Poem for Tuesday

Twilight at the Heights
By Joaquin Miller

The brave young city by the Balboa seas
Lies compassed about by the hosts of night—
Lies humming, low, like a hive of bees;
And the day lies dead. And its spirit’s flight
Is far to the west; while the golden bars
That bound it are broken to a dust of stars.

Come under my oaks, oh, drowsy dusk!
The wolf and the dog; dear incense hour
When Mother Earth hath a smell of musk,
And things of the spirit assert their power —
When candles are set to burn in the west —
Set head and foot to the day at rest.

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Had a day in a holding pattern. Tried to get stuff ready for Chanukah, prepared packages for out of town relatives so could send them from UPS in his office, got half the holiday cards stamped and ready to go, got the other half halfway there. Found out the van can't go in for repairs until the 13th no matter how much yowling I do, so no point in more yowling -- we have the rental, will drive it as long as necessary, and hope the separation between the hood and the panel next to it doesn't allow too much weather in to damage the engine on our van since we have no garage.

Picked up kids, took them to do some shopping, didn't get work assignments till late afternoon and never got it done due to the general chaos of life once the kids are in for the afternoon; that shall have to wait until tomorrow, as I am now too tired. Chanukah starts tomorrow night, which means more last-minute shopping in the morning. I hope no big DVDs are coming out tomorrow or Best Buy will be horrible. We have the candles, we have the menorahs cleaned from last year, we have the food...the big family Chanukah party is not until next week, so we are playing it low-key for tomorrow evening.

Sometimes I wonder whether the people saying they're moving to Canada have the right idea, and also wonder how the mainstream media missed this: "Scalia To Synagogue - Jews Are Safer With Christians In Charge". This is what we're going to get more of on the Supreme Court. On an equally twisted and not really lighter note, though someone has probably posted this story here already, but I never read it: "Arkansas Woman Killed in Mistaken Rapture". Sheesh, look before you leap.

Anyway, I spent most of the morning backing up my hard drive and deleting files, so while I couldn't do anything else with the computer I wrote drabbles. For , the Yule Ball challenge, "Inflammatory", and for , the holiday traditions challenge, "Dormant". One's kind of dark and features Karkaroff, and one's kind of...well, it mentions birthday spankings. 'Nuff said.


I had a request for hippos from the zoo last week.


The recent photos I took of the hippos came out very dark, like this one of a pygmy hippopotamus that had just gotten out of the water and was very shiny...


...and this big hippo, eating, blocked by bars. So I added at the top an older photo of one of the big playful hippos in the swimming area with a ball -- the dark shape underwater on the right is another hippo.

Haven't read anyone else's journal at all since last night. Apologies. Shall try to catch up tomorrow, along with many other things!