My take

Who do you want?

Barabbas!

(24 Hour Party People)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Happy birthday, yesterday, to me. I watched Liverpool torch Leverkusen. Guy Fawkes fireworks exploded all game long. People like that sort of thing, you know?

My mother was unwell but still brought me a cake.

The weather was how I prefer it. At night, I put on I Know Where I’m Going! for more of the same. The boys wouldn’t let me finish it.

November’s poem

“The Nomad Harvesters,” by Marie De L. Welch:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The nomads had been the followers of flocks and herds,

Or the wilder men, the hunters, the raiders.

The harvesters had been the men of homes.

But ours is a land of nomad harvesters.

They till no ground, take no rest, are homed nowhere.

Travel with the warmth, rest in the warmth never;

Pick lettuce in the green season in the flats by the sea.

Lean, follow the ripening, homeless, send the harvest home;

Pick cherries in the amber vallies in tenderest summer.

Rest nowhere, share in no harvest;

Pick grapes in the red vineyards in the low blue hills.

Camp in the ditches at the end of beauty.

They are a great band, they move in thousands;

Move and pause and move on.

They turn to the ripening, follow the peaks of seasons,

Gather the fruit and leave it and move on.

Ours is a land of nomad harvesters,

Men of no root, no ground, no house, no rest;

They follow the ripening, gather the ripeness,

Rest never, ripen never,

Move and pause and move on.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I came by this in Carey McWilliams’s book, Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California.