I've already got
a working collection of Halloween photo albums for this year, but nothing so far that will wind up on the next Social Review. Right now I'm just hoping that the rain won't keep Alexia from coming over for our traditional Capitol Hill Halloween Walk on Thursday (to her credit, it didn't keep her away last year) and that Laney will still go with me to the Dia de Muertos Festival at Seattle Center on Saturday.
Anyway. In an ideal world, I'd have had a pumpkin carving party this past weekend. Four years in a row, between 2020 and 2023, I took part in virtual pumpkin carving parties with Gabriel, Lea and Mandy (and sometimes Tess), but the momentum there skidded off the tracks last year when Gabriel and Tess were in Mexico, and there wasn't much interest from Lea or Mandy in doing it without them. I was most grateful, then, when last year Laney came over to carve pumpkins with me, making it a two-person pumpkin carving party and the first Laney did with me since 2010.
Laney has too much else going on this year. I thought about asking Tracy, but she lives in Puyallup now and, unlike last year and the year before, we haven't gotten together for any Halloween event at all.
I still didn't want to do
nothing this year, though, and I wanted to find a way to keep the string of annual photo albums unbroken at least since 2020 (although I did not carve any pumpkin between 2015 and 2019, a five-year break). I came up with an idea: why don't I come up with
some AI image prompts? That could be fun, right?
I guess not. The posts I shared went over like a lead balloon, and a guy named Brian, who used to sing in the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus with me, was the first to post a comment:
Just say no to the thieving ecologically disastrous AI. Okay, killjoy!
I responded that in a global, geopolitical context it's more complicated than that, but I get it. All of this is true and I still stand by it—as I still stand by my response to Laney's much lengthier follow-up comment, basically doubling down on Brian's sentiments.
I will freely admit, both that their hearts are in the right place and they have solid arguments to make (granted, Brian's comment felt a bit more judgy), and that I felt pretty defensive about this. I think that perhaps came out a bit in my responses, but, again, I also still stand by them. These exchanges honestly felt, to me, a bit reminiscent of the unfortunate penchant for progressives to police each other over things that are not exactly the most important thing for us to be focusing on right now. They may as well have been admonishing me for using plastic straws. We spend way too much time taking each other to task as individuals and not enough time taking corporations and institutions that have the real power to task. Maybe because we feel powerless to do anything about the institutions.
Except: I really get stuck on the selective moralizing of it all. Any of us still on Facebook are helping to bankroll Meta's own AI program just by engaging in any content there. In a just, moral world, I would not only not be using AI services, but neither would I be using any Meta platform at all (Facebook, Instagram, Threads)—or, hell, using a smartphone that was assembled overseas by children. And yet, here we are.
I can fully accept that my post with AI-generated jack-o-lantern images did not connect with anyone. Honestly, that's fine. But in contrast to what really felt to me like misplaced judgment, I'd have liked it a lot better had the post simply been ignored.
But, whatever. I got a
2025 photo album out of it (only eight images—two of them actual photos I actually took!—but better than nothing), and that's all I really wanted! Maybe next year I can get back to an actual pumpkin carving party again. Or hell, I'll just carve another one on my own if I have to. I almost did that this year, but thought this would be an amusing diversion. I guess not!
Then there was today:
West Seattle Harvest Festival. I was on my own for this one, too—also for the first time: I went with Shobhit in 2022, 2023, and 2024. His interest is because it happens in conjunction with the West Seattle Farmers Market, and he loves a farmers market.
This may be the way it is going forward now that Shobhit is so involved with SAG-AFTRA Local, and if they keep having their National Convention on this same weekend. I have no idea whether they will or not. It sounds like they've continued to do this virtually ever since 2020, but I did overhear someone today saying they will probably return to in-person conventions in the next few years, if not likely next year. If that happens, Shobhit will probably travel to Los Angeles. Although, hmm, maybe I could finagle my own trip out of it too, I bet I could find other Halloween-y events to go to down there. I guess I can cross that bridge if and when I come to it.
In any case, Shobhit was on Zoom at his computer when I got in the car this morning and drove in the rain to West Seattle, barely finding a parking spot two long blocks north of the Market in time to get there and see the high school marching band that kicks off the event. It's usually trailed by a parade of kids in costume, but there were maybe three or four of them this time. I can only assume the rain—light as it was—was what made the difference. But, they also have candy for the kids to go trick-or-treating at both the Farmers Market vendors and the businesses on that three-block stretch of California Ave SW, and there were several kids out doing that. I still got a few shots of adorable kids in costume.
I got 26 shat at West Seattle Harvest Fest itself, and a few other random shots, both of fall colors on the walk from and back to the car; and a few other shots on the way home. In the end this year's album has 32 shots in it, still making it the second-largest album of the now-four Harvest Festivals I have attended. I was there for all of 40 minutes, but I got what I needed. I'm glad I went.
[posted 7:07pm]
