Greetings to my fellow bloggers and anyone else might actually be reading this. I’m truly honored and downright thrilled to be joining the world of Metroblogging on this electric day before Halloween (I always get a bit tingly for Halloween).

I love my Powderhorn neighborhood in Fall. It’s more beautiful, more alive than any other time of the year. I don’t know much about trees, but the maples on my block seem to be some unique, magical breed. They stay in full autumn color and hang onto most of their leaves (dropping just enough to cover the sidewalks and streets with a festive carpet) far longer than any maples I’ve seen out there in the rest of the world.

Tomorrow night, bands of nomadic children in mostly half-assed costumes will take over, plowing trenches through that festive carpet on their single-minded quest for excessive amounts of free candy. The irony of the booming trick-or-treat trade in this Minneapolis neighborhood is that the “out-staters” and suburbanites that I know (and I know many, having lived in both Eden Prairie and a rural town in Stearns County) can’t even imagine these children running about (after dark none-the-less) in a “crime infested” inner city neighborhood. Meanwhile, my Stearns County hometown and others all around it are sponsoring community Halloween parties to take the place of that all too dangerous trick-or-treating tradition. And my sister in her hermetically sealed, Eden Prairie townhome complex has never seen a single costumed child in all the years she’s lived there.

I have some damned fine memories of trick-or-treating. Truth be told, I’m jealous of those kids on my block. I know the rules; adults are not eligible trick-or-treaters and yes, I abide by those rules. In place of trick-or-treating, I host a hell of a Halloween party which brings a great deal of joy to those ineligible adults. But it’s not the same no matter how much you drink. Those kids own the streets on Halloween and they know it. They feel safer and are safer in their little costumed platoons than they are at any other time or place all year long. We should all have one place, one night of the year that we feel so invincible. I don’t think that can happen indoors where there’s really nothing to fear in the first place.

Happy Halloween!