Take a quick look at the calendar and you'll know that the holiday season is upon us. October 30th brings Mischief Night, and the 31st, of course, is Halloween. You can count on your favorite Gold Standard personalities to be in costume. November opens with All Saints' Day (and Neighbors' Night Out) on the 1st and All Souls' Day (also known as the "Day of the Dead") on the 2nd.
Skip ahead to November 4th and you have Mischief Night as it is celebrated in jolly old England and Guy Fawkes Day on the 5th. On November 8th, we have Election Day, a more peaceful, civilized, and American way to change the face of our government, at least since we separated from jolly old England. The repetitive 11/11/11 is the anniversary of the end of the slightly less repetitive "War to end all Wars" -- also known as World War I, to tell you how successful that mis-moniker was -- although the holiday is now known as Veterans' Day.
That's quite a list already, and the big ones, like Thanksgiving, Bill of Rights Day, Christmas and New Year's are still a month or two away. Nevertheless, the Gold Standard will be there for you all the way through the holidays, with just a few exceptions. We will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, which our regulars will recognize as a change this year. Additionally, the back room will be a voting venue on Election Day, so our services will be slightly limited, but by no means eliminated. Instead, we like to think that we'll be providing the community an additional service that day. On this one, our regulars will note that we've always been a polling place.
This month's First Tuesday Neighbors' Night Out buffet will focus on "Harvest" and "Hearty" items, while blending elements of all of the week's holidays or named days, from Halloween to Guy Fawkes Day. If you want to talk about the election, you can even do that. Just leave the bullhorns at home, please!
Actually, it's chili season and, believe it or not, it's back by popular demand. The fallback to Eastern Standard Time on November 6th will herald the start of chili season, when chili will be on the cafe menu every day. Come in for a special pre-season tasting on Neighbors' Night Out!
This particular Monday is not one of the many named days in November, but we're going to make it special anyway. We're going to open a new art show, and, we think you're going to like it. The picture perfect petals and plant portraits of the current show will make way for a more spiritual and emotional interpretation of the various elements of nature. Kaitlin Deering is the artist (and www.kaitlindeering.com is her website, in case you want a preview of her works) and she has been exhibiting in the Philadelphia area for almost five years. Although she's from the area now, Kaitlin is originally from Oklahoma -- tornado alley and big sky country, were nature is still a powerful force and an untamed one at that -- and she draws on the emotive force of that stark and often violent nature in her works. It moves her to be creative and she hopes that her creations will move you, in turn. Come, enjoy some free wine and cheese, and see what you think.
Our favorite theater, the Curio Theatre, right across the street, is running another play that's getting rave reviews! This time it's "Eurydice", which raises its curtain at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings through November 12th. Tickets are reasonably priced and will leave you with plenty of money for dinner, coffee, and/or dessert at a local cafe (that's us!) before you sit down for the show.
In the last newsletter, we asked the following trivia question: "This summer I had to go to the Temple campus, and I went by SEPTA from around 48th and Chester. The trip I took involved FIVE different rides (i.e., I made FOUR transfers). What routes and stops did I make?"
We had a winner, who knew:
"Track work on the #13 trolley line forced me to first take a bus to 40th Street, where I took a trolley to 30th Street, jumped on the Market-Frankford Line to go to Broad Street, caught an "express train" on the Broad Street Line to Girard Avenue and rode a "local" train the last stretch to the Cecil B. Moore station serving Temple University."
We've been reading a "Book of Recipes" that's focused on a special historical time period, and the start of a poem is reproduced in this book. Can you identify the book and/or the book's subject matter? If you're the first person to do so, you will win a $40 gift certificate to the Gold Standard.
"We often see them, as they can
Try to kill their fellow man,
They become morally bad,
For need of wine, they are sad,
Glass in hand to begin:
Let us sing to our xxxxx."
All the best from
Joey · Roger · Sue · Vincent
The Gold Standard Café