Poem for Sunday

Post-Mortem
By Nicky Beer

To me, you have bequeathed
a half-dissolved
apple, a spider,
and three crescents
of your fingernails.

A large Y of black stitches
has split your trunk into thirds --
a child's rendition
of a bird migrating
towards your feet.

The arc of the scar
on your right calf
reminds me of a hooked trout
I once saw leaping
from the surge of a stream,

a curve of light shaped
by the moment between life
and the infinite space
just above it.

Smoke-browned fish on a white plate,
dawn-grey body on a silver table --
we do not like to linger
on how the dead may still nourish us.

Later, I will tell your family
what no one ever knew,
but you may have suspected:

you had two exquisite,
plum-colored kidneys,
lustrous and faultless
as the surface of a yolk.

--------

"Several years ago, I saw a fascinating documentary about medical cadavers called 'Still Life: The Humanity of Anatomy,'" writes Beer in The Washington Post Book World. "I was particularly touched by how the students endeavored to be respectful to their subjects, even going so far as to have a memorial service for them at the end of the year. Around the same time, I had to get an ultrasound of my kidneys. I remember vividly the sight of my bladder, ghostly and greenish on the monitor, and realizing that even though it had been working tirelessly on my behalf for my whole life, this was the first time I had ever seen it. These two experiences made me consider how relative the idea of intimacy can be. On the one hand, those medical students, necessarily, will never know the names, occupations, passions or fears of their subjects, but they will relate to the bodies in a way that is completely unique, inaccessible even to the subjects' loved ones."

We spent Halloween afternoon at Scott's Run, just as we did five years ago. The weather was gorgeous, quite warm for the season -- nearly 70 degrees. The leaves are just past peak here, still plenty of gold and orange on the trees beginning to turn brown, and lots on the ground with even more falling every hour (we had to sweep the porch twice before evening) so it was a perfect afternoon to spend in the woods and looking at the trees flanking the Potomac River. We saw many dogs, since this is a dog-friendly park -- it was at one time a private estate that the citizens of Fairfax County wrested away from a developer who wanted to cut down all the trees, voting to raise their own taxes to buy and protect the land -- and a heron on an island in the river. Then we came home to carve our pumpkin, which we hadn't managed to do earlier in the week, and Paul made tamale pie for the Day of the Dead. I ate only one single square of Dove Chocolate, so I am feeling virtuous, though I hoarded some Junior Mints for later.


Although I did not dress up, I did have my witch t-shirt and jack-o-lantern drawstring pants on. Want some candy?


Daisy, of course, had to keep up her tradition of "helping" to carve the pumpkin.


Here is how it looked fully carved on our porch at night fell.


Adam went as a hippie (that's a Peace, Love & Penguins shirt he's wearing). I am not sure what his friend is supposed to be other than menacing.


My neighbor, who grew up in Greece, is wearing a vintage European Carnival mask. I am wearing a $6 witch hat headband from Claire's.


These are some of the decorations on their porch...


...and in their yard.


This is the mother of Adam's good friend as the Cat in the Hat with her two little boys as Thing One and Thing Two -- she made all the costumes.


These are the decorations in front of their house, including a giant spiderweb, fog machine, strobe light, and her mother -- who recently moved here from Venezuela -- in the witch hat.


We always end Halloween at my parents' so they can see the kids' costumes, even though Daniel decided he was too old for trick-or-treating this year and didn't want to dress up. (The hat on Paul belongs to my mother and was stuck on his head for display purposes only.)

When we got back from trick-or-treating at my parents, it was only a bit after 9 p.m., and we remembered that we were going to have an extra hour of sleep because the clocks go back, so we put on the 1931 Frankenstein with Boris Karloff as the monster. This bears very little resemblance to the novel, which I shrieked to see was attributed in the credits to "Mrs. Percy B. Shelley" -- oh, but her mother would have been displeased -- but it's the basis of nearly every ripoff and parody ever filmed, which makes it both unintentionally hilarious in places and unwittingly epic in others. I hadn't seen it since college, so had not realized how much "The Mob Song" sequence in Disney's Beauty and the Beast owed to this movie when I saw that. I suppose we really should show the kids the Branagh film but I find I'm more in the mood for the Mel Brooks version of the story now!

Poem for Saturday

I Went To Heaven
By Emily Dickinson

Part Four: Time and Eternity
LIV

I went to heaven,—
T'was a small town,
Lit with a ruby,
Lathed with down.
Stiller than the fields
At the full dew,
Beautiful as pictures
No man drew.
People like the moth,
Of mechlin, frames,
Duties of gossamer,
And eider names.
Almost contented
I could be
'Mong such unique
Society.

--------

Poem for Cidercupcakes in honor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date."

This is going to be an all-fannish entry, so if fannish is not your thing, you may want to move along. I wrote a review of Next Gen's "Cost of Living" -- which I love, though if you can't stand Lwaxana Troi, you'd be forgiven for not feeling the same -- while waiting for the second segment of "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith" to air. When my family got home, we watched both parts, and I love that episode even more, right from the start, when Mr. Smith and K-9 get jealous of each other's abilities and start competing. Spoilers: When I first heard the episode title, I predicted that Sarah Jane's husband was either going to be an alien villain in disguise or that he was going to be an innocent pawn who would nobly sacrifice himself for her sake, and I'm very glad it was the latter; it was more like the Doctor having to let River Song die, made both Sarah Jane and Peter Dalton stronger characters, and was touching if, well, predictable.

I laughed a lot too, and just as much during the first half, while Luke, Rani and Clyde were joking that they didn't want to have to watch grownups kiss in public (I loved Sarah Jane saying "Cheek!" when Luke said he didn't know people her age did those things). Having just watched the aforementioned Buffy episode "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date," I found it amusing as well as sad that Sarah Jane has the same problems with dating that Buffy does; how do you tell your boyfriend about your job, or hide it from him, without making him flee? Of course, none of the kids would have recognized the stuttering TARDIS sounds as such but I expected more alarm from everyone, not just Clyde, when Sarah Jane orders Mr. Smith to shut down completely right after detecting the anomaly. The whole idea that she needs someone reliable, she doesn't even know where to send the Doctor an invitation -- as if he'd come purely to be happy for her, and not to save the world -- that makes me sad. I actually prefer her relationship with Clyde! Though I did snicker at Clyde's line about hoping the Doctor is as good as Sarah Jane says, and the Doctor's reply that journalists are always exaggerating but he is pretty amazing. Also Rani telling the Doctor to call her Sarah Jane rather than Sarah and his reaction...hee!

Not sure about the whole "there's nothing outside" from either a sci-fi or visual standpoint; it was hard to look at the screen at times, particularly when Sarah Jane, silhouetted in painfully bright light, talks to Peter about his "angel" and suspects he was using the red kryptonite ring to manipulate her (I am very glad she accepts the proposal before she puts on the ring, otherwise there would be very icky consent issues since they apparently were together for two weeks afterward). But you'd think the Pantheon of Discord would know that Sarah Jane is not so easily tempted by now, and would never fall for a man who isn't strong enough to do the right thing once he understands what it is, that he's already dead...it's very much like Rose's father, living up to his greatest potential for love and duty just as he realizes he has to die. I bristle at Clyde deciding he needs to go fight the Trickster because "it's what Sarah Jane would do, it's what the Doctor taught her" -- all right, but she learned from plenty of other people too, and Peter has learned enough from her to do what he knows she would do.

The Doctor's implication when he finds her, I think, is that ultimately Sarah Jane is more important to protecting Earth than he is himself, talking about the things she's going to do. When she asks if this is the last time she'll see him and he says he hopes not, I assume that means he knows that the until-now Doctor does not see her again in her future...does "don't forget me" mean him, Ten, his current incarnation, or is he actually sort of jealous of his previous self and possible future self? It's a nice conundrum. I mean, Peter doesn't deserve Sarah Jane, but really I don't think the Doctor does either. And I'm really glad Peter loved her and made her realize she could have a happy love life with someone, just not him -- more Martha, less Rose, without the violent erasure that Donna got. Anyway, I was completely satisfied with this episode, and wish Torchwood would take some cues from Sarah Jane.


Painted pumpkins in the store at Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch.


In addition to pumpkins, a variety of gourds are sold there.


Plus there are Halloween decorations for sale, including witches...


...and painted gourds designed to serve as birdhouses.


The pumpkins at Jumbo's were so picked over, though, that we got ours from this small local market.


They sell excellent corn and vegetables all summer, and, at this time of year, many varieties of apple, all locally grown.


A cool spring and lots of rain during the growing season made this a tough year for pumpkins -- there are plenty of big ones, but a lot of them aren't fully orange.


Still, there's plenty that can be done to make a less-than-perfect pumpkin festive!

The Friday Five: Memory and Desire
1. What is your happiest memory? Being at Stonehenge for the first time with my family.
2. What is the most important life lesson you've learned? Being poor sucks, but wealth is no guarantee of happiness.
3. What is the most difficult decision you've had to make? Whether to drop out of grad school.
4. What is the best thing about your life? My kids.
5. What is the biggest challenging you're facing right now? Finding a job that's enough hours doing something I actually want to do.

Fannish 5: Five favorite fannish Halloween costumes - that you have worn, or seen someone else wear. My tastes are simple and I am easily impressed.
1. Yoda from Star Wars, which I wore in college (it was a cheap storebought one, but I was short enough to pull it off better than most adults, heh).
2. Pikachu from Pokemon, worn by older son.
3. Harry Potter from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, worn by older son (who did not then need glasses, so he had fake costume glasses).
4. Bele from Star Trek, worn by Paul (created with black and white face makeup plus a neutral-color turtleneck and trousers).
5. Jim Morrison, whom my friend Suzy's then-boyfriend agreed to dress as because she had a total fetish (we're talking hundreds of old magazine photos taped inside her closet door). He didn't look much like Jim, but he must really have loved her to agree to try.

My parents are home from California but my father is sick, so we didn't have dinner with them; instead Paul made apple and cheddar strata with chicken in mushroom sauce, both of which were fabulous. Then we watched Smallville, which I didn't think was such a great episode -- it's like they can't figure out what to do with Oliver from week to week, though Tess is awesome and I love her. Spoiler: But I forgive everything, even the stupid Good Morning Metropolis storyline, for the last few seconds when Clark and Lois finally kiss, though this is so much earlier in the season than I was expecting for that that I am now worried how many stupid ways they'll be split up in future episodes a la Clark and Lana. Then we watched Sanctuary, which also had some silliness, but also had awesome women -- I always love Magnus, and go Kate! (I don't think Magnus is fooled by her for a second, which is part of the fun.) Spoiler: Also, any episode in which a geek gives the Live Long and Prosper hand gesture to misunderstood alien creatures before becoming a successful comic book writer gets bonus points from me.

Poem for Friday

The Pope's Penis
By Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat-and at night,
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

--------

I spent a delightful afternoon with , who forgave me for not having anything exciting to feed her and brought Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons one and five. First we had to get my irritable DVD player working; it had decided it was a Region 2 player, and rejected all my professional discs with a "Wrong Region" warning, requiring that the machine be restored to factory settings -- something not easy to learn from the minimal manual. But we figured it out, and then we watched "Teacher's Pet" and "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date" (which I had not seen before, never having watched the first season), plus "Checkpoint" (which I had seen, but it's one of the best ever, with the Council of Watchers and Glory and how Buffy lays the smackdown on everyone and how Giles adoring her).


A turkey stealing food from a calf in a barn at South Mountain Creamery.


Since it was Fall Harvest Celebration weekend, there were cheese samples...


...and containers of cream to be shaken by hand to make take-home servings of butter.


A singer was performing in the large barn...


...where there were also ice cream samples, farm toys, and historic farm equipment.


This calf was only a couple of weeks old. You can see some of the adult cows behind her, outside near the dairy delivery trucks.


These two calves were sharing a stall, and a water bucket.


Alpacas don't live at South Mountain Creamery, but these (plus yarn made from their wool) were visiting from a nearby farm.

I am liking FlashForward a lot, though I feel like that could turn on a dime if they killed off the wrong character in the wrong way or just screwed around and dragged things out too long. Right now the pacing is terrific and I like all the characters; I like that the men are as focused on their relationships as the women, and the women as focused on their careers as the men, and it's a reasonably diverse cast without too many obvious stereotypes. I particularly love Janis (the actress who plays her is terrific too), and I really like the Mark/Olivia/Lloyd triangle complicated by Dylan and Charlie's obvious attachment...it's messy and interesting and Lloyd obviously has all sorts of secrets much worse than the ones Mark is keeping from Olivia, so she's contemplating leaving one man she can't trust for one with with bigger skeletons in his closet.

I can't say that I enjoyed the World Series tonight, but a lot can happen in Philadelphia!

Poem for Thursday

The Freshness
By Jalaluddin Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

When it's cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

--------

I don't have a great deal to report other than my delight at seeing President Obama sign the inclusive hate crimes bill into law -- the first time a federal measure has protected GLBT rights along with the rights of other citizens. Now if only he would keep his campaign promise to overturn Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I will feel better about him despite his backtracking on health care and Afghanistan -- it isn't as if Americans hadn't been explicitly told that he intended to overturn it when we elected him, he said so several times -- no one can complain he turned out to be a secret liberal! I had a nice afternoon in that there were three white-tail deer walking in the woods at the same time I was, and I wasted far too much time in the late afternoon and evening setting up a Superpoke Pets club, then inviting people and explaining clubs to them since Superpoke didn't bother to do so before having them go live (and promptly crashing a bunch of other things). I think I may have irritated a couple of people by making Adam an officer, but he wanted an officer badge, and what's a mother to do?


Me and my kids enjoying the fall color on High Knob at Gambrill State Park last weekend.


The tea house at the summit of High Knob can be rented out for weddings and other events at Gambrill.


This was the view from the overlook facing Middletown and South Mountain.


The color was even more amazing on South Mountain itself, looking down from the Washington Monument.


The color on this tree was already past peak at that elevation when I took this photo of Paul and our kids.


The approach to the monument follows the Appalachian Trail where it crosses through Washington Monument State Park.


This tree was in the parking lot by the picnic table where we ate lunch.


And the foliage all around was equally spectacular.

We watched the World Series until Eastwick, and it was a happy couple of hours indeed...if the entire series goes this way, I will cease complaining about anything the Redskins do this season (I know I said I wasn't rooting for the Redskins till they changed their name, but I simply cannot root for Dallas or the Giants, and now that Michael Vick is on the Eagles, I would prefer the Cowboys in a crunch...the entire division makes me barf). I adored Eastwick this week -- an entire episode about female bonding in which men and what they want are secondary, particularly so far as Kat is concerned -- I am loving her character lately. Spoilers: I still can't warm to Joanna, she seems fundamentally selfish to me in a way that Roxie and Kat are not; her interest in exposing Darrell is not to protect the town but to become a celebrity news person. And yet she is intelligent enough to get Kat: "Will doesn't really know me...he certainly doesn't love me...you on the other hand walked through fire for me, if that isn't love I don't know what is." That's a lovely, lovely scene, and makes it easy to leave the bad witch/pagan stuff to the side.

Poem for Wednesday

My Great-Grandmother's Bible
By Spencer Reece

Faux-leather bound and thick as an onion, it flakes—
an heirloom from Iowa my dead often read.
I open the black flap to speak the "spake"s
and quickly lose track of who wed, who bred.
She taped our family register as it tore,
her hand stuttering like a sewing machine,
darning the blanks with farmers gone before—
Inez, Alvah, Delbert, Ermadean.
Our undistinguished line she pressed in the heft
between the Testaments, with spaces to spare,
smudged with mistakes or tears; her fingers left
a mounting watchfulness I find hard to bear.
When I saw the AIDS quilt, spread out in acres,
it was stitched with similar scripts by similar makers.

--------

Another from this week's New Yorker.

I have absolutely nothing worth reporting -- it rained all day, I had a bit of a headache though managed to stave off a migraine, I did lots of dumb organization things and started playing around with holiday card ideas that I ended up scrapping because I didn't really love any of them -- does anyone have any brilliant suggestions for a holiday/New Year card with a Southern/New Orleans theme, preferably with some fannish tie-in that works for both the locale and the holidays?


A view of fall foliage through the Civil War Correspondents Arch at Gathland State Park.


Gathland was the home of Civil War journalist George Alfred Townsend, built in Crampton's Gap, where William B. Franklin's Union corps fought Howell Cobb's Confederate force during the Battle of South Mountain.


This is the lodge where GATH (as Townsend signed his work) often had breakfast; the building above is the mansion.


These ruins are all that is left of GATH's library.


His books, however, have survived, and some remain in print. The Limoges candy dish was part of a set with the Gapland logo (as it was then known) in gold.


The museum has family photos as well, plus letters from Townsend to various colleagues and friends.


The War Correspondents Arch is the most famous structure at Gathland now. The Appalachian Trail crosses directly in front of it.


There are several memorials, national and state Civil War Trails signs, and descriptive markers around the barn ruins (at left), the memorial arch (at right), and the mansion (directly behind me as I took the photo).

Since we have no Tuesday night chill-out show -- maybe when V premieres, if it doesn't suck -- we watched the second episode of the second season of Merlin, "The Once and Future Queen." I liked it much better than the season premiere despite an ongoing shortage of Morgana, who better get lots of screen time in upcoming episodes; I love Gwen, though, so I was happy to see her get so much attention, and I love that she'll tell off Arthur without any concern about their relative social positions. I don't think they have any chemistry -- she has lots more with Lancelot, and Merlin, for that matter -- but chemistry isn't exactly what Arthur/Guinevere is known for, anyway, though I am wondering how that will work on this series, since Arthur clearly won't be marrying the daughter of King Leodegrance if he ends up marrying Gwen.

Poem for Tuesday

Letter to Tsvetaeva
By Nina Zivancevic
Translated by Charles Simic

Ah, now our time has come, Marina.
You visit me at night while I sit alone
with a glass of wine in hand
—you who do not need a key—
for you the most secret door of my room
is always open:
abandoned by our mothers,
we both loved children and poetry,
and hated Paris and poverty,
wearing the one and only dirty dress,
we kept clear of landlords and cops.
We both had blue eyes, many lovers,
and the incapacity to live with anyone.
Ah, I almost forgot: our fathers, too,
had similar jobs—they occupied themselves
with museums and art . . .
Still, I got angry yesterday
when someone called me Marina . . .
I'm neither important nor odd enough
to send daily reports to Beria . . .
How furious I was that you hanged yourself!
What courage, what a double cross, what a lie,
what a betrayal of poetry . . .
Marina, I'm a child as you can see,
about you and life I really know nothing.

--------

From this week's New Yorker.

It was a busy yet unexciting day -- many dozen photos cropped, color-corrected and otherwise manipulated, three loads of laundry washed, sorted and folded, two packages wrapped, addressed and taken to the post office, one long walk enjoyed since the weather was gorgeous, things like that. I tried to read the news but between not being able to figure out who's standing where on the public health care option, not seeing what the problem is if there's no McDonalds in Iceland and not being happy with the direction of Change We Can Believe In, I decided to let Adam try to explain Spore to me instead -- which was probably an even bigger mistake! I did refrain from buying my penguin Tarot cards, which I consider an accomplishment -- I did not refrain from buying myself Tarot cards with my $5 plus 30% off coupon at Borders over the weekend.


Piggies enjoying pumkpins at Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch on Sunday.


There was a petting zoo that included these sheep...


...and some small round goats and chickens, who were sharing a pen.


It is rare for me to think that a cow is particularly pretty -- usually I just think they're adorable, if they're clean -- but this one had unusual markings and was really quite beautiful.


Adam got to pet another calf as well as several at South Mountain Creamery earlier in the day.


Smaller children could have pony rides at Jumbo's.


Here are my kids surrounded by a very few of the pumpkins for sale there.


I'm not sure what kind of squash these are -- I don't think I've ever eated one -- but they were my favorites in the "weird pumpkins" patch!

After dinner (tuna pomodoro, mmm) we watched last week's two-part Sarah Jane Adventures episode, "The Mad Woman in the Attic," which despite being a reset-button episode was very enjoyable -- more so than the season premiere, I thought. Spoilers: I love that everyone still thinks about and talks to Maria even if she's not appearing and Rani resents how much attention she gets (are we to understand from the alternate future-forward at the end that Rani marries Luke and they go visit Maria in America?). I love the seaside resort, which reminds me of the one we visited in Plymouth a few years ago; younger son won a free game of miniature golf there, and still has the token to go back and use. I didn't mind Sarah Jane's expected speech about friends being all you need -- it reminded me of Lisa Moscatiello's song "In the Here and Now" (which, really, could be my theme song for Sarah Jane, and I'd make a songvid if I made songvids). I particularly love the flashbacks with previous Doctors, even alongside the prediction of Ten returning when such predictions always turn out to mean bad news in Whoverse.

Then we watched Heroes, which is like three different shows as it follows three different storylines, and as has been happening for the past two seasons for me, it feels so disjointed that I have trouble having any overall positive feeling. Spoilers: I am very, very tired of the Sylar-in-Matt's-head storyline, I don't think Greg Grunberg is a good enough actor to play it really well, of course they wrote Janice preferring Sylar in bed to Matt, it all feels vaguely icky and badly done. Whereas now that they got their gratuitous lesbian kissing out of the way, I actually really like Claire's uncertainty with Gretchen, which makes sense to me for someone who's been through what she has (and I'd sort of forgotten about the fact that she's a virgin). I'm wary of it because I have no confidence that these writers will do anything besides exploit the whole two-college-girls-together thing, but I appreciate how it was handled this week. As for HRG and Tracy, Ali Larter and Jack Coleman are two of my favorite actors in the franchise, but they seem to be floundering for things to do with them, and I only felt badly up to a point for the boy who can't help killing people...he could so easily have grown up to be Sylar.