Friday, May 22, 2009

Poem for Friday

Stray Birds of Summer
By Rabindranath Tagore


Stray birds of summer come to my window
    to sing and fly away.
And yellow leaves of autumn,
    which have no songs,
flutter and fall there with a sigh.

--------

Dementordelta and I watched the last season of Slings & Arrows while sitting in my living room eating hummus with bagel chips and entertaining cats. It was wonderful, and quite sad, both because the series is over and because a season of television based around a production of King Lear is bound to be difficult to watch if it's done at all well. This one is done superbly -- William Hutt's Lear is one of the best I've seen, even in fits and starts, disrupted by his Charles Kingman who is also a terrific character. I cried through the last 20 minutes so I may have missed some details that require rewatching. I am a bit wary of watching these with my children due to the rampant use of illegal drugs, but it's not like Richard is any sort of role model. Heh.

On a completely unrelated and theoretical note, if two people who had never seen Due South before were going to watch it, and weren't sure they could watch all 68 episodes in a timely manner, do you think it's possible to skip around and only watch the best episodes, and if so, is there a list of absolute must-see episodes? (Please do not get into Ray V vs. Ray K -- I've heard numerous arguments before, complete with statements of disgust toward people who hold the opposite view, which is a big reason I've avoided the series thus far, and I would like to make up my own mind on that subject.)


The Moffett Blacksmith Shop at Frying Pan Farm Park was rebuilt in 1917 based on an original in Herndon by a fifth-generation blacksmith.


The blacksmith in the photo, a park volunteer, was working on this red-hot s-hook while we were there.


Here is the peacock on Kidwell Farm at Frying Pan Farm Park.


This is one of the February piglets of Becca, the Hampshire Cross Sow...


...while this pile of piggies was born to Spot sow Ginny on Easter.


In my photo of the horses from this year, it looks like one horse has too many legs; last year, though, it looked like one horse had too many heads.


Sheep in various states of undress -- well, shorn-ness -- were in the barn...


...along with yarn, textiles, and awards produced from and in honor of their wool.


In other news, Adam has successfully traded for a witch penguin on Superpoke Pets and I am jealous, Daniel has pulled his math grade up three letter grades and I am delighted, and on Friday I get to review the wonderful Next Gen episode "Darmok," which we all watched in the evening. And my cousin Garrett, whom I almost called my nephew by mistake -- he's my first cousin, my uncle Mickey's son, but he's younger than Daniel -- will be able to come to the Bar Mitzvah after all, though they thought his final exams would make it impossible, so we are all glad about that. My kids don't have any other male relatives anywhere near their own ages and they all get along very well!

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