Poem for Thursday

From Gitanjali
By Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

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I am tired of cramps and have decided never to have them again. That was my big intellectual movement for the day, which otherwise included reorganizing several bookshelves but you would have to live here to notice any difference, writing up news bullets and an interview with Tim Russ, avoiding Tim Brazeal's latest get-rich-quick-at-the-expense-of-Star-Trek-fans scheme, driving carpool, doing various kid- and food-related things, taking older son to Bar Mitzvah tutoring in the early evening where the teacher said he is doing exceptionally well, taking some photos with the little camera around the Hebrew school building as IMing was impossible because I couldn't get any cell phone signal inside and didn't dare go outside since the doors were locked for the evening:









Note that this is just the Hebrew school sanctuary, not to be confused with the enormous temple sanctuary downtown; our kids go to Hebrew school in the suburban center. Personally I prefer things much smaller. The kids also went to nursery school and kindergarten in this building before it was renovated and the size was doubled, so we have a long family history here.

Also did a lot of movie recording. TMC had Spencer Tracy in Edison, which I snagged for younger son in case he was interested after being Edison at the wax museum performance. Watched Witness after school with the kids because it was on cable and wanted to record it to DVD since we only had it on a crappy ancient homemade tape; the film itself holds up exceptionally, I get nostalgic seeing pre-renovation 30th Street Station in Philly, Harrison Ford is utterly appealing and Alexander Gudenov and Viggo Mortensen both look good enough to eat.

Then at night we watched The New World, which has to be one of the most beautiful movies ever made. The acting is excellent, the screenplay is quirky -- long stretches with no dialogue at all, which in some ways are the most coherent parts of the film, since John Smith the philosopher-poet is at times a little hard to believe even with Colin Farrell in the role. Farrell and David Thewlis are mostly in the first half of the film and Christian Bale is mostly in the second half, so there are consolations when either is not there, though I would love to have seen more than the teeny moments of interaction between Smith and John Rolfe. Q'Orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas is luminous but I think she suffers a bit once she has to perform in stilted English rather than pantomime. I want to visit every place in Virginia this movie was filmed.

has absurdly early phone conference with Bangalore in the morning so I must crash!