XIV: Fly, Some Kind Harbinger, To Grasmere-Dale!
By William Wordsworth
Fly, some kind Harbinger, to Grasmere-dale!
Say that we come, and come by this day's light;
Fly upon swiftest wing round field and height,
But chiefly let one Cottage hear the tale;
There let a mystery of joy prevail,
The kitten frolic, like a gamesome sprite,
And Rover whine, as at a second sight
Of near-approaching good that shall not fail:
And from that Infant's face let joy appear;
Yea, let our Mary's one companion child--
That hath her six weeks' solitude beguiled
With intimations manifold and dear,
While we have wandered over wood and wild--
Smile on his Mother now with bolder cheer.
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Thursday was probably the last ridiculously warm gorgeous October day -- we're supposed to drop 20 degrees tomorrow -- so I didn't get a lot done but I did take two long walks in a neighborhood whose sidewalks are increasingly covered by yellow tulip poplar and brown oak leaves with some red maple mixed in. One of my neighbors stopped by to offer Adam a job walking her two big dogs after school every day -- he'll soon be making more money a week than I am and be able to buy himself some of the camera equipment and software he wants -- so we chatted for a while, and I visited with another neighbor later in the day while she was out working on her Halloween decorations. (Ours are going to be very simple -- jack-o-lanterns, giant fake spiderweb, candles!)
I actually enjoyed $#*! My Dad Says this week -- far fewer gratuitous gay jokes, just Henry being hot for the male real estate guy, and I snickered at the main plot because my father always jokingly warned me not to write a Neil Simon-style play about him which is essentially what Henry does (well, a $1000 article, which is awfully cheap to sell out one's relatives). I enjoyed Nikita far more, though -- it makes me so happy that so many of the stories are focused on women and their experiences, and thus far they haven't bumped any off gratuitously the way I feared might happen this week. I'd bet anything that Nikita's murdered lover isn't really dead at all -- he's probably secretly running Section -- and now that the show has a full season order, I want to meet him.
A stork in the Africa region at the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore.
A sleepy leopard enjoys the sun.
There are many other birds, including guineafowl who share the meadow with various antelope.
This is a photo of the okapi at the zoo in July. One of them died later in the summer and now there is just one left.
The sitatunga apparently prefer to eat the vines that grow near the walkway than the food set out in in their enclosure.
I am always pleased to see wild animals living in a zoo. Near the penguins, there's a pond with many frogs like this one.
This chipmunk had snuck into the warthog enclosure...
...and this snake was just outside the giraffe house.
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