Poem for Monday

Ha'tzofeh Le'tovah (The One Who Seeks The Good)
By Rabbi Avraham Itzchak HaCohen Kook
Translated by Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein

It is the good that I desire,
Its glorious expanses entrance me,
Its lips, its roses, I kiss.
Its beautiful visions exalt me.

Absolute good, without limitation,
Without end, constriction or boundary,
That is not separate from anything alive,
That, with its love, koshers everything blemished.

Good for me, good for all,
Good without evil or severity,
Good full of pleasure for all,
Full of tranquility, without anxiety.

Good forever, good right now,
Good for every people and nation
Who seek the good and not the bad,
And the light and joy, as the One is there.

(Genesis: 21:17)

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I'm at my in-laws in Pennsylvania, where my kids are currently teaching my father-in-law to play chess with his Civil War chess set and Paul is watching some football game or other (the Redskins beat the Cowboys to clinch a playoff spot earlier, and that's all I care about). My mother-in-law is working on an itinerary for their England trip in the spring so I am discussing our favorite things to do in London and Bath while typing this.

Earlier in the day, on the drive up, we stopped at Boyd's Bear Country because it's closing for renovations for several months starting tomorrow; we were hoping they'd be having a big sale, but they were pretty wiped out of everything but leftover holiday merchandise and some of the seasonal animals -- I wanted to buy a little bear dressed as a devil, but it turned out he was part of a set and separated from his fellows.

We went to dinner at Red Lobster with gift cards that Paul's aunt and uncle sent us and his parents for Christmas last year -- I had coconut shrimp and salmon, Daniel had crab legs, Adam had lobster tail, everyone is very full and content! Plus we exchanged holiday presents we missed over the actual holidays. Monday we are probably going to the museums in Harrisburg, depending on whether the rain stays rain or turns into snow overnight.

Poem for Sunday

Grief Calls Us to the Things of This World
By Sherman Alexie

The morning air is all awash with angels . . .
                                        -- Richard Wilbur

The eyes open to a blue telephone
In the bathroom of this five-star hotel.

I wonder whom I should call? A plumber,
Proctologist, urologist, or priest?

Who is most among us and most deserves
The first call? I choose my father because

He's astounded by bathroom telephones.
I dial home. My mother answers. "Hey, Ma,

I say, "Can I talk to Poppa?" She gasps,
And then I remember that my father

Has been dead for nearly a year. "Shit, Mom,"
I say. "I forgot he's dead. I'm sorry—

How did I forget?" "It's okay," she says.
"I made him a cup of instant coffee

This morning and left it on the table—
Like I have for, what, twenty-seven years—

And I didn't realize my mistake
Until this afternoon." My mother laughs

At the angels who wait for us to pause
During the most ordinary of days

And sing our praise to forgetfulness
Before they slap our souls with their cold wings.

Those angels burden and unbalance us.
Those fucking angels ride us piggyback.

Those angels, forever falling, snare us
And haul us, prey and praying, into dust.

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We had a mostly quiet Saturday getting ready to go to my in-laws Sunday morning. Paul wanted to make cookies and Swedish rye bread, so we wanted to stop at Whole Foods to get ingredients, which meant we were near both the Hair Cuttery and Croydon Creek Nature Center in Rockville Civic Center Park. So we went to see the reptiles in the nature center -- they have many turtles, several snakes and toads, plus a beehive and an injured screech owl -- and walked around a bit on the rocks above the creek, then we went to the Hair Cuttery and forced boys to face the evil shears (younger son took off barely a half inch from his long hair, older son took off a couple from his short hair). And we went to Whole Foods to get rye flour, Bombay potatoes, etc. and to Petco to get cat litter and an all-important laser pointer, which has worn Daisy out.

A red-eared slider and a young terrapin -- I think it's a diamondback -- at Croydon Creek Nature Center.


An eastern box turtle peeking out of its log.


A big fierce snapping turtle. This one can't live in the wild, sadly.


I believe this is a rat snake, unless it's the pine snake and I have them backward!


The toads here live very well and get live albino crickets for lunch.


The little injured screech owl who lives in the nature center and clucks at visitors.


The queen bee is the one with the yellow dot on her back.


And these are not at the nature center, but at Petco...a Siberian hamster mother and her nearly-grown babies. Aww!

Evening entertainment has been the awesome Patriots-Giants game. I am so glad the Giants came to play, and even though I root against the Giants nearly all the time, I felt badly for them when they started to let the game slip away. I have no big investment in seeing the Patriots go undefeated (Miami's 17-0 record came against the Redskins in the Superbowl), but I'll root for them to do it at this point -- I like Brady, I just tend to root for NFC teams if they aren't, like, the Cowboys. Hey, it sounds like the Redskins game is on nationally so we'll probably get it at my in-laws'...

Poem for Saturday

Driving Lesson
By Jane Shore

"Name the eight states that begin with the letter M,"
Mohammed, my driving teacher, says.
I'm forty-one. Am I in school?
I glance at the rear-view mirror, glad I can't see
my embarrassing STUDENT DRIVER bumper sticker.
I spread a ghost-map across the windshield,
scroll down the east coast, top to bottom.
"Maine. Massachusetts. Maryland."
Sweaty left hand gripping the turn signal,
I step on the gas, edging out
into congested Nassaue Street in Princeton.

Twenty years since I last drove a car,
twenty years since I was a passenger in the red VW Bug
my boyfriend Jeremy totaled on a Vermont back road,
twenty years since plastic surgery
fixed my broken cheekbone and eye socket,
my double-vision, but not my fear.

"Are you hurt?" the priest has asked,
standing over me as I lay dazed
on bloody gravel, waiting for the ambulance.
Last rites? He'd just happened to be driving by.
Where am I? It's as if I just woke up
and found myself in the driver's seat, steering
the company car onto suburban country roads
past ugly half-built multi-million-dollar mansions,
muddy sub-divisions, my right foot
on the gas, my cold hands at the wheel
nailed at ten and two o-clock.

"Minnesota," I say, "and Michigan,"
stopping inches from the crosswalk.
An orange hand flashes DON'T DON'T DON'T.
I check the speedometer, fuel guage--
dash board lit up like a cockpit.
"Mississippi, Missouri. Mobile, and in mobile,
as in automobile," I say. "Get it?"
Bearded Mohammed frowns, not in a joking mood.
Strip malls and luxury town-house condos streak by
as his sneakers tap-dance around his safety-breake.
We lurch. Stall. Cars behind us honk.
"Montana. Have I named them all?"

"Next lesson, I'll teach you how to park,"
Mohammed grins, adjusting his turban.
"Now, name four states that begin with the letter A."
I rev my engine. "Alabama, Arkansas."
At sea, I'm seasick in the Bible Belt.
"Arizona. Oh God, I almost forgot Alaska!"
"Relax," Mohammed says. "It's like I told you.
While you drive, you can keep your mind on
more than one thing at a time."

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Another relatively uneventful day. In the morning I wrote a review of "Time Squared", and either all the complainers are on vacation or I wasn't controversial enough in discussing it, because there are no scathing complaints about it on the TrekBBS yet, heh. It's a good episode, particularly in the context of the use of the same themes later in The Next Generation.

In the afternoon my parents invited my kids and myself (since Paul had to work/go to the optometrist) to go with them to National Treasure: Book of Secrets, since they hadn't seen it yet. It holds up very well upon a second viewing even after having watched the first National Treasure earlier in the week; the ridiculous history is still ridiculous, the similarities are still pronounced and Sean Bean still isn't in the sequel, but it still has lots of good actors looking like they're having a great time and Ben is still adorable as Abigail and Riley team up to try to make him a better boyfriend. After the movie, Paul met us and we went to Hamburger Hamlet (well, I had fish, not a hamburger).

Here are a few more pictures from Mount Vernon.


A line of people wait to enter the groundskeeper's house on the way to the mansion.


The back porch seen from the hill sloping toward the Potomac River. If you saw National Treasure 2, this is where the party took place.


This is the view of the river from below the porch. You can see Fort Washington -- for many decades the only defensive fort protecting Washington DC, completed in 1809 -- across the river.


As a historic farm, Mount Vernon has cattle...


...and rare Hogg Island sheep whose wool is sheared, carded and spun throughout the month of May while visitors watch.


At this time of year they work as natural lawn mowers, grazing through to sunset in the fields.

Friday Fiver: I'll always be true
1. Tell us something you love: The ocean.
2. Tell us something you know to be true: If you drop a marble on the kitchen floor within hearing of a cat, it will take you a very long time to get the marble back, and that's assuming you can get to it at all before it is batted under the refrigerator.
3. Tell us about someone new in your life: An awesome woman wrote to me about my Barbie Tarot deck. She's a graphic designer and said that she'd love to try to print a set for a friend of hers who's a Barbie fan, and I said it was fine with me but would love it if she printed an extra for me and I'd be happy to pay for materials. She sent me The Fool with a holiday card as a sample and a promise to send the rest when she had figured out the best way to reproduce the whole deck. I am completely psyched about this and so grateful to her.
4. Who can you never please? My poor starving big yellow cat who never, ever gets enough to eat.
5. Friday fill-in: You know I ___. You know I never know when to shut up.

The Friday Five: Totally Random
1. When did you "lose your innocence"? This is absolutely none of the readers of a meme's business. Sometimes I really wonder why I bother with .
2. Would you say you have an accent? Other people tell me that they can tell my parents are from Brooklyn.
3. Do you hope to be married (married again if divorced)? Happily married, thanks.
4. If you could take one technology to a desert island (the obvious satellite phone excluded), what would it be? A spaceship.
5. What is the last activity you bought a ticket for? National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

Fannish 5: What are your five top hopes for your fandom(s) or your fan activities in 2008?
1. More fun, less wank.
2. A certain character's scenes cut entirely from the Star Trek movie.
3. A swift end to the writer's strike that benefits the writers.
4. Doctor Who schedules synchronized on both sides of the Atlantic.
5. Brilliant inspiration.

We're going to my in-laws for New Year's but won't leave till Sunday because they're flying home from my brother-in-law's in Oregon tonight and their flight was delayed getting in and out of a Chicago stopover due to weather conditions. So Saturday we will be getting ready and watching the Patriots-Giants game. Friday night, Maryland met Oregon State in the Emerald Bowl and the Terps played the Beavers in a very balanced game for three quarters, but then the Beavers went ahead and Maryland just couldn't catch up. Oh well!

Poem for Friday

Meeting at Night
By Robert Browning

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

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A relatively uneventful day. Paul had a half-day of vacation left that had to be used by the end of the year, so he took the afternoon off since the weather was beautiful and we went to Great Falls National Park, the Maryland side, so we could walk along the C&O Canal. We didn't go out to the falls overlooks like we usually do but stayed on the towpath, walking about a mile and a half towards Washington, DC where some new bridges have been built and the clear, beautiful water reflected the evergreens on the rocky banks.

The C&O Canal reflecting trees on the rocks above it.


The canal boat Charles F. Mercer covered and docked for the winter.


Someone had strung Cheerios and berries on the evergreen as holiday decorations/food for the birds.


This is one of the lock houses where the person who had to open the lock for passing boats lived.


This bridge over the canal...


...has a built in floodgate to protect the canal in case the water levels rise.


The canal is lined with white oak trees like this one.

In the evening I had to watch a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode to review it ("Time Squared" -- holds up very well) and then on impulse put on "Breakaway," the first episode of Space: 1999. My kids tend to laugh at the original Star Trek for looking so cheesy so I expected them really to ridicule this, but older son in particular watched entirely attentively! It's a good episode, has government corruption and a scientific mystery and lots of action near the end, but when those Eagles crash...eep. Even so, the writing holds up passably and Barbara Bain looks great. So we will be watching more of those!

I always thought Benazir Bhutto was extremely brave. She knew that, like her father and brothers, she would probably end up dying young. I know that she had her faults as a leader and that her Harvard and Oxford education and wealth made her very atypical among women from her country. But she knew there were people who would try to kill her purely because of her gender, and others who would try to kill her because of her political views and alliances, her Western ties, her government's corruption and her expensive clothes. She could have chosen to remain a wealthy exile making speeches from a distance to foreign politicians and journalists about how best to help the people of her country. Instead, as soon as she was permitted, she went back to Pakistan, apparently believing that she could help fight for democracy in the face of considerable resistance to her personally and to her own previous mistakes. Now she's gone, and others have died and will die in her name and in opposition to her name. I find the news so heartbreaking.

Poem for Thursday

From "Shine on, Tottering Republic"
By W.S. Merwin

In the last days of the presidents a new star appeared. By then the organization of fear was vast and persuasive beyond anything that could have been conceived by the founding fathers. . . . On the domestic front the police were their own masters, and no branch of technology was closed to them. Any window, any light bulb, any picture might be a television camera connected to the nearest precinct. No one dared to examine too closely. Those who did might be arrested a few minutes later, charged with obstruction or conspiracy. Bail no longer existed, trials came seldom, sentences were inevitable, heavy, and without appeal. On the whole, it was said, the public was relieved at the steady disappearance of disturbing elements.

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The kids and I were stuck at home with no vehicle this morning and I had laundry to fold, so we watched the first National Treasure, feeling nostalgic for it. I must admit that having Sean Bean definitely adds an element that was absent in the second movie, though I love Helen Mirren even in such a fluffy role; the first one is so much fun for me because I've spent lots of time in all the cities where it takes place, and the scenes in Philadelphia in particular are so much fun, plus I love the Founding Fathers as secret possessors of Masonic treasure. Paul came home early so we could pick up the van and get Adam the new Warriors book Dark River (we couldn't find the manga Warrior's Refuge, Thursday may have to brave the mall for that). CVS gave me a holiday present -- they had new for $7 the special edition DVD of Fatal Attraction with the original ending, which has been on my Amazon.com wish list for about six years!

Since the car place is right next door to IHOP, we went there for dinner -- it was surprisingly crowded but harvest nut pancakes, turkey bacon and hash browns make up for a lot. Then we came home and wanted to watch something seasonal before the inevitable football game (the Motor City Bowl, Purdue/Central Michigan, which actually had a completely thrilling fourth quarter), and wound up picking Kingdom of Heaven, which is a better movie than I expect every time I watch it. People who find fault with Orlando Bloom's performance in this are looking for reasons to find fault, because he holds his own very well with a great many terrific actors (Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, Alexander Siddig, Brendan Gleeson, Ghassan Massoud, Kevin McKidd, David Thewlis, Michael Sheen, et al). His chemistry's not terrific with Eva Green but I find her rather stiff overall...this would be a better film without the tempted-and-fallen-over-women stuff overall. The screenplay has some definite weaknesses but overall it's still a much better movie than it generally gets credit for being, I think.

The tomb of George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon.


Behind their graves is a vault where other family members are buried.


In the new education center at Mount Vernon, sculptors worked with life masks made of Washington to create lifelike statues of him at various stages in his life. Here he is as a young surveyor...


...and later as a military commander. He was 6'2" which was quite tall for his era.


A wealthy man, Washington had a coach house but his family coach made by Clark Brothers does not survive today. This one belonged to Samuel Powel, Mayor of Philadelphia and Washington's good friend.


One of General Washington's pistols and a telescope that belonged to him.


The Washingtons also had a large kitchen, not connected to the rest of the house because although it looks like stone, it's actually treated wood, sprayed with sand and painted to give it the appearance of masonry, so there was significant fire risk.

Am laughing so much over Barron Hilton leaving his fortune to his father's charity, especially since he fought so hard to keep part of that fortune when his father intended to leave nearly his entire fortune to the charity but the son challenged the will. I really wish there were a maximum individual inheritance. And hey, the Giants/Patriots game will be on local TV on Saturday instead of just the stupid NFL cable network, so I know what I will be stuck watching that night!

Poem for Wednesday

In the Manner of SD
By Stuart Dischell

The day that I found art in my first name
Was the same day I saw hell in my last.

There was a girl there, of course, --
Touching a wet finger
To a postage stamp,
Pursing her lips
On the double bed.

I went to kiss
The cat-tongue rough
Of her each bent knee.

I was weak then, not yet a liar.
One of us had said,
What we do is our own business.
Then we broke the windows
And looted the store.

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Another from Poet's Choice in Sunday's Washington Post Book World. "For each person, one utterance is so loaded with associations that it cannot be heard objectively: our own name," writes Robert Pinsky, citing Catullus, Villon and Elizabeth Bishop as examples of poets who reflected upon their names. "Stuart Dischell, in his new book, Backwards Days, writes an artful and striking variation on this theme...the way the last two lines revise and challenge the preceding phrase 'our own business' does, indeed, exemplify 'the manner of SD,' with its playful yet implacable stripping away of self-justification," adds Pinsky. "Dischell compresses a lot of narrative -- and much understanding -- into fewer than a hundred words. His poem teases and expands notions of personality and impersonality, the hellish and artful qualities of being a many-sided but particular person called by an identifying name."

I had a lovely Christmas that involved no celebration whatsoever of the holiday. We went to Mount Vernon, which was surprisingly crowded, for which the tour guides blamed, err, credited National Treasure: Book of Secrets (all the while assuring us that there are no secret tunnels on the property mapped by George Washington, his slaves or anyone else). Since Christmas is usually such a low visitor day, the third floor of the house was open to the public, which it has never once been in all the times I've visited; these were Martha Washington's private rooms after her husband's death, since she did not want to sleep in their bedroom where he died. Because it was warm out, the sheep, cows and horses were in the fields and the barns were open.

The tours were informal, with people passing through in a steady line rather than in tour groups, but as always we learned some new things and noticed some new things, and we got to visit the new visitor's center which has several movies including a reenactment of Washington's war years and Glenn Close narrating Martha Washington's private reflections on her husband, plus George Washington's weapons, telescope, drinking glasses, family Bible and dentures. Since it was only $5 more to buy yearly passes rather than just paying admission, we got the passes so we can go back for the colonial fair in the summer and drop in any time we happen to be nearby in Alexandria.

George Washington's formal dining room set for Christmas dinner at Mount Vernon.


Usually no photos are permitted in the house, but there were people on either side of us snapping away with flashbulbs and not getting scolded, so I took a chance and took a couple of photos with the flash off.


The color of the paint is matched to the original and this mantelpiece is the original, a gift from an admirer that Washington liked because it has farm animals and he considered himself a farmer.


The tables in the outer buildings for servants and riders are not as glamorous.


But the views of the river from all around the house are spectacular.


Here for instance is a side view off the back porch.


The grounds had few holiday decorations, but the visitor center had a tree trimmed with George, Martha and Mount Vernon souvenirs.

We had fondue for dinner and pumpkin pie for dessert, both Paul's choice -- since we do not celebrate Christmas at all, I figure he is entitled to eat whatever he wants that day -- and then, thanks to the kindness of strangers, we watched Voyage of the Damned. It wasn't my favorite Tenth Doctor episode -- wasn't even my favorite Tenth Doctor Christmas special, really -- but I loved it anyway. I was afraid it would be too Titanic for my taste, but it was much more Poseidon Adventure in all the best ways!

SPOILERS: I really dislike angels and appreciate that they are always bad news on Doctor Who ("Did you ever notice how in the Bible, when ever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like?" -- The Prophecy). So the Heavenly Host tourist information and killing machines make me very happy! I had had it with the Doctor-as-Jesus parallels at the end of last season's series with Martha as His disciple on Earth, but even though he was playing the Reverend Scott role from The Poseidon Adventure -- without the dying-on-a-cross part -- I appreciated that it was toned down despite the theological imagery and his insistence/apparent belief that he could save them all. The fake professor Copper's explanation of Christmas, in which Santa is a god married to Mary and the people of the UK are at war with Turkey so they eat them for Christmas like savages, really made me howl.

I liked Astrid, didn't love her but we didn't really get to know her much, other than the usual starry-eyed-girl routine when meeting the Doctor which gets tiresome enough that I'm really looking forward to Donna biting his head off a bit. (I like the wonder at the universe, it's the worship of the man that goes with it that I can live without.) At least with her backstory -- waitress at a spaceport diner, saw the ships go to the stars and dreamed of doing the same -- her behavior makes sense, more to me than Doctor Jones' anyway. Plus she gave her life saving others without falling insanely in love, she didn't have time for that, she just did it because he'd have done it for her and the rest. I liked the randomness of the deaths, which unlike in Poseidon Adventure did not spare the innocent while killing off the whore, the crook, etc. though it's a bit annoying that the two white guys lived while both women, the alien, the black man died...it's so true that Mr. Financial Asshole is not who I'd have picked!

I loved a lot of little images -- the big guy stuck like Winnie the Pooh trying to escape from the Host, the angels hurling their halos like Xena with a chakram while Astrid batted them away like baseballs, and the Doctor lifted up by angels (younger son started singing the John Farnham song, making me howl some more). And I did find the scene where he tries desperately to bring Astrid back, only to have to be convinced that she's really gone, quite moving, like the cumulative effect of losing people is getting worse and worse for the Doctor. I still wish there was more of Astrid there, but given how little time they had and how amazing the ship itself was in the glimpses we got, the party, the explosions, the engines, I think they did quite a good job.

I'm so sad about the tiger attack in San Francisco! What a holiday bummer. Wednesday I have boys home and no van for half the day, as the other one was making scary noises and is now at the shop. Eee!

Poem for Tuesday

Here We Come A-Wassailing

Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wandering,
So fair to be seen:

Love and joy come to you,
And to you our wassail, too,
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.

Our wassail cup is made
Of the rosemary tree,
And so is your beer
Of the best barley.

We are not daily beggars
That beg from door to door,
But we are neighbours' children
Whom you have seen before.

Call up the butler of this house,
Put on his golden ring;
Let him bring us a glass of beer,
And the better we shall sing.

We have a little purse
Of stretching leather skin;
We want a little of your money
To line it well within.

Bring us out a table,
And spread it with a cloth;
Bring us out some mouldy cheese,
And some of your Christmas loaf.

God bless the Master of this house,
Likewise the Mistress too;
And all the little children
That round the table go.

Good Master and good Mistress,
While you're sitting by the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who are wandering in the mire:

Love and joy come to you,
And to you our wassail, too,
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.

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I broke the cardinal rule of Christmas Eve, namely: Thou Shalt Not Approach the Mall. Actually the mall wasn't terrible, either getting there or getting a parking place, and when we ran in to pick up older son's reserved Super Mario 64 DS purchased with Chanukah gift money from my uncle, there weren't even crowds. But it was terrible driving from the mall to Bagel City to meet Heather, who brought me a lovely Dornick Designs necklace as a holiday present (I'd never seen Dornick's jewelry before, it is so much just my kind of thing!) and put up with my kids yakking nonstop through the meal. And then, after buying some bagels for breakfast -- if we were at my in-laws, we'd be having Swedish holiday pastry with marzipan, so I figured Paul should have good bagels at least -- we were caught in a nightmare of road closings and the recent Montrose Road rerouting, and the Shell station I went out of my way to reach to buy gas was closed, and it took me more than an hour to get gas and get home. Paul got there before I did, his office having closed early!

I got lots of cards over the past week, including cards from many online friends as well as relatives. Plus I got snow globes on Facebook -- thanks, all of you! We had a pretty quiet evening, having baked potatoes stuffed with chili for dinner and watching the Patrick Stewart A Christmas Carol for TNT. I love Stewart in this role and there are a lot of other actors (Laura Fraser, Dominic West) whom I like in supporting roles. But this put us in a rebellious mood so then we watched The Nightmare Before Christmas!

A pair of caroling penguins at Home Depot.


A pair of penguin decorations at a local Tara Thai restaurant...


...and a penguin on a yard decoration at Lowe's.


This cartoony inflatable nativity scene, also at Lowe's, cracks me up so I am including it.


Here is a selection of hardware store artificial trees.


And here, from Seneca Creek State Park's winter light display, is Santa.

Merry Christmas! And for those like me who celebrate different winter holidays, enjoy whatever you may be doing!

Poem for Monday

On My First Son
By Ben Jonson

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
  My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
  Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father, now! For why
  Will man lament the state he should envy,
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
  And, if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace; and, asked, say: Here doth lie
  Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry --
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such,
  As what he loves may never like too much.

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The above poem is "possibly the most moving use of a poet's own name in English poetry," writes Robert Pinsky in Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World. One's own name, he notes, "is so loaded with associations that it cannot be heard objectively. Jonson seems to associate his name with temporal and personal things: his work and reputation as a poet, even his role as father and his pleasure in the child -- all the personal attachments he vows to rise above, for some superior but unattained, impersonal form of love."

Warm, wet weather kept us indoors for most of the day, so we went to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets. The number of plot holes in this film exceeds even the number of holes in that ship under the ice that got blown up at the beginning of the first National Treasure, but did I care? The only thing that bothered me is that in all the times I've been at the University of Maryland, I never once saw Helen Mirren there teaching Pre-Columbian history, and believe me I would have gotten a PhD in the field if she had been. (I did teach a class in McKeldin Library, which can be seen in the film!) As Disney family values films go, I liked this one much better than Enchanted, despite the lack of music; it has a lot of the same paternalistic glorification but the women are grownups with their own jobs and lives, who are impressed by men who are smart rather than charming. And there are no cliched villains either in terms of the story or in terms of American history, unless that archetypal villain of history John Wilkes Booth counts.

Spoilers: I was never much of a Nicolas Cage fan -- okay, I really disliked some of his movies/performances -- but I loved him in the first movie, though I thought it might be proximity to Sean Bean. Proximity to Ed Harris has never been a turn-on for me, though, and I loved Cage in the sequel, thought he had better chemistry with Diane Kruger this time out and loved his scenes with Mirren, who looked like she was having a great time. Plus, you know, how much am I going to dislike a movie that goes from Paris to London to DC (which has looked really good in both these films) to Mount Rushmore? I'm completely lost on how a Spanish slave in Florida wound up discovering a Native American city of gold in the Black Hills, not to mention how come the Native American underground treasure trove architects appear to be the same people who worked for the Templars during the last film, but who cares -- I'd rather believe in that than the Disney Beauty & the Beast formula.

Although, as is always the case in Disney movies, Native Americans and their historical culture get totally ignored (Pocahontas is probably more accurate), I liked that neither the people of the Confederacy nor the man descended from a Southern general were portrayed as entirely villainous. It's always the moral of treasure hunt movies that people who want treasure out of greed for money or power are wicked -- look at Indiana Jones vs. his adversaries -- but Gates seems convinced that Wilkinson wants the treasure to bring glory to his own family just as much as Gates wants it to clear his great-grandfather's name. (It cracks me up that Queen Victoria must be characterized as an adversary of Abraham Lincoln to justify breaking into Buckingham Palace and stealing from the current Queen's desk!) And I love that the Yale-educated US president is such a history geek that he leaves his own birthday party to explore George Washington's secret tunnels at Mount Vernon. If there was a secret book of presidential secrets, Bush wouldn't be able to understand it.

The Church of Latter-Day Saints' Washington, DC temple surrounded by its Festival of Lights display.


The temple itself is closed to non-Mormon visitors. This is the outside of the public visitors center...


...where, inside, two women perform on the harp beside one of the many Christmas trees.


There are also nativity scenes from all over the world. This one is from the Ukraine.


Outside is a live nativity scene outdoors next to the visitors center.


Around the front, the gardens have lots of flowers. At this time of year they're all made of lights.


Pretty much every tree even in the parking lot is covered in lights.


It's very pretty and doesn't cost anything, unlike any comparable local light display, though those are far more secular.

The evening activity has been watching the Redskins take a big lead over the Vikings and then look for ways to squander it (with occasional visits outside to look at the moon and Mars, which are very close to one another, through our little telescope). I have noticed that the Redskins play much better when I am not paying any attention, so I did some writing and some reading to avoid watching too closely. Oh, in case any Doctor Who fans reading this don't already know, The Daily Telegraph published an illustrated Tenth Doctor Christmas story by series writer Paul Cornell -- it's here!

Poem for Sunday

There Is No Frigate Like a Book
By Emily Dickinson

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –

This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.

--------

Quasi-nautical poem as I have been having a quasi-naval week, which today included visiting the Naval Heritage Center at the United States Navy Memorial downtown. Our original destination was Huntley Meadows Park, but it started drizzling while we were on the Beltway and we turned down the George Washington Parkway into the city, figuring we had better go somewhere indoors. Of course it then stopped raining, but we had a nice afternoon anyway at the Museum of Natural History -- where the insect zoo recently reopened -- plus the National Archives, which has a very fun exhibit on the school years of 20th and 21st century presidents (many of whom were mediocre students, and I didn't realize Gerald Ford was so hot when he was young). I'm sure the shopping malls of DC were crowded but the National Mall was not.

After sunset we set out for Brookside Gardens' Garden of Lights, but after waiting 20 minutes to get into one of the packed parking lots without success, we turned around, got back on the Beltway and made an impromptu visit to the Washington DC Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints' Festival of Lights, which is not as imaginative as the one at Brookside -- no sea monsters, no giant dragonflies in the trees -- but is quite stunning anyway. I had never been there before, though I visited the temple the year it was completed and actually took a tour before it was closed to non-Mormons, but I was in elementary school at the time and remember nothing but a lot of stained glass. The gardens around the visitor center are ringed with light-covered trees and flowers fashioned out of bulbs, and inside there are concerts, art displays and many trees and nativity scenes; there is also a live nativity pageant outdoors. It's beautiful, but not the place to take the kids if you prefer secular holiday displays!

A snowman "looks" through the eyepiece of the 6-inch transit circle telescope in the lobby of the US Naval Observatory. The telescope was constructed in 1897 and used until 1995 to observe the positions of the sun, moon, planets and nearby stars.


This is the observatory's 12-inch refracting telescope, through which we looked at the moon's craters. It is housed in a dome in the same building as the library that affords spectacular views of Washington, DC from the balcony.


This was our initial view of the 26-inch refracting telescope, which is too large for me to have photographed with the camera I had with me even while it was several stories over our heads.


And this is how it looked after the floor had been raised and the dome opening turned to allow people to reach the eyepiece and the telescope to be focused at the night sky, though because of time constraints we didn't actually get to look through this one.


I don't know exactly what the micrometer does but it was used for more than a century to observe double stars. The sign on the lower corner of this amused me.


An even older telescope housed in the same building as the library, decorated for the season...


...and I'm not sure what this device is called or how it works, but it's also centuries old.

We watched The Simpsons movie in the evening -- the kids' choice -- and we have just watched the unfortunate end to the UCLA-BYU matchup in the Las Vegas Bowl (down to a UCLA field goal that a BYU player got a hand on and kept from going through the posts -- did I mention that I was rooting for UCLA, my cousin's alma mater?). Sunday the weather is supposed to suck and I think we are going to try to get to an early show of National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which we're all in the mood for after being in the Archives!

Poem for Saturday

Thinking in Bed
By Dennis Lee

I'm thinking in bed,
Cause I can't get out
Till I learn how to think
What I'm thinking about;
What I'm thinking about
Is a person to be--
A sort of a person
Who feels like me.

I might still be Alice,
Excepting I'm not.
And Snoopy is super,
But not when it's hot;
I couldn't be Piglet,
I don't think I'm Pooh,
I know I'm not Daddy
And I can't be you.

My breakfast is waiting.
My clothes are all out,
But what was that thing
I was thinking about?
I'll never get up
If I lie here all day;
But I still haven't thought,
So I'll just have to stay.

If I was a Grinch
I expect I would know.
But I don't think so.
There's so many people
I don't seem to be--
I guess I'll just have to
Get up and be me.

--------

Had a much less exciting day than yesterday...had to go to the mall to exchange a gift, didn't have trouble parking, the lines were a bit on the long side but overall not as crazy as I feared, and I got to have bourbon chicken for lunch so not a terrible morning. In the afternoon I wrote a review of "The Royale", and it's just as well this episode came up just before a holiday when no one is reading retro Star Trek reviews anyway because there's almost nothing to say about it beyond "Wow, that was silly!" I was more excited by the news that penguin sketches by Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackleton have been discovered in a Cambridge University basement!

We had dinner with my parents, who are going to my sister's over Christmas since her kids have no school and they can get in the bonding time they missed over Chanukah. Then we came home and watched Doctor Who, a.k.a. Enemy Within, a.k.a. the Eighth Doctor movie, and I loved it so much more than I was expecting even though I love Paul McGann from Horatio Hornblower -- I was never a Doctor fan growing up and no one told me how much I would love Grace, and the American setting amused me because of course he'd visit places on this side of Earth. Though I do have a bunch of questions, of which the biggest is, how come Grace and Chang aren't immortal if the TARDIS brought them back the way they brought Jack back? And is the Doctor joking when he says he's half-human or are we supposed to take that as canon, since everything in later canon would seem to contradict it? Most importantly...I always figured this movie must be when Gallifrey got destroyed, but it seems to have been alive and well -- is there canon in the novels or elsewhere about what happened to turn Nine into someone so alone?

These are some of the old timepieces at the United States Naval Observatory -- a ship's chronometer and hourglass.


This astronomical clock was made by Robert Molyneux and purchased by the Navy for Lt. Gillis's observational expedition to Chile in 1850. Now it is keeping Eastern Standard Time.


The railroads used to run on US Naval Observatory time, and various companies that wanted to advertise their punctuality adopted the trend of claiming the same.


Here is the official clock of the United States. This computer compiles the information produced by the atomic clocks...


...that are kept in this room: four hydrogen, nineteen cesium, if I remember correctly.


Apparently if you fire single hydrogen atoms at the same spot enough times, they'll leave a hole!


I don't remember exactly what this computer does vis-a-vis the others and I know the photo is hopelessly blurry, but we were making Time Lord and Master jokes when we found out there is a US Director of Time, hence the photo had to be included.

Friday Fiver: yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
1. If you could change your name, what would it be? I could change my name; if I had a perfect one in mind I'd do it rather than writing about it in a meme.
2. What is the worst name someone has called you? Jolly Green Midget, my nickname in elementary school.
3. If you could meet someone famous, who would it be? George Bush, so I could give him a piece of my mind.
4. How do you like to travel home? With someone else driving.
5. What kind of phone do you have? A T-Mobile MDA.

The Friday Five: Christmas Five
1. What is your fave thing about Christmas? Celtic holiday music concerts.
2. Did you believe in Santa Clause? If so, what was the best gift from him? This is the actual spelling of the question in the comm. I did not ever believe in Santa Claus, being Jewish, but I've received many great clauses in my time, particularly in run-on sentences.
3. Do you have a Christmas Tree? Ribbon, Angel, Star or ______ on Top? No, no, no, no and no.
4. Best stocking stuffer you got? My husband's grandmother used to send me handmade ornaments so I wouldn't feel left out when we were at his family's house for Christmas. She made me a needlepoint star.
5. Wishing for a White Christmas? Not really, since we're hoping to go to Mount Vernon and I'd rather not be stuck in the house.

Fannish 5: What were your five favorite things about your fandom(s) in 2007?
For purposes of brevity I'm going with Harry Potter as "my fandom." Some spoilers ensue.
1. The closure of canon with the publication of the last book.
2. Immediate fannish denial of the closure of canon and the contents of the last book, not to mention the fact that the writer could not simply leave canon closed but felt compelled to keep adding details left out of the books.
3. My favorite character "died" without leaving a body or any other evidence that he is, in fact, actually dead. It's like an invitation to write fan fiction.
4. My other favorite character: Alive, well, devoted to his wife and son, still hot (and according to the author not a homophobe).
5. The fifth movie was better than the fourth, my favorite of all but the third.

Winter arrives in an hour or so. Enjoy it!

Poem for Friday

Song of Solstice
By Jennifer Cutting

'Tis the gateway of the year;
Shortest day and darkest hour;
Praises as our newborn Sun
Journeys back to its full power.

Blessed be the darkness deep;
All we learned there well worth knowing.
As below, the seeds' long sleep
Nourished hope for springtide's growing.

Troubles of the old year past
Burn we in the oaken fire,
Making way for greater gifts
Glowing with our hearts' desire.

Merry meet and merry part,
Merry meet again,
Strangers only at the start
Now are friends until the end.

Raise the song of Solstice high,
Through the wind and weather;
Welcome Yule with frost and fire
And sing we all together!

--------

Composed for the Ocean Quartette's Pre-Solstice Concert at the U.S. Naval Observatory on December 20, 2007, © Once and Future Songs, BMI.

It's not really worth talking about my day before 4 p.m., when Paul and I went to a wine and cheese, concert and tour of the facilities at the United States Naval Observatory. Until I got a message from Jennifer Cutting about the concert, I hadn't realized the observatory was ever open to the public; apparently there are public tours of the main building (designed by Richard Morris Hunt, who also designed the Biltmore Mansion and the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and the large refracting telescope on Mondays, but since the Vice President's house is on the grounds and the facility houses the official clock of the United States -- which, as we learned, is vital to keeping everything from GPS to the internet running as well as numerous military and government technologies -- security is tight and no one is admitted without a reservation and photo ID. The entrance is between the embassies of Great Britain and New Zealand up a winding drive with deer wandering across the road.

Because the library is so small, it was only Jennifer, Lisa Moscatiello, Grace Griffith and Rosie Shipley out of the many people who sometimes make up Jennifer Cutting's Ocean Orchestra, with only Jennifer's keyboard plugged in; the rest was all acoustic and none of the women were using microphones. Steve Winick and a couple of other people sang with them at various points as they did most of the songs they performed when we saw them a couple of weeks ago in Herndon, but this time, since there were no pipes, Rosie played most of the melodies and Jennifer had written a new piece just for the occasion because she couldn't find a suitable solstice song. There were lots of sing-along choruses and lots of clapping, though not so much stomping...I think the room itself might have been a bit too serious for that. There was also wine and cheese, hot mulled cider, cookies and cake!

Rosie, Grace, Lisa and Jennifer in the library at the US Naval Observatory.


The quartet singing "Winter Light" with Steve Winick and a lovely woman whose name I have forgotten who also sang a bit in the refracting telescope dome where the acoustics are amazing.


Grace singing solo on "Bells of Norwich" (the audience joins in the chorus, "Ring out, bells of Norwich and let the winter come and go/All shall be well again, I know").


As Jennifer said, "I have an accordion and I'm not afraid to use it."


This is Bob, our tour guide as well as the opening act. For this performance, he learned Sousa's "Transit of Venus" march and an Irish fiddle tune called "Solstice."


Looking into the observatory library from the hallway, where there was a reception area with the wine and cheese.


In the library, a portrait of Asaph Hall, who discovered the moons of Mars at the observatory in 1877. His great-granddaughter was at the concert.

Much as I love this music, I must admit that the very coolest part of the evening was not the concert but the tour afterward of the observatory, which included a trip upstairs in the main building to see the 12-inch refractor, a walk through some of the historic instruments around the library and a lecture on the functions of the US Naval Observatory today, which included the best explanation I've heard of how GPS works (it's a matter of the time differential between satellites talking to a device, adjusted for the vicissitudes of the Earth's orbit and rotation, and must be correct to within a billionth of a second). I always forget that historical observatories are so closely associated with sailing ships and navigation, so there was lots of talk of tall ships and the development of celestial navigation and timepieces. The original Naval Observatory was actually not on a hill where the stars could be seen very clearly, but down by the water at Foggy Bottom, so that the ships could be signaled with the correct time every noon.

Anyway, in addition to the 12-inch refractor that offered amazing views of the moon's craters (it being too early in the evening to look at Jupiter or Saturn, while Mars was nearly as bright to the naked eye as it would have been through a telescope), we got glorious views of DC from the dome, particularly National Cathedral on one side and the Washington Monument on the other. Then we walked across the grounds to the massive done housing the 26-inch refracting telescope, at one time the largest in the world. The floor of this dome is the largest elevator in Washington, DC, though we didn't learn that until the guide started to make it rise! The telescope is now used to study double stars, which for reasons I didn't quite understand is not a task particularly hindered by the city's light pollution. Its dome sits on the original US prime meridian from before the US and France were using the one in Greenwich as a reference point for longitude.

Our final stop on the tour was most accurate clock in the world -- the massive computer-controlled atomic clock that sets the official time of the United States. There are many other timepieces housed in the same building, historic clocks and quartz clocks and nautical clocks, including some beautifully designed timepieces...the most important one, however, looks like four big computerized boxes and lots of smaller hard drives, and uses hydrogen and cesium. The guide, whose background is in meteorology, said that he couldn't actually explain how it worked, as whenever the physicists tried to explain it to him, his ears started to bleed. And we got home to find that Navy is winning the Poinsettia Bowl! Anyway, it was a nearly perfect evening except that we didn't get dinner till 9 p.m., so I will just wish everyone a very happy solstice and go collapse!

Poem for Thursday

Preludes For Prepared Piano 5: Sonnet in Search of a Moor
By Estill Pollock

Rearranging the letters, Othello the Moor of Venice, gives
oh lover felt emotion echo,
a tragedy, divers times acted at the Globe
by His Majesties Servants, practicing upon His Peace
even unto Madness.

The endless mask of photocopied time-tables, study guides.

In the film, Paradise in Harlem, lots of mobsters.
Doll, the nightclub singer, takes a bullet for Lem, who plays
Othello somehow, then sings a couple of songs.
Lucky Millander and his Orchestra, the final act, Desdemona
says don't worry, I'm the type who's going to die in bed.

Black moves first, the game ends when no player can move.

Think on your sins, he says, and she responds they
are the loves I bear to you.

--------

Not a very eventful day. Folded laundry while watching Dreamgirls, which I loved so much more than I was expecting -- I had high expectations from the stage musical (yes, I am that old) and was ambivalent about Beyonce, but no more...she was terrific and I was particularly impressed at how willing she was not to be the star, playing a character who rises to the top precisely because she is malleable and unobjectionable and blandly pretty and not as powerful a belter as Jennifer Hudson's character. I had heard a lot about how good Eddie Murphy was in the film, but nobody talked so much about how good Danny Glover was, and Jamie Foxx was fantastic. And the women were all superb.

When younger son got home, I took him to the orthodontist -- first time in months, just to make sure the retainer is doing its job. The mall parking lot wasn't too bad but the orthodontist's office was a zoo; I guess everyone wanted to get in before going out of town for the holidays. We stopped in Borders, which had moderately long lines but also lots of registers open...I had a 40% off two-days-only coupon for DVD box sets, so I now own all the Landau-Bain Mission: Impossible seasons, yay! (Would anyone like twelve professional Paramount M:I VHS tapes?)

Watched the off-night Journeyman...is that the last ever? I've lost track of how many they're aired so I'm not sure whether that was all 13 (or even if they finished scripts for the 13 originally ordered before the strike). Spoilers: I have the same problem with this episode that I've had all along with the objectified women -- Livia's going away forever just as she's starting to get interesting and show glimmers of a life of her own, and tonight's stalker story of the week did not bother to develop its female object of attraction even as it was trying to sell her to us as the pivot for the other time traveler's wife. And Katie's sister was Dan's brother with a bitchy edge and Jack's pregnant girlfriend wasn't even around. Even so, the last few minutes were completely riveting and finally we get some hints about the larger arc and...poof, that's it, probably forever! Oh well, it was worth watching while it lasted!

And I have nothing to say about Britney's sister but I just had to share LiveScience's article on how Barbary macaque female monkeys shout during sex because the males almost never ejaculate unlesss the females are yelling their pleasure. Go monkeys!

Poem for Wednesday

Preludes For Prepared Piano 12:
Circle of Fourths
By Estill Pollock

Begin with private circles, an enclosed or surrounded space,
isolated, everything in close proximity,
sacred boundaries about me, fewer and fewer climbing
up with me higher.

The work is an inspiration for the shape of the mouth,
the simultaneous telling of stories never an issue.
No one really understood the words anyway—
droney, modal counterpoint.

A notebook he gave his wife,
filled with her favourite pieces of music,
icy jabs on the piano, six violins and magnetic tape, the backing vocals
in bold font highlights three quarters water.

The head in profile, the eyes,
light blue circles in the centres,
the background is supposed to be dark blue,
the window stained orange and yellow.
I forgot to say my body is scrunched up in the right margin.

I should have been more specific, lilting mordents,
the flourishing turn figures enhancing
fluid legato passages,
from the raked stalls to the stage, collapsing the spiral,
everywhere irrational, transcendental.

Here's what I learned. Near the edge of the paper
history repeats itself. Everything is outlined in black.

--------

I spent a lovely afternoon with Perkypaduan eating soup from California Tortilla and watching December Boys. She brought me a home-strung chalcedony, moonstone and silver bead necklace -- my favorite kind of present! And I got holiday cookies in the mail from Ribby and a card from Totally Kate and a really wonderful present...a set of Now Voyagers from Shalini, who'd been cleaning out her Star Trek stuff. I only have two complete sets and sometimes get asked for issues or by prospective employers who want to see issues, so this is a really nice thing for me to have.

In the evening we went to Daniel's school for the December PTSA meeting, holiday mixer and chorus performance. It always takes a while to get over there in rush hour traffic, so we dropped him off, walked to the nearby Starbucks for coffee while he was rehearsing, then went to the school for the event. We weren't home till nearly 9 so we had a very late dinner but it was a lovely concert with Chanukah tunes and carols by both the chamber chorus and the a cappella group, plus some popular songs.

This is the main downstairs corridor leading from the lunchroom to the theater and gym in Daniel's high school, which is so large that the corridors have street names like "Maryland Boulevard." The red curve is the front of the library.


Daniel is a member of the robotics club, where the kids are building robots like this one.


The club will build a life-size humanoid robot for the national competition in the spring.


The chamber choir performed at Tuesday's PTSA meeting.


So did InToneNation, the school's award-winning student-directed a cappella group.


I think this sign in the library speaks for itself.


Another view of the main corridor looking from just beyond the library past the school store toward the courtyard.

We did make it home in time for Boston Legal, cracked as usual and lots of fun though again we get Alan more in serious angry mode and there's quite a bit of darkness over the holiday festivities. Spoilers: It starts with Denny, wearing light-up antlers, shooting a client with a paintball gun because the client's firm, GreenPeople, wants to drop Crane, Poole & Schmidt for having claimed to be green-friendly when there are no solar panels and no recycled computers there. Because Shirley is in Atlanta at a conference on environmental law, Carl gets the case. Meanwhile Clarence tells Alan that he lost his house -- the bank foreclosed when he couldn't keep up with the spiraling interest on top of his student loans -- and Jerry tells Katie that Lee has dumped him for an iPhone, which he finds so humiliating that he has taken to hiding under desks -- first his own, then Carl's while Carl is telling Lorraine that despite her past as a madam, she has a cleaner record than most of the partners at the firm even excluding Denny, so she is welcome to stay.

Alan goes to the bank and makes a lot of noise talking to a lobby teller about the subprime mortgage scam, which attracts the bank manager who says he's just as much of a victim -- banks are facing plunging stocks and mortgages they'll never collect. The good-ole-boy lawyer Palmer tries to claim in a friendly manner that Clarence is a lawyer and should have been smart enough to read a legal contract, but Clarence counters that no one explained what could happen to his fees if the prime went through the roof. Palmer says that even Alan Greenspan couldn't have foreseen that and gets nasty, saying that Clarence was never lied to: he made a deal, now he doesn't like it, so he deserves to lose his house. Alan points out that some of the people holding the trillion dollars worth of loans that will be called in as interest rates take off will undoubtedly be on a jury if Clarence's case goes to court. He asks who they will feel for: a man who lost his home for missing two payments, or a bank? Clarence is given time to pay off the loan and a fixed rate.

Denny's old friend from GreenPeople testifies that Denny lied about his firm's commitment to the environment. Then Katie asks him about the bottled water his lawyer is drinking, how come he goes out for ribeye steaks with Denny when eating beef is worse for the environment than driving a car, and why he drives a hybrid when their components and fuel really aren't environmentally safe at all. The plaintiff's lawyer says that the issue here is that Crane, Poole & Schmidt refuses to be held accountable for their promises even if her client personally may be a hypocrite, but Carl argues that no one can say precisely what would constitute being green: one minute we're supposed to eat farmed salmon to spare wild salmon, then the opposite, one minute we're told to walk to work, then we're told that if it will cause us to eat more meat it's better to drive, and overall the chicken littles would be far more effective if they'd stop yelling that the sky is falling and filing lawsuits when they could be giving helpful directives about the little things that make a difference, like environmentally friendly holiday lights.

Carl wins, but Denny is too distracted to care; Alan has become worried about his erratic behavior like shooting clients and drags him to his annual CAT scan. While holding Alan's hand, he hears about the proteins in his brain and is told that he ha MCI, to which he promptly responds that he knows better than that -- he has AT&T. The doctor explains that MCI is mild cognitive impairment, which appears in 29% of people under 85. In six years, about 80 percent of such patients develop Alzheimer's, but he doesn't think Denny needs to worry: as a drinker and a smoker at 75, the doctor doesn't expect Denny to live that long. While Alan is trying to cheer him up, Katie tries to cheer Jerry up by saying that Lee is obviously a total nutjob for cheating on him, even though Lorraine agrees with Lee that iPhones are sexy. Katie suggests that Jerry not limit his dating pool to mentally impaired people -- in the real world, she reminds him, sometimes women fall in love with their abusers and men with their mothers. But it's a passionate kiss under the mistletoe from Lorraine at the holiday party that gives Jerry his confidence back. He asks Katie to dance and has Whitney claiming jealousy.

Ultimately Clarence ends up dancing with Whitney while Alan snuggles Lorraine and Denny hits on one of the go-go dancers. Later, on the balcony, Denny is still angry at the doctor for telling him he wouldn't live long enough to get Alzheimer's. Alan wonders what the odds are of one man getting both Mad Cow and Alzheimer's, anyway. Denny says that he appreciates each day, which he might not do if he quit smoking and drinking, though he is considering giving up sex because blood can't go to his brain and penis at the same time and that's probably what caused his MCI. He isn't going to worry about it that night, though, because Christmas makes everything wrong go away, Denny adds, revealing that he once had sex with a Christmas tree...well, a woman dressed as one, anyway. He is resigned to never having sex with Lorraine but he asks Alan if, for a Christmas present, he can smell Lorraine's perfume on Alan. "Don't try anything," warns Alan, allowing Denny to smell him, though once Alan discovers that Denny smells like the go-go dancer, they end up hugging and sniffing each other. "Let It Snow" is playing and it's snowing in Boston.

So I know I am supposed to be delighted that Peter Jackson is making The Hobbit. But two movies? The Rankin Bass cartoon managed to fit it into 77 minutes, and while that admittedly has many drawbacks, Jackson should be able to do it in two and a half hours! It's not even like The Two Towers where there are multiple storylines unfolding. I fear that we're going to get a bloated monstrosity like King Kong. And speaking of apes, my kids were frightened to learn that monkeys can perform mental addition in a manner remarkably similar to college students!

Poem for Tuesday

River Of Souls
By Dan Fogelberg

I take my place along the shore and I wait for the tide.
It seems I've passed this way before in an earlier time.
I hear a voice like mystery blowing warm through the night;
The silent moon embraces me and I'm drawn to her light.

I follow footprints in the sand to a circle of stone,
Find a fire burning bright though I came here alone,
And in the play of shadows cast I can dimly discern
The shapes of all who've gone before calling me to return.

There are no names that fit these faces,
There are no lines that can define these ancient spaces.
The spirits dance across the ages
And melt into a river of souls.

I take my place along the shore and I wait for the tide.
It seems I've passed this way before in an earlier time.
To every man the mystery sings a different song,
He fills his page of history, dreams his dreams and is gone.

Lo que es mio,
Lo que es de Dios,
Lo que es del rio,
Melt into a river of souls.

--------

It wasn't easy to pick one Dan Fogelberg song -- I had trouble deciding which ones not to include, but I figured I should pick one more recent than The Innocent Age which was a big influence on me in high school. RIP.

I had a quiet Monday doing chores around the house and online, plus some post office stuff. When Adam got home from school, he had e-mail for the first time in a long time from his good friend who moved to Venezuela three years ago, convinced the friend to get a Google Talk account and within minutes the two of them were chatting like they'd never stopped. It was really cute (animals and video games being, apparently, a univeral language for boys). Plus I got holiday cards from some overseas friends and fannish friends, and one came with a present!

A model of a penguin wearing the Crittercam at the National Geographic Explorers Hall.


There was a display on how the camera was strapped to the penguin, complete with video.


The Crittercam on the humpback whale was attached to a flipper.


There were more displays on sea turtles, lions, bears, seals, sea lions, pigeons and a DC cat who caught a mouse and ate it on camera.


This is Nigersaurus, 110 million years old, who lived when Africa and South America were still joined together.


And this is an African pterosaur, a fish-eater with a 16-foot wing span also discovered at the Niger site. Son is of the opinion that it needed braces and headgear.


Also at National Geographic, a photo display on the Alaskan wilderness and how global warming is affecting it. Here are images of glaciers receding in three areas.

Journeyman was pretty good tonight, though not so good that I was devastated to learn earlier in the day that NBC chose not to pick up the show beyond its initial 13 episodes...I just hope the last script completed before the strike resolves some of the mysteries that I think should have been explored in more detail earlier in the series. Spoilers: Favorite line in recent memory: "Thanks for...saving our lives and everything." The plot was pretty predictable: kid knew mom was going blind, wanted the camera for money to save her eyesight, didn't realize he'd die and consign her to darkness forever, but he came off as an obnoxious little shit anyway...not a great casting job.

Whereas Dan's daughter-who-isn't has the opposite problem. Real young kids don't smile sweetly and talk about red licorice when their parents are mad and don't even recognize them; they freak out. I don't much like Jack's attitude toward women and fatherhood but at least "I knocked up my girlfriend" sounds very real. (And Katie's sister telling him to make the decision that's best for him becuase that will be best for everyone...and this is the woman pissed at how he treated her sister?) Of course the Evil Female CEO gets killed for her ambition, because the proper place for women on this series is primarily as wives, mothers, hippies and psychics (they can be reporters and doctors and time travelers but they get defined by their men and children anyway).

Read the preview of J.K. Rowling from the upcoming Leaky Cauldron Pottercast and was pleased by this: "In the wizarding world...I think you could be gay, pureblood, and totally without any kind of criticism from the Lucius Malfoys of the world. I don't think that’s something that would interest him at all." That's always how I wrote Lucius. And Dementor Delta linked me to The Courant's Alan Rickman interview in which he talks about fame, Judge Turpin and "Radcliffe" as he refers to his Harry Potter co-star.

My grandfather would be 97 today. He died a couple of weeks before my wedding in 1990.

Poem for Monday

No Worst, There Is None
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing —
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

--------

Another from Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World: "The mind, wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins, has 'cliffs of fall' that are 'no-man-fathomed,' suggesting a jagged, dangerous terrain with unexpected and potentially lethal gulfs," in the words of Robert Pinsky.

After Adam got home from Hebrew school and we had M&M pancakes (because we couldn't waste the extra M&Ms bought to play dreidel and make holiday cookies with!), we went downtown to the Phillips Collection to see Impressionists By the Sea, which has some absolutely gorgeous Monets plus tall ships and Normandy flowers and rock formations and sunsets (I had a series of Trouville prints on my wall through college so I am very attached to some of these paintings). We also looked at the permanent collection, some of which I adore (Picasso, O'Keeffe, Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party) and some of which is too much contemporary color splashing for me (no one is ever going to make me appreciate Rothko no matter how much they go on about palette and portals and abstraction).

Then we went to the National Geographic Explorers Hall to see the Crittercam exhibit, which not only has video and models of penguins, sharks, sea turtles, seals and lots more animals but has interactive exhibits on how the cameras and harnesses are attached, computer simulations, a be-a-penguin dome and lots more. Adam was delighted and Daniel spent lots of time on the computers. We also went to see the newly excavated Nigerian dinosaurs and the photo exhibit of the Alaskan wilderness and how global warming is affecting it.

Since it was already getting dark when we left as the museum was closing, we decided to go to Cici's Pizza in Gaithersburg for dinner, then to the Winter Lights Festival at Seneca Creek State Park, an annual tradition. They didn't have a park radio station playing quiet holiday music this year so we were stuck with WASH's all-Christmas, all-the-time plus commercials nightmare music programming but otherwise it was lovely! Next year I'm bringing George Winston's December and Jon Simon's New Traditions.

Animals both real and imaginary inhabit the woods at Seneca Creek State Park at this time of year.


Here for instance are squirrels...


...a flapping owl...


...a fish leaping out of the lake...


...a sea monster, or lake monster...


...a peacock...


...and (it's blurry but I had to post it anyway) a snakey!

Watched My Boy Jack with the kids in the evening; older son is studying World War I in school right now and younger son will generally watch anything so long as he has not deemed it boring (this one was in danger because it's based on real biographical events, but he was interested anyway). They both watched intently and younger son hid under a pillow when the war scenes got ugly. I was pleased to see that my imaginary boyfriend, Lucius Malfoy, made the Forbes list of the world's richest fictional men. Think he'll get me a pimp cane for the holidays? And our power stayed on despite the wind all across the county. And it looks like the Redskins beat the Giants! Wheeee!

Poem for Sunday

Unthought
By Jill Rosser

Every time I'm reminded of the actor
who willed his own skull to repertory
for use as that of poor Yorick
in stagings of Hamlet, I wince to think
I forgot his name. Was it Cooke?
Cronin? Cracken?
                  Cooke I decide, and
doubt sets in. So the thought I always
nearly have about this morbid legacy
never fully shapes itself. I've almost
had this thought at least a hundred times.
For some reason until I get that name right
I can't permit myself to think it through.
Maddening, like a sneeze that won't quite,
all day it just, climax unbrought-to . . .
Sir Arthur Cronin seems plausible
until I suspect I've conflated the actor
with Conan Doyle, who solved hard cases
of lives dissolved. Absurd, really,
this paralyzing sense of obligation to a name.
Alas poor whoozis, who'd have given rise
to some thought in my still humming skull,
my wracked skull rich with the image of his,
held aloft nightly to shadow forth past performances,
like the echo of a hermit-crab-deserted shell.
Is it still in use? No prop man could throw it away.
Did he love puns? Was he the boneheaded sort
who felt Ophelia must be played by a man
because she would have been in Shakespeare's day?
Did he upstage a friend? Was he gifted enough to?
Sir Something. Arthur, George? Frederick.
It's killing me, since his whole idea was to be
remembered -- literally -- letting his too solid skull
stand for his love of the curtain-hush, the lights,
the flourish of lines and crushed velvet and the gasp
just audible in the front row; to be a part of it,
a body part of it. The thought I want to have
undoes itself again. You go ahead and think it for me.
I guess I never wanted it. I think that may be why
I had to tell you. Here, take this from me.
You'll think of something. Please. This is as far as I go.

--------

From Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World. "Sometimes, as in Jill Rosser's new collection of poetry [Foiled Again], it's a comic, irritable gesture that recalls the abyss a footstep away," writes Robert Pinsky. "'Alas poor whoozis' propels a slide toward the outrageous death-jokes of 'my still humming skull' and 'it's killing me.' These suitably theatrical jokes and hi-jinks, like Hamlet's musing on the skull of Yorick the jester, link the limits of memory with the limits of life itself. By closing with the seven little words that hand over the anecdote and the search for that actor's name, giving them to the reader, Rosser makes a final allusion to mortality, in the mordant, laughing tradition of Shakespeare's graveyard scene.

I had to get up absurdly early for a weekend to take Daniel to a local Barnes & Noble, where his school PTSA was holding a fundraiser with several different school groups appearing, including the chamber choir of which he is a member. It was a very nice performance -- Christmas carols and Chanukah songs, including "Hanerot Halalu," "Silent Night," "O, Ir Kleyne Likhtelekh," "Angels We Have Heard On High," "Deck the Halls," "Kumah Echa," "Adoramus Te," "Tanzen und Springen" and "Bear Me Gently." The bookstore was donating a percentage of sales from people who mentioned the school to the school and there was a table of wish list books for the library, so it was sort of like an elementary school book fair on a much grander scale, and there was a pretty good turnout (plus all the holiday shoppers). Afterward we walked through downtown Bethesda looking in store windows a bit, then drove to Borders because that's the bookstore where my kids had gift cards as Chanukah presents from Paul's L.A. brother and his family, and we walked down to Bed, Bath & Beyond to get some un-thrilling household items on pre-holiday sale (including microfiber fuzzy slippers, yay!)

The high school choir performs beneath Winnie the Pooh in the children's department of Barnes & Noble.


Here's Daniel with the rest of the group.


Out front the fountain is turned off and decorated for the season.


A Father Christmas in a nearby store window.


And a menorah...


...a snowman...


...and a Chanukah serving dish.

My eye has been bothering me for two days -- something going on with my tear duct, this seems to happen a couple of weeks after I get a cold every single time -- and the weather was iffy, and I consulted with vertigo66 and neither of us felt up to driving to beeej's holiday fangirling, which I feel terrible about but I really didn't feel safe driving so far after dark. So I had a quiet evening at home watching the end of Order of the Phoenix and then The Upside of Anger, which has the awesome cast of Joan Allen, Kevin Costner and Mike Binder (who wrote and directed), plus Evan Rachel Wood, Keri Russell and lots of other good people, and a twist that I so had no idea was coming -- I don't know how I missed knowing about it but for once I was really happy not to be spoiled for a movie, because I usually don't care. (Whereas I am spoiled completely for I Am Legend and thank goodness, because if I went to see that with significant changes from the original story and didn't know which direction they went, I'd have steam coming out of my ears!)

Poem for Saturday

Garage Sale
By Laure-Anne Bosselaar

     I sold her bed for a song.
A song of yearning like an orphan’s.
Or the one knives carve into bread.

     But the un-broken bread
song too. For the song that a river
sings to the ferryman’s oars — with

     that dread in it.
For a threadbare tune: garroted,
chest-choked, cheap. A sparrow’s,

     beggar’s, a foghorn’s call.
For the kind of song only morning
can slap on love-stained sheets —

     that’s what I sold my mother’s
bed for. The one she died in. Sold it
for a song.

--------

Adam got home at lunchtime from three days of outdoor education, hoarse, muddy and quite cheerful -- apparently the food is quite good at Summit Lake, there was enough of an ice storm for an improvised snowball fight, they had s'mores without having to sit outdoors in freezing temperatures at a bonfire, his best friend was in his cabin and there was a reptile show with several snakes including a Burmese python that they got to touch. And he survived at Predator & Prey even though he was a herbivore, who often get eaten by the carnivores. Of course everything he brought with him had to go into the laundry as soon as he got home, so my afternoon was mostly comprised of washing and folding it all, plus writing a review of "Contagion", a fun episode if not a really profound one.

fridayfiver: The Only Nasty Thing I Like
1. What's the last movie you saw? Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on DVD.
2. Are you gentle? In the sense of lion vs. lamb, yes. In the sense of gentlewoman, not at all.
3. Do you sleep with your bedroom door shut? Even if I wanted to, the cats would not permit it.
4. What's your middle name? Erica.
5. Friday fill-in: I could learn to like ___. I could learn to like being pampered head to toe.

thefridayfive: Many people make a big deal about not being "labeled." And yet, we all are, constantly.
1. Pick one label that you think does describe you (race, religion, hobby, etc.). Short.
2. Pick one label that is often put on you, that you really think is inaccurate. MEAN. (This is by my kids; when other people say it, it's probably true. *g*)
3. Pick one label you wish could be put on you. Fascinating.
4. What is one kind of label that you think is universally wrong to use (race, gender, height)? I don't see how this question can be answered -- I mean, race in terms of racial profiling, sure, or gender in terms of essentialist characterization, but people self-identify with all sorts of labels and I don't see how that can be "wrong."
5. Labels, used intelligently, can be a convenient rhetorical shorthand for identifying how a given person will fit into (or react to) a given situation. Labels, used incorrectly, can be an excuse for dismissing the differences still inherent in the people to whom the label is applied. Discuss. Um...whatever.

fannish5: Name five characters who should die, or should have died sooner.
This is hard for me, because if I hate a character this much, I generally stop reading/watching whatever they're in. And I tend to love women disproportionately more than men, so I tend to be disproportionately more disappointed by them. Hence:
1. Nymphadora Tonks, Harry Potter's woman who can't live without a man.
2. Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars' villain who was vastly more interesting in the Vader suit than out.
3. Nathan Petrelli, Heroes' most selfish hero. Not that I expect him to stay dead for long.
4. Bareil, Deep Space Nine's Vedek who turned Kira into a meek lapdog in the name of romance.
5. Lana Lang, Smallville's damsel in perpetual, pathetic distress.

David Beck's wonderful 2006 Mvseum on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.


This is an interactive sculpture, though the protective glass discourages interaction...


The miniature museum contains art galleries, fossils, a planetarium...


...reptiles and sea creatures, plants and butterflies, stained glass and skylights.


The whole thing is 32 x 55 x 50 inches (81.3 x 139.7 x 127.0 cm) at the base.

We had dinner with my parents and my father's brother who is visiting from Los Angeles, whom I think felt neglected that we left fairly early but Adam wanted to be home after three days away and Daniel has a chorus concert early tomorrow morning at a local bookstore that is going to require us all to be out of the house at 9 a.m. So we watched part of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and sent the kids off to bed early, then watched a bit of the Appalachian State-Delaware championship game (Blue Hens, hee -- I was hoping they would play the Spiders). Oh, and I got lots of holiday cards in the mail! Yay!

Poem for Friday

My Boy Jack
By Rudyard Kipling

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
    Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Has any one else had word of him?"
    Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
    None this tide,
    Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind--
    Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
    This tide,
    And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
    And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

--------

I spent a lovely day with , who took me out for Thai food and brought me glass, magnetic and metal seahorses, Bath & Body Works potions, tall ship books, a Dorothy Parker puppet and Prince Ken! After going to Benjarong (on the new Montrose Road, to my surprise, as I wasn't expecting the road diversion), we came back to my house, ate the remainder of my Nubian chocolate roll and indulged ourselves in Daniel Radcliffe movies -- December Boys, My Boy Jack and the Order of the Phoenix DVD extras. December Boys was not as cliched as the reviews led me to believe, though maybe I just don't know my Catholic orphan stereotypes well enough...all the young actors were very good, the guy playing Fearless could be the love child of Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman and his wife was played by Xena hottie Victoria Hill. Also, the scenery is very prettily shot...the is movie very easy on the eyes in so many ways. Spoilers: We think Maps' future as a priest is a huge waste of potential. Seriously, forgetting his erotic future, the film does very little to recommend Catholic institutional life and for Maps, returning to a Catholic orphanage is a kind of defensiveness against being hurt again by friends or potential family. But maybe I am not believing in the miracle of the Virgin's appearance sufficiently.

I thought My Boy Jack was actually a better-scripted movie and magnificently filmed...I realize it was made for TV but if they cut corners on the battle scenes, I certainly couldn't see it on the small screen (we watched an .avi file on my new laptop). The acting is first-rate -- Caroline Kipling is my favorite Kim Cattrall role ever, completely unglamorous and focused, and David Haig (who also wrote the screenplay) and Carey Mulligan are terrific too. I knew in broad strokes what would happen, but the war scenes were still very upsetting and the contrast with the quiet English countryside was portrayed very well. Plus I liked the relationship between the siblings, the storytelling scenes and the portrayal of the women going out to do hard physical labor while the aristocratic men continued to dress well and sit at nice clean tables discussing the war.

As for the HP extras...ohhgod, I still want a poster of that still of Lucius sitting in the fancy chair with the dogs at his feetl, his brandy in his hand, and his legs spread. We didn't get to the Tonks tour -- is it any good? -- but we did watch the deleted scenes, which as usual were entertaining but nothing that made me desperately wish for an extended edition. Spoilers: There's lots of added Umbridge, Neville and Trelawney but not Snape, and nothing really thrilling added back from book like, you know, Lockhart, or Remus and Sirius giving Harry a joint Christmas present. Instead there's a long, funny but rather pointless bit of Trelawney making a mess on the table in the Great Hall while Umbridge talks, an extended bit of the scene with Umbridge in Trelawney's classroom, a funny moment between Umbridge and Filch after the Weasley twins' departure, Umbridge's rant just before the centaurs arrive in the Forbidden Forest.

There was a downtown holiday street fair...


...set up outside the Smithsonian's Reynolds Center last weekend.


In addition to the carolers, there were merchants and craftspeople.


Many of the people coming and going from the National Portrait Gallery went to look at the wares.


The back of the building is next to the MCI Center (with its giant National Treasure: Book of Secrets poster).

Smallville started out so promisingly: Lois has to rescue Chloe, yay! Girls helping girls and not a Clark in sight! But of course we didn't get so lucky all episode. Spoilers: Clark's dialogue with Lana is even more atrocious than usual -- "I'm back and you're here, that's all that matters now," "When I saw you in the barn it was like I fell in love with you all over again" -- gaaaah, maybe these writers deserve to stay on strike while I watch more British TV! Fine, it's not really Clark, something I suspected before he flew and then we saw the Ice Prince...but the thing is, Clark and Lana's dialogue is often that bad when it IS really him. And then HE gets to rescue Chloe while Lois is UNCONSCIOUS because of Lex's EVIL CLONING SCHEME. Gaaaaah, again! I suppose it was worth watching for the Grant Gabriel "My Clone Sleeps Alone" storyline and Lex's hysterical "You're not my brother, you're a mistake!" And his priceless line to Grant, "If I didn't love you, you wouldn't be here." But that's very little to like in 40+ minutes of television.

Was dorkily excited to see that the remains of the Quedagh Merchant, Captain Kidd's pirate ship, have been found. More excited by that anyway than Jodie Foster...some of the same people who were screaming that J.K. Rowling is a homophobe for doing too little too late are now lionizing Foster for a tiny acknowledgment of her partner and co-parent after her 15 years of determined silence on gay issues in Hollywood.

Poem for Thursday

You Bring Me Back
By Patti Tana

You bring me back
with a smell
a shape
to my early pleasure.
Deep in the night
I climb the high
chair of your lap
and rest in sure
familiar dreams.

When I turn, you turn
and I become host
to your sleeping
body, your naked body.
Kneading the flesh
aligning the bones
till morning arouses
a shape, a smell
and we turn to each other
in familiar pleasure.

--------

I got up early to send Adam off to outdoor education, along with his best friend whose mother has two babies in the house and didn't think she could juggle the babies, the duffel bag and the sleeping bag. When I did outdoor ed in sixth grade, it was called science camp and was the culmination of elementary school; my kids go at the start of middle school, so it's a much bigger group whom they know half as well. Adam has never been to overnight camp, only single-night retreat-type things, so he was a bit nervous, but looking forward to it too -- Daniel went his third week of middle school knowing practically nobody and had a great time. They do a lot of outdoor stuff and although it was 60 degrees this morning, it's supposed to drop off so much tonight that the county sent out a winter weather advisory for the morning rush hour in case the rain freezes on the roadways. The kids are up in the mountains near the Pennsylvania border and I hope they're not freezing!

Since we didn't on my birthday, I went out to lunch with Paul (Minerva, the awesome Indian restaurant), then stopped at Best Buy to pick up December Boys in case should happen to drop by on Thursday or something. *whistles* Then I stopped at the mall to look for a couple of presents and came home to do some organizing -- had to put the new art books out of reach of claws that occasionally decide to use something other than the scratching post for scratching. I had a pounding headache, the beginning of a migraine, so it did not surprise me when I got the county's weather warning even though in the morning they were still saying it would be clear till the weekend. It's better now...had chicken soup for dinner after huge lunch and stayed away from holiday cookies for the most part. *g*

Birthday card from my husband:

I was so excited to discover that Pushing Daisies had another new episode -- I thought they had aired all the ones they had filmed! From the Play-Doh opening, I loved all of this one, especially the ending which makes so many things make more sense! Spoilers: Of course Lily is Charlotte's mother...that makes so much more sense of her behavior concerning Chuck all along. And Pee Wee Herman, excuse me, Paul Reubens didn't turn out to be a Perfume psycho as I feared, just an ordinary nut who can smell death. I love how in the flashback scenes, everyone drives cars from the '50s, and the snowflakes are clearly paper...Ned's rose-colored memories even when they're unhappy ones.

And Olive's pyjamas matching her bedspread and her wallpaper, and Chuck's perfectly matched ensemble as Ned worries about her out in the cold, cold world, and again so many lines..."It was hard for Olive Snook to close the door on the piemaker's breaking heart." "The mermaids are back in the water?" "Then you slipped in your word-vomit and fell on your head and now you're covered in word-vomit!" And the exchange with frozen Victor, "So there is such a thing as a snowball's chance in hell?" "You're not in hell." Then Emerson claiming they're angels of justice and Victor saying that he is in hell. And Ned telling Emerson that Emerson doesn't need him to talk to the living, and Emerson saying, "Dead girl don't need you either...which is why she ain't here!"

The dialogue between Ned and Chuck is always snappy but it's so sad when she can't look at him the way he couldn't look at her after her dad died, and "it wasn't the fickle finger of fate -- it was your finger" and needing to hate him for a little while. And really, I loved the dying boy's bitterness, which was so much more real than the angelic resigned children who show up so often on TV, and the desperate avenging angel from the Make a Wish Foundation and the so perfect you could word-vomit ending. ("Bobo the bonobo monkey had a wish of its own...to play with the ball on a stick." Hee!) I so, so, so want this show back next season and will send daisies or pies or whatever is necessary to ABC to make it so.

Okay, and after Pushing Daisies, I did a terrible thing. I, um, watched Braveheart on cable. Enough said about that. (Look, I'd never seen it and I was curious and the cast outside the lead is excellent and, okay, fine, tell me I suck because I deserve it...I, who will not watch Sean Connery movies because he makes me sick.) I shall just declare this Guilty Pleasure Film Week and watch Daniel Radcliffe lose his virginity as the least of my evils so far!

Poem for Wednesday

Angel Supporting St. Sebastian
By Robin Becker

Shot with arrows and left for dead,
against the angel's leg, Sebastian sinks.
In time, he'll become the patron

saint of athletes and bookbinders.
But for now, who wouldn't want to be
delivered into the sculpted arms

of this seraph, his heavenly
shoulders and biceps?
The artist understood the swoon

of doctrine, its fundamental
musculature, and the human need
to lean against the lusty form,

accept the discourse that assigns
to each of us a winged guardian
whispering into our ringing ears.

--------

I had a pretty quiet birthday, as I had to get a bit of shopping and more than a bit of laundry done to send Adam off for three days of outdoor ed the next morning...what we called science camp when I was growing up. Had lunch with vertigo66 and gblvr (Corner Bakery), had dinner with my parents (shrimp au gratin and Nubian chocolate roll), celebrated the last night of Chanukah both at my parents' house and at ours (I got the gorgeous catalogue of the J.M.W. Turner exhibit published by the Tate Museum, Chesapeake: Exploring the Water Trail of Captain John Smith, the second season of Mission: Impossible on DVD, and some money from my parents, plus HP:OOTP for the family and packs of the POTC constructible ship cards that can be played with the various WizKids Pirates games). Am seeing on the news that there's a tropical storm in the Caribbean and horrific footage of the mudslide out west and the ice storm closer to here...hope everyone is safe!

My cats waiting eagerly to wish me happy birthday. Oh, fine, my cats waiting eagerly for me to walk in the kitchen and feed them.

Came home, got Adam packed and tucked in, made Daniel finish homework, did a bit of cleanup and watched Boston Legal. Sometimes I really wish David E. Kelley weren't so coy about his political beliefs, you know? *snerk* The points for skewering this week are the National Guard's failure to accept willing members who don't fit their demographics and the No Child Left Behind act...definitely one of my favorites of the season even apart from Alan earnestly telling a National Guard recruitment officer that he and Denny get plenty of exercise, fiber and sex. My kids, who were still awake, were delighted when the episode started with Denny and Alan playing tennis on the Wii, but they're quickly interrupted by a man Denny has sued because he wanted a pizza from the man's restaurant which turned out to be closed. The man points out that the restaurant closed because of a flood and Alan comes up with the idea of suing the National Guard for failing to offer assistance. Shirley doesn't believe this is a legitimate case, but she also can't stick around to argue, as her granddaughter Marlena who has just been expelled from school for shredding standardized tests comes begging for her assistance.

Shirley talks to the principal, who says the girl was a model student until a year abroad convinced her that the US educational system was terrible. Unable to convince him to drop the suspension, Shirley insists to the judge that destroying the test was an act of civil disobedience that shows a knowledge of US history like the Boston Tea Party. She calls upon experts who testify that the No Child Left Behind act grants exemptions to make certain states look good and that half of US students can't locate the state of New York on a map.

The principal, a math teacher, admits that he sends his own children to private school and says that the No Child Left Behind tests are necessary to receive federal funding, which is costing him teachers and wasting millions of dollars. ("This No Child Left Behind act, we've got to get rid of it, it's leaving our kids behind.") Shirley concedes that shredding the test may be taking civil disobedience too far, but so is expelling a student for it, and the judge agrees, saying it should be only a suspension. Marlena asks Shirley for a part time job.

Alan and Denny get the patriotic judge who threatens to throw them in jail for contempt if they can't prove the case against the National Guard isn't a despicable waste of time. Alan shows footage of the state of emergency during the flood and argues that the National Guard and its equipment are in Iraq -- we don't even bring it back -- but when he describes all the services we're not getting in the US as a result of the war, from education to care for the elderly, the judge has them locked up in the name of court and country.

In prison, Alan suggests to Denny that they join the National Guard and invites the judge to join them when he comes to have them released. But the National Guard recruitment officer announces that they are both too old and suggests that they volunteer with the USO, and when Alan returns to the judge, insisting that older Americans, gay Americans, etc. should be allowed to volunteer to serve and to take domestic positions, the judge says that would end our backdoor draft so even though it's outrageous that age, sexual orientation, etc. can keep Americans from serving, he must dismiss the case, as he can't set military policy. (He suggests joining the Boy Scouts, but Alan points out that they want you to be young and straight, too. "Our country doesn't want us," he laments.

Back at the firm there are problems as well. Katie asks Lorraine enough questions to conclude that she's lying about her ex-husband's alleged fatwa. Fearful of discovery, Lorraine visits Alan in prison and confesses that she used to run a brothel in Piccadily; because her clients included members of the royal family and Parliament, the government agreed not to prosecute her if she would leave the country. (Overhearing, Denny claims to have an image made on a Xerox machine while he was getting it on with the Queen on the photocopier.)

Meanwhile, Carl complains to Shirley that he is thinking about going back to New York because he can't restore order to Crane, Poole and Schmidt and doesn't beliefe she really wants him to. While Shirley is attempting to convince him that the firm is just a bit eccentric, Lorraine comes in and, after telling Shirley of Alan and Denny's new plan to join the Coast Guard, explains her predicament. Carl tells Shirley, "I'm sorry, you're right, it's just like any other firm." Ultimately he admits that he's really upset because he's starting to like it there, and that scares him; moreover, he's deeply in love with Shirley, who has a history of going through men like tic-tacs, and that scares him too. Shirley asks him to just go with it, and Marlena walks in on them kissing, which she labels gross.

Alan and Denny sit on the balcony in coast guard uniforms, which Denny finds arousing though Alan points out that they're rented uniforms and don't actually make Denny's penis look bigger. Alan notes his surprise that with all the chaos in the country, volunteerism is actually up, and Denny says that was Bush's plan: to let people learn to fend for themselves. "Act like an idiot, people stand up and volunteer," he observes, telling Alan to look at the big picture: we need a way to nuke Iran and Iraq without starting a world war! Only someone perceived to be as stupid as Bush could get away with claiming that it was an accident! Alan says Denny is all talk about wanting guns and bombs and Denny agrees -- he may be a nice guy with a big heart, but women love men in uniform. As for Lorraine's lie about the fajita or fatwa or whatever, Denny says he will stand up for her if she lies down for him. And he wants a tank. The two drink as "Over There" plays into the credits.

Poem for Tuesday

Pickle Belt
By Theodore Roethke

The fruit rolled by all day.
They prayed the cogs would creep;
They thought about Saturday pay,
And Sunday sleep.

Whatever he smelled was good:
The fruit and flesh smells mixed.
There beside him she stood,--
And he, perplexed;

He, in his shrunken britches,
Eyes rimmed with pickle dust,
Prickling with all the itches
Of sixteen-year-old lust.

--------

Worked on stupid web stuff that went nowhere -- I need a proper class in CSS, I think -- and put together final Chanukah presents, which included framing a photo of Adam with penguins while keeping the cats from either sitting on the glass, chewing on the matte or crawling into the tube in which the photo arrived from Shutterfly. It was a pretty quiet day even after the kids got home from school; both kids had homework, I was recording Crimson Tide, which is on On Demand and which I haven't seen in a few years, and the whole family ended up watching the last hour or so. I love Viggo and Denzel and James Gandolfini in that film, and Gene Hackman is really frightening and the rest of the cast is really terrific too.

I get a thrill from the posters, the idea of the rigging as the sinews of war, and the artwork in the Joan of Arc poster and the one above it with an early 1900s fantasia of apocalyptic New York with the Statue of Liberty's head lying on the ground. Journeyman -- was this the last one finished before the strike? -- was for a change not very apocalyptic but entirely a family story, though once more "family" overwhelmingly means "important stuff men do and how they bond with and relate to one another" which grates after awhile. Spoilers: Finally we get to see Dan's dad, but what a letdown...I was convinced that his disappearance had something significant to do with Dan's traveling, the idea of disappearing man as metaphor, and instead he's just a schmuck who decided he was a lousy father and wanted his freedom. Here the parallel tale of two fathers is about the newspaper owner and his father, with Mystery Livia and her Mystery Man still offering no answers.

As for Jack's becoming a father...he wants to be with a doctor too stupid to worry about birth control? And naturally the Pulitzer Prize-winning female journalist didn't make it on her own merits, but covering for a suspected killer and allowing people to believe she got through the door on her knees. I don't blame Katie for freaking out after everything she's been through and I loved her getting support at last from Dan's mother, but for once can't she be the strong one, the interesting one, the one who gets to do stuff besides all the things Dan takes for granted, raising his son and entertaining his friends and relatives and juggling work and trying to find one minute to herself to deal with it all? I am frankly astounded that she's not thinking about leaving while he's in the past with Livia hinting they should be together because they can't make it work well with anyone else.

Poem for Monday

Dinky
By Theodore Roethke

O what's the weather in a Beard?
It's windy there, and rather weird,
And when you think the sky has cleared
          -- Why, there is Dirty Dinky.

Suppose you walk out in a Storm,
With nothing on to keep you warm,
And then step barefoot on a Worm
          -- Of course, it's Dirty Dinky.

As I was crossing a hot hot Plain,
I saw a sight that caused me pain,
You asked me before, I'll tell you again:
          -- It looked like Dirty Dinky.

Last night you lay a-sleeping?
No! The room was thirty-five below;
The sheets and blankets turned to snow.
          -- He'd got in: Dirty Dinky.

You'd better watch the things you do,
You'd better watch the things you do.
You're part of him; he's part of you
          -- You may be Dirty Dinky.

--------

Another from Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World. "As shown by anonymous childhood chants about greasy grimy gopher guts, we can take pleasure in the messy or messed up," writes Robert Pinsky. "Roethke succeeds at that...orderly rhyme and messed-up experiences here -- as in much poetry of all kinds -- lead to a final, powerful, psychological insight."

After Adam got home from Hebrew school, we went downtown to the Smithsonian -- first the National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum, then the National Gallery of Art because I wanted to see the Turner exhibit again before it left for Dallas. American Art has Kindred Spirits, much of which I believe is the same Asher B. Durand exhibit that we saw in Philadelphia a couple of years ago, which was the major reason I wanted to go there and it has lots of information and a wonderful collection of his portraits as well as the gorgeous forests he painted (unlike, say, Bierstadt, there's more shadow than layers of light in Durand). It also has a terrific exhibit of World War I posters and the amazing For SAAM, a massive column of messages in light.

The Portrait Gallery has a small but wonderful exhibit of photos and posters of Katharine Hepburn, complete with screen showing clips from her movies and -- this should not have thrilled me so much -- a case with all four of her Academy Awards. (We also peeked a bit at the presidents.) Then we walked to the National Mall and went to see the Turners, which required a detour through the Dutch galleries because a symphony orchestra was rehearsing in one of the interior courtyards for an evening concert. It was so lovely to walk through listening to Grieg! All the museums were fairly empty but the Turner exhibit was crowded; the kids, at least, were reasonably attentive and not too loud.

The new courtyard between the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery.


Although it's under cover, there are places where it's always "raining" on the floor of the courtyard...


...with rain that drains away beneath the tiles.


I don't know exactly how this works, but it somehow keeps the floor wet without any appearance of mist.


Here's the stained glass window from the inside.


And the space inside the space...


...with this stunning glass ceiling.

I'm almost too embarrassed to admit what I watched on cable on Sunday night...oh fine, it was The Devil Wears Prada, which is the opposite of my kind of movie in so many ways, but I like Anne Hathaway and Stanley Tucci and I was curious to see Meryl Streep, who seems determined to reinvent herself onscreen as the Bitch of Life now that Glenn Close no longer wants the mantle (or maybe those are the only interesting roles offered to women of a certain age). I should probably confess at this juncture that at a very low time in my life, Sex and the City helped me stay sane, and this film kind of presses those nostalgic buttons for me.

Half my flist is linking right now to gloom-and-doom articles about LiveJournal's new owners that I can't read because both IJ and GJ are down, and the other half my flist is bitching about how both IJ and GJ are down. At the risk of contributing to all the negativity everywhere...doesn't anyone have a positive suggestion? Like, let's pool our money and buy a bunch of servers and make our own site, or something? I'd do it if I knew how, because god knows that if I was interested in corporate wealth, I'd have found a way to sell out by now. ("Let's give all our money to InsaneJournal" sounds so much like "let's give all our money to JournalFen" did a couple of years ago, and we can all see how that turned out.) Of course I want the freedom to post what I want, but I feel so drained by all the unhappiness that I don't much feel like posting squee, which the world needs more of at the moment.

Poem for Sunday

The Sloth
By Theodore Roethke

In moving-slow he has no Peer.
You ask him something in his ear;
He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a Word
There, upside down (unlike a Bird)
He will assume that you have Heard --

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.
But should you call his manner Smug,
He'll sigh and give his Branch a Hug;

Then off again to Sleep he goes,
Still swaying gently by his Toes,
And you just know he knows he knows.

--------

From Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World. "Eminent poets sometimes write poems to please children," writes Robert Pinsky. "Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) succeeded, with poems that are short, funny, well-rhymed and respectful of the reader's intelligence."

Our original plan for the day was to do some chores, then leave the kids with my parents for 24 hours so Paul and I could go out to dinner and a concert, then downtown on Sunday to museums, but my father has a bad cold and since Adam goes to outdoor ed next week, we all decided that we really didn't want to risk him being sick, so we just let my mother take the kids out to dinner and are back home with them now. Earlier we took them to Target to get detergent, a micro-umbrella and hiking shoes for younger son to wear at outdoor ed. We also stopped in Bath & Body Works (which has those pretty velour bags filled with Velvet Tuberose products at 50% off, whoo!) and took a walk around the lake at Washingtonian Center, which had both a Humane Society adoption truck and a Santa Claus visiting in the square by the lake:

Santa Claus waves in between visits with children at the shopping center. The Humane Society is behind the tree introducing dogs to prospective adopters.


Seagulls stood on the ice in the frozen parts of the lake...


...while the geese occupied the shore.


The Canada and domestic geese appeared to be having territorial quarrels, even though some of them grew up in the same families.


Instruments and music belonging to Jennifer Cutting, Lisa Moscatiello, Grace Griffith, Rosie Shipley and Bob Mitchell.

That last photo is from the Ocean Quintet's Winter Light concert at Herndon's Industrial Strength Theatre, taken before the musicians came out to perform -- despite being sold out, it was an intimate concert and I didn't try to take any photos during it. Jennifer wrote a bunch of songs for the season, including the title "Winter Light" song in which the singers, holding electric candles, paid tribute to Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Brighid and various other light- and inspiration-bringing religious leaders (Jennifer apologized for not knowing any Celtic Chanukah songs given the date). They also did a sing-along wassailing song and another song by Jennifer about bah-humbugs of the season set to Gilbert and Sullivan, but I can't say any more about that, as we all agreed that what happens at the Industrial Strength Theatre stays at the Industrial Strength Theatre. *g*

And we had wonderful Thai, Afghan and Middle Eastern food at A Taste of the World, and stopped in Crystalis to look at crystals, beads and Tarot decks, so it was a lovely evening. Dementor Delta, thank you for my holiday card! Sunday if the weather cooperates we are dragging our kids downtown with us to art museums. Wish us and Asher B. Durand luck.

Poem for Saturday

The Feast of Lights
By Emma Lazarus

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.

Remember how from wintry dawn till night,
Such songs were sung in Zion, when again
On the high altar flamed the sacred light,
And, purified from every Syrian stain,
The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung,
With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine,
Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung
From one heroic stock, one seed divine.

Five branches grown from Mattathias' stem,
The Blessed John, the Keen-Eyed Jonathan,
Simon the fair, the Burst-of Spring, the Gem,
Eleazar, Help of-God; o'er all his clan
Judas the Lion-Prince, the Avenging Rod,
Towered in warrior-beauty, uncrowned king,
Armed with the breastplate and the sword of God,
Whose praise is: "He received the perishing."

They who had camped within the mountain-pass,
Couched on the rock, and tented neath the sky,
Who saw from Mizpah's heights the tangled grass
Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie
Disfigured and polluted--who had flung
Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud
And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue,
Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed,

Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame,
Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men,
They rushed upon the spoiler and o'ercame,
Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten.
Now is their mourning into dancing turned,
Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight,
Week-long the festive torches shall be burned,
Music and revelry wed day with night.

Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm,
The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.
Where is our Judas? Where our five-branched palm?
Where are the lion-warriors of the Lord?
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Sound the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn,
Chant hymns of victory till the heart take fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born!

--------

We had freezing rain on top of what was left of the snow, so I chickened out on driving anywhere and stayed home. Wrote a review of "The Dauphin", a mediocre yet enjoyable episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, put lots of filters in place on my Gmail account now that there are those nifty color labels, got cards from all my California cousins, Half Elf Lost, RueDifference and MelissaUKGirl. Discovered that I can buy a British title and am now determined to become Lady of East Shamlord. Hey, Queen Pamela of the Isle of Man is a George Mason University graduate!

Friday Fiver: Sweet you rock
1. Are you married? Since 1990.
2. When do your claws come out? When someone does something not nice to my kids.
3. Have you ever been in a car accident? Yes. Fortunately they were small -- in all cases the car suffered, not me.
4. Who is the last person you held? My son, after I insisted on brushing through his hair including the nest under the surface he tries to avoid.
5. Describe a time you've gone overboard: We'd had a flood in the basement. Everything had to be moved. Things were bad. I had a pile of thousands of books to sort in the bathroom, the one dry area. I threw a slipper at my husband.

The Friday Five: Traveling
1. Have you ever stayed in a hostel? If so, where? Did you like it? If you haven't stayed in a hostel, would you? I never have; would be quite happy to if someone would like to send me to Europe right now.
2. What is your favo(u)rite airport that you've been to? Why? I'm fond of O'Hare from having lived in Chicago and having connected there for many flights to the west coast from the east coast, but I'd have to say Heathrow is my favorite because it means I'm near London.
3. What is the best museum you have visited on vacation? You can't expect me to choose among the British Museum and the Tate.
4. Have you ever made friends while traveling whom you keep in touch with on a regular basis? Does a Star Trek convention count as traveling?
5. Have you ever had a conversation with a seatmate on a plane? Nearly always when I've been traveling alone. My last many flights have been with my family, so it tends to be more in passing these days.

Fannish5: Fictional Holidays
What are your five favorite holiday-themed moments in canon (any holidays)?
1. The Mists of Avalon, Beltane the year Arthur decided perhaps Lancelet could father his child with Gwenwyfar.
2. Boston Legal, Halloween the year Denny and Alan were flamingos.
3. Deep Space Nine, the Bajoran Gratitude Festival the year Kira led the opening ceremony.
4. Xena: Warrior Princess, the winter solstice the year Senticles saved the celebration while Xena pretended to be the Ghost of Solstice Present.
5. Doctor Who, the Christmas Invasion.

Kids gleefully watch the model trains going around Fairfax Station Railroad Museum.


There are five or six trains set up on the outdoor tracks.


Inside, a G-scale holiday layout...


...and Santas traveling on an HO-scale train...


...and tiny Z-scale trains.


Here's a local house decorated for Christmas...


...and our menorahs and Shabbat candles for the fourth night of Chanukah.

Watched both episodes of SGA, "Miller's Crossing" because I wanted to record it and "This Mortal Coil" because of a certain person who appeared in the previews. I think the former is a better episode, but I really loved the latter, in part because of that person and in part because I love where the Replicator plot is going -- they interest me so much more than the Wraith and the storyline reminds me of things I like on both Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.

I was so happy to see Elizabeth, then so bummed to learn that she's dead, though it's 1) not really a surprise and 2) something that would be very easy to reverse -- we never see a body, Keller2 may not have all the information, etc. The business about the soul being the secret ingredient for ascension could get very woo-woo and silly if badly done, but I love the way the idea is being played with now, the way Star Trek characters have negotiated whether Data and the EMH have souls (BSG has gone over into woo-woo on the topic of Cylon souls once too often for my taste). And I love Weir2 insisting that compassion is a fundamental ingredient of being human, and Sheppard2 insisting that freedom is something real humans will always fight for, and Keller2 deciding to let them warn the real Atlantis rather than keeping them on the fake one to die, though I was positive it was all a ruse to help the Replicators locate the real one. I like Carter, but I must admit that I really miss Weir, and I've missed other people missing her too the way Rodney finally gets around to missing Carson.

Older son thinks he is supposed to have a chorus concert tomorrow but he doesn't seem to know where he's supposed to go for it. So we may be going to that, or we may be going to see The Golden Compass, or both. Under any circumstances, Paul and I are going out to dinner and to see the Ocean Quintet in the evening!

Poem for Friday

Envoi: Waking After Snow
By David Baker

When did we drift into each other's arms?
Snow, blue as morning, shakes down
in the branches, not a breath among them.
I can't tell if we're one body or two.
As soon as he's settled, the redbird puffs up
his whole heart to the cold. Don't move.

--------

My children had a two hour delay due to the snow on the ground before school started this morning, which of course means that I was up earlier than usual rather than getting to sleep late, trying to find out whether and when they needed to wake up! Paul agreed to drive Daniel to the bus so I didn't have to fight with our as-usual not-plowed neighborhood streets. After sending Adam off, I did some more cleaning/rearranging -- Purple Heart is collecting tomorrow, we have a bunch of stuff I wanted to get organized and bagged for them -- folded laundry and watched a Next Gen episode I need to review on Friday. Please try not to envy my exciting life.

At the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum, the old telegraph room. (You can also see Santa in his sleigh out the window.


Like the sign says, this is a Civil War pass from the station to the nearby courthouse.


The station was moved from its original location on the Manassas line to its current location to become a museum. These were found at the original site.


A display of railway lanterns.


This is an N-scale model of the original line on which the Fairfax Station stood.


A model of a West Virginia and Ohio car crosses a bridge in a model layout.


And here are working modern miniature Amtrak passenger cars made of Legos.

We had dinner with my parents because they're going to a farewell dinner for our shul's Hebrew school teacher tomorrow night (sounds like there were some nasty politics in his replacement, I stay out of that), so we had latkes and roast chicken and lit the candles there. We also watched most of the awesome POTC3 extras -- one reason I don't at all begrudge anything Jerry Bruckheimer does is that his DVD packages are wonderful. This one isn't quite as awesome as the first in terms of actual history of pirates in the Caribbean, but it uses the history of the pieces of eight from the film as an excuse to explore the history of the fictional pirates and a bit of real piracy -- I gather that some of this information was included in the video game, but I never played that. Plus the two-disc set has featurettes on Johnny Depp's crush on the casting of Keith Richards, how the maelstrom sequence was filmed, the composition of "Hoist the Colours" with Verbinski playing guitar, and more extras on the filming and design.

The extra Best Buy exclusive disc, though, might be my favorite; that one has featurettes on with how the HMS Endeavour met its fate, how Davy Jones' Locker was created in the Bonneville Salt Flats, how the underwater acting sequences were filmed, how Orlando Bloom was turned into a wax museum figure and how much fun everyone had at the premieres. (Tom Hollander says nobody knows who he is, so he doesn't get the screaming.) I am so glad we got the three-disc set, but impressed that they put the bloopers on the disc with the main movie so anyone who wants those can see them!

And the Redskins just beat the Bears, huzzah, and I avoided the news all day because it seemed to be all Omaha shooter, all the time (man says he wants to die famous, TV gives him his posthumous fantasy), so I think I shall go to sleep while I'm ahead. Have a good day which will live in infamy.

Poem for Thursday

Legend
By Judith Wright

The blacksmith's boy went out with a rifle
and a black dog running behind.
Cobwebs snatched at his feet,
rivers hindered him,
thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind
and the sky turned into an unlucky opal,
but he didn't mind.
I can break branches, I can swim rivers, I can stare out
any spider I meet,
said he to his dog and his rifle.

The blacksmith's boy went over the paddocks
with his old black hat on his head.
Mountains jumped in his way,
rocks rolled down on him,
and the old crow cried, You'll soon be dead.
And the rain came down like mattocks.
But he only said,
I can climb mountains, I can dodge rocks, I can shoot an old crow any day,
and he went on over the paddocks.

When he came to the end of the day, the sun began falling,
Up came the night ready to swallow him,
like the barrel of a gun,
like an old black hat,
like a black dog hungry to follow him.
Then the pigeon, the magpie and the dove began wailing
and the grass lay down to pillow him.
His rifle broke, his hat blew away and his dog was gone and the sun was falling.

But in front of the night, the rainbow stood on the mountain,
just as his heart foretold.
He ran like a hare,
he climbed like a fox;
he caught it in his hands, the colours and the cold -
like a bar of ice, like the column of a fountain,
like a ring of gold.
The pigeon, the magpie and the dove flew up to stare,
and the grass stood up again on the mountain.

The blacksmith's boy hung the rainbow on his shoulder
instead of his broken gun.
Lizards ran out to see, snakes made way for him,
and the rainbow shone as brightly as the sun.
All the world said, Nobody is braver, nobody is bolder,
nobody else has done
anything equal to it. He went home as easy as could be
with the swinging rainbow on his shoulder.

--------

Another poem from chaosmanor. There was a quarter inch of snow on the ground when my kids left for school in the morning and it continued to accumulate all day. I love snow but I hate driving in it, so since gblvr couldn't make it to lunch anyway, I had a quiet morning at home working on my new laptop to install VLC Media Player, Audacity and various other things I hadn't gotten around to yet. (I keep meaning to rant about Facebook's Beacon affiliation, which makes even the latest insanity at LiveJournal seem less infuriating -- well, except that Facebook is free so I have no investment there -- and hangingfire put up a post linking to BlockSite which I hadn't known about.) Now, I know I have asked this before and I think melina123 answered me but I can't find it, so I will ask again: does anyone have a recommendation for an AVI converter to burn to DVD? Must such a file be turned into an MPG first? And is the sound getting out of sync inevitable?

A squirrel eating berries in the tree outside my house that's covered with blossoms in the spring.


The bushes in my front yard...


...a flag on the neighbor's deck...


...a nearby street that sat unplowed all afternoon.


Rosie preferred to curl up with a toy fishie...


...while Daisy demonstrated her ownership of the scratching pad that the cats got for Chanukah.

My afternoon consisted of heated arguments with children about keeping their grades up, in and around getting them bundled up to go sledding, rearranging a whole bunch of stuff in my bedroom to move older obsessions out and newer obsessions in (my Lord of the Rings Barbies are now more dramatically displayed than ever before, which is kind of weird at this late date), and doing laundry that will have to be folded in the morning. Evening entertainment was jelly donuts for Chanukah (which was always my preferred spelling of all the options but people online overwhelmingly seem to prefer Hanukkah, which throws me), plus Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End which was a family gift for the holiday this evening and just as awesome as ever. Thursday the kids are likely to have a delayed opening for school so who knows if I will be able to get much done!

Poem for Wednesday

Woman To Man
By Judith Wright

The eyeless labourer in the night
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day-
silent and swift and deep from sight
foresees the unimagined light.

This is no child with a child's face;
this has no name to name it by;
yet you and I have known it well.
this is the hunter and our chase,
the third who lay in our embrace.

This is the strength that your arm knows,
the arc of flesh that is my breast,
the precise crystals of our eyes.
This is the blood's wild tree that grows
the intricate and folded rose.

This is the maker and the made;
this is the question and reply;
the blind head butting at the dark,
the blaze of light along the blade.
Oh hold me, for I am afraid.

--------

Poem by an Australian writer and environmentalist, recced by chaosmanor whom I thank. I did some writing and some cleaning in anticipation of Paul's parents' arrival in the afternoon to attend Adam's school orchestra concert and celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday and the start of Chanukah. My parents came for dinner too, and all eight of us crammed into the kitchen for latkes and pan-fried chicken (got to have that oil)! Plus Paul made a cookie cake. The concert was terrific -- this middle school orchestra is really extraordinarily good, they played the third Brandenburg Concerto superbly, and a Taiwanese piece and some fiddle tunes and the Wexford Carol. Plus I got a wonderful Chanukah present from DRush!

The intermediate middle school orchestra playing Bob Phillips' arrangement of "Sword Dance."


Here are the kids filing in -- the advanced orchestra and intermediate orchestra had to switch between the seats and the bleachers to wait.


There were, of course, long tuning sessions.


Daniel and all his grandparents at the concert.


Here are the menorahs lit for the first night of Chanukah.


And Adam with the penguin book he received as a gift and spent the rest of the night reading (Outdoor Photographer had given it a very good review).

Was a bit distracted for Boston Legal due to cleanup and having been out all evening, but there was a lot I liked in the episode...much more than in the last couple, at least. Like, Shirley and Bethany go head-to-head and Paul is back! I expected the Denny-as-Larry-Craig storyline to be my favorite of the evening, but despite Stephen Culp as a gay D.A. -- and what a week that actor is having -- I still preferred Shirley's free speech case.

The Denny case is played for crack at first but is actually the first time I felt sorry for Larry Craig for five seconds, until I remembered that he is a liar and (as Alan says) he got thrown in front of the bus he helped build. Denny goes into the men's room in the courthouse, lets out a huge fart, is embarrassed, looks under a stall to see whether anyone was in there to hear, pushes his briefcase forward so he can work on his constipation, does a lot of grunting, hums to cover it up, taps his feet...gets arrested. It's so thoroughly gross and unsexy that it makes one wonder how anyone could possibly find anything arousing about looking for sex in a public restroom. (Denny's cell phone still makes a Star Trek communicator noise, too.)

The police offer to let him plead guilty to disorderly conduct, pay a fine and make this all go away but Denny and Alan both insist that this is outrageous. Still, Denny is willing to pay the fine just to keep his name out of the papers, but Alan insists that it's extortion. Not even Paul and Carl's concerns about Denny's reputation will keep him from insisting on a trial, and Denny ends up agreeing that it's better to risk job and reputation than roll over quietly. Just as long as people don't think he's gay. And as long as Alan doesn't have any sleepovers with Carl talking strategy while Denny meets with Paul to reassure him that the firm won't be damaged. Then Denny tries to get Lorraine to have sex with him in an elevator to get caught on surveillance and reassure people that he's straight. He's furious when Gracie Jane accuses him of violating family values, saying she knows he isn't gay and told him that she was the best sex she had since her brother.

Of course they get the same-sex attraction disorder judge, who says that even in Massachusetts, Denny must stand trial for propositioning a man. Alan tell Carl and Paul that he must put Denny on the stand in his own defense. Denny tells the story of his constipation, insisting repeatedly that he is not gay, but Alan's case focuses more on the fact that there is no evidence Denny was looking to pay for sex, which is the crime with which he has been charged; he says repeatedly that just being gay and flirting with men is not illegal. When Denny says he only has bathroom sex with women and jokes about the D.A. being gay, the D.A. says that in fact he is gay, then asks about Denny's sleepovers with Alan, his special time on the balcony, the fact that they refer to each other as flamingos...all coincidence while Denny is not gay? "Damn right I'm not!" announces Denny, who thinks homosexuality is against God and the president.

Alan closes by saying he never heard of gay prostitution in a courthouse restroom and asks why gay prostitution is so much more heinous than heterosexual prostitution...Congress ignored the Louisiana senator who visited female hookers, and 29 members of congress have been accused of spousal abuse, plus there's all the fraud, mentions fraud, tax evasion, etc. but we had to spend lots of money trying to find out whether Larry Craig taps back. Don't police have better things to do than play footsie in men's rooms? Alan declares that it's all a symptom of homophobia run amok, so now everyone is wasting tax dollars because Denny had gas. Ultimately, since there's no evidence of an actual crime, Denny is found not guilty and hugs Alan awkwardly as Paul and the DA both watch.

Back at Crane, Poole and Schmidt, Katie thinks Lorraine looks familiar, and moreover that she doesn't believe for a moment that she's American -- Lorraine says to call 999 instead of 911 and has a bit of an accent. She and Whitney do a bit of investigating and discover that Lorraine never really went to Georgetown. When Lorraine twigs to all this snooping, she says that she was married to a Pakistani who caught her cheating and has vowed to find and kill her. Katie tells Whitney, which upsets Lorraine who says her life could now be in danger, but Katie's still not quite sure she believes Lorraine...her face is familiar, and Katie thinks she's a criminal.

Meanwhile, in the rocking case of the night, Shirley is visited by old friend Bob, a shock jock who was recently fired for suggesting that old people should die and stop being a burden. "Free speech, rah!" Bethany is representing the station, and she and Shirley exchange barbs about one another's appearances. The station manager says that putting down blacks and Jews is fine, but baby boomers are the core of the station's profits. Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a faggot is fine, Don Imus accusing Arabs of fucking sheep is fine, but expressing the opinion that the 40% of the federal budget going to aid retirees is too high when politicians won't even talk about the baby boomer retirement crisis is unacceptable (Bethany suggests that Bob suggested genocide of the elderly).

Shirley says that while she understands the need to avoid racist remarks, this is a case of censoring political content from a news analyst who was asked by his station to sound more like Howard Stern. The judge says that while the case is not about censorship but editorial control, corporations slap suits to chill free speech; in fact, and let me capslock because this is so important in the blogosphere right at this moment, CORPORATIONS HAVE BECOME BIGGEST THE INFRINGERS ON FREE SPEECH -- the public gets the opinion the sponsors pay for. Shirley wins for her client, and Bethany goes to prison for contempt when she insults the judge. She thinks Shirley hates her because she and Denny were lovers and Shirley still loves Denny

The man in question is still shaken that people might have thought he was gay -- even after Alan wins his suit, Denny wants the judge to find that he is not gay as matter of law. On the balcony, Alan suggests to Denny that women are less guarded around gay men, so if they did think Denny was gay, he could endear them as a Trojan Horse before charging at them with his, uh, Trojan. Denny isn't happy that Alan had to lump him in with "that closet Democrat" Craig but is very happy to have won, particularly against that gay DA who is intolerant himself for seeing something sexual in good old fashioned male bonding. Denny is more interested in thinking about Shirley going up against Bethany and wondering whether there are dwarfs in hell, where he believes he and Alan are going to be soulmates for eternity after Alan quotes Mark Twain: "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

Poem for Tuesday

Tea
By Carol Ann Duffy

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day,

as the women harvest the slopes
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.

--------

Other than a lovely lunch with Perkypaduan at Tara Thai on this windy day where we lost most of the remaining leaves in my neighborhood and saw our first snowflakes of the season, I spent most of the day working on configuring our new laptop. *g* We've needed a new one since the old Gateway died, though we've been making do sneaking turns on Paul's work laptop, but I'm always worried someone will leave something on there they shouldn't in a chat transcript or that the company can somehow trace the browser history...we got another Dell because we've owned four now, three new, one inherited from my parents, and we've been very, very happy with all of them, plus we could get the new one loaded with XP instead of Vista which was a big consideration!

So I spent most of the afternoon and evening downloading and installing Firefox, CoreFTP, Free Download Manager, etc., importing bookmarks, digging out the ancient Photoshop installation CDs, trying to figure out whether that Foxmarks program will be more trouble than it's worth and all that. This computer is widescreen and has a built-in 8-in-1 card reader and a DVD burner and lots of nifty features I have not had time to play with yet, and it weighs less than the old laptop and is thinner and cost less...I love how technology is developing in that regard!

Dancing Pig Pottery's pagan holiday collection: goblets, bowls, plates and chargers with triple moons, pentacles, and the names of the sabbats engraved into the glaze.


They're available in different colors, and these lighter green pieces also have some with cats chasing mice on them.


There are also gorgeous iridescent pieces.


Outside, the banners of Dancing Pig and Tuatha...


...while the watchdog of Art of Fire sniffs around outside the barn that houses the gallery.


Here are my kids with the aforementioned dog.

Am refusing to stress out any further about LiveJournal until we actually see signs of further change...I've already backed up all the entries elsewhere, I just don't want the service to go under altogether because I have so many photos here. I am assuming that they will not retroactively take away privileges from paid and permanent account holders if they expect to have any hope of retaining customers. Six Apart already made me lock or remove everything...how much worse can the new management be, whether they use US or Russian standards of "decency" as the latest arbitrary reason for restricting our freedom of speech?

Watched Heroes. I'm sort of relieved this season is over. I find it ironic that I dislike nearly everyone more than I did at the end of last season with a single exception: Nathan, the character everyone seemed to love but me, but I feel like all his backbone this season came at the expense of his mother and in the absence of his wife. The sexual politics of the show have been retro all season and tonight's finale was no exception: Elle being benched by Daddy because she's working well below what she can do, trying to borrow Claire's Daddy for her very own and then rushing off on a mission to get back into Daddy's graces is just the latest in an endless series of icky Elle tricks. Angela can't even seem to make her groping control work on her sons these days. If they kill Niki, the one really good mother on the show, I'm going to be very annoyed, but I don't really think she's dead (you don't kill off your hottest blonde). And Nathan has Adam's blood from when he was healed...I figure they could both be back, just like Sylar and Noah. It's worse than Star Trek on the Miraculously Undead count!

Have just watched the most frustrating Monday Night Football ever, where it looked for a long time like the Ravens would end the Patriots' perfect streak but then blew it at the very end of the game and New England won! Sigh! And I'm seeing my in-laws Tuesday at Adam's winter concert! Ah well, Happy Chanukah!

Poem for Monday

Syntax
By Carol Ann Duffy

I want to call you thou, the sound
of the shape of the start
of a kiss — like this, thou —
and to say, after, I love,
thou, I love, thou I love, not
I love you.

Because I so do —
as we say now — I want to say
thee, I adore, I adore thee,
and to know in my lips
the syntax of love resides,
and to gaze in thine eyes.

Love’s language starts, stops, starts;
the right words flowing or clotting in the heart

--------

Poem swiped from Emily F., from Duffy's poem sequence Rapture, which follows the arc of a love affair from start to finish.

After Adam got back from the Hebrew school Chanukah party, we made our yearly (well, these days sometimes every-other-yearly) trip to the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum for the holiday train show. Santa Claus was there in the sleigh out in front of the caboose, which houses the N-scale trains, and there were gingerbread cookies and tea in the station plus the G, HO, Z-scale layouts and Lego trains. The museum has permanent exhibits about the history of the station and its temporary status as a Civil War hospital where Clara Barton nursed Union soldiers.

Fairfax Station Railroad Museum, moved to this site in the 1980s from its origins on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad.


At this time of year, Santa Claus is out front greeting arriving children.


There are seasonal decorations inside as well...


...in the layouts as well as on the tables.


I love the little imitation small town decorations.


Not all the decorations were Christmas-related, however.


I'm not quite sure what Frodo, Sam and Gollum have to do with the diner and trolley and stuff!

I figured those Lord of the Rings figures at the train display were a sign, particularly since the kids were playing The Two Towers GameBoy game, and I took it to mean that we were supposed to watch The Two Towers after dinner. We didn't quite get all the way through it because naturally I insisted on the extended edition -- no way was I watching the version without Boromir, Denethor and Theodred -- but oh, it's wonderful. I always think that Fellowship is far and away my favorite, but there's an awful lot of Shire and long Isengard sequences, whereas in TTT there's nothing besides the Uruk-Ent stuff that makes me want to get up and get pretzels. (Well, and the extended scenes with Eowyn cooking for Aragorn.)

Then we watched the Brotherhood season finale, which ran at wonderful full steam for 45 minutes and trickled into WTF! I suppose they might assume Showtime won't pick up the series and wanted it to be A Day in the Life of the Caffees, because in some ways it was painfully typical, but given some of the plot bombshells that got dropped, I was more ready for a Sopranos cliffhanger than a quiet resolution. Spoilers: I don't understand why Michael killed Ralph! Did he assume Ralph conspired to let Freddie go? Or was he just afraid Ralph would talk to the cops, though Ralph would already have talked to the cops if he was going to, wouldn't he? And why strangle him...why not Michael's usual M.O., shooting him? Tell me Michael isn't stupid enough to have left fingerprints or anything on that glass. Michael definitely wins the Caffee Asshole Award for the week; Tommy's just generally politico-sleazy like everyone he knows and Colin is actually quite pleasant, just when I thought he was going to have a meltdown and do something extreme. And no Kath anywhere to be seen. Eeesh, what a place to end.

Oh, LiveJournal...it's not that we couldn't see something like this coming for ages (and did the deal make those execs anywhere near as rich as they were obviously dreaming?). But now I don't know what to do...keep storing photos in my permanent account at LJ, start putting them at littlereview.com again where I have plenty of space in terms of GB but can only have 25,000 total files before I have to start paying for more, start filling up various other accounts that may disappear as more companies shift on the internet? I have this journal and my others backed up entirely in terms of the text, but the photos aren't stored on my computer, they're imported each time...is there a way to change that setting in ljArchive?

And the Redskins managed to lose the Sean Taylor tribute game, and one of the cats is sleeping on the new scratch mat, and, okay, I'm begging: I want to create a page in CSS that does what this one does, only (obviously) without using frames. (Also obviously, if you click: warning for frames!) I can't figure out how to make an index page where pages will pop up in the main content window, only how to make it look like that's happening by having the same repeating left column on every page, but to use that would require modifying every page! Can anyone help?

Poem for Sunday

Flashback
By A. Van Jordan

FLASHBACK:

INTERIOR: Princeton Classroom, 1945 -- DAY

Einstein has read JOHN HERSEY's Hiroshima in the New Yorker . He buys 1,000 copies to send to his friends around the world. Now, he goes into the classroom to teach, facing the chalkboard to work an equation.

Einstein Doing the Math

I turn to the black expanse of the chalk
board and the numbers spill
from my skull first and from fingertips
in time. Time in mathematics
brings complications, sequentially.
Numbers demand order and orders
demand numbers to behave. Otherwise,
one places one digit out of place
and an entire world loses
equilibrium. Someone determines that
one number is the temperature to freeze,
someone else realizes another number brings water
to a boil, but someone got the math wrong
and -- now, if you'll allow me to dream --
the bombs pull us closer together
instead of separating the masses.
Working an equation is as tedious as a comedian
working a room, timing when to drop
the solution to our worries so profoundly we rear back
and laugh at them. Or, for those without
a sense of humor, math can be as simple as buttoning
a blouse, really: after you misfeed the first button,
though, every move of the hand, no matter how sincere,
becomes a lie.

--------

From Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World, in which Robert Pinsky writes that A. Van Jordan "writes books of poetry that approach a subject the way a filmmaker or nonfiction writer might." His latest book, Quantum Lyrics, has a bibliography and begins many poems "headed by screenwriting categories such as 'Flashback' and 'Cut To.'" Many of the poems are about the development of race relations following World War II. "['Flashback']'s undertaking is audacious -- speaking as Einstein. The quiet, convincing directness in handling that last figure of speech about miscalculating and misbuttoning is successful. By evoking American history from unexpected, unsettling angles, Jordan demonstrates poetry's power to be at once intimate and wide-ranging."

Daniel volunteered at Hebrew school in the morning and needed to be at school for a couple of hours in the afternoon to work on a project with the rest of the robotics club, so Paul, Adam and I went to California Tortilla and Trader Joe's while waiting for him to finish, then we all drove up out of the city to Laytonsville, where Art of Fire, Dancing Pig Pottery, Greenman Leather and Tuatha were all taking part in the winter Countryside Artisans Tour...all artisans we have seen previously at the Maryland Renaissance Faire. I believe I am getting one of these for my birthday. *g*

Glass witch balls at Art of Fire .


I particularly love their iridescent pieces, like this one.


As it was last time we were there, the glassblowing studio was open for visiting...


...so we got to watch the artists and students working on their creations.


And we got to visit with the cats who guard the barn.


Don't be deceived by this innocent sleepy face: anyone who wanted one of the flyers had to brave claws and teeth!


Adam, however, was brave enough.

Came home, had dinner and watched Shrek the Third, which I didn't know whether I would love -- I enjoyed the first two but I don't watch them compulsively the way I do, say, The Road to El Dorado or Mulan. Oh, but it rocked! And I'm very glad I saw Enchanted before this one because it would have suffered by comparison otherwise! My favorite parts, unsurprisingly, were Fiona's peers going from Disney stereotypes to Charlie's Angels, particularly Snow White's transformation into Xena, Warrior Princess (sure, it would be useful to have chipmunks scrub my toilet but I also love them as assistant butt-kickers to uncharming prince). I also must admit that I howled at touchy-feely Merlin, who's the Wizard of Oz crossed with Dumbledore here...Dreamworks knew that Dumbledore was gay before the rest of us, heh. My one disappointment was Charming's fate, because I was so waiting for the Monty Python punchline, after all the scenery-chewing: "But I only want...to SING!" (and rescue by one of the stepsisters, or better yet, Lancelot). Even if he did kill Bambi!

Perfectly enjoyable way to spend an evening, and now the world of college football is being thrown into chaos as Oklahoma beats Mizzou. (Why did it have to be Oklahoma!) The BCS show on Sunday might actually be kind of entertaining, not that I will ever understand how they think we will need three hours! I'm watching the Brotherhood finale regardless!

Poem for Saturday

The White Fires of Venus
By Denis Johnson

We mourn this senseless planet of regret,
droughts, rust, rain, cadavers
that can't tell us, but I promise
you one day the white fires
of Venus shall rage: the dead,
feeling that power, shall be lifted, and each
of us will have his resurrected one to tell him,
"Greetings. You will recover
or die. The simple cure
for everything is to destroy
all the stethoscopes that will transmit
silence occasionally. The remedy for loneliness
is in learning to admit
solitude as one admits
the bayonet: gracefully,
now that already
it pierces the heart.
Living one: you move among many
dancers and don't know which
you are the shadow of;
you want to kiss your own face in the mirror
but do not approach,
knowing you must not touch one
like that. Living
one, while Venus flares
O set the cereal afire,
O the refrigerator harboring things
that live on into death unchanged."

They know all about us on Andromeda,
they peek at us, they see us
in this world illumined and pasteled
phonily like a bus station,
they are with us when the streets fall down fraught
with laundromats and each of us
closes himself in his small
San Francisco without recourse.
They see you with your face of fingerprints
carrying your instructions in gloved hands
trying to touch things, and know you
for one despairing, trying to touch the curtains,
trying to get your reflection mired in alarm tape
past the window of this then that dark
closed business establishment.
The Andromedans hear your voice like distant amusement park music
converged on by ambulance sirens
and they understand everything.
They're on your side. They forgive you.

I want to turn for a moment to those my heart loves,
who are as diamonds to the Andromedans,
who shimmer for them, lovely and useless, like diamonds:
namely, those who take their meals at soda fountains,
their expressions lodged among the drugs
and sunglasses, each gazing down too long
into the coffee as though from a ruined balcony.
O Andromedans they don't know what to do
with themselves and so they sit there
until they go home where they lie down
until they get up, and you beyond the light years know
that if sleeping is dying, then waking
is birth, and a life
is many lives. I love them because they know how
to manipulate change
in the pockets musically, these whose faces the seasons
never give a kiss, these
who are always courteous to the faces
of presumptions, the presuming streets,
the hotels, the presumption of rain in the streets.
I'm telling you it's cold inside the body that is not the body,
lonesome behind the face
that is certainly not the face
of the person one meant to become.

--------

Adventure! Excitement! A Jedi craves not these things! And neither should you if you are reading this entry because there's no excitement here! My lunch date couldn't make it, my older son brought a friend home so the house was noisy, and there's just not much to report. I did write a review of "The Measure of a Man", possibly the greatest Next Generation episode of all, and took younger son to the local high school to pick up the oranges his middle school's band sold as a fundraiser, and lugged a gigantic box of oranges from the van to my parents' kitchen, and put my own box of oranges out on the deck where it was nice and cool till my husband got home so he could tell me whether the bowl of what appears to be yellow puke in one of the crisper drawers was some science project as opposed to something he stuck in there and never got rid of. (It's gone now. At some point it was apparently a component of some elaborate cookie batter that never got finished.)

Poor Richard Leigh! I think he sued Dan Brown because now, instead of the first line of his obituary reading "...author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail," his obituary reads "author of one of the books that inspired The Da Vinci Code." (I know, I should be more concerned about Evel Knievel or the arrests in the Sean Taylor shooting or the hostage crisis at the Clinton campaign, not to mention the fact that the state of Kansas is about to ensure that no woman in the US who needs a late-term abortion to protect her life or health will be able to get one, but it's Friday night and my brain is not going there.)

fridayfiver: Presenting
1. What do you resent? That my husband and kids can eat as many chocolate chip cookies as they want and not gain wait, and I can't.
2. What is your most recent occupation? Freelance writer.
3. What are you presently wearing? A beige cardigan, black stretch jeans, black fuzzy socks.
4. What presents have you bought? Lots of penguins for one son, lots of video games for other son, lots of music and comic related things for husband.
5. Whose presence would you enjoy tonight? My grandmother's.

thefridayfive">: Pointing Things Out
1. What's the most strange thing anyone has ever pointed out to you? That my cat Rosie looks like Condoleezza Rice.
2. What's the most obvious thing anyone has ever pointed out to you? That I look like my father.
3. What's the most miserable thing anyone has ever pointed out to you? That I really can't sing.
4. What's the most extraordinary thing anyone has ever pointed out to you? The Andromeda galaxy.
5. What's the greatest thing that anyone has ever pointed out to you? My not-yet-born baby sucking his thumb on an ultrasound.

I believe this is an Indigo Bunting, though it might be a Palm Tanager (the zoo web site says there are no Palm Tanagers in the bird house, only Amazonia).


These are African pygmy falcons. (I've posted pictures of these two before.)


A big sleepy seal.


My kids and nieces watching the sea lions chasing each other in the water.


An equally sleepy sloth bear.


And some of the now-grown-up cheetah cubs.

Like a dork I watched the Flash Gordon fall finale...had intended to ignore it, but it had evil witches possessing other people's bodies and hurling fireballs and stuff. *g* Spoilers: Baylin's comment on Dale hurling fireballs: "I had not known her to have balls before." And saying she doesn't understand women! I love Baylin. And in general I love how everyone on the show always looks like they're having a good time, particularly while being villainous. I'm curious, because Sci-Fi advertises this as "their" show but the entire cast is Canadian...did Sci-Fi have anything to do with the production, or did they just buy the series from a Canadian producer? Anyway, any series that plays Sarah McLachlan at dramatic moments and causes my entire family to exclaim, "Put Edwina back in bowl!" when someone's soul is out of her body (All of Me reference) has already justified its existence as far as I'm concerned.

And then we watched SGA, which was amazing. Emmy-caliber stuff from David Hewlett level amazing, and I'm not even a Rodney fan. Spoilers: I don't even know if I'm at all an Atlantis fan, because I loved seeing the team on Earth and was kind of disappointed when they went back to the Pegasus Galaxy. And I know there are people who get off on the dark, horrible stuff like the ending of this one, John refusing to let Rodney sacrifice himself and then talking the guy who infected Rodney's sister into doing just that, which I really do not -- it made me want to watch "The Measure of a Man" all over again -- but it was so well done this time out, no gratuitous Wraith horror stuff, and such wonderful dialogue especially between Rodney and his sister who calls him Nancy Drew and tells him he had better marry Katie because he's no John Sheppard! (I also loved Rodney trying to kick the unlocked door in a la Charlie Brown with Lucy holding the football.) I wonder why I just don't feel it with this show...I can admire it on occasion and there are characters I really like, but it doesn't hit my fandom bone.