Saturday, July 18, 2009

Poem for Saturday

Preludes for Prepared Piano 8: Sonnet for Sister Kate
By Estill Pollock


Somebody singing Kate, mighty good,
late but up to date, I mean shaking it like her.
Three times as many women between 30 and 34 never married.
Liberty or death.
On that same day, she met her father,
also her biological sister, no intention of letting
the notorious rouĂ© anywhere near—careless love.
None of us had been there since 9/11.

Orbit around colliding with
same old moon.
This is a translation from Enchanted Rock State Park in Texas.
Her collection contained 83 letters, 81 from the same guy,
in her spare time developing a simple dress pattern cut
to a woman's body.

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Adam had a fairly early orthodontist appointment, which required getting the kids up and moving before they would have liked. We were going to go to Bagel City afterward, but Adam had to have a bracket reglued for a new wire, which meant softer foods for lunch...so Daniel convinced me to take them to Cici's, where Adam ate mostly pasta and small bites of pizza while Daniel ate the equivalent of about two pizza pies. I called my mother to tell her we were going to need soft food for dinner, too, and discovered that she was in the Barnes & Noble next door, so we met her for a while and found a book by our former Washington Hebrew rabbi that she bought for both me and herself. Then I came back here so the kids could swim, though a mid-afternoon thunderstorm cut that short.

I wrote a review of Star Trek: The Next Generation's "Unification, Part One" (Spock's return very happy, Sarek's return very sad), and tried to write a robots.txt file to exclude certain parts of my web site from being indexed by bots, but all I succeeded in doing was bringing down my entire web site, necessitating a phone call after dinner with my parents to my web host to reboot whatever it is they do to bring the site back up. It never went down via FTP, just couldn't be loaded as a web site, so I have no idea now what to do about the robots.txt file besides ask tech support for help -- the guy I spoke with on the phone had no idea either. We watched the second episode of Warehouse 13, which I enjoyed the same way as the first -- entertaining characters, mildly engaging plot, nothing that has really grabbed me yet but hey, it's summer, I can afford to give it time.


The Cabildo in New Orleans, site of the Louisiana Purchase transfer ceremonies, now part of the Louisiana State Museum.


My kids in front of the building, where several big guns of French, Spanish, English, and pirate background are kept.


This octant, made in London around 1810, belonged to Captain Hugh Mattison on the privateer Saucy Jack when he sailed with Laffite's pirate fleet.


A rosary and crucifix that have been in Louisiana since the 1700s.


We stayed at the Inn on Bourbon Street, built on the site of the French Opera House which burned down in 1919 after 60 years of being the most fashionable establishment in New Orleans and the center of Creole high society. These items survived the fire -- a bell recovered from the ruins and a baritone horn played by G.M. Burkarth at the opera house.


Judah Touro, a Sephardic Jew born in Rhode Island who moved to Louisiana while it was still under Spanish rule and established himself as a community leader and philanthropist. He built a public library, almshouse, and infirmary as well as a synagogue in New Orleans.


An 1840s cotton gin, built in Cincinnati, used on a Louisiana plantation which doubled its number of slaves to plant and harvest cotton as the use of the machine increased.


From "Unsung Heroes: The Secret History of Louisiana Rock & Roll," which features instruments, recordings, costumes, sheet music, and other memorabilia from noted R&B, rockabilly, and soul performers with ties to New Orleans jazz.


Sad about Walter Cronkite's passing -- I saw him once in the Russian Tea Room -- delighted about the Episcopal Church blessing gay unions, getting up insanely early for Breakfast with the Penguins, so more tomorrow!

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