Poem for Saturday

Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Calm Sea

Deep silence rules the water,
Without motion rests the sea,
And troubled the sailor views
A smooth surface all around.
Not a breeze from any side!
A dreadful, deathly stillness!
In the enormous breadth of ocean
Not a wave bestirs itself.

Prosperous Voyage

The mists are rent,
The heavens are clear,
And Aeolus loosens
The anxious bonds.
The winds are sighing,
The sailor is stirring.
Quick! Quickly!
The waves are dividing,
The distance is nearing,
Already I see land!

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You can find Edgar Alfred Bowring's translations at Everypoet.com but I like the simplicity of these, which are from here -- thanks !

Other than a brief run to the store for necessities and dinner with my parents where we discussed additional necessities to be purchased before we go to the beach next weekend, I spent the day in the house, getting work done and being distracted by the great evil posted in the locked entry before this one. *snogs * We have a long list of things we want to try to do on the Eastern Shore: We want to go to the shipwreck museum in Fenwick Island, we want to take a pirate adventure cruise, we want to visit the Lewes Maritime Museum, we want to see Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge, we want to go to Assateague where I have never been despite having grown up in the same area where I live now, we want to eat Nic-o-bolis and crab soup and salt water taffy, and my father -- well, mostly wants to go to the beach. Which we do too, but I prefer the beach between 8-10 a.m. and 5-8 p.m., when it is less crowded and much less hot. I wonder whether we will end up doing different things than my parents some of the days and how annoyed they will be if we opt for less family bonding and more vacationing.

: What are your 5 favorite animated films?
I'm not even going to pretend to be a cool anime fan.
1. Mulan
2. The Road To El Dorado
3. The Iron Giant
4. Prince of Egypt
5. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

: Wedding Crashers
1. How many weddings have you attended? No idea. More than ten, less than a hundred.
2. Wedding registries: buy from the list or freestyle it? Depends on how well I know the couple. If one member of the wedding party is a complete stranger I tend to go with the list; if I know both of them often I will freestyle.
3. Are you more likely to slow dance or participate in the chicken dance? Both, though the hora is my specialty.
4. The garter find/toss experience: cute or tacky? Phenomenally tacky. I didn't even wear one.
5. If you could marry someone famous, who would it be? I'm very happily married and have no desire to marry anyone famous.

: Work, Work, Work
1. What was your first job? Besides babysitting, it was acting in a puppet show at Glen Echo's Adventure Theatre, and after that, a summer as a filing clerk in a law firm.
2. How much did you make? Babysitting, a dollar an hour plus a small tip; for the six-weekend run of the puppet show plus rehearsals, $150; at the law firm, 50 cents above minimum wage.
3. Describe your least favorite co-worker of all time. The pedophile who was in the puppet show.
4. What is your dream job? Writing and editing screenplays for a director and producer who don't monkey with my words.
5. What do you currently do and do you like it? I freelance and write part-time for TrekToday, and I like it a great deal in terms of interest and flexibility but the money is such that I should go back to being a file clerk!

Saturday morning we are going to Annapolis to the Maryland State House and the Naval Museum, so what follows is, in fact, relevant and appropriate: *g*


On display at the Calvert Marine Museum, a model and painting of HMS Augusta, 64-gun ship of the line, one of five Royal Navy warships of this size or larger present in the Patuxent River during the summer of 1814. The Chesapeake Flotilla kept the British at bay for four months, but the British army marched north through Charles County -- the only time Maryland's shores have been invaded by a foreign army -- and the flotilla was scuttled and sunk to prevent capture so that its men could join the land defense just before the British burned Washington, D.C. in August. British General Robert Ross was so impressed by the actions of American Commodore Joshua Barney that he pardoned all of Barney's "Bluecoats" -- a decision he later had cause to regret when the British fleet was kept out of Baltimore's harbor by men in Fort McHenry while Ross, who led the land attack, was mortally wounded by one of Commodore Barney's pardoned sharpshooters.