By Constantine P. Cavafy
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
That we've broken their statues,
that we've driven them out of their temples
doesn't mean at all that the gods are dead.
O land of Ionia, they're still in love with you,
their souls still keep your memory.
When an August dawn wakes over you,
the atmosphere is potent with their life
and sometimes a young ethereal figure
indistinct, in rapid flight,
wings across your hills.
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On Tuesday I did most of the stupid shopping stuff that I didn't get done Monday, which included such exciting activities as finding clothespins for younger son for a project (we only had the straight arts-and-crafts variety, he needed the ones with pincers), getting a new mattress cover (someone's claws tore ours despite having been clipped often) and tracking down dot matrix photo quality paper (still don't think I have the right thing as I'm getting very uneven results printing). Then took Adam to Hebrew school, read most of a book on Ruskin and Turner that I've read before but wanted to read again after the exhibit at the National Gallery last weekend, did three laundries and backed up a bunch of music and stuff onto my external drive, which was weeks behind.
I do, however, have some messages for my cats. Cat #1: THAT IS NOT YOUR DISH. You always throw up when you eat the wrong food, and guess who ends up cleaning it up? If anything made me throw up that often, I would stop eating it no matter how good it tasted! Cut it out! Cat #2: At this time of year, when I get out of the shower in the morning, it is cold outside the bathroom. The shower has made it nice and warm and steamy inside. I don't care whether you want to be inside or outside, but MAKE UP YOUR MIND and stop meowing piteously and clawing at the door whichever side you're on, then deciding once I've let out some of that precious warm air that you want to be on the other side! Cat #3: Every time you climb on the CD rack, you cause an avalanche and end up running away yowling. Could you please take my word for it that the upper shelves look just like the lower shelves and cut it out already?
Mother Seton's chapel at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in Emmitsburg.
This is the grotto itself. There are always hundreds of blue and white candles burning inside.
Among the many reproduced sculptures on display are Saint Francis with the animals...
...and Michelangelo's Pietà (also here if you want to see it in the winter).
I should have taken this photo of the Virgin of Fatima entirely in reflection in the water, surrounded by leaves.
And the reason for all this gorgeous color...nearby Catoctin Mountain overlooking the Blue Ridge, which at this time of year is more golden-burgundy-russet-bronze.
Paul brought home Live Free or Die Hard, to which we figured we were entitled on DVD since we never managed to see it in the theaters and we own the first three on DVD anyway. (Yes, I know I am supposed to be boycotting buying DVDs till the writers' strike ends, but since it doesn't look like the strike is going to end before Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End comes out on December 4th, and no way am I waiting to buy that, I am filing this under, "Yes, and I ate that Nestle Mint Aero bar, thus making myself personally responsible for the suffering of babies in Latin America, but that boycott has been around since I was younger than my children, thus suggesting to me that it isn't making a dent in the Nestle corporation, and I worry about babies in Latin America a hell of lot more than I worry about Joss Whedon's internet residuals." Unfriend me if you wish.)
I know that Die Hard is nearly as politically incorrect as buying DVDs during the writers' strike, and I know how I should feel as a feminist about John McClane's particular brand of beat-em-up masculine posturing, versus, in this film, wussy technological masculine posturing, where wives and daughters always end up putting on the McClane name and symbolically returning themselves to property status, where even his daughter's toughness under pressure is attributed to Daddy as savior-protector in youth. Do I care? Hell no! Am hoping to watch the unrated version with
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