Poem for Thursday

O Captain! My Captain!
By Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
    But O heart! heart! heart!
      O the bleeding drops of red,
        Where on the deck my Captain lies,
          Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
    Here Captain! dear father!
      This arm beneath your head;
        It is some dream that on the deck,
          You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
    Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
      But I, with mournful tread,
        Walk the deck my Captain lies,
          Fallen cold and dead.

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You're probably laughing at me for the poem, but it's not for Captain Archer -- it's because my major activity for the day only marginally related to Scott Bakula was walking to Ford's Theatre, where Bakula is currently starring in Shenandoah. The theater had very long lines of people waiting to see the museum and presidential box, and since Donna, the person I was with, had seen the show there several times, I didn't feel like I could ask her to wait with me, especially since she had been up since about 4 a.m. to fly into Washington (I picked her up at Reagan National and dropped her off there in the afternoon, and she got me into the National Press Club luncheon). But Donna had not been in the house where Lincoln died, also known as Petersen's Boarding House (hey , the Petersens were immigrants from Hannover). That had a much shorter line, so since I had not been there since I was about 14, we walked through the open rooms of the house -- the parlor where Mary Lincoln waited for news from the doctors, the side bedroom where the Secretary of War supervised the pursuit of the assassins (some of the Cabinet members blamed Edwin Stanton for the shooting since he was supposed to be in charge of security), and the bedroom where Lincoln passed away four days and 141 years ago.

Donna is one of the people who runs Project Quantum Leap and had been very helpful sending TrekToday news about Bakula, and she had also worked with the press club to publicize this luncheon, which we mentioned on the site three times. We went out for coffee (well, actually iced chai latte) after walking around Ford's Theatre; she introduced me to a bunch of Quantum Leap fans who had come for the event and to the Ford's Theatre and press club publicity people. I was kind of wary of meeting die-hard Bakula fans because I know he has had horrific stalker problems, and we have on occasion been asked to remove news bullets about charity events he was doing for his kids' schools and stuff because someone didn't want that information getting out in public, but these people were quite friendly and certainly weren't scarier than some of the Kate Mulgrew fans I knew back in the day. *g* (No one trying to break into his dressing room to find out what brand of lipstick he keeps in his purse at least, hee.)

I had to quickly throw together an article for TrekToday when I got home -- tractor beam, tricorder and synthehol being developed -- and retrieve my kids from my mom since older son had Hebrew tutoring for his Bar Mitzvah in the evening. At night we watched Holy Warriors, about how Richard the Lionhearted's legend diverges from reality and why Richard, Saladin and the Third Crusade remain so important in defining conflict over land in the Middle East. It was well done but I was too tired to pay full attention!


Scott holding his certificate from the National Press Club to thank him for being a speaker. As I should have explained earlier, the long hair and scruffy unshaven look are for his character in Shenandoah to be Civil War-era in appearance!


And during the Q&A -- the guy who heads the speakers' committee asked all the questions, which had been submitted via e-mail and written out on little cards that were on the tables.

I have to get up very early Thursday and I had to get up very early Wednesday! Waah!