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On Halloween, while Adella and I were waiting to trick-or-treat along Main Street, Newtown, with her cousins, this sunflower caught my eye. I had my glasses off because it was raining, so the flower was a smudge of intense color on that dull afternoon. Strangely, unfortunately, and miraculously, the camera caught exactly what I saw--not really the flower at all. It's a bad photo that was the moment--cold, wet, waiting as darkness encroached on a magical night as we waited for children to come out and light the fire of imagination. Watching families climb the hill to celebrate Halloween was like watching a pilgrimage. Some say the holiday is about greed and sugar and malice; I say it is about the magic in the plastic wand of the first princess to toddle by on that evening. It is the magic of the sunlight burning at the end of a long stem in the cold dark.