Greetings from My Laptop

I had kind of an exhausting day. My friend's surgery went well, but she's still in pain and there's just always a lot of stress and not sleeping well when someone you know is going through something like that. It was also hot and muggy -- the muggy takes it out of me more than the heat alone. Apart from putting together some storage boxes and finishing King Rat after having taken a break to read some other things, I didn't do a huge amount. 

While on calls and our computers, we did watch the Orioles win over the Cubs and most of the France-Morocco game. I talked to several technicians who agreed it's not worth the money to fix the 8 key on my computer, then did some research on replacements and decided I can live with not typing that key. We had Pokemon Spaghetti-Os for dinner, then I had Thursday night chat on Zoom. Here are some more mammals from the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence:

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.

Greetings from Boston

We had chilly but nice weather on Saturday, so we ate lunch early and went to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston. We got to see lots of animals -- giraffes and their baby, gorilla family, roaring lion, prairie dog community, kangaroos and their baby, parakeets that ate out of people's hands, kookaburras, tapirs, snakes, bats, camels, lemurs, peacocks who wander all over the zoo, and the chipmunks, mice, bunnies, sparrows, and a rat who have snuck into the zoo to live. It was World Turtle Day, so there was also a special presentation with a Blanding's turtle and African tortoise to meet the animals and their keepers. 

Since we were nearby, we went to the Arnold Arboretum to see the azalea border while the rhododendrons are in bloom. After walking up the hill to see some more flowers and the remains of a building foundation inside the garden, we came home and ate leftover Chinese food from earlier in the week. Then we watched the third and fourth episode of the second season of Rivals (Cameron is the only character I really like, because she's the only woman who doesn't identify herself only by what men think of her, so I hope she's lying to Rupert) and now we're watching more Boston Blue (good characters, meh writing). 

Greetings from Woodland Park

Guess what I did all morning and most of the afternoon? If you guessed packing books, you're right? All but one shelf in the living room are finished, then I get to tackle the bedroom bookcases. It was a lovely nearly-60-degree day, so we did walk to the park -- there were big flocks of geese and ducks completely segregated on different fields near the beach -- and we were serenaded by an eagle. 

My DS9 group watched the excellent "The Collaborator" before dinner, after which we watched the first episode of Black and Jewish in America: An Interwoven History, which had some excellent, informative interviews, though it also had Cornel West, ugh. Afterward, we finished up Lower Decks, which was never great but had a lot of fun moments. Great cats we saw at the Woodland Park Zoo:

Poem for Tuesday and Cougar Mountain Lion Cubs

Sonnet 19 

By William Shakespeare 

Devouring time, blunt thou the lion's paws

And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,

Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws

And burn the long-liv'd phoenix in her blood,

Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,

And do what e'er thou wilt, swift-footed time,

To the wide world and all her fading sweets:

But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,

O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow,

Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,

Him in thy course untainted do allow

For beauty's pattern to succeeding men.

Yet do thy worst, old time, despite thy wrong,

My love shall in my verse ever live young. 

-------- 

I had a fairly quiet Tuesday morning doing paperwork and talking to a couple of friends, then lunch, making PDFs of some of the things I scanned yesterday, and a walk to the beach just as the rain was ending, so dozens of ducks and a huge murder of ravens were emerging. We came back for my DS9 group, which watched "Blood Oath" -- the episode in which Kang, Koloth, and Kor gather with Dax to fulfill a blood oath, and while some of them take issue with the fact that Dax is no longer Curzon, none of them care that Dax is now a woman who wants to be called Jadzia. There's also a wonderful scene in which Kira talks to Jadzia about what happens when you kill people and a bunch nicely unresolved between Dax and Sisko. 

We ordered Ballard Pizza for dinner and ate it while starting to watch the last several episodes of the new Robin Hood, which remains anachronistic, hard to pin down politically (is it good English values against the invader French, or nascent Christianity softening the Saxons into better people?), and extremely entertaining. Sean Bean, Connie Nielsen, and Steven Waddington own every scene they're in, the younger women are interesting and complicated, and there's so many Plantagenet dynasty shenanigans that it feels like a Lion in Winter prequel with a much stronger Prince John. Lots of things aren't resolved so I really hope there's another season! Speaking of lions, here are the cubs at Cougar Mountain Zoo: 

Greetings from the Cougar Mountain Zoo

We spent much of Saturday at Cougar Mountain Zoo, which is in the final days of its annual Reindeer Festival -- Santa has gone back to the North Pole but the large herd of reindeer live at the zoo year-round, so we got to see all the girls with their winter racks and the boys stuffing themselves on apple pieces. We also got to see the three new lion cubs; two of the cougars for whom the zoo is named; all three wolves; the one remaining tiger; lemurs, alpacas, and deer; and the emus, cranes, and raptors who are the only birds outdoors in winter. Since we were in Issaquah, we also stopped at Wild Birds Unlimited and at Safeway.

 

We ate Christmas week leftovers for dinner, saw the delightful end of the Ravens game (sorry Packers fans but I'd really like to be in the playoffs and you already will be), and watched Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World just because we were in the mood for it; everything about it holds up beautifully, especially Russell Crowe's Jack Aubrey. Now we're watching Four Weddings and a Funeral because it's another on the "everybody but me has seen" list and I've disliked Hugh Grant for so long, for so many reasons, that I figure he's never going to get better and probably can't get worse. It feels overrated, but then I'm biased.

Poem for Thursday and Cougar Mountain Lions

The Mountain Lion 

By Ada Limón 

I watched the video clip over and over, 

night vision cameras flickering her eyes 

an unholy green, the way she looked 

the six-foot fence up and down 

like it was nothing but a speed bump, 

and cleared the man-made border 

in one impressive leap. A glance 

over the shoulder, an annoyance, 

an "as if you could keep me out, or 

keep me in." I don't know what it 

was that made me press replay and 

replay. It wasn't fear, though I'd be 

terrified if I was face to face with 

her, or heard her prowling in the night, 

it was just that I don't think I've 

ever made anything look so easy. Never 

looked behind me and grinned or 

grimaced because nothing could stop 

me. I like the idea of it though, felt 

like a dream you could will into being: 

See a fence? Jump it.

-------- 

Thursday was chilly but lovely. After reading about the new Pope, I spent a bunch of it reading China Miéville's Embassytown and a bunch of it enjoying the spring (no baby waterfowl today but there were lots of turtles and the big bullfrog). We saw most of the unfortunate Orioles game, in which the failure to bring runners home and the terrible bullpen pitching combined to ruin a decent start by Kremer, And I had my Thursday evening chat group, so I'm running late posting this! We did manage to work in the season finale of Ghosts (I'm counting on Patience to save Jay from the Devil next season), the penultimate season episode of Doctor Odyssey (which may not be back next season, so they better give us a meta episode next week), and the new episode of Hacks (it's about time, Deborah). Here are the titular attractions at the Cougar Mountain Zoo going hunting for the meat zookeepers have hidden around their enclosure: