Biloxi
By Jesse Winchester
Down around Biloxi
Pretty girls are swimming in the sea
Oh they look like sisters in the ocean
The boy will fill his pail with salted water
And the storms will blow from off towards New Orleans
The sun shines on Biloxi
The air is filled with vapors from the sea
And the boy will dig a pool beside the ocean
He sees creatures from a dream under the water
And the sun will set from off towards New Orleans
The stars can see Biloxi
The stars can find their faces in the sea
We are walking in the evening by the ocean
We are splashing naked in the water
And the sky is red from off towards New Orleans
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That "poem" is, in fact, song lyrics that most people probably know from Jimmy Buffett, though my favorite version by far is Lisa Moscatiello's (she explained that she learned the song for a "clothing-optional" folk festival because of the line about being naked, which she figured would get a big cheer, which it did). I spent nearly the entire day running around but whenever I had a few spare moments to check the news, it was about New Orleans and Biloxi and a disaster that is bad enough even though it could have been so much worse, so perversely I had this song running through my head all day. I hope the stars can see Biloxi because it doesn't sound like many people can right now. And hope everyone and their loved ones are okay!
Most of my Monday consisted of taking kids to and from their first day of school, filling out countless forms -- new county grading policy, code of conduct that must be read aloud by families, P.E. rules, medical forms in octuplicate, each child needs four little yellow cards rather than one page that can be copied four times -- rushing kids after school to the dentist (in all the orthodontist appointments I often forget to make them appointments for cleanings until the last minute, meaning we had to take what was available), and then helping with the first-day-of-school homework that both boys considered unreasonable though there was really very little of it. Since his science class is studying weather first, older son had an assignment to watch news coverage of the hurricane, hence we are all very well informed about the Caribbean being two degrees warmer this year than is usual and the way Katrina built as it came through the Gulf.
I did not get a single Trek article done today (no block of time to listen to an hour-long Brannon Braga interview let alone transcribe and write it up) but I did receive Death in Winter in the mail from Pocket Books, the long-awaited Picard/Crusher romance novel by Michael Jan Friedman, and I need someone to read it and tell me if it's good because I'd love to read a decent Picard/Crusher romance novel but I will not put myself through an unhappy or badly written one! No rush, as I still have to read The Big Over Easy, Stowaway, The Historian and God Is a Verb (a book on Kabbalah that my mother got me at the Brandeis book sale).
In other news I have no "other news," other than that the dentist says younger son needs to brush better around his braces but older son may yet get lucky and not require major orthodontics *knock wood*, younger son had to fill out an "about me" sheet for homework and on the line that started "I want to be..." he wrote, "...a billionaire" (spelled incorrectly), older son is reading Eldest and it's a good thing that came out this week because they're not allowed to play video games on school days, and long division is just as frustrating now as it was when I was in elementary school. Tomorrow I have to get up ridiculously early because
apaulled has a very early meeting, so hopefully I will still be functioning after school when the second wave of forms comes home from the second rotation of classes at the middle school! And the Hebrew school sent home a boatload of permission forms and field trip information. Eeeeee! Fall!This is a photo of an actual Heinz ketchup bottle. I howled for about five minutes when I saw it because I am that kind of geek and I don't care if it is selling out!