Poem for Friday

A Declaration of Faith
By Jean Esteve

Where prayers are effective,
springs gush forth and sequined fishes
swim over sand. Where crying works,
fishes swim over the sand to paupers, handing out hooks,
where crying works and prayers are heard.

Where Americans care
and drive to their fellowships,
trees shoot up out of slash to protect them,
shading them gently. Gently shaded
from cancerous sunlight, new possums are born
from tire treads, where Americans care.

When we meet together
to sing, holding hands in a circle,
fish-full streetpeople leap from the shadows to join us
and sweet baby possums play at our feet.

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Poor Rosie had to go to the vet today to have her rotting tooth removed and it turned out she had another that was broken and infected...poor kitty! She is home now but very unhappy, avoiding all of us, rubbing her face on everything, whining for food but we have been ordered to give her only very small amounts of wet food for now. And worst of all, she must take pills, the bane of all cat existence! I anticipate scratching and biting in my near future.


Rosie and Cinnamon help read the newspaper. And by "help" I mean that Cinnamon grooms his hair while Rosie nudges his hand until he pets her, and both will sit on the newspaper to prevent page-turning if it becomes necessary to get his attention.

Being short one cat during the afternoon, I went to visit , who fed me comfort soup like tomato soup, grilled cheese and a peanut butter Easter egg and gave me horror short stories to read. Came home and wrote up such entertaining Trek news as David Gerrold restoring his gay-themed Next Generation script for New Voyages (note: this does not make Gerrold any less of a creep -- funny how he gets to slash Kirk's nephew and that's legit, but all other slash is written by pathetic women with no lives according to him), and a Finnish MP campaigning in Klingon.

I also had to cover Linda Park's debut on Raines, but although I like Jeff Goldblum, the criticisms were such that I decided I really did not need to see the show. I did watch Smallville, which I thought at first might turn out to be all a dream since there were so many dream sequences early on, but regrettably, it looks like none of the major character deaths actually happened. Younger son predicted at one point that maybe Lana would fake her own suicide to get away from both Clark and Lex, and I thought that was a brilliant idea, a win-win situation for everyone: Lana would get to have a life and the rest of us wouldn't have to watch Kristin Kreuk attempting to perform it! But sadly, it was not to be.

Despite my desire to have Lana off the show by hook, crook or foul play, the opening dream-fantasy seemed gratuitously violent, with Clark dreaming of killing Lex and Lana both...this is not the fantasy of a man who's in love, this is the fantasy of a man who's furious at not being loved back, not too far off Lana's stalker bodyguard. Clark has his tantrum, throws away his prom photo, and that seems all to the good, but then a 30-second lecture from Chloe makes him forget all the reasons he dumped Lana to keep her safe after Jonathan died plus five freakin' seasons of idiocy, and he goes puppydogging after her again. Augh! Meanwhile, we get tantalizing hints but no real information about Lana's pregnancy. Is she not really pregnant at all? Is the baby not Lex's? Is the baby Lex's but genetically manipulated? I love that both the doctor and Lionel point out that only a really desperate loser sinks as low as Lex has to get a woman, but they don't explain what they mean by that.

The episode's redeeming feature is that Lionel is back! The old Lionel, the real Lionel, who is just plain evil...who convinces Lana he's forcing her to marry Lex out of love for his son, admits to Lex he helped hide the dead doctor just so he can get payback when he most needs it. And he's willing to hold out Clark's life as bait to make Lana bite, and calls Lex pathetic to his face. "You don't have the guts to plan a successful murder." "She's made a desperate man out of you, Lex." That's my Lionel! So Lex offers him anything -- Luthorcorp, 33.1 -- though not Clark, heh, whom Lex looks at nostalgically before driving away with his bride. That's definitely not gloating there. Sometimes a single moment of subtext can nearly redeem an episode for me, in this case along with Snow Patrol and Lion-El.

*sings to Duke* Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, GOODBYE! It's okay with me if VCU wins the tournament, though my father bet on Ohio State. Oh, sure, Maryland's turn to leave will come, but it's so nice to have come through the first round from behind and know that at least this won't be Duke's year yet again. (If NC wins the tournament I reserve the right to eat these words, BTW.) Penn lost to Texas A&M, no big surprise -- at least Texas A&M blew a 14-point second-half lead before going on a 31-13 run to win.

This article on Irish Jews was news to me. Interesting, and very sad that American organizations aren't doing more to support the Irish-Jewish Museum.