[MORNING CALM TALES] Carving jack-o'-lanterns at an English academy and the 'Great Pumpkin Showdown' of 1991

It was October 1991, and I was teaching English at ELS, a private English language institute in Seoul, when a rather unusual confrontation took place just outside my classroom. One of the institute’s cleaning women stopped at the classroom door and stared into the trash can. For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then she looked at my students, looked…