Treats?

I remember these peanut butter kisses from my childhood. Mainly I remember them as being very chewy, with a taffy-like consistency. I am surprised I never lost a tooth while eating them.

Hope your Halloween is filled with more goodies than ghoulies!

You know what I'm talking about ...

Halloween costume idea: One night stand

Well, I'm amused.

Don't say I didn't warn you!

On a side note, I recently heard that George Romero, whose 1968 Night of the Living Dead is a seminal zombie movie, notes that his zombies do not eat brains and he has no idea where the brain-eating thing originated.

Well, duh! From observation of zombie behavior, dude!

Missing days

On Thursday, October 4, 1582, Mother Teresa of Jesus -- later known as St. Teresa of Avila -- died in the Monastery of the Discalced Carmelite nuns in Alba de Tormes.

The normal practice of the church would have been to make the date of her death -- or the nearest available following date -- the date of her feast. Her feast day, however, was set as October 15. (October 4 was securely occupied by St. Francis of Assisi.) 

Why?

The Gregorian calendar -- named for the pope who sponsored the reform of the old Julian calendar that over the centuries had shifted significantly out of sync with the seasons -- was implemented in Spain on October 5, 1582. Philip II of Spain decreed the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, which affected much of Roman Catholic Europe, as Philip was at the time ruler over Spain and Portugal as well as much of Italy. In these territories, as well as in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (ruled by Anna Jagiellon) and in the Papal States, the new calendar was implemented on the date specified by the bull, with Julian Thursday, 4 October 1582, being followed by Gregorian Friday, 15 October 1582.

As a result, October 15, which became La Santa Madre's feast.

Protestants, by the way, refused to recognize the pope's calendar until much later. In England, for example, didn't accept it until 1752, at which time there were riots as people demanded the ten missing days back.