Poem for Tuesday

Underground
By Barack Obama

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

--------

The New York Times reprinted this poem by Obama from the Spring 1981 issue of the literary journal Feast, published at Occidental College. My happiest congratulations to the poet-president.

We are still in Pennsylvania, where we woke to a dusting of snow on the ground and watched more fall for much of the day -- mostly flurries, though it was coming down thick and fast while we were visiting Wolfgang Candy in York (at the clever suggestion of Totally Kate). My father-in-law had had to be in York for a checkup, and afterward we met him at Isaac's Deli for lunch, then drove to the Wolfgang chocolate factory, where the tour starts in the shop and museum but then heads outside to pass through several amazing-smelling buildings where chocolate is made.

Unlike the Hershey tour, which does not enter the real factory but takes visitors through an animated recreation of the steps in chocolate-making, the Wolfgang tour leads visitors (in required hair nets) past the machines that melt, pour, shape, fill and coat the candy, including an entire chocolate pipeline leading into the building where chocolate is put into molds and spun to create hollow Easter bunnies and Valentine hearts. The smell in the room where Utz pretzels were being coated with milk chocolate -- and we got to watch the whole process, from naked pretzels being put on the conveyor belt to the cooled chocolate-covered pretzels dropping into boxes many feet away -- is possibly the best smell in the universe.


Photos regrettably are not allowed in the factory itself (nor are jewelry, uncovered hair, cell phones, or anything else that could fall into the machinery or the chocolate). But the raisin clusters have to be made by hand because the raisins gum up the machine that makes all the other cluster candies, so those are made the old-fashioned way where shop visitors can see.


The Wolfgang family who founded the company in 1921 still oversees the chocolate production. The museum contains such items as this old Ford delivery truck...


...and a display of the tins, molds, and souvenirs used and sold at various times by Wolfgang Candy.


Behind this display of ingredients are some of the company's historic photos and documents.


Here you can see how attractive Paul, Adam, and myself look wearing the hair nets.


I know everyone is dazzled by our beauty in the photo by my mother-in-law above, so here is a photo of both in-laws and children to give everyone equal time.


This is the old-fashioned ice cream counter in the shop.


And this is the entrance to the museum, shop and factory tour. The blur is from the snow coming down.

Older son has a bit of a cold, so we came back to Hanover as the snow was coming down hard, where we had a quiet evening watching Stewart, Colbert, and the UConn-UNC women's basketball game. On Tuesday we're planning to watch the inauguration, visit the Utz factory, and come home so the kids can do some serious studying; they have exams all the rest of this week. Happy Inauguration Day!