By Lam Thi My Da
Translated by Martha Collins and Thuy Dinh
White circles of conical hats have come out
Like the quiet skies of our childhood
Like the wings of storks spread in the night
White circles evoking the open sky
The golds of rice and cluster-bombs blend together
Even delayed-fuse bombs bring no fear
Our spirits have known many years of war
Come, sisters, let us gather the harvest
Each of us wears her own small moon
Glittering on a carpet of gold rice
We are the harvesters of my village
Twelve white hats bright in the long night
We are not frightened by bullets and bombs in the air
Only by dew wetting our lime-scented hair.
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From the final Poet's Choice column by Robert Pinsky in The Washington Post Book World, in which Pinsky discusses the sonnet, "this little 14-line variable recipe" which "seems to have an endless capacity for different purposes, settings and feelings." The one above, "written when Western bombs were falling on Vietnam," is from The Making of a Sonnet, a new anthology edited by Eavan Boland and Pinsky's predecessor writing the Poet's Choice column, Edward Hirsch.
We had various family members in various states of recovery on Saturday, so after older son got back from volunteering at Hebrew school, we had pancakes for lunch, took a low-key walk at muddy Locust Grove without much climbing and visited the animals in the nature center there. So it wasn't a very eventful day, though I got a bunch of e-mail because of an awesome thing: one of the editors at Jezebel apparently found my Barbie Tarot from a link at the Feminist Law Professors blog and posted about it, with the comment "These homemade Barbie Tarot Cards are several different kinds of amazing." *bounces* Unfortunately most of the mail was from people wanting to know where they can buy the deck, which of course is not possible; I haven't even managed to print out a copy of the deck for myself. Which is probably just as well, since until a few weeks ago I was still tinkering with the images on the cards.
A big old fallen tree in front of the Locust Grove Nature Center is being carved into these three bears.
This is the stump left after the extra wood was cut away.
The front, and largest, of the bears...
...and the rear bear with a pile of the pieces carved out of the wood.
Nearby is another fallen tree whose trunk has been stripped of bark. Maybe this will get carved into more bears, or into Goldilocks.
Inside the nature center, maple sap was being boiled...
...to remove the water and produce maple syrup.
Snicked from Gblvr, though this is so wrong it made me snicker:
| I am an |
I had a Blockbuster coupon for a free rental and the kids lobbied for Balls of Fury, to which I agreed because, you know, this is a movie that should only be watched for free. I am ashamed to admit that, as with Epic Movie, there were many scenes where I could not stop myself from snickering, though overall it's just as monstrously stereotype-ridden, heterosexist and dorky as you'd expect. (Okay, Christopher Walken in Elton John's cast-offs is hilarious by any standards.) The best thing about the DVD, though, is the bonus feature about the "ball handler" that spoofs all the pretentious extras on every DVD you've ever seen while at the same time permitting a lengthy Porky's Mike Hunt rip-off. Look, I live with two tween boys, it's not my fault if I'm laughing.
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