Poem for Tuesday, Cardinals, Oklahoma, Crowe

The Night Migrations
By Louise Glück

This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds' night migrations.

It grieves me to think
the dead won't see them--
these things we depend on,
they disappear.

What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won't need
these pleasures anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine.

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Another quickie because I got to spend another day with Cheryl after our Oscar night sleepover. We were going to be lazy all morning but younger son forgot his lunch (again), so that had to be dropped off at school. Then we watched the Trevor Nunn production of Oklahoma starring -- wait for it -- Hugh Jackman, which Paul had tracked down on DVD from the public library (he also came home to check in on deck repairs and half-watched the second half with us, plus ate some of the pizza we ordered for lunch.

After Hugh, we decided we needed to see Russell Crowe tied up in Heaven's Burning and just adorable in Cinderella Man. I am fond of the latter despite some issues with how Max Baer is portrayed, but despite the violence I actually think I like the former better -- it sidesteps all the typical American film noir judgments of women with independent sexuality and makes the heroine complex and likeable. Finally, we watched Russell's Inside the Actors Studio, which I have blathered about at length nine years ago.

I have a bunch of feelings about the Oscars, McFarlane, why a film like Argo would beat Zero Dark Thirty, and what gets called sexist versus what does not -- it's so easy to shout about the created-to-be-offensive "We Saw Your Boobs" along with everyone else in the world, much rarer to hear shouting about the rampant sexism from popular hosts like Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, etc. -- but I am too tired to be coherent and I am in squee mode anyway. Here are some cardinals we saw along the C&O Canal the weekend before last: