By Richard Kenney
Loose leaves in a metal ball
Or men in a shark cage steeping,
Ideas stain the limpid mind
Even while it’s sleeping:
Ginseng or the scent of lymph
Or consequences queasing
Into wide awareness, whence,
Like an engine seizing
Society remits a shudder
Showing it has feeling,
And the divers all have shaving cuts
And the future’s in Darjeeling—
Blind, the brain stem bumps the bars
Of the shark cage, meanwhile, feeding,
And the tea ball’s cracked, its leaves cast
To catastrophic reading:
Ideas are too dangerous.
My love adjusts an earring.
I take her in my arms again
And think of Hermann Göring,
And all liquidities in which
A stain attracts an eating,
And of my country’s changing heart,
And hell, where the blood is sleeting.
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My father is now on the board of Glen Echo Park and wanted to go to the Labor Day Art Show, which is going on all weekend, so since Adam was interested in seeing the photography and Daniel can usually be talked into going to see glassblowing, we went with my parents to the park after lunch on a day of the most perfect weather in weeks -- just under 80 degrees, partly overcast, breezy, glorious. (We did not mention to the kids that there was going to be Irish dancing, heh.) I've never seen glassblowing at Glen Echo before and I understand from the guys who were working in the studio that they just got new glass ovens; they were making glass pumpkins at the demonstration, in a very similar manner to the ones we've seen made at Art of Fire. There was glass and pottery for sale on tables outside the yurts where we've seen it displayed at the Washington Folk Festival, and we walked through the art show in the Spanish Ballroom, where there was more gorgeous glasswork and some wonderful photos, plus the permanent art galleries in the arcade.
Some of the glass for sale outside the glassblowing studio at Glen Echo Park.
Inside the very warm studio we saw a demonstration...
...of glass being colored, blown, and shaped...
...into a pumpkin, which was quickly placed in the annealing oven as soon as it had a curly stem.
Outside the pottery yurt, some vases, pots, and decorative items were on display.
There were a few with Green Man themes, but my favorites were the ones with animals.
My kids don't have a high tolerance for watching Irish dancing. I mostly wanted to listen to the music, but unfortunately they aren't big bagpipe fans, either!
And they're a bit old to appreciate the offerings of the Puppet Company -- which had a little theater set up outside for younger kids to try -- but when they were younger we took them to shows there.
After getting ice cream and heading out of Glen Echo with stops at some of the old amusement park fixtures -- the miniature golf course is completely overgrown at this point, but the old trolley car is still out in front, and Adventure Theatre and the Puppet Company have moved into the arcade -- we came home, where older son worked on homework and Adam worked on projects for his photography class (including a walk in the woods where he took photos of many deer). Paul had been quoting the Ministry of Silly Walks skit at the Irish dancing -- we both feel certain that John Cleese must have been forced to take Irish dance, or at least to watch Irish dance -- so we put on Monty Python's Flying Circus, which we all watched happily for several hours because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Both kids have more homework to finish Sunday and Daniel is meeting with his summer project mentor so I'm not quite sure what else is on the agenda yet.
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