Poem for Friday

There is a willow grows aslant a brook
By William Shakespeare

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

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Prettiest death scene ever described, by a narrator so unreliable that it astonishes me what percentage of artists, directors and writers have taken Gertrude at her word and portrayed Ophelia thus. There's a lost J.W. Waterhouse painting of Ophelia lying on a dry bank with her neck broken -- that's always rather what I assumed happened, a quick shove from one of the guards at the order of one of the royals, and then a pretty speech for Laertes whom you'd think would notice that anyone who observed his sister's calamity in such lovely detail could have rushed down to the river and pulled her out before she drowned. Was thinking about this because we all watched the Zeffirelli/Gibson Hamlet...Branagh's is too long, Hawke's didn't impress me, I don't have Kline's or Jacobi's and I really don't like Olivier's, plus Zeffirelli's is kind of perfect Hamlet Lite for boys who've never seen it before and like swordfighting and it has Glenn Close, who improves pretty much anything. Kids were entirely attentive, which was not the case during As You Like It.

In other news, came over shortly before my kids came home from their secondary school orientation days and we went to the mall for lunch (mobbed food court -- most of us had Thai, and we met my mother), plus stops in Hot Topic (buy one t-shirt, get one half off), Borders (for Erin Hunter's Firestar's Quest), the candy store (which and I had discovered carries British Cadbury, yay!) the watch kiosk (where boys could not make up their minds) and the toy store (where they made the talking parrot say "You're a loser" and other brilliant intellectual slogans). They both appear reasonably content with their schools, other than the fact that they are, you know, school. And in addition to writing two Trek newsbits, I lured onto Catbook so our cats could be friends, thus proving that I am a loser.


On the last day of the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair, the bunnies that had not yet been sold were available for close-up adoration by prospective adopters.


Look at this face! Who could not want to bring that face home? (Well, besides my cats, the thought of whom was a useful deterrent.)


Lots of the bunnies that did not have "SOLD" stickers had reduced prices on their charts, as well as notes if they were gentle and would make good pets.


However, some of the rabbit breeders were clearly not in the pet business.


This is a chinchilla rabbit. It's as soft as you'd imagine from the name.

We were going to go to the Maryland RenFaire this weekend but it's supposed to be nearly 100 degrees on Saturday and to thunderstorm on Sunday, so now we are trying to figure out when we might possibly do it without wrecking the kids' Hebrew school schedules. Need new weekend plan or new weather report!