have this all backwards. The day of the Earth’s closest approach to the Sun (Perihelion) actually occurs in the middle of winter: January 4th, usually. Similarly, the Earth is at its most distant point from the Sun (Aphelion) during summer: the Fourth of July (although this is one case where the modern holiday wasn’t lifted from the solar calendar). If we were in the southern hemisphere, this arrangement might seem more intuitive to people.

That gives us ten solar holidays, which make a great deal more sense to me than our contrived celebrations, for they observe the changes in our days and our seasons, which affect every living thing on our planet. At my last job we were given “floating holidays”, which I used on these solar holidays to celebrate the seasons. I found that much more satisfactory than taking a completely arbitrary day off to celebrate “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” in 19th century New York City.

Were you raised in a particular religious faith?

No.
 

Do you still practice that faith? Why or why not?

No.
 

What do you think happens after death?

From my February 24th LJ entry "Philosophy for Dummies":

When we die, like any animal, we die. There is no essense or spirit which survives when our brain activity ceases. Because death is an inevitable end of our being, and because we never live to experience it, it is illogical to fear death. On the other hand, it certainly is logical to fear suffering and pain, if those are part of your road to death. But death itself should be accepted as the ultimate, immutable fact of life. Accept it and move on and enjoy your life, motivated further by the knowledge that your portion of life is finite.

I firmly agree with the Existential creed that there is no meaning to life other than to experience it, and believe that is an incredibly empowering, liberating, and optimistic realization.
 

What is your favorite religious ritual (participating in or just observing)?

Although I do not believe in religion as such, I feel that it is eminently logical to observe the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days, although not in any self-impressed wiccan sense. On those days I try to reconnect with nature and quietly celebrate the beauty and wonder of nature and life.
 
One tidbit: did you know that the change of seasons actually used to be observed on the cross-quarter days, rather than the solstices and equinoxes (they were thought of as the midpoints of seasons)? I find that a much more logical arrangement.
 
And happy Samhain everyone (even if few people realize that the cross-quarter day actually falls on November 7th).
 

Do you believe people are basically good?

I believe people have a strong trend toward laziness, ignorance, selfishness, and fear . As a moral relativist and secular humanist, I do not believe in the ideas of objective "good" and "evil" as such. The only "good" is acting in conformance with your own unique set of morals and values.