Daylight savings and Halloween

On Nov 1, 10:44 am, "Cathy Kearns" wrote:
wrote in message

ups.com...

We live in a suburb where people don't really see each another much. I
can recognize 3 of my neighbors and 2 more if I see them in their
house. So there's not much acquaintance around here. Kids are
accompanied by parents and we only TOT at the houses in the same lane.
We live on a short street and we have about 20 houses. We cover that
in about 15 minutes. That's enough excitement for my 3&4 year olds.
They started at 7pm and done by 7:20 or so. They get more kick out of
handing out candy.

My kids at 3 or 4 years old wouldn't have made it past one house in 15
minutes. There's the checking out the pumpkins, and petting cats, and
lights, and okay, it would take my daughters 30 minutes to make it 200 yards
down the street to the park on a normal day. Lots of distractions.

In our neighborhood I knew most of the 60 or so kids that came to the door.
And of the little ones, I knew all of them, and their parents. So then
there's the catching up on the latest neighborhood news. Yeah, they weren't
going to finish the street in less than an hour.

My oldest is now away in college. My youngest is 13. This is the first
year I didn't go out with her and her friends. Not that it wouldn't have
been plenty safe in the last year or two, it's just I like to talk to the
other parents. The local news had helpful hints, including parents
accompanying any child under the age of 8. Really, 8 years old? I live in
probably one of the safest neighborhoods in the country and eight or nine
seems really young to me. Heck, I made my 13 year old ballerina fairy carry
her cell phone in her tutu last night.

Interesting -- I had my 8yo go to the TOT in the center of town with
us last night, and indeed, we were The Overprotective Parents, as most
other 3rd graders were out and about with their friends.

Caledonia

For the first time tonight at dinner I asked dh what he did during
Halloween. He said he went out on mischief night (October 30th) and
soaped car windows and took trash cans etc. I said - you didn't let
our kids do that (it was never discussed and never even suggested),
and his response was "I didn't think what I did was very smart."


Caledonia wrote:

On Nov 1, 10:44 am, "Cathy Kearns" wrote:
wrote in message

ups.com...

We live in a suburb where people don't really see each another much. I
can recognize 3 of my neighbors and 2 more if I see them in their
house. So there's not much acquaintance around here. Kids are
accompanied by parents and we only TOT at the houses in the same lane.
We live on a short street and we have about 20 houses. We cover that
in about 15 minutes. That's enough excitement for my 3&4 year olds.
They started at 7pm and done by 7:20 or so. They get more kick out of
handing out candy.

My kids at 3 or 4 years old wouldn't have made it past one house in 15
minutes. There's the checking out the pumpkins, and petting cats, and
lights, and okay, it would take my daughters 30 minutes to make it 200 yards
down the street to the park on a normal day. Lots of distractions.

In our neighborhood I knew most of the 60 or so kids that came to the door.
And of the little ones, I knew all of them, and their parents. So then
there's the catching up on the latest neighborhood news. Yeah, they weren't
going to finish the street in less than an hour.

My oldest is now away in college. My youngest is 13. This is the first
year I didn't go out with her and her friends. Not that it wouldn't have
been plenty safe in the last year or two, it's just I like to talk to the
other parents. The local news had helpful hints, including parents
accompanying any child under the age of 8. Really, 8 years old? I live in
probably one of the safest neighborhoods in the country and eight or nine
seems really young to me. Heck, I made my 13 year old ballerina fairy carry
her cell phone in her tutu last night.

Interesting -- I had my 8yo go to the TOT in the center of town with
us last night, and indeed, we were The Overprotective Parents, as most
other 3rd graders were out and about with their friends.

Caledonia

On Oct 31, 8:16?pm, "Cathy Kearns" wrote:
I'm thinking leaving daylight savings for Halloween isn't working too well.
I just answered the door to a very tired darth vader. It seems even the
tiny tots wait until dark, and when dark is 7pm, well, by 7:30 bedtime
they've only hit a few houses.

So I was wondering, how did moving the daylight savings time to run through
the Halloween holiday work out for folks in other parts of the US?

We're so far north that it doesn't make as much difference for us --
it still gets dark fairly early by Halloween. We were still carving
pumpkins until the last minute, having been awfully busy (it was a job
to *find* pumpkins at all, the day before Halloween!).

When *did* daylight saving time get moved, and why? I kept wondering
when it was going to stop this year -- had it in my head that it was
around Columbus Day. Fortunately we have some bank person who sends us
notes every year as part of her marketing, so we don't usually forget
(she also sends everyone on her mailing list one-cent stamps when the
postage goes up ... a very thoughtful way to market, in my opinion! I
guess she's competent at her actual job as well).

--Helen

On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:05:45 -0700, Barbara
wrote:

As of the last time I read up on this, a couple of
years ago, there had never -- NEVER -- been a documented case of
tampering with Halloween candy to harm random children. There were
cases where parents tampered with their own kids' candy, and might
even have been one where a parent tampered with some additional candy
to make it look random, but that's it. All of the scary stories are
just that -- scary stories.

You are correct for the most part. I did find this:

http://people.howstuffworks.com/candy-tampering.htm

Until 2000, there hadn't been a single proven incident in which a
child was injured by Halloween candy from a stranger. That Halloween,
James Joseph Smith of Minneapolis was charged with one count of
adulterating a substance with intent to cause death, harm or illness
after he put needles into candy bars and handed them out. One child
was pricked with a needle when he bit into a candy bar, but neither he
nor any other children were seriously injured. The idea of tainted
candy from a stranger may have started with a 1964 incident involving
a New York homemaker named Helen Pfeil. Irritated at the idea of
handing out free candy to older kids, Pfeil gave out packages of steel
wool pads, dog biscuits and poison ant buttons. Although she made it
clear that her "goodies" were inedible, Pfeil was charged with
endangering children.

*******************************

* * There have been at least two confirmed deaths linked to tainted
Halloween candy, but strangers didn't cause them. In a 1970 case,
family members sprinkled a 5-year-old child's candy with heroin to
hide the fact that he'd gotten into his uncle's drug stash. In the
other case, which occurred in 1974, a man named Ronald Clark O'Bryan
of Houston, Texas, laced his son's candy with cyanide and the child
died. The motive was a big insurance policy that O'Bryan had taken out
on his son. To make the poisoning appear random, O'Bryan also poisoned
his daughter's candy and the candy of three other children. None of
them ate it, however. He was eventually convicted of murder and died
by lethal injection.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

On Nov 1, 8:03 am, "JennP." wrote:
"Sue" wrote in message

news:rv6dnZOo8MaKVrTanZ2dnUVZ_sSlnZ2d@wideopenwest .com...

Here in Michigan, we went out when it was still light out. It was weird.
Supposedly, our time to TOT was 6-7 pm, but there were many out past that
time. I think it was silly to put a time limit on it, but I think the idea
was to have the kids go out when it was still light out.

I had no idea that towns were putting regulations on TOT. I agree that it
seems pretty crazy. I am starting to think I don't fit into this
micromanaged world.

JennP.

Oh, my word -- you have no idea. Because a 9-year-old was murdered
(another part of the state) while ToT in 1973, resulting fears meant a
lot of communities around Milwaukee went to daylight hours. That
meant, since people weren't home yet & rush hour traffic bad, a lot of
suburbs here went to Sunday afternoon. It causes an uproar every year,
with some subdivisions having their own ToT hours at night on the 31,
but most communities don't want to break away officially because they
don't want confused drivers moving between suburbs not sure which are
ToT and which aren't. So the kids go around on bright afternoons.
Can't even ring the doorbells, often, because the neighbors are
outside, raking leaves & listening to the Packer game! Kinda kills any
mood!

Maybe that's what made it easy for our elementary school to end
costumes about 7 years ago. Kindergarten teacher told me they lobbied
to get rid of Halloween dressup/costume parade because there were so
many parents who for financial or whatever reasons, didn't provide
costumes & kids felt sad. We do have a few fundamentalists, too,
saying, it's devil worship and doesn't belong in public schools.

All of which makes my head hurt. Especially since my employer
encourages costume dress on Halloween... things just feel very topsy
turvy!

Lori G.
Milwaukee, WI

On Nov 2, 12:26 am, Rosalie B. wrote:
For the first time tonight at dinner I asked dh what he did during
Halloween. He said he went out on mischief night (October 30th) and
soaped car windows and took trash cans etc. I said - you didn't let
our kids do that (it was never discussed and never even suggested),
and his response was "I didn't think what I did was very smart."

Caledonia wrote:
On Nov 1, 10:44 am, "Cathy Kearns" wrote:
wrote in message

roups.com...

We live in a suburb where people don't really see each another much. I
can recognize 3 of my neighbors and 2 more if I see them in their
house. So there's not much acquaintance around here. Kids are
accompanied by parents and we only TOT at the houses in the same lane.
We live on a short street and we have about 20 houses. We cover that
in about 15 minutes. That's enough excitement for my 3&4 year olds.
They started at 7pm and done by 7:20 or so. They get more kick out of
handing out candy.

My kids at 3 or 4 years old wouldn't have made it past one house in 15
minutes. There's the checking out the pumpkins, and petting cats, and
lights, and okay, it would take my daughters 30 minutes to make it 200 yards
down the street to the park on a normal day. Lots of distractions.

In our neighborhood I knew most of the 60 or so kids that came to the door.
And of the little ones, I knew all of them, and their parents. So then
there's the catching up on the latest neighborhood news. Yeah, they weren't
going to finish the street in less than an hour.

My oldest is now away in college. My youngest is 13. This is the first
year I didn't go out with her and her friends. Not that it wouldn't have
been plenty safe in the last year or two, it's just I like to talk to the
other parents. The local news had helpful hints, including parents
accompanying any child under the age of 8. Really, 8 years old? I live in
probably one of the safest neighborhoods in the country and eight or nine
seems really young to me. Heck, I made my 13 year old ballerina fairy carry
her cell phone in her tutu last night.

Interesting -- I had my 8yo go to the TOT in the center of town with
us last night, and indeed, we were The Overprotective Parents, as most
other 3rd graders were out and about with their friends.

Caledonia

As a kid I remember 'Devils' Night' (10/30) resulting in a lot of
vandalism, broken windows, sirens -- it seems to be one of those
'quaint memories of childhood' here, as absolutely nothing was going
on the day before. In fact, i only thought of it later during the
evening of the 30th, as I was engaged in some boring and stupid task;
as a kid, *that* night was the night to stay indoors and hunker down.

Caledonia