Pumpkin

Since it's pre-Halloween week, I feel obligated to pay tribute to the pumpkin.

Instead of buying a real pumpkin I get an image of it. But my chosen pumpkin has a cute profile.

Sans the Mark Bittman context in which it appeared (another wearisome food-nanny admonition to Americans to cook this nutritious vegetable instead of hollowing it out for candles), looks like an old-world, somewhat charming, gentleman-pumpkin.

What a pity were this lovely pumpkin to be carved and emptied of flesh and seed and made into a placeholder for cheap carbon-monoxide emitting candles.

I prefer a whole pumpkin over one that is cruelly mangled.

I recently read the simile which compared somebody's violently beat-up face in terms of a "Jack-O-Lantern."

This put me off of the idea of a "carved" pumpkin.