O! How I Faint When I Of You Do Write
By William Shakespeare
O! How I faint when I of you do write
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!
But since your worth—wide as the ocean is,—
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or, being wrack’d, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this;—my love was my decay.
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The kids' schools opened two hours late today due to winter weather, which is pretty ironic since we didn't have a flake on the ground or in the air in our part of the county until after they were already in classes. I ran out to the mall to get another origami calendar, since son wants to keep one with all the "recipes" as he calls them and fold the other (at $4 this is actually cheaper than buying a year's worth of good paper, and he has already taught his best friend to fold a penguin). Came home, ate my leftovers from Thursday's lunch, wrote a review of "All Our Yesterdays" which is indefensible as a "good" Star Trek episode but entertaining nonetheless. Picked up older son from his bus stop in hail and drove him on slippery roads to a friend's house. Younger son's best friend's report card apparently had some highly undesirable grades -- younger son ended up with a B in science, which is a hell of a lot better than I thought this teacher might give him -- and the friend's mother is apparently serious with her threat of military school, which has younger son somewhat traumatized.
1. American football: good times or couldn't care less? Mostly good times, though it's not like I follow it with any great seriousness. I can't name 9/10th of the players on my own team.
2. Do you have a favorite sports team? The Redskins, when it's American football. The Orioles, when it's baseball, though I will root for the White Sox when there's not a direct conflict and inherited Brooklyn Dodgers fandom. I grew up rooting for the Bullets, who are now the Wizards, in pro basketball, but four years of living in Chicago in the Michael Jordan era made me a Bulls fan.
3. What's your favorite junk food? Smartfood popcorn.
4. Are football players paid too much? Way too much! If only second violins were paid a fifth as much as second-rate athletes!
5. Who do you think will win this year's Superbowl? I'm rooting for the Bears, so I'll bet on the Colts!
1. How far back can you trace your family tree? Only my great-great grandparents; all the records before that were lost in the Holocaust in Warsaw and I don't know how to search for them in Hungary or Russia.
2. What is the most interesting (or strange) thing you've heard about one of your relatives? My father's grandmother's family, the Feldhandlers, fled into France when the Nazis came to power, joined the Resistance and changed their name to Feldain. They have a girl of my generation with the same name that I have who was born the same year I was.
3. How do you feel about legacy names like John Henry Smith IV or naming children after other relatives? Because of Ashkenasi Jewish superstition I would never personally name a child after a living relative, though my Sephardic good friend from childhood is named after her (then-)living grandmother and all her children are named after living relatives.
4. Would you consider yourself and/or your family to be traditional? I have no idea how to answer this...compared to what? I had a religious wedding, as did my parents and my sister; we're not at all conservative, but compared to my friends in fandom where there are three women and a man sharing three children and sex, I suppose my family is traditional.
5. What is one tradition you have passed on to your children and/or plan to pass on to them? Love of travel. And, to be fair, shameless nerdiness.
1. The Black Chalice, Marie Jakober
2. The Moon Under Her Feet, Clysta Kinstler
3. Flicker, Theodore Roszak
4. Forever, Pete Hammill
5. The Reader, Bernhard Schlink
Spent the evening watching Shakespeare in Love with the kids, since it was on and they had never seen it, and the Gwyneth Paltrow factor is mitigated for me by the Judi Dench, Imelda Staunton, Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Simon Callow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush and Tom Wilkinson factors. Gwyneth's not bad in this one; even Ben Affleck's not bad in this one, though they are both overshadowed by everyone else as far as I'm concerned (I cannot forget that the Academy gave Gwyneth the Oscar that Cate Blanchett should have won for Elizabeth). The kids liked it and were attentive, probably because they got to see Gwyneth's breasts and hear discussions of Elizabethan toilet customs, but whatever works!
In belated honor of Groundhog Day, since I understand that Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow so we should have an early spring, I present the Pennsylvania groundhog I know best...Maximus, who lives in my in-laws' backyard in Hanover.
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