Poem for Friday

Alone
By James Joyce

The noon's greygolden meshes make
All night a veil,
The shorelamps in the sleeping lake
Laburnum tendrils trail.

The sly reeds whisper to the night
A name -- her name --
And all my soul is a delight,
A swoon of shame.

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Happy Bloomsday! Rather than try to excerpt Ulysses, I thought I would post a Joyce poem and link to the masterpiece at Online Literature and at Bibliomania. Since Ulysses was first published in the United States serialized in The Little Review, the day on which the story takes place is always a celebratory day for me.

Ended up running most of Thursday afternoon, which was not the game plan; the game plan was to drop older son off at a friend's house for lunch, send younger son off with my mother who had offered to take him out for Chinese food and penguins (newest one is named Waddle, and waddles when you press a button), then go have lunch with on her way to con.txt, make quick stop in CVS and come home to write Trek articles and do pre-trip chores. But when I went to pick younger son up from mother's house between CVS and Trek articles, I discovered that he had detached one of the brackets on his braces; hence, a trip to the orthodontist for repair became necessary, and then since we were in the mall where the orthodontist has his office, did some shopping for necessities to avoid having to track them down over the weekend.

This means that I am behind, and things are only going to get worse: kids are home tomorrow and I need to write a review of "Bread and Circuses," one of my favorite guilty pleasure Star Trek episodes (not only magnificently slashy and featuring Roman prison scenario, but containing the only original series scene upon which I have ever based fan fiction). I also have to get younger son more bathing suits, since, as I suspected, most of the ones in his drawer from last summer no longer fit him -- parents took kids to the pool for an hour before dinner, so I know this for a fact now. Saturday I am going to a ritual for Litha (for which I must bring a dessert -- , help!), Sunday is Father's Day and we are going with my in-laws to the zoo in Baltimore, which has both a parakeet landing and -- wait for it -- PENGUINS, Monday we are meeting with a videographer about the Bar Mitzvah and having lunch with the globe-trotting , Tuesday we will be at Fallingwater in the afternoon and Pittsburgh at night, and then on west from there. Eeeee!


A Nicobar pigeon at the National Zoo in the open area of the bird house.


I'm not sure what sort of bird this is (is it a lilac-breasted roller?), but it was also in the open area and also has a lovely rainbow pattern.


A pair of African pygmy falcons.


A suspicious-looking burrowing owl.

Watched The Light in the Piazza on PBS and enjoyed it, but the simple truth is that Evita was on one of HBO's channels for the two and a half hours before, and even though we own the DVD with extras, we recorded it for our trip and had it playing so we could hear the music through dinner, and I must admit that I like it much, much better...in some ways I like the movie even better than the stage musical, because there's been a much greater attempt to mimic Eva's clothes and hairdos and I really think Madonna is marvelous in the part. Antonio Banderas too. Considering my level of worship for Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin in the Broadway cast, that's saying a lot.