Friday, August 27, 2010

Poem for Friday and National Aviary

Psalm
By Terri Ford


The Lord is my Arctic, my tube
nosed bird. He hoppeth over
the surface of waters, my Jesus
bird who doth follow my ship.

He broods over cliff's edge, ponderous
over all of the penguins balancing
their eggs on their feet.

The Lord is my giant frigate bird. I am
his limpet, krill, and his plankton.
He is the blue and the ever
in waking, blue
in the wake.

--------

Adam had a high school orientation in the spring that we thought duplicated the one that took place Thursday morning, but apparently we were wrong because his friend called with a provisional schedule (which may change between now and Monday when school starts properly). So although I had plans to have lunch with Gblvr -- my father took the boys out to lunch at Hamburger Hamlet -- I had to rush over to the high school to get the schedule from the guidance counselor, because he wants to switch from honors to AP US History if he can, which hopefully will also let him switch from software design to journalism which he'd like to do. We still had time for some girly shopping -- Fire & Ice, Brighton -- and to share crepes!

The rest of the afternoon mostly involved chores, taking a walk, taking a shower, and other things not worth detailing. We watched "Dark Page," the Next Gen episode I need to review on Friday, which I'd recalled as being rather overwrought but it's really quite good, both the performances and the emotional content. Then we watched "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences," this week's marital problems Futurama, which was cute, but afterward Comedy Central reran "Roswell That Ends Well," which is one of the funniest half-hours in TV history. And then Jon Stewart explained Glenn Beck's plans for America and we couldn't decide whether to laugh or spend all night throwing up.


A penguin watches his friend being fed at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh.


The penguins at the aviary have a huge new enclosure...


...from which visitors can watch them underwater and on the rocks.


They have lots of room in the outdoor enclosure to swim around.


We got to watch a penguin feeding, where one staffer took notes on how many fish each penguin ate while another fed them...


...and we got to watch penguins diving underwater.


The adult penguins are banded on the arm for identification, but his year's young penguins haven't all been named yet because they need genetic tests to determine their sex.


There is a penguin named Patrick at the aviary who is female -- she was named before her sex had been determined via testing.

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