Friday, November 22, 2019

Poem for Friday and Arboretum Bonsai

Play the Game
By Jessie Pope

Twenty-two stalwarts in stripes and shorts
    Kicking a ball along,
Set in a square of leather-lunged sports
    Twenty-two thousand strong,
Some of them shabby, some of them spruce,
    Savagely clamorous all,
Hurling endearments, advice or abuse,
    At the muscular boys on the ball.

Stark and stiff 'neath a stranger's sky
    A few hundred miles away,
War-worn, khaki-clad figures lie,
    Their faces rigid and grey—
Stagger and drop where the bullets swarm,
    Where the shrapnel is bursting loud,
Die, to keep England safe and warm—
    For a vigorous football crowd!

Football's a sport, and a rare sport too,
    Don't make it a source of shame.
To-day there are worthier things to do.
    Englishmen, play the game!
A truce to the League, a truce to the Cup,
    Get to work with a gun.
When our country's at war, we must all back up—
    It's the only thing to be done!

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Our car was at the dealer for a recall all day Thursday, so Paul worked from home and we got to have lunch together. Apart from getting a nice big package from Wal-mart with Pandemic: Legacy, the game I won during the Hobbs & Shaw Vudu Viewing Party, it was a pretty quiet work-and-chore day until late afternoon, when we went to get haircuts, swung through the park, and picked up the car.

After dinner (tofu parmesan with whole grain pasta), we spent the evening watching a few episodes of The Crown. I like all the actors who've taken over the roles from the previous seasons and there have been some awesome guest cast members, but I'm not loving the political conspiracy theories being given so much air time. From the National Arboretum, here are some specimens from the bonsai collection:

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2019-11-17 14.06.12

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