Poem for Saturday and Stone Zoo

For the White poets who would be Indian 

By Wendy Rose 

just once

just long enough

to snap up the words

fish-hooked from

our tongues.

You think of us now

when you kneel

on the earth,

turn holy

in a temporary tourism

of our souls.

With words

you paint your faces,

chew your doeskin,

touch breast to tree

as if sharing a mother

were all it takes,

could bring instant and primal

knowledge.

You think of us only

when your voices

want for roots,

when you have sat back

on your heels and

become

primitive.

You finish your poem

and go back.

-------- 

My friend Roger posted this poem by his friend, the poet, who sadly passed away a week ago. I had not read it before and was really struck by it. It's from her book Lost Copper. 

We went on Saturday to the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, which is part of Zoo New England along with the Franklin Park Zoo. My friend Meredith met us there, and we saw lots of animals in big wooded yards -- a lynx and snow leopard, macaws and flamingos, gibbons and tamarins, reindeer and fennec fox, tortoises and porcupines -- we did not see the family of wolves hiding in their enormous enclosure nor the ringtail hiding in its many hidey holes, but we did see bunnies that had snuck into several pens, and many, many birds. In the late afternoon we tried to get ice cream, but the parlor was closed, so we got drinks at Dunkin instead. 

 

We came home to feed our starving cats, eventually ate a small dinner, and, having missed most of the sports we cared about during the afternoon, watched Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. I don't even know what genre to put it in -- crime caper? action comedy? buddy time travel? gangster sci-fi? -- but it's really funny when it's not extremely violent and worth watching just for the debates about Disney movies and Gilmore Girls, plus Vince Vaughn has better chemistry with himself than anyone in Bad Monkey with him. Now we're watching the first episode of Discovery's second season, and I'm glad to see Pike but the Sarek retcon irritates me as much as the Klingon retcon.

Poem for Thursday and Seattle Sloth Bears

Low Tide 

By Ruta Mohapatra 

Like a sloth bear,

Life moved, slowly, steadily,

And stood still at times.

Nothing seemed to change,

Neither the sky, nor the horizon,

Nor the tree-line!

Only the grey in the hair,

Spread from roots to the end,

From the temple to the neck;

And the skin lost its lustre,

The eyes, their sparkle,

The voice, its genre,

Till she turned into a stranger!

-------- 

I finished my latest scanning project Thursday morning, merged and uploaded a bunch of files, then in the early afternoon we went out to get haircuts so we will look presentable at Daniel's wedding. We also stopped at Safeway for a few necessities and ate Mediterranean leftovers for dinner before my Thursday evening chat with fannish friends, after which Paul and I watched some Rebels with Cheryl. 

We took a walk at 9:30 to see what animals were hanging out, since there was a crescent moon and the sky in the west wasn't fully dark yet (lots of ducklings in the weeds every night!). Then we watched the season finale of Hacks, which is always going unexpected places -- in this place very far away -- and now we're watching an episode of Veep. Here is the Woodland Park Zoo's baby sloth bear and her mom:

Greetings from Woodland Park Zoo

Paul wanted to go to the zoo for his birthday, but that was before we knew Adam and Haley (and Pepper) would be visiting. So we put it off till this weekend. The rain forecast for Sunday was originally starting at 4, then 3, then 2, so we got up, brought egg salad sandwiches with us, and went to Woodland Park on the early side, which ended up not mattering because the rain started around 12:30. Still, we covered the entire zoo -- the red panda, the penguins, the flamingos, the big cats, the Pacific Northwest animals, the African savannah, the bird house, even the farm. It was wet but not cold, and we went into the reptile house, insect house, and other indoor spaces when it really rained, so it was lovely.

 

It's just as well we didn't spend any part of the day watching sports, because it was disastrous for my teams. The Orioles lost to the Royals again, the Mariners lost again in the last inning and were swept by the Giants, the Red Sox slaughtered the Cardinals, South Carolina lost to UConn in the NCAA women's championship final. We ate dinner early so we could watch The White Lotus before the internet could spoil us; that was too many deaths for me, though I was more upset about certain things in other storylines (I did like the way the three girlfriends' storyline ended). Then we watched Suits L.A., which still could use better supporting actors, and now we're watching House, where he and Cuddy finally broke up.

Poem for Monday and Snoqualmie Bear

Furry Bear 

By A.A. Milne 

If I were a bear,

And a big bear too,

I shouldn't much care

If it froze or snew;

I shouldn't much mind

If it snowed or friz--

I'd be all fur-lined

With a coat like his!

For I'd have fur boots and a brown fur wrap,

And brown fur knickers and a big fur cap.

I'd have a fur muffle-ruff to cover my jaws.

And brown fur mittens on my big brown paws.

With a big brown furry-down up to my head,

I'd sleep all the winter in a big fur bed.

-------- 

I was having a good Monday until half an hour ago when my phone fell out of my pocket as I was carrying recycling down the steps and crashed on the concrete walkway below -- the screen is shattered and the back is cracked, so it is pretty unusable, and I'm going to Oregon this weekend and it would have been really nice to have a working phone with a decent camera. I got a lovely late anniversary gift, an egg chair swing, which is set up on the deck, which is now free of mud dauber wasps, which were building nests at the top until the maintenance company for our apartment complex knocked them down. 

Adam and Haley have arrived in New England and he got yet another day of birthday celebrations with her family. Meanwhile, we had gorgeous weather, high 60s and breezy, so I found excuses to walk to the mailbox and office. We saw ducks and otters in the evening after eagles and geese in the afternoon when we walked on the dock. In between, we watched most of the Deadpool red carpet premiere interviews, then most of the Mariners-Angels game, which started well but ended badly for Seattle. Here are photos I keep meaning to post of the bear we saw from the chair lift and Summit at Snoqualmie: 

Greetings from Snoqualmie

I spent an awesome Saturday with our very longtime friends Hildy and Tom, who are the parents of Adam's girlfriend Haley, mostly in Snoqualmie at a ski resort running chair lifts up the mountain for the summer, swinging by Rattlesnake Lake, visiting Snoqualmie Falls, and barbecuing at the big grills on the public patio in our neighborhood along the lake. Highlights included seeing a bear both from the chair lift and the summit, drinking iced coffee at the resort below, hanging out at the falls, and watching eagles in the trees while we ate dinner, plus catching up on a million things! A few quick photos:

Poem for Saturday and Lewis Ginter Wildlife

Housekeeping
By Natasha Tretheway

We mourn the broken things, chair legs
wrenched from their seats, chipped plates,
the threadbare clothes. We work the magic
of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes.
We save what we can, melt small pieces
of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones
for soup. Beating rugs against the house,
we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading
across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw
the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs
out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie.
I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog,
listen for passing cars. All-day we watch
for the mail, some news from a distant place.

-------- 

Friday was just as cold as the weather reports warned us, though I didn't notice when I first went out to feed the birds, under the overhang and in direct sunlight. Kristen and I finished watching Good Omens together, and I finished my Scatterbug collection in Pokemon Go with the help of new friends made online in Mexico and Hawaii. 

We had dinner with my parents, Skyped with our kids for Chanukah, then came home, watched a bit of sports, and now we're watching the third season of Staged which I only just discovered existed today because of Good Omens and I am laughing too hard to type! Maymont has both a farm and a Virginia wildlife zoo and here are some of the animals: 

Greetings from Richmond

Happy Chanukah! We spent Sunday in Richmond with Cheryl, starting with lunch at Panera, then a visit to the Maymont estate. The mansion tour is now given via recording instead of docents, which makes it easier to socially distance, and I learned a lot about the servants and the holiday preparations. There's not much blooming in the garden now, but the bears were as close as we've ever seen them and the fox and farm animals were all pacing in anticipation of their dinner. 

From there, we went to meet Cheryl's sister Jennifer at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, where we went to see the decorated trees and trains in the library while it was still light out, then we walked through the many lighted parts of the garden, which had everything from fairies to animals to Pikachu, plus lighted balls and a huge flowering tree in the conservatory. We went to Burger King for Impossible Burgers before driving home for the end of the Commanders game. 

Greetings from the Woodland Park Zoo

Quickie after full lovely day, the longest stretch of which we spent at the Woodland Park Zoo, where Daniel met us at noon after we went with Adam to pick up breakfast from Blazing Bagels (Katherine and Cahaya had to work). We saw many awesome animals including a baby sloth bear, some tiny Asian deer, many kangaroos and wallaroos, an orangutan family, several lemurs high up in trees, and a silverback gorilla born at the National Zoo, though we did not see penguins as nearly all the birds were off exhibit because of avian flu in the state. 

Since we'd had a late breakfast, we had a late afternoon snack of cheese bread and drinks at Kitanda, a Brazilian coffee shop near where Daniel lives (because of covid, we still haven't seen his house -- we figured we'd give being indoors another day), and we stopped at the PCC Market to get fruit for later. Then we came back to Adam's house to hang out for a while before going out to dinner at the Lunchbox Lab in the pretty shopping plaza at Redmond Town Center after discovering that Cactus in Kirkland wouldn't seat more than four at their outdoor tables.