For many among us, November is a bear, a time to brace oneself against sudden darkness and cold, against the looming long months of winter. The sky is gray, the fields shorn, the leaves fallen, the colors muted, the songbirds flown, and November is Minnesota’s month with the least sunshine. The cold asserts itself, as “the iron door of the north clangs open … and a cruel wind blows,” as the poet Stanley Kunitz wrote.