Photo from Wikipedia; supposed to be a forensic reconstruction of what St Martin de Porres would have looked like when he was younger and healthier than when his official portrait was painted. (He died, looking very "old," before age 60.)
There is a special word-nerd name for a short prose piece interspersed with, or ending with, one or more haiku (or variations on the haiku such as tanka). It's called a haibun. I suppose this post might be a haibun.
There is also an old Washington, DC, tradition whereby one particular company used to advertise its services with a weekly haiku, or senryu, in the Washington City Paper. Their poems always had the same last line, "call us we can help."
There is a special name for the kind of weather we're having here, too. Normally the Appalachian Mountains see first frost toward the end of September or beginning of October.
The October thaw, which is normally the ideal time for leaf peeping, has been called "Indian Summer." When Europeans started immigrating to what became the Eastern States, they would offer the people they met something in trade for the land they wanted to own. Most of the people they met belonged to some group or other of Algonquins, a general category for the ethnic/language group that included Wamponaug, Powhatan, Yuchi, Lenni Lenape, Anishinabe, Shawnee, and many other tribes, each with its own language and customs but with some things in common. One thing many Algonquin groups had in common was a belief that nobody could "own" land: what was inherited or traded was the right to use land without being disturbed by other people. So they would happily sell the rights to enough prime hunting and fishing land to build a city on, for a sack of beads. Throw in a tin cooking pot and they might sell a lake to go with it. This was how Manhattan Island was "bought" for what was estimated, when I was in school, as twenty-some dollars' worth of beads. And then, since the immigrants had paid for the land like good friends and neighbors, after they'd set up houses and hunted, fished, or farmed for a while, like good friends and neighbors these Algonquins would come back, expecting either to have kept the right to share the land or to be able to buy rights to it back for some of those beads, shells, and other trinkets they used in trade. It had not been just a poetic phrase when they'd said things like "You may hunt all the deer that run there," meaning "during this season." So, when summer weather seemed to go away and then came right back, that was "Indian Summer."
Some years, like this one, there's not much of a frost at the end of September. There is still usually some warm weather in mid-October but, as this year, it may be more like an extra-long summer than like a real "Indian Summer." In these years there usually is frost by the end of October, and some extra warm weather in the first half of November.
This November thaw had its own traditional name from England. It was St Martin's Little Summer, because Bishop Martin of Tours was a popular saint whose feast day was observed on the 11th of November. Being the patron of what was probably the last pleasant weather for outdoor work, before winter, didn't hurt St Martin's popularity.
All kinds of stories are told about the life and work of Martin of Tours. Some of them are hard to believe, and are debated. Everyone seems to agree that he was born in what became Hungary, the son of a Roman soldier, and when he grew up he became a Roman soldier. Then he had a Christian vision, left the army, joined the early church, travelled around Europe in service to the church, and was eventually made bishop of a church in what became France. He was a strong, adventurous type who liked to travel. Probably the most popular story about him was how he was travelling light, with only one big cloak to wrap around him, when he met a beggar who had nothing to wrap over his shoulders at all, so he sliced his cloak in half and gave half to the beggar. Stories that are known to be true tell how, after becoming a bishop whose life was documented by his church, Martin set up local parish churches and visited each church once a year, and how he took sides in different debates that have shaped the doctrine of the church today.
With one thing and another, St Martin also became the namesake of the progenitor of one of the oldest English families in our part of the world.
He was also the namesake of Peru's "Brother Broom," San Martin de Porres, whose story is even more unlikely--but (mostly) documented as true. Brother Broom was unfortunately born at a time when the law didn't recognize marriages between the Spanish conquistadores and the non-Spanish women with whom some of them lived. Efforts were being made to set up a caste system. Martin's father abandoned his family; his mother had to take in washing to feed the children, which was considered disgraceful at the time. As a teenager Martin went to the local monastery and begged to be allowed to work for room and board. Being of mixed race, he was officially ineligible to be recognized as a monk, but the monks were allowed to keep him as a servant. He worked hard, not only sweeping and cleaning the monastery, but also fundraising (with a begging bowl, on the street) to expand the monastery into a hospital, and tending sick patients. While the official rule books said that people of mixed race couldn't be recognized as monks or priests, the other monks eventually became so ashamed of this rule that they recognized Brother Broom as a monk anyway. He never became a priest who might have been called Father Martin, and was not even officially recognized as Brother Martin, but after he died his community started calling him Saint Martin; and so they still do. All sorts of miracles were credited to Martin de Porres starting from the time when, though still officially ineligible to be called a monk, he was eligible--by an oversight, no doubt--to be called a saint. If he was as humble and hardworking as the stories say, he was a miracle.
Martin de Porres died on the third of November so he, too, is remembered during St Martin's Summer, by those who observe saints' days. The third to the eleventh of November is about how long this "season" typically lasts. An old song "about the Martinmas time" describes November thaw weather, when the door was open for light and air during the daytime, but the wind felt chilly and people wanted to close the door at night.
Are we now enjoying St Martin's Summer? Or has the El Nino wind just brought us an abnormally, unnaturally long summer? I think so. We still haven't had frost. Ash, beech, and maple trees are making the hills colorful. Oaks and some of the smaller trees are still green. The sunshine still feels warm, even hot, during the few hours when the sun does shine.
The "old" furnace man, who is not really all that old but is the old familiar furnace man the company sends out, has been dropping hints rather generously about how he hates and dreads working in the cold. If you want your furnace to be tuned up by a local man, don't put it off...
St Martin's Summer
dry green leaf falls from oak tree
check your heaters now
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