Poem for Saturday

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
By William Wordsworth

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

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Okay, so I'm a day early for this poem (now watch and it will be in Poet's Choice tomorrow!) but I couldn't resist, as I have been on this bridge, though the mighty heart was not lying still at that time. I have a poem from I keep meaning to post and forgetting!

I wasn't kidding when I said I was going to be boring for the first part of September. Had a lovely Middle Eastern lunch with and , discussed slash and my insanity. Came home, reviewed "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" which I must say holds up phenomenally; this is an episode that a lot of current reviewers seem not to like, between the presentation of the commercial IDIC and the choppy pacing and mediocre dialogue of the unrequited love story, but neither of those things makes me love Miranda or the crew any less and really, the concept of the IDIC is so intrinsic to everything I love about Star Trek that if Roddenberry made a few bucks off Spock's wearing it here, I don't begrudge them in the least. Also wrote up the official report about the Lucas-ization of Star Trek...yes, I know not really, but I really don't need CGI aliens added to space stations or CGI clouds added to planets if we're still getting styrofoam rocks and aluminum foil cave walls! That is all part of the charm of the original series for me! The major pain in the ass about this article is that I have two sources swearing they were the VERY FIRST PEOPLE on the net to have it and the other one stole it from them, so I am quite relieved that it's now all over the media and I can cite them instead.

Speaking of media, my news entertainment today consisted of reading about the New James Bond's onscreen gay kissing, Munch's The Scream being recovered in Norway, Lockheed Martin winning the contract to replace NASA's space shuttles and McDonald's saving Britain's hedgehogs! I also subjected my family to Widow Twanky episodes ("...And Fancy Free" and "Greece Is Burning") of Hercules, since my DVD sets arrived and I was so in the mood to watch Sorbo strut and make Kirkesque speeches about how people should be free to interpret the E Plebnista for themselves, after having dinner by candlelight with my parents because the power went out courtesy Tropical Storm Ernesto for a couple of hours!

: Friday Fill-In
1. When I'm angry, I ____ bitch and moan, usually, unless I am REALLY angry in which case I scream.
2. The first time I ____ I also ____ took my driving test, backed into a cone on the three point turn and failed.
3. I was born in ____ Washington, DC in December during Chanukah.
4. My favorite ____ is ____ Tarot deck, Sacred Circle.
5. I laughed so hard when ____ My younger son explained the facts of life to my older son: "I know where babies come from! The boy PEES in the girl!"

: Thirty Days Hath
1. This is the 1st of September, what do you want to accomplish by the 31st? To have gotten through my son's Bar Mitzvah with him happy and me not having had a nervous breakdown!
2. What does September make you think about or feel? Autumn, my favorite season. Also Mabon, the autumnal equinox, and the High Holy Days, which nearly always occur during this month.
3. September is the ninth month; can you name nine memories so far from this year? I can name nine memories just of ZOOS this year!
4. What does September have in common with three other months and can you name them? If you mean October, November and December, yes and I think it's pretty obvious. They are no longer 7, 8, 9 and 10, though.
5. The first weekend in September signals the end of summer for many even though it doesn’t really end for weeks. When does summer end for you? When I was growing up, school started the Tuesday after Labor Day, and then they moved it back to September 1st. Now it starts for my kids the last week in August, so that's when it ends for me.

: Underutilization
What five characters have been underutilized in canon? Everyone on Star Trek who isn't a captain or first officer.

Speaking of ends of summer and beginnings of school, one of my favorite exhibits at the soon-to-close National Museum of American History is the lunchbox display near the downstairs cafeteria. Here are some of my personal highlights.