Monday, May 26, 2008

Poem for Monday

Baseball Haiku
By Cor van den Heuvel


baseball cards
spread out on the bed
April rain

biking to the field
under a cloudless sky
my glove on the handlebars

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More from Poet's Choice in Sunday's Washington Post Book World, reproduced by Mary Karr from Baseball Haiku: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball. Of the book's editor and translator Cor van den Heuvel, who wrote the haiku above, Karr writes, "van den Heuvel is a haiku aficionado whose single-image poems capture moments from my own baseball-centered childhood, like these two."

We went Sunday to the Virginia RenFaire with DementorDelta and a friend of hers, the first time we had been there. It's much smaller than the Maryland or Pennsylvania fairs, on the grounds of Lake Anna Winery in Spotsylvania, without a jousting arena or permanent structures -- the vendors and food are in tents, the stages temporary -- the kids were a little disappointed that there were no horses or human chess pieces in evidence, but they agreed reluctantly to be recruited to carry pikes and Daniel particularly enjoyed the archery, where he shot two arrows right into the middle of the target (I was very proud merely of getting into the black ring, heh). We had turkey legs and cinnamon nuts and lots to drink -- it was quite warm, we all got a bit sunburned -- and Adam bought a stuffed penguin and a cheap Indiana Jones style bullwhip. I told him the moment the latter is used inappropriately, it becomes mine!


Members of the court at the Virginia RenFaire watch the guard practice.


My husband and kids were recruited to carry pikes.


There were fiddlers...


...and potters...


...and alpaca...


...and dancers around a maypole.


This is my favorite sign at the Faire, which I want to put up in my own kitchen when I ask my kids what they want for breakfast: "No Um."


And this is DementorDelta with the bat and snakey puppets she found!


In the evening we finally watched the DVD we bought on release day of National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets, including the deleted scenes with Jon Turteltaub commentary and the bloopers. There's a really long added sequence explaining how they all ended up at Mount Rushmore that I thought made more sense than the movie's shortened version, but Riley's "Death and despair...mostly death though" line from the trailer has not been restored, sadly! I didn't see my flist at all and the only news that I caught was that the lander had made it safely to Mars, the kid who plays Marcus Belby in the next Harry Potter film was murdered, and a Japanese railroad has a station master who's a cat. Have a good Memorial Day and/or whatever bank holiday it is in the UK tomorrow if you celebrate either!

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