Poem for Wednesday

There Will Come Soft Rains
By Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

--------

Another poem requested by . I am always open to recommendations if there is something I really should know about or post! Please leave me links whenever you like. Or better yet post poetry. I have been known to ask for permission to borrow. *g*

Kids had a two-hour delay this morning but I did not get to sleep late, in the chaos of finding out and getting ready anyway; I played with my younger son some in the morning and tested him on his spelling words, rushed through some stuff I had to do and had lunch with a friend in the mall. Question that occurred to both of us: if you were in a public eatery, and there was a person scrounging through the trash taking out food and containers to bring it home, and you had a 3/4 full container of leftover Japanese food, would you walk over and offer it to her? Would you worry that she'd be kind of spiteful if you did (I have had this happen to me before -- offered food to people who were begging for money and been soundly insulted)? Would the whole thing leave you sort of shaken up, that in this mall in this affluent area, someone would come to scrounge the stuff people throw out, and start thinking about the ungodly amounts of food that go to waste here and all over the place? I went home quite depressed, despite having spent a lovely hour or so with discussing ephemera.

Okay, good for the Supreme Court for finally putting an end to the execution of children who would have been too young to vote or serve in the army at the time they committed their crimes, and good for the ACLU for suing Rumsfeld finally. But there is so much shit going on in the world that I couldn't even get past the front page of the newspaper today...and that's the mainstream news, not even the doom and gloom in the alternative press.

I have stuff going on with my older son again where I don't know what to do...there's a math group that meets after school on Thursdays that his math teacher really thinks he would do well to participate in (he's in a very accelerated program), and Thursdays he has Hebrew school, and we could switch him to Tuesdays with no change in his Hebrew teacher but it would mean he'd have a different Judaic Studies teacher, and he really loves the one he has now and really does not like the one he'd be getting, and he's very reluctant to change and he has gotten a perfect score on his Hebrew school final exam each year for the past two and I SO do not want to rock the boat in this one area where he is doing so well...but I also hate to tell his math teacher no, and I don't know whether I should try pressuring him to switch, because otherwise I need to pressure him to work one-on-one with his math teacher and either way there is going to be struggle.

And I had a shitty fannish day. Not really sure why I feel this way -- I witnessed a lot of second-hand wank, and was almost the victim of some first-hand wank but was well-defended by people even before I knew the wankery was there. And yet this left me feeling strangely empty -- not like, wow, these people who in some cases don't even know me are defending me from a troll, but sheesh, there are so many people who take it upon themselves not even to pretend they're offering constructive criticism but just to announce when they believe something sucks and then react as if their free speech has been compromised when someone else says it's rude. It seems to me that there is far more of this in HP fandom than anywhere else I've been; I realize that HP is larger than most fandoms, and younger, but I never once hit this kind of trolling in LOTR fandom where I certainly saw my share of "OMG U pervert!" over slash itself.

I got very nice feedback on the fic itself, but it's such trivial porny stuff -- really, criticism of that does not bother me at all even if it's entirely negative, because one person's kinks are another person's squicks and I've read fic that I thought was unsexy and horrible just because of some act or some phrase (sometimes the word "cunt" can ruin an entire story for me, depending on the context). It's become increasingly apparent to me that I have either really offended a self-proclaimed BNF in my corner of fandom or she just plain does not like my writing, too, which is just plain frustrating...to be aware of this and not even know if it's worth doing anything about. I mean, it's not like this person is anything like a friend, not even someone I've ever talked to. It just feels stupid and annoying.

Not even watching Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World improved my mood much, and that's saying a lot. I finished typing up my notes on Blue at the Mizzen and feel like I am at the end of that journey all over again, which makes me sad. Arrgh. In the good news department, has finally posted her wonderful LOTR vids now that Escapade is over. And tomorrow I get to spank for her birthday and watch Highlander. Ah well, I shall post some cat amusement. Please come tell me something cheerful, because I don't like being unaccountably grumpy over things. It puts me in one of those "oh my god I have to get out of fandom and devote those hours to getting more of a life" mood, which is stupid really because no matter what kind of life I end up with I'm going to want entertainment in my down time.


My kids saw Pokemon: Destiny Deoxys last week and after a year of scoffing at Pokemon for not living up to the Yu-Gi-Oh standard, have suddenly retrieved all their stuffed Meowths and Charmanders and such. This is a very annoying talking Pikachu which says things like "PIKA!" and "PEEEEEE-KAAAAAA-CHUUUUUUUU!" at spontaneous intervals when it's turned on. You can see Cinnamon's opinion of it.


Rosie tends to be more complacent about such things in general, but when my younger son set up his pieces from the Pokemon Master Trainer game with Pikachu as his ostensible opponent, you can see how she felt about it -- she got her paws on some of them and glared. We all know who's really top Pokemon around here.