Poem for Wednesday

Departed Days
By Oliver Wendell Holmes

Yes, dear departed, cherished days,
Could Memory's hand restore
Your morning light, your evening rays,
From Time's gray urn once more,
Then might this restless heart be still,
This straining eye might close,
And Hope her fainting pinions fold,
While the fair phantoms rose.

But, like a child in ocean's arms,
We strive against the stream,
Each moment farther from the shore
Where life's young fountains gleam;
Each moment fainter wave the fields,
And wider rolls the sea;
The mist grows dark, -- the sun goes down, --
Day breaks, -- and where are we?

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Last night we had one back to school night with an hour on the new county grading standards and twenty minutes with a teacher trying to explain how a second and third grade combination class could be managed; tonight we have another back to school night at the middle school, undoubtedly with even more tedious discussion of grading standards, the magnet program and however much any teacher can tell us in ten minutes about her classroom.

In better news, the tenth part of "Tea and Chocolate" is pretty much finished. Am considering posting the rest of these as-is and hoping readers will give constructive comments, because it seems like a lot of effort to have each chapter meticulously betaed when we know we're going to have to do a lot of rewriting to pull the whole thing together. Parts eleven and twelve are mostly drafted, we know what has to happen in parts thirteen through fifteen and we also have a pretty good grasp on how all this will need to be renumbered when we go back and add the missing Lucius/Severus chapters at the beginning. And heh, then it'll be a novel.

No photos today, too much crap to do. No political commentary either, since it should be perfect obvious that Dick Cheney is a...yeah. , I owe you lunch.