Poem for Monday

A Place
By Alan Williamson

It doesn't really matter where it is.
Chickens get fed, that will be eaten later.
Dogs die from poisoned meat left in the woods
by the hunters whose gunshots echo early,
shrunken old men waiting for the songbirds
at the far end of the olive grove. Winter is real here,
the hearths well-built and enormous, telling of
well-being and exposure, in a very old way.
Wild boars root out the vipers, and the porcupines
are as big as dogs back home.

Enough has been said of the beauty, but the hills
do wear the sun on their shoulders, long before
it softens the ice, down here.
                                          And I, for a while,
am almost no one, a well-dressed foreigner,
and something inside flows clear, from the dream-time.

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Another from Poet's Choice by Robert Pinsky in the March 13th Washington Post Book World. Pinsky calls Williamson "a contemporary American master at illustrating the aura of place," saying that this poem both steps back from the tradition of imprinting emotions onto landscapes and into it at the same time.

Sunday, as has become usual these past few weeks, we took older son to Hebrew school, then to meet with his science group at the home of one of the kids in Silver Spring (most of the kids are from nearer to the middle school than we are so the meetings are always out there). The kids took turns presenting their science fair project, which is actually quite a wonderful invention that they are patenting and I am not sure I should talk about it in public until the paperwork is finished! The presentations left something to be desired in terms of focusing on the audience, not fidgeting and all those good things, but that will probably come with practice. Tomorrow for reading class each student is supposed to dress up like the person of whom he or she read a biography for a class assignment and perform a monologue in character as that person, and my son is doing Steven Spielberg. It did not occur to me until he started talking about Spielberg and Amy Irving and Kate Capshaw and George Lucas how much this has in common with RPF. *g* At least he picked someone whose preferred clothes we can imitate fairly easily (checkered shirt, glasses, baseball cap, ancient Super 8 camera) and not Julius Caesar or Elizabeth I.

and I are all a-squee because Penn has received a #13 ranking in the NCAA tournament, though they must beat Boston College to advance. My in-laws will undoubtedly be miffed that UConn is not a top seed, neither the men nor the women, but I cannot sympathize, as Maryland blew it in the ACC championship and is only going to the NIT. Hopefully will not rub in the fact that Duke got a top ranking and the Terps blew their chance at the big show, since of course I will root for Duke over NC if it comes to that. I do wonder, though: if Duke wins the NCAA, and Maryland wins the NIT, does that mean that Maryland is really the best team, since they beat Duke twice this year? *g* At least Georgetown isn't in the big tournament either -- my father went to law school there and, having grown up in the DC area, I dislike them on principle.

So is anyone else having a problem loading their own userpic and others' on their friends pages due to malformed URLs on LJ's part? That fic commentary meme: I would be happy to comment on any of mine, if you want me to just leave a note. And what a relief:

None of the graphics on this site appeared to be working, either at the site or on my friends' page, so these results are not pretty but here is what they said:

Trekkie Nerd
Congratulations! You scored 96%!

Congratulations - your designation as a Trekkie Nerd means that you are statistically more likely to be a virgin, socially inept, live at home in your mother's basement and have no chance of scoring a chick like Seven. Still, if knowledge of temporal paradoxes, the repercussions of the Janeway effect and an intimate knowledge of Klingon history made big bucks, you'd be a millionaire. Ah, tis the sweet irony of life.

You scored higher than 99% on Trekkies

Link: The Trekkie Test written by MadameBoffin on Ok Cupid

Because the kids were interested after the IMAX yesterday, we watched Titanic tonight (first half before dinner, second half after). I have only seen the film twice through, having avoided it for a long time because I was positive it was overrated and would be ahistorical and overblown and annoying, and then when I saw it -- completely oblivious to the undersea archaeology that opens the film, as I had somehow managed to hide from the previews and everything -- I absolutely loved it. It holds up very well; definitely a little too Poseidon Adventure at some moments and a little too West Side Story at others, but I am very fond of both of those movies as well, even the former's equally despised theme song.


You don't think I went to Baltimore without taking a few photos of my ship, do you? I had to walk over to see her now that she's docked with her bow facing the harbor, since I've only seen her from the Light Street Pavilion since they brought her back from Annapolis and docked her this way.


This is the closest I have ever been to the stern of the USS Constellation. The bowsprit used to jut out over the sidewalk in front of the Pratt Street Pavilion, but now the cabin at the rear shines its lights over the sidewalk instead.


Here's the whole ship from in front of the Light Street Pavilion -- not a great photo, too dark in the foreground, but I like the color of the twilight sky and the ship dominating the harbor.


And an evening shot from the upstairs balcony of the Light Street Pavilion outside City Lights, where we ate dinner.