The Little Review

Poem for Friday

2008-05-09T03:30:56Z

She-Fox
By Esther Raab
Translated by Kinereth Gensler

In the night fields a hungry she-fox
blasts, alone.
A single horn-blast -- then silence,
her voice like blood pouring into the night.
She is not one of the visitors and claimants;
sad, she blasts
just once -- then a hush.
Mutely the night's vastness answers.
When the cub suckles the last milk
her voice brims with the world's grief.
A stand of pine trees schemes and threatens,
fences sweep by.
Myrrh from nettles in the open fields
is as heavy as fog.
Chickens are sheltered in the coops,
and a pack of dogs squabbles through the emptiness.
A hungry she-fox lifts her head to the Pleiades,
a cold star mirrored in her eye
could be a tear in her pupil.
The cub will suckle at life's sad marrow --
the howl of foxes splits the night.

--------

Another poem from Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought's feature on feminist Hebrew poetry posted here. Raab, notes the article, "reverses the male-centered poetic iconography. She communicates an auto-erotic intimacy with the landscape and a familiarity with native Palestinian flora and fauna...the conflict between personal and collective demands characterizes many national literatures. Freeing a personal voice from the grip of the collective is an ongoing project in Hebrew literature, with women's writing leading the way."

Let me begin by mentioning the awesomeness of the Platypus. And presales for Great Big Sea's Fortune's Favour start Friday at noon. And yay Wil Wheaton -- vertigo66, what shall we do the night the Star Trek movie opens? Go out to dinner, then watch "Amok Time" and "Requiem for Methuselah"? *g*

Today I had the pleasure of lunch with perkypaduan, followed by the first hour or so of the director's cut of American Gangster, though she had to hit the road so we will finish it next week. It was not immediately apparent what, if anything, was added in that first hour, but I only saw the theatrical version of the film once. I also helped son a bit more with his web page and captioned photos on Picasa and contemplated things I need to buy before we go on vacation at the end of next month, like another bathing suit and some shirts that are nicer than t-shirts but don't need ironing and hopefully an inexpensive skort. I loathe shopping for clothes.

Little girls pet lambs at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival last weekend.

There was a fantastic selection of dyed wool...

...and hand-spun yarn like this beautiful collection.

There were also finished sweaters, scarves, gloves, socks, shawls, hats and pretty much every other article of clothing.

This is just-shorn llama wool (is it called wool if it's from a llama?).

And here is an unhappy sheep awaiting the same fate. It was baaing woefully.

There were sheep of every size and color, with varying horns and ear sizes...

...a great many of which were for sale.</center>

We had jacket potatoes with turkey stew for dinner and watched Smallville, which would have been fun if it had embarked on this storyline while certain characters were still alive and had developed it over several seasons, but now seems to be playing "Canon? What canon?" with its own second season on top of chewing up and spitting out the previous history of Superman as I understand it. It's so very Da Vinci Code, right down to the secret society hiding clues in a foreign church and a faraway castle (is that church really in Montreal? Because it's beautiful), and as much as I miss Lionel, having Lex face up to having possibly killed his father for nothing, then unraveling his secret, would have made a great long-term arc.

Instead it's all getting crammed into half a season, though, and we get Edward Teague (the always wonderful Robert Picardo) only for a single episode in which he has to be a lunatic from the start, so wonderful moments like Edward's casual acknowledgment and dismissal of the fact that Lex killed Lionel get brushed past, and good lines like Jimmy saying Chloe "went Scully" on him barely register. More X-Files two years ago would have been fine, but at this late date it feels contrived. And the "Kal-El is Jesus" parallels at this late date are really, really irritating...Chloe using the cross to save the Savior! Ick! Now, what happened to the whole second season revelation that Jor-El sent his son to rule humanity? Suddenly Jor-El was such a humanitarian that he sent an off switch to random humans? Now Lex knows where the Fortress of Solitude is and will soon know what Clark is...canon, what canon indeed.

The Next Gen episode I watched to review is one I don't remember at all -- it was like brand new old Star Trek! Fun! Political commentary Thursday made me want to throw up all over people I like, far more than the opposition, so I am going to ignore everything until the Democrats have a nominee and then hold my nose and vote for him or her no matter who it is or who gets disenfranchised, insulted, underestimated, marginalized or misquoted between now and then. Sigh.

Poem for Thursday

2008-05-08T03:10:46Z

The Water Queen of Jerusalem
By Rahel Chalfi
Translated by Tsipi Keller

The Water Queen of Jerusalem
dives into history
history is hard and she grows fins
there is no air so she invents
gills rowing through memory

the Water Queen of Jerusalem owns
a bathing suit made out of Yiddish

the Water Queen of Jerusalem wallows
on a stone beach in
Ladino
is afraid of the rising water level in Arabic

the Water Queen of Jerusalem has no
sea in Jerusalem
she has a history
Jewish
and she holds
just holds her head
above water

--------

For Israel's 60th birthday, a poem by a modern Israeli writer. Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought had a feature reproduced here about feminist Hebrew poetry, saying, "Contemporary Israeli women's writing challenges the Hebrew language, tearing it at its seams, invading areas formerly restricted to masculine discourse...Chalfi (1945-) first explored a powerful feminist persona in aquatic imagery: in the poem 'The Water Queen of Jerusalem' the city is overwhelmed by its cultural baggage, while the protagonist herself is almost drowned. She triumphs, mutating into an ichtyoid in a process of evolution and definition of her subjectivity."

Not the most exciting of Wednesdays. I worked on html for a web page for my son, who has decided that he desperately wants his own domain for penguin photos and the like, but for some reason a photo that loads fine on a local html file won't work when I upload the file to the web (I think it's because his new domain forwards to a page on my web site, so there are essentially frames keeping the domain URL in place and the frames are somehow screwing with the tables). Then I took younger son to the orthodontist, where we got some bad news: not only do the braces need to go back on, but because it's considered a new phase in his treatment, with new molds and a new apparatus, we have to refinance and argue costs with our insurance. So it's painful for all of us! At least the braces won't have to go on till we get back from our long trip this summer so they won't affect what he can eat while traveling. He has one adult tooth that is refusing to budge from the gums because his mouth is small and it would just fit straight between the teeth but it's coming in at an angle, so there has to be more room. Sigh.

</center>

I see that the Olympic torch made it to the top of Mount Everest...I have mixed feelings because of the Tibet situation but it's a neat idea to take the Olympic flame to the top of the world, though I was wondering how they managed to light it with so little oxygen. Climbing is one of my favorite sports to read about, though not people who think the 8000 meters plus mountains are the only ones that count and not wealthy amateurs who pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of losing toes, limbs or their lives in exchange for possible bragging rights. I made it up Mount Washington in the White Mountains, but I don't dream of climbing on Denali, let alone the Himalayas, though I would dearly love to walk around Mount Kailas.

Poem for Wednesday

2008-05-07T03:32:06Z

The Water-Fall
By Henry Vaughan

With what deep murmurs through time's silent stealth
Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat'ry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide, and call,
As if his liquid, loose retinue stay'd
Ling'ring, and were of this steep place afraid;
The common pass
Where, clear as glass,
All must descend
Not to an end,
But quicken'd by this deep and rocky grave,
Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.

Dear stream! dear bank, where often I
Have sate and pleas'd my pensive eye,
Why, since each drop of thy quick store
Runs thither whence it flow'd before,
Should poor souls fear a shade or night,
Who came, sure, from a sea of light?
Or since those drops are all sent back
So sure to thee, that none doth lack,
Why should frail flesh doubt any more
That what God takes, he'll not restore?

O useful element and clear!
My sacred wash and cleanser here,
My first consigner unto those
Fountains of life where the Lamb goes!
What sublime truths and wholesome themes
Lodge in thy mystical deep streams!
Such as dull man can never find
Unless that Spirit lead his mind
Which first upon thy face did move,
And hatch'd all with his quick'ning love.
As this loud brook's incessant fall
In streaming rings restagnates all,
Which reach by course the bank, and then
Are no more seen, just so pass men.
O my invisible estate,
My glorious liberty, still late!
Thou art the channel my soul seeks,
Not this with cataracts and creeks.

--------

I got to get out of the house and have lunch with gblvr, yay! We had grand plans to go to P.F. Chang's but it was so crowded that we said to heck with it and opted for the quicker pleasure of Texas BBQ (which cost a lot less and frankly I like as much as most Chinese, though now that I know about that vegetarian place, I have a new favorite restaurant). I also got to meet wojelah, who shares my adoration of Donna Noble and did not run screaming when I admitted that I like Sam Carter better than Rodney McKay. Somehow while we were in the mall we managed not to notice the earthquake that hit the DC region, though on the scale of disasters I keep being grateful that I live here instead of in a major hurricane zone, tornado zone, etc.

Month-old baby African elephant Samson was born at the Maryland Zoo on March 19th.

He only began making public appearances last week.

The trainers are working to get Samson used to playing with people.

His mother, Felix, came to the Maryland Zoo from Arkansas last year.

Samson likes to try to climb the tall boulders in the enclosure, which he's not supposed to do yet.

Mom weighs more than 7,000 pounds; Samson weighs about 350 pounds at present.

The zoo also has a young giraffe, many baby penguins and a baby camel.</center>

Finally we watched The Golden Compass, which I liked well enough -- it's probably my favorite Nicole Kidman role ever, she's so much better cold and insincere, heh -- but I could also see why it didn't catch on as the next Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc. I started to feel a bit Farscape about all the talking animals -- give us more Asriel, even if his name is ridiculously pretentious, already -- and I was really looking forward to the alleged Church-bashing and was sorry it was so subtle, and that the world was still so hierarchical and aristocratic in many ways. Just like in C.S. Lewis's books, there's a rightful hierarchy and a wrongful hierarchy even among bears! And I'm kind of embarrassed at what Pullman obviously thinks American stereotypes are like.

Now, I hate to talk about the election, but did Hillary just imply that she's running for Vice President? Not that I am in any way complaining -- I would love that ticket, not sure it's even under consideration, but I hope Obama thinks about all the people who did vote for her and their reasons. For everything she says that makes me roll my eyes, I still feel like I have a much firmer sense of her plans in office than I have of his; I know which of her ideas and McCain's he thinks are misguided but I haven't seen firm alternatives in most cases. It would make me so happy to see Clinton and Obama working together.

The pictures from Myanmar are so upsetting, but it's almost as upsetting that only now does the world media seem to notice that there are thousands of refugees already -- more than in Darfur, according to some reports -- and the government is actively blocking humanitarian aid. It's a nightmare situation on top of a nightmare situation.

Poem for Tuesday

2008-05-06T03:30:23Z

Executive Shoeshine
By Mary Jo Salter

It may go on snowing forever,
but meanwhile, how he's basking
in the sun of his own multitasking!
He's perched erect on his throne
looking down on the airport food court,
as the silver snail of a cell phone
earpiece hooked to his ear
hangs on his every word.
No way to cut him short
until the runways are cleared
and they've finished out there de-icing
the right wing, then the left wing
of all those planes before his.
Could he strike us a deal with the weather?
The man hunched below him polishes
one wingtip, then the other.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Salter's A Phone Call to the Future, published by Knopf.

Not a very eventful Monday; I mostly finished laundry, caught up on phone calls and tried to learn how to use my new speedlight -- an early Mother's Day present so I'll have it on our trip this summer and can hopefully take better photos of relatives, indoor scenery and the interior of the HMS Surprise. *g* Younger son came home from school all excited because he had found several caterpillars on the way; later, son's best friend came over excitedly to tell me to bring the camera because a bird had laid eggs in one of the nest boxes on their deck (received and painted as party favors a few days ago -- on Tuesday I am going to Michael's to get one of them!).

Freshly sheared and groomed sheep awaiting their opportunity to go before the judges at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival last weekend.

A wide variety of sheep came to the festival from all over the country...

...producing a wide variety of wool and related crafts.

These sheep, for instance, are from "Ewetopia" in New York!

There were also locally bred alpacas...

...and llamas (if you were my son, this would be your cue to start chanting, "Here's a llama, there's a llama, and another little llama...").

Plus there were live performances, including Maggie Sansone on hammered dulcimer with several other local folk musicians.

The festival drew a wide range of people -- reenactors in period costume, organic farmers in flannel, bearded men in pro-life t-shirts, renewable resource champions wearing Obama for President buttons, Muslim women in hijab scarves, cancer survivors in head scarves and Walk For Life t-shirts, African-American men in kente cloth, women in old-fashioned solid color dresses that wouldn't have looked out of place among the Texas Mormons, you name it.</center>

For dinner we had Mexican food to celebrate Cinco de Mayo (well, Tex-Mex, since I doubt anyone involved in that victory over the French had hard-shell chicken tacos and mini cheese quesadillas). Then we were going to watch The Golden Compass which apaulled brought home on DVD last week -- he enjoyed the book -- but older son took forever taking his shower, so we postponed that. Fannish comment: I was delighted to read on The Leaky Cauldron that Natalia Tena said whiny Tonks is entirely absent from the film of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince...sometimes the cuts in the films are really delightful improvements on Rowling's pathetic self-indulgence and lack of coherent editing. Plus there's a rumor that Jason Isaacs appears in a flashback scene in the film, which would delight me greatly if true. I'm so irritated that they're making two movies out of Deathly Hallows that I'm not feeling any particular desire to see Half Blood Prince, though finding out that the filmmaker may have more sense than the novelist about certain things makes me feel somewhat better.

Hope everyone is keeping safe from tornadoes, cyclones and all the other disasters that seem to be whirling around the world. I'm sad that Mildred Loving has died and still astounded that her lawsuit demanding the right to intermarriage took place during my lifetime. I'm hoping my kids are just as shocked and horrified one day to realize that gay marriage wasn't legal during their lifetimes.

Poem for Monday

2008-05-05T03:30:06Z

Opera Night at Caffe Taci
By Adam Kirsch

No curtains here, no chandelier to raise;
She takes the low stage and begins to peal
Long airs of anguish, to distracted praise
From the gourmands of opera and the meal.
She wears the helium shoulderpads of dresses
Sold in a suburban bridal shop,
Rigid in velvet, while the waitresses
Lounge at their ease in cottons from the Gap;
Whatever third-rate coach she studied with
Could not undo the mannerism that
Half-shuts her eyes and splays her lipsticked mouth,
The cartoon mincing of a marionette.
It's all just as it should be. For the crowd,
The sensual pampering and dignified
Consumption; in return she is allowed
To sing, gauche and ignored, beatified.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Kirsch's Invasions, published by Ivan R. Dee.

Daniel was still recuperating from his upset stomach on Sunday morning and Adam was fed and entertained at the Hebrew school's birthday party for Israel, so those of us at home had a quiet morning and a relatively small lunch before deciding it was too gorgeous a day not to go out somewhere. Since Daniel was feeling much better, we went to Lake Whetsone Park in Gaithersburg for our annual look at the goslings produced by the goose colony there (previous years here and here). Lake Whetstone also has a great blue heron colony at the top of the tall trees in the center island, plus ducks and ducklings, cormorants, turtles, cardinals, red-wing blackbirds, barn swallows living under the boardwalk and many other animals. Adam found a caterpillar that accompanied up on our walk for a while on his arm. It was gorgeous and cool in the woods and there were birds singing everywhere.

</center>

For dinner Paul made jacket potatoes with chicken tikka masala -- Daniel doesn't eat that anyway, so he didn't mind having plain chicken and noodles -- then we all watched Doctor Who's "The Poison Sky" which I liked much better than its prequel for a whole lot of reasons. Much of it was little things -- that momentary glimpse of Rose on the viewscreen when the Doctor is addressing the Sontarans, Donna's mother whacking the car window with a hammer when the Doctor's sonic screwdriver wasn't saving her father (and then Donna whacking the Sontaran with a hammer later, yay for practical solutions!), the eye-rolling and mass exodus by his peers at the nerd genius's Moonraker posturing, the Doctor saying "Are you my mummy?" when ordered to wear a gas mask, Donna smacking the Doctor after he gets teleported back from his attempted martyrdom, the Doctor saying he knew clone!Martha wasn't the real deal almost from the start -- but I was also happy to see the English fight back rather than waiting for the Doctor to rescue them. And the preview for next week, hee! Is the blonde daughter Susan's mother from the First Doctor era, and is she Four and Rowena's, Eight and Grace's, Nine and Rose's, Ten and Reinette's...? Who else is blonde, since my knowledge of Companions has some giant holes? I don't suppose she could be Sarah Jane's; we'd know if Sarah Jane had had a child before Luke.

Then we watched The Tudors, which surprisingly dropped the opportunity to suggest that Anne had Catherine murdered -- I was so sure she was going to convince her brother or someone to poison Catherine, since she's talked about wanting her and Mary dead so often. But I was really glad they didn't go that route, even though they offered no explanation why Catherine died so young, apart from a broken heart. They're back to Henry being over Thomas More's death and turned on by Anne (son, who was in the room reading, asked why Henry liked to be choked during sex; I had no good answer immediately ready), so even though Jane Seymour is very pretty, it's not clear to me how they're going to work Henry into the murderous frenzy necessary to bring her to her well-known end.

I'm trying to find decent coverage of the British election, because our press isn't covering it for shit and the UK press is presuming more knowledge of British party politics than I have. Yesterday at the Sheep & Wool Festival, I told my mother-in-law that I wished someone was covering the Zimbabwe election controversy instead of garbage like Barbara Walters' love life, and a Muslim woman patted me on the back and said she was glad to hear someone who cared about real issues and then started lecturing about Rachel Corrie's foundation and the situation in Gaza. I almost bit my tongue off not arguing point for point...

Poem for Sunday

2008-05-04T03:50:31Z

Memory
By Heather McHugh

Whatever I am taught,
let me remember it.
When the big fish comes out of the water
we can see the bottom of the pond.
When the big toad comes out of the water
we can see the bottom of the well.
When the kingfisher dives into the water
his brain becomes clear.
When the cheek of the pregnant antelope was marked
her child was also marked.
If there is one piece of meat left in the pot
it will surely be taken by the spoon.
Everything the landlord does
is known to the swallow.
Everything that is in your brain,
my father,
let it be known to me.

--------

In Yoruba villages, "a poet or singer could rank with a great hunter," writes Mary Karr in Poet's Choice in Sunday's Washington Post Book World. "Yoruba artists fed the people's spirits and kept channels to the capricious gods flowing. The Yoruba's chain of 'talking drums' carried news vast distances." McHugh was inspired by Ulli Beier's translations of ancient Yoruba songs, and Karr says the poem above "lucidly capture[s] both the nature of consciousness and how the stories we inherit shape us," beginning with a longing for permanence, then leaving to gain experience, "but it's only in returning to the water of experience, plunging back through memory -- as the kingfisher does -- that the mind clears. In a single instant of recall, the poem argues, we can experience all our time, all our tribe's time. From this transcendental instant, the poem shifts to very practical concerns: how much meat is in the pot and the dishonesty of one's landlord. But it closes with plaintive longing for permanence and connection."

Saturday we took our annual trip to the Maryland Zoo's Breakfast With the Penguins, for which we had to get up very early and at which we got a bit sunburnt but it was worth it as always! This year there was a lot more food...in addition to all the breakfast meats and eggs and pastries, they had about eight varieties of bagels from a local place with several different flavored cream cheeses, plus fresh fruit and fruit juices as well as coffee for the adults and penguin squeeze bottles for the kids. (The penguins get smelly cold fish, so it's just as well there was no lox. *g*) There were two penguin ambassadors waddling on the grass and most of the zoo's 45 African penguins swimming around the penguin enclosure, along with some greedy gulls and a cormorant. This year, instead of bidding on a penguin painting, we bid on a private tour of the penguin enclosure to be held at a later date, and even though someone outbid us at the last minute, they offered to let us do it too for our bid price so we will be going back to see the inside of the enclosure soon!

These are Ascot and Tails, the ambassador penguins at the breakfast. We first met Ascot two years ago when she was a chick.

Only the zoo staff were allowed to hold the birds...

...but the penguins were happier on the ground anyway, waddling around pecking at dandelion stems.

When they got agitated, the zookeepers picked them up and calmed them down.

The penguin with the light blue band has caught the fish I threw in, which it promptly threw back and gobbled down.

The cormorant swam over and grabbed several of the fish!

But most of the penguins were content to wait their turn, or to stand around waiting to be hand-fed inside after the crowd had gone.</center>

We walked around the zoo a bit because there is a baby African elephant, Samson, who only just began appearing in public this week, as well as a young giraffe and lions, cheetahs, cranes, a porcupine, chimpanzees, rhinos and lots of other animals in the Africa section. We stopped by the Arctic zone, but we didn't see much of the rest of the zoo because we had plans to meet my in-laws at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I had never been before, and was expecting a bunch of local sheep and a couple of craft tents -- I had no idea of the size of it, and it's entirely free, even parking! We walked through four enormous barns of sheep, alpacas and llamas, several of which were being sheared and primped for judging, as well as dozens of craft displays and at least three musical stages, on one of which Maggie Sansone was playing. My in-laws are just back from three weeks in the UK and brought us Cadbury, Scottish souvenirs and a bunch of little Vikings in honor of their Swedish heritage.

On the way home we stopped at Ikea to get a bookcase -- now that we know where it is in College Park, we can't seem to stay away -- and had an early dinner there since the food is so inexpensive and we'd skipped lunch due to the size of our breakfast. It would have been a perfect day except that against my better judgment I watched the Kentucky Derby when Paul put it on, though I'd said after Barbaro that I was through with horses racing, but I didn't stick to it after we visited Churchill Downs two summers ago. Now once again we have had to watch an animal die for a big-money race, this time on the track after coming in second -- "It's not supposed to happen," the trainer said, but it happens far too often and I'm done watching the sport and supporting that kind of treatment even passively from my living room. Older son ended up with an upset stomach from our crazy eating and hectic hours today, so it was a quiet evening at home with the kids.

Poem for Saturday

2008-05-03T03:27:46Z

Pre-War
By Cornelius Eady

In mid-November wind off the Mountain
An American flag, left behind by the previous owners,
Stutters on the pole.

Fall loosens its grip:
Dead seed and leaf skitter across the grass,
Smoke ghosts up the chimney.

I hear the mid-morning news
As I watch the mid-morning sun
Wash from the needles of the pines,

Our first dust of snow.

The weather tests the weak spots in the sill,
Stoops our stride, thickens our shirts,
Has come to nest.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Eady's Hardheaded Weather, published by Putnam.

My day was mostly chores -- laundry and reviewing "The Price", one of the Next Gen episodes that soured the show for me the first time around even though I'm enjoying it more on nearly every level this time through...amazing what several years of mediocre sci-fi TV will do. The kids had friends over after school since it's a weekend and therefore video games are allowed, plus they took part in a big water gun battle with half the neighborhood kids that left them soaking wet. We had dinner with my parents (salmon, mmm) and I captioned and organized photos. What was I going to do, read the British election returns and mourn the Wizards' playoff loss and fret about tornadoes?

fridayfiver: I'm still
1. Describe where you grew up: Suburbia. Plenty of trees, reasonable proximity to Washington, DC if you have a car, and all the usual school and community ennui.
2. Do you wear any jewelery? When I go out, my wedding ring, one of my pagan rings and almost always earrings. At home, none.
3. What do you have too much of? Belly fat.
4. Who is a fool? John McCain.
5. What's your nickname? Littlereview, obviously!

thefridayfive: Nice things
1. What's one of the nicest things a friend has ever done for you? Gave me web space when I couldn't afford it.
2. What's one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for you? Offered me a freelance writing job based on something I'd posted on a fan site.
3. What is a trait in another person that you instantly admire, and that draws you to them? Generosity.
4. What is a trait in another person that instantly repels you, and prevents you from forming a close relationship with them? Thinking they know better than everyone else.
5. Time to vent: tell us about something rotten someone has done to you. Plagiarized me from something we'd written privately together in something she published.

fannish5: What were your five favorite resurrections?
1. Spock, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.
2. Buffy, "Bargaining, Part One," Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
3. Xena & Gabrielle, "Fallen Angel," Xena: Warrior Princess.
4. Jack Harkness, "The Parting of the Ways," Doctor Who.
5. Apollo, "War of the Gods," Battlestar Galactica.

I now know that we were meant to have three cats, because we have three beds.

This means Cinnamon can sleep on older son's bed all day while Rosie sleeps on younger son's new bunk bed...

...and Daisy has the biggest bed all to herself.

Rosie often demands her solitude.

Cinnamon will sleep anywhere, on the backs of couches, on people's clothes.

Being the most social of the cats, Daisy never complains if someone joins her.

But I think it's really cute when all three of them share space.</center>

Watched The Sarah Jane Adventures, Doctor Who and then BSG because it was there and none of us bothered to change the channel. Still not liking the latter much at all but I have little interest in the CBS vampire show, not having fallen for a vampire since I was a teenager, and anyway I think that's on in the earlier hour. Sarah Jane delights me in so many ways -- I love seeing a woman older than me, not tied to any man, attached to a faerie child she rescued, surrounded by kids whose intelligence she never underestimates and whom she treats like adults.

I was a bit shocked at the extent to which she expected Maria to hold it together and save her father -- and Maria did! Young Captain Jack Harkness could have taken lessons from her -- but my favorite moment in the new episode was when Clyde said the missing kid didn't have time to make friends, he was too busy with his Nintendo, at which both my kids looked up from their Nintendos and paid attention for the rest of the story, which takes place largely in a virtual game complex like our local Shadowlands where kids are disappearing from the Combat 3000. I preferred the earlier episode in some ways -- the archaeology storyline, Phyllida Law -- but really I've liked the entire show very much.

I'm so pissed at Sci-Fi for the cuts they're making in Doctor Who; this time I'm seeing the US TV versions much closer to the uncut ones, so they're much more obvious, so as much as I love the Pompeii episode, I'm really irritated that the last scene is missing with the Doctor and Donna as Roman household gods! BSG...well, I've said from the get-go that I really don't like Starbuck, I don't like the way she's written, I don't like the edge-of-madness shit whether it's divine inspiration or just plain being screwed up, and I don't like watching a show where I'm regularly rooting against a major female character but this series rarely leaves me feeling like I have a choice.

Kara is so fucked in the head where Leoben is concerned, and it's being handled so irresponsibly, so pathetically...between that and Ron Moore's messianic fantasy lived through Baltar and his gaggle of grrlz, though what Baltar really wants is the legitimacy of being admired by someone like the Chief...ugh, I can't even talk about it coherently, I just want notes to remind myself of all the things I don't like about the series for the next time someone gives me the "BSG is better than DS9 and B5 combined!" hyperbole.

Poem for Friday

2008-05-02T03:25:04Z

In the Junk Store
By Charles Simic

A small, straw basket
Full of medals
From good old wars
No one recalls.

I flipped one over
To feel the pin
That once pierced
The hero's swelling chest.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from That Little Something, published by Harcourt.

I actually got out of the house for fun today! I met perkypaduan at the mall for lunch and very important shopping such as a glittery scarf at Hot Topic, bargain books at Borders and shampoo at Bath & Body Works (if they have discontinued the signature scent lines in favor of that Fekkai stuff, I am going to be so irritated!). Came home to get kids, my mother stopped by for a bit, I got my new Shutterfly books so read those and then played with photos for a while -- I have pretty much everything uploaded to Picasa that I want there, now I just need to organize and caption it all. apaulled decided he was in the mood to barbecue chicken for dinner, so we used the charcoal grill for the first time this season, then made s'mores because how could we not, really?

A bird-of-paradise plant at Brookside Gardens' greenhouse last month...

...and false bird of paradise, or heliconia, which I've read is actually a cousin of the banana.

I'm not certain whether these are bananas or plantains -- they look kind of small for bananas, but they're very green and young and the tree is very tall.

Unripe coffee beans...

...and one of the few already coming ripe!

A white camellia...

...and pink and fuschia azaleas blooming on the same plant.</center>

I thoroughly loved this week's Smallville; even without all the various people who are no longer with the show, it was my favorite in ages and ages. It's a Wonderful Life makes such a nice format for exploring things in fantasy, even though I really don't much like the movie, with the angels and the suicide storyline -- it totally makes sense as something Jor-El would do to Kal-El, though, and how much fun to see the universe unspooling the way it's supposed to according to older canon! I like the new Clark Kent, Martha and Jonathan's adopted son, and was sorry he didn't stick around...and Paris with kids is the perfect place for Lana, I wish she was there right now in real canon. And Chloe has a hot fiance, and Lois is hot for Clark, all of which fit in better with my view of the Superman universe than Smallville's current direction.

Now, the timeline makes no sense to me -- if this is supposed to be real Smallville time, how can Lex possibly be over 35 and thus old enough to run for President? I am glad they returned to the nuclear war Lex is supposed to start as President, a storyline in play since Cassandra back in the first season, and I was so pleased to see Clark in his nerd glasses (I really like Tom Welling in nerd glasses!). It's too bad they had to make Kara such a bimbo that she didn't figure out about Brainiac herself and of course she didn't really destroy him when she thought she did. Sigh. But I never thought much of Supergirl, so I can't say it's outrageously acanonical. Now if only they'd let Lana wake up in Paris instead of Clark and Lex both still obsessing over her...shit, I just read that Michael Rosenbaum is not coming back for Smallville's next and almost certainly last season, so I guess I better enjoy it while I can.

Also watched a bit of the Pistons-Sixers blow-out and the Star Trek episode I need to review tomorrow ("The Price," which makes Troi look really stupid, not one of my favorites at all), then tried to watch the news but it was all the death of the DC madam and Rob Lowe's nanny and Barbara Walters' affair with a senator. At least Ted Casablanca made me howl by suggesting that his readers write fan fiction about himself, Jake Gyllenhaal, Patrick Dempsey and Tobey Maguire, all of whom used to belong to the same gym. "Makes great reading material (and more)," writes Ted.

Poem for Thursday

2008-05-01T03:25:21Z

To Hold
By Li-Young Lee

So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,
measuring by eye as it falls into alignment
between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky,
she'll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day we'll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn't for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I'll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling
more and more detail into the light
of a joint and fragile keeping.

--------

From "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Behind My Eyes, published by Norton.

Once again I have no exciting news of my own so I'll just link to stuff I was reading today (somewhere in the world there must be something people are talking about besides celebrity indiscretions, political candidate antics, consequences of the NFL draft and the fate of the Grand Duchess Anastasia but I couldn't find it). I am ever in Hawaii, I want to go to Surfing Goat Dairy where people get to feed and milk the goats and sample 20 different kind of cheeses made there. And speaking of animals, I was reading about the escaped pig balloon and Paul says the funny thing is that it isn't the first time something like this happened -- when Pink Floyd shot the original Animals album cover with the pig flying by Battersea Power Station, the pig broke free and eventually landed in a field near Canterbury. And I'm sorry, but when I first read about the Greek "take back 'lesbian'" lawsuit, I thought at first it was a joke by The Onion and when I found out it was for real, I kept snickering rather than being indignant.

This last photo is not National Arboretum koi, obviously, but the view of the orchid display in the visitor's center.</center>

Actually I don't need to get going on Clinton, Obama and the idiocy that is the Democratic Party at present because Boston Legal did it for me...and the side story was about cloned beef on the market, brought by a woman with whom Denny falls instantly in love and rides horses. So it was a really divine hour of television. Amidst a discussion of the show's move to Wednesday and not being sure whether it will be back next year, a woman comes in wanting a lawyer to deal with the FDA signing off on cloned meat. She's a rancher, Sunny Field, of Sunnyfield Farms, and Denny asks her to marry him before she's finished explaining her issues with "the mad cows in charge of the asylum." Denny begs Carl to work on the case with him because he needs a heavy hitter for the consumer advocate issues while Denny is himself busy hitting on Sunny.

Alan is busy with Shirley, who wants to sue her nephew because he's going to vote for Obama. When Alan says he believes the nephew has that right, Shirley explains that Mitchie is a delegate whose district -- and indeed whose state -- voted for Clinton, but it's a dirty party secret that delegates don't have to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Mitchie insists that it's a duty but not an obligation, and at 22 feels certain that Obama is the right choice, which Alan recognizes as within party rules...unless they sue the Democratic Party. They get the Not Gay judge, and Wolf Blitzkrieg of CCN has a field day trying to interview them.

Meanwhile Carl and Denny get the jibber-jabber judge, who asks how they can be suing Food and Drugs. Carl must explain that it's the FDA they want to sue, and after Sunny flirts with him, she explains that the FDA doesn't even require cloned food to be labeled so there's no way for the public to avoid it even though it hasn't been properly studied to see if it's healthy. She talks high levels of hormones in surrogate mothers, massive doses of antibiotics, pharmaceuticals in the human food supply. In private, Denny tells her how much he's infatuated, but Sunny warns him that she treats men like horses: "I ride 'em hard and I turn 'em out." Though Alan thinks he's out of his mind to want to commit after one date, Denny is certain that she's The One.

Shirley testifies that while the Democratic Party rules may technically allow pledged delegates to vote for someone else, it's not what the party advertises will happen when it asks voters to participate in primaries. In private, she and Alan have a shouting match -- he's annoyed that she really brought this case out of support for Hillary, she's furious he brings up big party politics and dynasties to support Barack -- but they end up agreeing that the system is rotten no matter which candidate one prefers. Mitchie parodies Bill Clinton on stand and quotes Obama and then Dean, making Alan say that the boy sounds like the Little Engine That Could and wonders what he'd think if delegates voting their conscience chose Kucinich. The Democrats explain that delegates are necessary to stop the popular vote from allowing someone silly like a comedian to get the nomination, but Alan points out that currently it's big business picking the candidates. The judge agrees that the nomination process is not democratic -- "This is how we ended up with Bush" -- but denies Alan's motion.

Denny and Sunny ride horses together, and despite a serious setback -- Sunny says cows shun animals that have Mad Cow, then furrows her brow when her entire herd flees from Denny, who tells Alan how devastating it is to be diagnosed by a fellow cow -- Denny asks her to marry him. Carl trounces the FDA lawyer, naming piles of FDA-approved supplements that caused fatal problems and citing all the dangerous drugs that had to be removed from the market, but the jibber-jabber judge keeps changing his ruling so that Denny isn't sure whether he won or not when Sunny comes to give him her answer. She wants to marry Denny, but she has bought a farm in Montana and wants him to move there with her. Crushed, Denny admits that there's someone else, "my best friend," and refuses to uproot his life away from Alan.

On the balcony, Alan says he's sorry but Denny knows that he's really relieved and forgives him when Alan explains all his own issues with finding love. "While many people embrace the promise of tomorrow, too few celebrate the joy of now, and nobody does that like Denny Crane," says Alan. Denny replies that when you have Mad Cow, now gets high priority, especially when you're sitting on the balcony sipping scotch with your best friend. They drink to now. That's right -- Denny broke up with The One for Alan. Heh. Happy Beltane!

Poem for Wednesday

2008-04-30T03:45:16Z

From 'The Prodigal'
By Derek Walcott

III: II

The tidal motion of refugees, not the flight of wild geese,
the faces in freight cars, haggard and coal-eyed,
particularly the peaked stare of children,
the huge bundles crossing bridges, axles creaking
as if joints and bones were audible, the dark stain
spreading on maps whose shapes dissolve their frontiers
the way that corpses melt in a lime-pit or
the bright mulch of autumn is trampled into mud,
and the smoke of a cypress signals Sachsenhausen,
those without trains, without mules or horses,
those who have the rocking chair and the sewing machine
heaped on a human cart, a waggon without horses
for horses have long galloped out of their field
back to the mythology of mercy, back to the cone
of the orange steeple piercing clouds over the lindens
and the stone bells of Sunday over the cobbles,
those who rest their hands on the sides of their carts
as if they were the flanks of mules, and the women
with flint faces, with glazed cheekbones, with eyes
the colour of duck-ponds glazed over with ice,
for whom the year has only one season, one sky:
that of rooks flapping like torn umbrellas,
all have been reduced into a common language,
the homeless, the province-less, to the incredible memory
of apples and clean streams, and the sound of milk
filling the summer churns, where are you from,
what was your district, I know that lake, I know the beer,
and its inns, I believed in its mountains,
now there is a monstrous map that is called Nowhere
and that is where we're all headed, behind it
there is a view called the Province of Mercy,
where the only government is that of the apples
and the only army the wide banners of barley
and its farms are simple, and that is the vision
that narrows in the irises and the dying
and the tired whom we leave in ditches
before they stiffen and their brows go cold
as the stones that have broken our shoes,
as the clouds that grow ashen so quickly after danw
over palm and poplar, in the deceitful sunrise
of this, your new century.

--------

I did nothing but chores, so I have nothing exciting to report. Well, I did sleep kind of late because I had all three cats in bed with me, thus forcing me to contort into the kind of positions in which it is possible to sleep only if you have three cats in bed with you, but nothing besides that! I spent some time looking at The Old Bailey Online just because it's so cool that it's there (and after seeing the Sweeney Todd extras, I was really curious to see all the murder and robbery transcripts, not to mention Oscar Wilde's indecency trial. All of which makes me think of that father with the daughter in the basement in Austria -- if The X-Files had done that as a story, I would have said it was unrealistic and vile (I did say that about "Home"). There's no prison terrible enough for that guy. Ugh.

Red foot tortoises from Central America. They have a 50-year life span.

Larger cousins, African spurred tortoises, which eat cacti and sub-Saharan grasses and can live to be 80.

Much smaller Russian tortoises, which live all over Asia and hibernate more than half the year. They can live to be nearly 100!

The local Eastern painted turtle also hibernates but their life spans are only 30-40 years.

This is a black throat monitor lizard, a carnivore from Africa that can inflate its body when intimidated or angry.

A blue-tongue skink from Australia, an omnivore that occasionally bites fingers as they look like something edible.

And a bearded dragon, also from Australia, hoping for a big yummy worm to go with his veggies.</center>

After he finished his homework, older son wanted to watch the Tenth Doctor Who devil episodes ("The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit") because he was in an Ood mood, so that's what we did tonight...Doc and Rose threatening to become domestic and the awesome black hole. I'm so relieved Obama publicly told Wright where to stick it -- I have zero tolerance for anti-Semitic bigotry, I don't care if you're blathering in the name of Jesus or liberation theology or some massive US conspiracy theory. And I have never given a crap about Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana, having boys with no tolerance for her or her music, but she'd seen the photos before she left the shoot and knew exactly how they made her look, and she is now trying to have it both ways looking sexy in Vanity Fair while claiming she didn't mean to look sexy...it's her prerogative to make money titillating pedophiles, but the one of her sprawled all over daddy with her belly exposed is more disturbing than the photo with the sheet and every adult handler knew exactly the messages they would send. Again, ugh.

Poem for Tuesday

2008-04-29T03:59:19Z

From 'The Prodigal'
By Derek Walcott

I

Chasms and fissures of the vertiginous Alps
through the plane window, meadows of snow
on powdery precipices, the cantons of cumuli
grumbling or closing, gasping falls of light
a steady and serene white-knuckled horror
of speckled white serrations, inconceivable
in repetition, spumy avalanches
of forgetting cloud, in the wrong heaven-a
paradise of ice and camouflage
of speeding seraphs' shadows down its slopes
under the metal, featherless wings, the noise
a violation of that pre-primal silence
white and without thought, my fear was white
and my belief obliterated-a black stroke
on a primed canvas, everything was white,
white was the colour of nothing, not the night,
my faith was strapped in. It could go no higher.
I doubted that there would be a blest descent
braking like threshing seraph's wings, to spire
and sun-shot field, wide, innocent.

The worst fear widened, to ask of the infinite:
How many more cathedral-spires? How many more
peaks of these ice-seized mountains, and towns
locked in by avalanches with their yellow lights
inside on their brilliant goods, with the clappers
of bells frozen by silence? How many small crows
like commas punctuating the drifts?
Infinite and repetitive as the ridges
patterned like okapi or jaguar, their white forests
are an opposite absolute world, a different life,
but more like a different death. The wanderer's cry
forms an O of terror but muted by the slanted snow
and a fear that is farther than panic. This,
whatever its lesson, is the tacit chorus
of the screaming mountains, the feathering alp,
the frozen ocean of oceanic roofs
above which hangs the white ogling horn-skeletal
tusk of a mastodon above white inns.

II

A small room, brown and dark, its linen
white as the white spur of the Matterhorn
above the balcony and the dark inns in snow,
and, incredibly on the scars of the crevasses,
a train crawling up the mountain. Orange lights
and brighter in the muffled streets of Zermatt,
what element more absolute as itself
than the death-hush of the snow, the voiceless blizzard,
between the brilliant windows of the stores?

He stood outside bright windows filled with music,
faint conversation through the mullioned panes
and crab-clenched chandeliers with pointed flames
above the animate and inanimate faces
of apparitions whose features matched their names,
all gentlemen with some big-buttressed dames,
a fiction in a fiction. The door could open,
he would be more than welcome. The lights were squared
on the lawn's edges. A conspiring pen
had brought him thus far. All that he had dared
lay in elegant ambush whose bright noise
was like the starlit surf whose voice had reared
him. But this was a different climate,
a different country. Now both lives had met
in this achievement. He turned his head
away this time, and walked back towards the road.
The scene was just like something he had read.
Something in boyhood, before he went abroad.
But cowardice called to him. He went back inside;
secure and rigid in their printed places
all of the dancers in that frozen ballroom.

III

As with snow, to feel the air changing,
the heart darken and in the clarity of sunshine-the
clarity of ice, as in the islands,
all spring, all summer, it was the one world
till autumn marshalled its divisions, its flags,
and deer marched with agreeing nodding antlers
into another fiction while we remained
in immortal cobalt, unchanging viridian;
and what was altered was something more profound
than geography, it was the self. It was vocabulary.
Now it was time for the white poem of winter,
when icicles lock the great bronze horse's teeth.
The streets were white. No sidewalks in the streets
and the short snowy distances between the shops
brilliant with winter gear and above the streets
full of skiers with their poles on their shoulders
the chalets, snow-roofed, with peaks like Christmas cards.
From a climate without wolves, what if I dreamt
a white wolf trotted and stood in my path,
there, in the early lights of the busy streets
thickened to silence, coal-eyed, its tongue
a panting flame, snow swarming my eyes.
Then, like a match struck with light! A different glow
than the windows of the hotels, the stores, the inns.
Her hair above the crisp snow of table linen
was like a flare, it led him, stumbling, inane.

He went down early to the lounge. Repeat:
He went down early to the lounge and waited.
The street lights were still on. Then they went out.
Eventually she came and when she came,
she brought the mountain with her into the big room
with her cold cheeks, snow smudged with strawberries,
her body steaming with hues of a banked hearth,
her eyes the blue-green of its dying coals,
and her hair, once it was shaken from its cap
leapt like new fire. Ilse, perhaps, brought in
the muddy tracks between the inns, dark pines,
the unicorn shaft or the priapic horn
of the white mountain, as famous as its stamp,
she brought in echoes of hunted stags folding
from a shot's ricochet through a crevasse
in the warmth of the body which she now unsheathed,
shaking the dust of snow from fur and leather
and hanging her ski-coat on a rack of antlers,
with a glance that pierced him like an icicle,
flashing the blizzard of white teeth, then tousling
the wet hair at the nape of her neck, she stood
for a moment in a blizzard of linen
and the far-lightning flash of cutlery
over the chalets and lodges of Zermatt.

IV

As far as secular angels go there is always one,
in Venice, in Milan, hardening that horn
of ageing desire and its devastations,
while skiers plunge and slide soundlessly
past crevasses, invisible as thoughts,
like the waitress buttoning her uniform
already pronged by an invisible horn
and lids that sometimes closed as if her form
slept in the white peace after an avalanche.
He looked out through the window at white air,
and there, crawling impossibly like an insect
across the drifts, a train, distinct, impossible.
Now with more promise than he could expect.

Her speech was crisp, and as for the flushed face,
was it a patronizing kindness? Who could tell?
Auf Wiedersehen to the pines and the peaked chalets
to the inns looking like toys behind the car
and the waitresses and Ilse, indifferently
going about their business with the lamps
of the Alpine dusk, and the beds freshly made
as the new snow that blurred the villages
and the lights from the stores on the banked street
and the receding shore of our hotel.
Again, how many farewells and greetings
on cheeks that change their name, how many kisses
near tinkling earrings that fade like carriage bells.

--------

I had a quiet morning playing with photos and a fun evening with dementordelta, who was passing by my house on her way home from Pittsburgh Comicon and agreed to subject herself to my entire family, including Daniel in full sulk mode because he has just been banned from video games until his chemistry grade comes up. Once he finished reporting us to the child abuse society for this act of cruelty, we went to California Tortilla, where Delta and I tried to discuss fannish matters in between bouts of Adam talking about roller coasters he wants to ride, having gone on one yesterday with the Hebrew school youth group that pleased him greatly. I know I am still boring but I am only having coughing fits once or twice an hour now, so this is progress!

The electric cars were rock stars at Rockville Science Day.

This one powers its batteries with solar panels and can go longer distances.

Whereas this one must be charged at night...

...which requires a trunk full of batteries...

...as well as a hood with more batteries and a converter.

The Discover Genomics mobile lab bus visited the science expo as well.

And Reptile Wonders drove a vehicle with advertising on top.</center>

Watched Doctor Who's "The Sontaran Stratagem," not one of my favorites of modern Who (it might help if I had watched the Tom Baker Sontarans in something resembling order, as opposed to whatever random sequence we get on late night PBS), but I continue to adore Donna and Donna and Martha together are almost as much fun as Rose and Sarah Jane together were. Yay, Martha has a new boyfriend! Not soon enough, sadly, but she deserves so much better than mooning over the Doctor. And I snickered at Donna saying that if you hug the Doctor you'll get a paper cut. Though my favorite bit is Donna telling off the general! Not a fan of the murderous boy genius, it's too much of a sci-fi type, but I am amused that this time it's our GPS systems that will bring about the end of the world. I didn't realize those were as prevalent in the UK, where I couldn't even get mobile service in some of the remoter parts of Wales.

Now I'm trying to pay attention to basketball playoffs but am having trouble staying awake again. Oh well, good thing I don't really care!

Poem for Monday

2008-04-28T03:23:13Z

From 'The Prodigal'
By Derek Walcott

I

In autumn, on the train to Pennsylvania,
he placed his book face-down on the sunlit seat
and it began to move. Metre established,
carried on calm parallels, he preferred to read
the paragraphs, the gliding blocks of stanzas
framed by the widening windows-Italian
light on the factories, October's
motley in Jersey, wild fans of trees, the blue
metallic Hudson, and in the turning aureate afternoon,
dusk on rose brickwork as if it were Siena.

Nothing. Nobody at the small railroad station.
The willows fan open. Here we hung our harps,
as the river slid past to elegiac banjos
and the barge crawled along an ochre canal
past the white spires of autumnal towns
and racketing freight trains all long whoop and echo.
Stations, bridges and tunnels enter their language
and the scribble of brown twigs on a blank sky.

And now the cars began to fill with pilgrims,
while the book slept. With others in the car,
he felt as if he had become a tunnel
through which they entered the idea of America-familiar
mantling through the tunnel's skin.
It was still unfamiliar, the staidness of trains.
And the thoughtful, the separate, gliding in cars
on arrowing rails serenely, each gripped face intent
on the puzzle of distance, as stations pass
without waving, and sad, approaching cities,
announced by the prologue of ramshackle yards
and toothless tunnels, and the foliage rusting
across an old aqueduct, loomed and then dwindled
into their name. There were no stations
or receding platforms in the maps of childhood
nor blizzards of dogwood, no piercing steeples
from buttressed cathedrals, nor statues whose base
held dolphins, blunt browed, repeating themselves.
Look at that man looking from the stalled window-he
contains many absences. He has ridden
over infinite bridges, some with roofs below,
many where the afternoon glittered like mica
on the empty river. There was no time
to fall in love with Florence, to completely understand
Wilmington or the rusty stanchions
that flashed past with their cables
or how the screaming gulls knew
the names of all the women he had lost.
There was sweet meditation on a train
even of certain griefs, a gliding time
on the levelled surface of elegiac earth
more than the immortal motion of a blue bay
next to the stone sails of graves, his growing loss.

Echoing railway stations drew him to fiction,
their web of schedules, incoherent announcements,
the terror of missing his train, and because trains
(their casual accuracy, the joy in their gliding power)
had (there were no trains on the islands
of his young manhood) a child's delight in motion,
the lines and parallels and smoky arches
of unread famous novels would stay the same
for yet another fall with its bright counties,
he knew, through the gliding window, the trees would lift
in lament for all the leaves of the unread books,
Anna Karenina, for the long wail of smoke
across Alpine meadows, for soldiers leaning
out of war-crowded stations, a separate joy
more rooted in landscapes than the flare of battles.

In the middle of the nineteenth century,
somewhere between Balzac and Lautréamont,
a little farther on than Baudelaire Station
where bead-eyed Verlaine sat, my train broke down,
and has been stuck there since. When I got off
I found that I had missed the Twentieth Century.
I studied those small things which besieged the station,
the comical belligerence of dragonflies
and the perpetual astonishment of owls.
It was another country whose time had passed,
with pastoral willows and a belief in drawing.
I saw where Courbet lived; I saw the big quarry
and the lemon light of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.
The noise of roaring parliaments, a noise
that sounded like the ocean, whorled in my ear-shell,
was far, and the one sibilance was of the poplars
who once bowed to Hobbema. My joy was stuck.
The small station was empty in the afternoon,
as it had been on the trip to Philadelphia.
I sipped the long delight of a past time
where ambition was too late. My craft was stuck.
My deep delight lay in being dated
like the archaic engine. Peace was immense.
But Time passed differently than it did on water.

II

There is a continent outside my window,
in the Hudson's patient narrative. There's some calm.
But traffic hurtles up the West Side Highway,
and in fall, the embankment blazes, but
even in spring sunlight I have rarely sought
the glittering consolation of the river,
its far-fetched history, the tongues of unknown trees
talk to an old man sitting on a bench.
Along the smouldering autumnal sidewalks,
the secretive coffee-shops, bright flower stalls,
wandering the Village in search of another subject
other than yourself, it is yourself you meet.
An old man remembering white-headed mountains.
And subtly the sense insinuates itself
that frequent exile turns into treachery,
missing the seasons at the table of July
on lower Seventh Avenue when young women glide
like Nereids in their lissome summer dresses,
all those Susannas for a single elder!
In spring the leaves sing round a tireless statue
who will not sit although invited to.

From a fresh- to a salt-water muse. Home to the Hudson.
The bells on a bright Sunday from my bed,
the squares of sunlight on the buildings opposite
the river slate, the sky cloudless, enamelled.
Then Sunday brings its summary of the world,
with the serene Hudson and its criss-crossing ferries,
great clouds and a red barge.
Gaze, graze on the numinous greys
of the river, its spectral traffic
and the ghostly bridges, the bouquet of lamps,
along the embankment your name fades into fog.

Clouds, the sag of old towels, sodden in grey windows,
the far shore scumbled by the fog,
ducks bob on the grey river like decoys,
not ducks but the submerged pieces of an old pier,
lights fade from the water, "Such, such were the joys,"
muffled remorse in the December air.

III

Desire and disease commingling,
commingling, the white hair and the white page
with the fear of white sight, blindness, amputation,
a recurring kidney stone, the plague of AIDS,
shaken in the mirror by that bewildered look,
the truculence, the drooping lip of a spiritual lout.
Look at it any way you like, it's an old man's book
whenever you write it, whenever it comes out,
the age in your armpits in the pleats of your crotch,
the faded perfumes of cherished conversations,
and the toilet gurgling its eclogues, resurrecting names
in its hoarse swivelling into an echo after.
This is the music of memory, water.

IV

On Mondays, Boston classes. Lunch, a Korean corner-my
glasses clouded by a tribal broth,
a soup that tamed shaggy Mongolian horsemen
in steaming tents while their mares stamped the snow.
Asia swirls in a blizzard; winter is rising
on drifts across the pavements, soon every gutter
will be a locked rivulet then it will be time
for rose and orange lights to dot the Prudential,
and sparrows to bulb along the stricken branches.
I missed the fall. It went with a sudden flare
and blew its wick in Gloucester, sank in Salem,
and bleached the salt grass bending off Cape Ann,
flipped seals into the sound, rattled the shades
of a dark house on that headland abandoned
except by Hopper. You know the light I mean.
American light. And the wind is
the sound of an age going out the window,
yellow and red as taxis, the leaves. And then
boring through volumes of cloud, a silverfish-

--------

Another from Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World, in which Mary Karr writes, "Walcott's recent work in The Prodigal captures a familiar saga, in lines I find his most powerful to date: an aging man still trapped between longing and the physical confines of old age." The book was released in 2004 by Farrar Straus Giroux.

Adam went with the Hebrew school youth group to an amusement park for the afternoon and rain was forecast, so although the Folger Library was having their annual celebration in honor of Shakespeare's birthday (which usually involves minstrels, stage fight demonstrations, poetry readings and cake for all), we decided to stay in the suburbs and took Daniel to Rockville Science Day at Montgomery College. I missed this last year to go to a Beltane celebration and was then bummed not to have seen the baby emu. This year there was no baby emu, but there were lots of other birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, a space shuttle model, student-designed robots, tai chi demonstrations, nutrition exhibits, electric cars and more.

An exhibit about pigeons at Rockville Science Day in Montgomery College's gym.

Kids got to dig for worms in a composting exhibit.

Building rockets for a late afternoon launch.

Kids also designed aerodynamic flyers...

...and tested them blowing them out the top of this wind chamber.

And there were many other animals, including this nesting parakeet...

...and this tree frog, part of a display from a local nature center.</center>

After retrieving Adam, we had dinner with my parents; my father had asked us to bring a movie over, so since it's a school night and we didn't have time for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, we opted for the kids' recent favorite Goldmember. Which is still one of the silliest movies ever. And still cracks me up, though I don't think my mother was at all impressed. I was therefore quite amused that The Tudors had a scene focused on the venerable English theatrical tradition of fart jokes -- I like that Cromwell rather than Henry is getting the credit for the rise of the theatre, and that Henry's guilt over his adoration for Thomas More is the cause of his disenchantment with Anne, rather than the usual daughter-and-miscarriage rage. Anne isn't very bright to be interrogating him about his mistresses when he's already obviously in a snit -- though I like that she doesn't sit down and shut up even though she has neither the bloodlines nor the political connections to get away with it -- but Henry is such an obnoxious self-centered bratty jerk! It's so unfair that Catherine didn't get to outlive him.

Poem for Sunday

2008-04-27T03:04:59Z

Sea Grapes
By Derek Walcott

That sail which leans on light,
tired of islands,
a schooner beating up the Caribbean

for home, could be Odysseus
home-bound on the Aegean;
that father and husband's

longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is like
the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name in
every gull's outcry.

This brings nobody peace. The ancient war
between obsession and responsibility will
never finish and has been the same

for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now
wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since
Troy sighed its last flame,

and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough from
whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the
conclusions of exhausted surf.

The classics can console. But not enough.

--------

From Poet's Choice by Mary Karr in The Washington Post Book World, in which she describes Walcott as "one of the great mongrels of American poetry, serving as a singular melting pot for a variety of traditions -- from Shakespeare's English to the patois of his grandmothers, who descended from slaves. "'I'm just a red nigger who love the sea,/I had a sound colonial education,/I have Dutch, nigger, and English in me,/and either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation.'" Karr compares Walcott's struggles with exile to Homer's chronicle of Odysseus, noting that "in Walcott's poem about Odyssey, Homer appears as 'the blind giant' who heaves a trough in the ocean that Walcott then sails into."

Saturday was Maryland Day at the University of Maryland and our original plan was to go to the physics and agriculture and manga exhibits, but it's over a hilly mile from the parking lots to the various buildings and between my lungs, the pollen count and the possibility of rain, I bailed out and the rest of the family followed. Instead we returned to our household cleaning projects, which included putting together a new chest of drawers for Adam, whose room is now cleaner than mine, and sorting through Daniel's closet, where we discovered several ancient stuffed animals that have now moved onto Adam's bed -- including the trio of dragons that lived on my dorm room bed in college, and a musical dinosaur given to Daniel as an infant -- as well as four bags of baby clothes we had never given away, where I found two sweaters made by my mother's mother that will be saved for my grandchildren. Even at this late date it's sad to be giving away all those cute little velour baby outfits, and I put the Chicago Bears onesie on a stuffed bear so we could keep it for posterity. I also yanked something for someone who's reading this who may need it in a few months, heh.

Daisy actually fell asleep in this position.

Really, mid-stretch, with her paw sticking out just like that.

She has also been known to fall asleep with her paw over her face...

...or smushed against Rosie, or between Rosie and a person. Usually me.

Here she helps inspect Adam's collection of stuffed animals being sorted on my bed.

All three cats can be highly pesked by a feather pesker, even if no one is waving it around.

In fact, they are more likely to take turns if it is anchored in one place.</center>

Watched Robin Hood: Men in Tights because we were all in silly moods and the kids hadn't seen it -- not even close to Mel Brooks at his best, but it has Cary Elwes, Roger Rees (proving that he's no Alan Rickman) and a very young Dave Chappelle whom I hadn't even realized was there last time I saw it more than a decade ago -- I didn't know Brooks discovered him! Plus Brooks does his usual rabbi schtick and Patrick Stewart gets some hilarious digs in at Sean Connery's expense, which is really sufficient reason to watch the movie. My in-laws called; they have made it home from Britain, where it sounds like they had a lovely time and saw more of Scotland than we have. And I ordered my Shutterfly stuff with a combination of coupons that it less than half price, so all in all a reasonably successful day even if I never left the house.

Poem for Saturday

2008-04-26T04:01:00Z

Cotton Candy
By Edward Hirsch

We walked on the bridge over the Chicago River
for what turned out to be the last time,
and I ate cotton candy, that sugary air,
that sweet blue light spun out of nothingness.
It was just a moment, really, nothing more,
but I remember marveling at the sturdy cables
of the bridge that held us up
and threading my fingers through the long
and slender fingers of my grandfather,
an old man from the Old World
who long ago disappeared into the nether regions.
And I remember that eight-year-old boy
who had tasted the sweetness of air,
which still clings to my mouth
and disappears when I breathe.

--------

Another from The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue last weekend, this one by former Poet's Choice columnist Hirsh, to go with this article. "Poetry is a vocation. It is not a career but a calling," writes Hirsch. "For as long as I can remember, I have associated that calling, my life's work, with walking. I love the leisurely amplitude, the spaciousness, of taking a walk, of heading somewhere, anywhere, on foot. I love the sheer adventure of it, setting out and taking off. You cross a threshold and you're on your way. Time is suspended. Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind. Poetry is written from the body as well as the mind, and the rhythm and pace of a walk can get you going and keep you grounded. It's a kind of light meditation. Daydreaming is one of the key sources of poetry -- a poem often starts as a daydream that finds its way into language -- and walking seems to bring a different sort of alertness, an associative kind of thinking, a drifting state of mind."

The pollen count today was over 2000. Between that and the not-yet-recovered condition of my lungs, I spent a lot of time coughing, wheezing and gasping. So if you're hoping for new neighborhood photos or something like that, sorry. I did get a review of "The Enemy" written, probably more enthusiastic than I meant to sound because it's an interesting story to think about after though frustrating while watching. (And possibly incoherent due to lack of oxygen but that's how it goes.) Had dinner with my parents, couldn't eat much -- if bronchitis is good for anything, it's weight loss -- and folded laundry, which was much excitement as I could muster.

fridayfiver: The air's so heavy
1. When did you last get lost? When was the last time I drove anywhere?
2. Have you ever been flying? As a passenger. Not piloting or skydiving or anything like that.
3. Who do you always listen to? My friend Veronica, who is incredibly knowledgeable about a wide range of things.
4. When does the day feel long? When I'm stuck in traffic.
5. Friday fill-in: Are we _____ ? Are we running out of ideas for questions?

thefridayfive:
1. Whats harder to live without, chocolate or alchohol? Chocolate! I can go weeks or months without alcohol and never miss it.
2. Does the colour yellow remind you of anything? Besides the sun? And pollen? And piss?
3. Who most annoyed you last week? Answering this question would be sure to get me unFriended, and after I was so careful to stay out of the controversy.
4. Do you have a cutesy romantic nickname for your partner (or previous partners)? Yes.
5. What is your favourite Stephen King movie? The Running Man.

fannish5: What are your five least favorite romances, in canon?
1. Star Trek: Voyager, Chakotay/Seven of Nine.
2. Harry Potter, Harry/Ginny.
3. Smallville, Clark/Lana.
4. The West Wing, Josh/Donna.
5. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Gul Dukat/Kira Meru.

From the National Aquarium in Baltimore...

...puffins and other North Atlantic shorebirds.

They call these the "penguins of the north" though my son says it doesn't really count.

And from the Caribbean reef exhibit...

...and the Maryland marsh exhibits...

...and the exterior of the great shark tank...

...and above the giant ray tank...

...and diving into it.</center>

Speaking of penguins, Adam tells me that Friday was in fact World Penguin Day, and I should report that I loved the penguin wet suit story. Watched the Sarah Jane Adventures/Doctor Who lineup on Sci-Fi and then left it on for BSG, which my kids watched attentively, to my dismay. Sarah Jane just delights me -- I love that she's not defined by her maternity or lack thereof like so many women that age, yet she's so willing to work with and involved with adolescents and takes their intelligence seriously. And Phyllida Law as a guest star, with the same hairdo she had in The Winter Guest, and she'll be back next week! Squee! The Slitheen are fun but I like the creepy nuns and Medusa better...more cool women. ("Behave or the Abbess might show you my idea of solving a problem like Maria.")

I'd seen "Partners in Crime" before but I enjoyed it on the big screen...I adore Donna and her attitude, both wanting to believe and see there's more in the universe and at the same time taking no crap from anyone, particularly not the Doctor. BSG...sigh, everything I said last week is still very much in effect with a double helping of the Bimbos of the Death Sun cult. Maybe Saul and Gaius could date; they'd be a dream couple on this series.

Poem for Friday

2008-04-25T03:39:49Z

Here, Bullet
By Brian Turner

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable fight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And a dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

--------

A poem currently being passed around among American soldiers in Iraq, another from last Sunday's Washington Post Book World, the annual poetry issue, here on the cover.

Let's just write off this week as a loss, okay? I still have bronchitis. I still have no energy to contribute anything intelligent to any current debate. The most exciting thing that happened to me today was a raccoon on our deck after dark that made all three cats puff out their tails and thunder around the first floor in a panic. Am absurdly pleased that The Tudors will be back next season, considering that it's as historically absurd as ever -- it has really grown on me, though without Anne Boleyn (oops, is that a spoiler, heh) I am not sure that will continue. I was also pleased to see that UC Santa Cruz will get the archives of the Grateful Dead -- the school's mascot is a banana slug, and since Adam adores banana slugs and Paul adores the Grateful Dead, we can't wait for the tie-die banana slug t-shirts.

</center>

Smallville...I know it's very wrong of me but I want Lana to stay in a coma until the show is cancelled! Because Chloe-and-Jimmy-centric episodes with a side helping of Lex are so much more fun! Even with Lionel dead, Martha gone, Lois absent and Clark as annoying as ever -- last week he was much too worried about Lionel to think about Lana, now he's on the all Lana all the time channel -- the show can eke out some interest for me if Chloe has something fun to do. I didn't even mind that she had to be rescued because it was Jimmy instead of Superman. And any episode containing the line "This entry didn't just Rita Skeeter itself into Swann's journal" has redeemed its existence right there.

Also watched a Next Gen episode I largely didn't remember to review on Friday and half-watched the end of the Wizards blow-out playoff game; they're still down 2-1 but hey, the Capitals are out of the playoffs entirely so it's a matter of DC pride. If I believed a city's pride rested in pro sports, which I don't. But it's not like DC has much to be proud of in terms of the things for which it's best known, and the Wizards' record is better than certain people's approval ratings!

Poem for Thursday

2008-04-24T03:48:19Z

The City
By C.P. Cavafy
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

You said: "I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried like something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them,
destroyed them totally."

You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
The city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world.

--------

From last Sunday's Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World, in which Mary Karr writes about poets who "brought laser-keen invective to fending off heartbreak." She imagined that he wrote "The City" after being "seduced and abandoned by some traveling Romeo, since the first stanza makes use of quotation marks -- separating the poet from the speaker. In the second stanza comes the poet's smackdown comeback. Ever leave a painful conversation thinking, I wish I'd said...'? Cavafy says it for you. We could interpret this poem as being about the payback inevitable for the pompously self-deceiving...and yet, when a girlfriend of mine watched her husband of 30 years drive off in a fancy sports car to 'find himself,' she took comfort in those words of Cavafy's set down more than a century ago."

I have bronchitis. In many ways it is a relief to have this confirmed by a doctor (who had the misfortune of having his stethescope pressed against my chest when he said "breathe deeply" and getting an earful of amplified coughing), since it means 1) I have antibiotics and 2) I have a logical reason why I can't catch my breath after walking upstairs, rather than thinking I am just a total wimp with a cold. I had a fever when I got to the doctor even after having taken Tylenol, which he didn't think was a good sign, either.

So I missed Earth Day and Shakespeare's birthday and I think I might have missed World Penguin Day, and I cannot work up a proper rant about biased election coverage except to wonder when the entire blogosphere went so insane that they can no longer do math. It is embarrassing to be associated with the Democratic Party at present...between the superdelegate situation, the Florida-and-Michigan situation, the redrawing of the district maps and what have you, it is very easy to feel like the whole process has been subverted by a handful of party bigwigs and a few candidates with inflated egos. There are about 1800 things I wish the Democrats would fix. But that's so many fewer than the things I wish the Republicans would fix that it's simply not a contest for me and I get nauseous when I encounter "I'm not voting if ___ gets the nomination" as someone's solution. How will putting McCain in the White House help anything?

From Richmond's Museum of the Confederacy, a chess set made by Major Robert J. Lawrence at Camp Douglas. He was captured at Fort Donelson.

The pocket watch of Major General Harry Heth, a Virginian, who carried it at the Battle of Gettysburg where he was wounded and forced to yield command of his division.

The Hardee pattern hat of Colonel Francis Bartow, a Confederate congressman turned military officer who died leading at counterattack against Federal forces.

The full-dress beaver-skin chapeau of Captain Andrew J. Grayson, who commanded the "Sharpshooters" from Bland County, Virginia.

The owner of this elaborate Greco-Roman style calvary helmet frpm the Charleston Light Dragoons is unknown.

The tobacco pouch of Brigadier General Henry Clayton, a prominent Alabama politician and lawyer before the war.

Hubbard Roberts of the 150th New York Volunteers brought home this Confederate wooden canteen after trading it for his own with J.A. Brewer of the 36th Alabama Infantry during a truce to bury the dead outside Atlanta.</center>

We watched "Planet of the Ood," which is far too wonderful for me to try to write about in my current oxygen-deprived state -- that's two weeks in a row the Doctor reduced me to tears and I bloody love Donna Noble! Then, for some inexplicable reason since I've sworn it off, we watched Battlestar Galactica: Razor, I think to see whether some of the things I'd heard happened in it would offend me as much as I thought they might (to my surprise, they did not...there's a lot I loathe about Cain but I completely understood her hatred of Gina and all the specific ways in which she wanted her hurt). More tomorrow when hopefully I will not be coughing up a lung. Those of you who know Adam will appreciate the significance of this, though: he found his Pokemon Leaf Green! In the mess that was his room but is now mostly cleaned up! Yay!