Poem for Monday

The Remarkable Objectivity of Your Old Friends
By Liam Rector

We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.

We called other friends--the ones
Your mother hadn't called--and told them
What you had decided, and some said

What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we'd just have to live
With that, that your life had been one

Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,

Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we'd have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.

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After Hebrew school in the morning, we spent most of the day at Frederick Family Festival @ the Farm -- first Stunkel's Farm, which has lots of sheep who were being sheared while we were there, plus cows, goats, several sheepdogs and a yellow tabby cat to keep them all in line; there was also a store with knitting and quilts and the kids could feed the chickens. Then we went to Chestnut Hill, which breeds alpacas and has fabulous views of Sugarloaf on one side and Catoctin on the other, where we watched mother and baby alpacas chase each other around and a woman spinning alpaca wool to make the fabulous sweaters, slippers, gloves, etc. for sale there. After that, we went to Brookfield Pumpkins, which has more farm animals including calves and pigs, hayrides out to the pumpkin patch, a store with a practice "milk cow" and gourds including some painted to look like penguins, and a corn maze to raise money for breast cancer research which unfortunately we did not have time to do as older son had remembered that he needed to get poster board for a school project due Monday.

So we paid for our pumpkins and drove to Germantown, where I made everyone stop in Borders so I could use my weekend coupon to get The Prestige (which is also reading...first one finished has to write fic first, I say *veg*), stopped at Subway for dinner because we were all starving after a small early lunch and no snacks, then went to the food store to get school supplies and other necessities like canned pumpkin because we have not worked up the nerve to figure out how to use the pumpkins we pick for anything other than jack-o-lanterns but we clearly must have pumpkin soup this week. And then we came home and I ruined husband's World Series watching by discovering Airplane II on cable, from which it obviously needed to be recorded, though I did not watch the whole thing as both kids had homework to finish and were doing a fine job of distracting themselves without the television on! Naturally the game ran longer than the movie (how many American Idol contestants can Fox work in, and John Mellencamp singing his truck commercial...you have lost my respect as a musician, buddy). I see this series is destined to drag hour to hour and night to night...


Recently sheared sheep with lamb at Stunkel's Farm.


Here is one being sheared -- they were taking turns!


One alpaca nurses a baby while a slightly older youth looks on at Chestnut Hill Farm.


The wool was being spun and knitted right there.


Pumpkins at Brookfield. They had many white pumpkins as well as orange ones, and I was surprised to discover that the white ones are orange inside too!


Here is the "practice" cow for milking!

Just heard that Jane Wyatt, who played Spock's mother on the original Star Trek (and the stereotypical mother of the 1950s on Father Knows Best), has died. I know what news I'll be writing up in the morning.