Greetings from the Garden

I had a pretty quiet Friday working on cleaning up the black and white Tarot cards I found yesterday, plus enjoying the beautiful weather, though we saw a dead bunny on our walk in a spot where we've often seen him munching the grass, so I'm sad about that. The trees are starting to change and I'm not ready for that; I feel like we barely had summer. 

I watched Strange New Worlds again with Cheryl, then we watched Supergirl, which was okay. I didn't dislike it as much as some of the internet did, but it made me miss the early seasons of the TV show, which had a sense of humor along with the pathos. We saw some animals at Washington Park Arboretum but the dogs were sad not to get to chase them:

Greetings from Washington Park Arboretum

Quick post after Thursday night chat while watching Stuart Fails To Save the Universe -- an episode that's particularly a propos tonight because I was just talking about when I worked at AnotherUniverse and the guys could argue for an hour about whether Captain Cold could beat Mr. Freeze. 

Earlier while looking down the basement for a box with cards, I found the black and white original copies of our Star Trek Tarot deck, which I had really wanted to scan but thought were lost forever, so I wound up making it a scanning afternoon with that and all the summer mail and stuff. 

I talked to my parents, took a walk, we ordered vegan Chinese for dinner and watched "Once La'an a Time" -- this week's over the top but fun Strange New Worlds -- before chat, during which we had the Red Sox win on in the background. Late summer-early fall at Washington Park Arboretum:

Greetings from City Hall

It rained all of Monday morning, so I spent it doing exciting things like laundry, working on a book review, and cleaning the counters. Then the mail came and I got two packages I'd been waiting for from overseas, the Beatles Tarot deck from England via Kickstarter and my own reprints, after scanning and editing, of the Star Trek Tarot deck that Paul drew for me in the early 90s -- they were expensive to print and so very worth it, since I've always been afraid to shuffle the originals or risk smearing the ink with my fingers! 

My afternoon was fully distracted by the MLB trade deadline, before which the Orioles had traded a significant part of the team -- at least Ward is going to the Mariners, my side team, and Rutschman is coming here to the Red Sox, so I'll get to see him a lot sooner than I was expecting. We took a walk and started watching the second season of Citadel after dinner, but it was so insanely violent that after an episode we put on the new season of Futurama instead. Here's Worcester Common, City Hall, the Continental Army cemetery, and memorials:

Greetings from North of Boston

I had a great maritime Saturday in Salem and Revere north of Boston, seeing ships and at the beach! The Salem Maritime National Historical Park was having its Heritage Days festival, with people demonstrating historic crafts like aspects of shipbuilding, lace-making, furniture carving, and traditional cooking, plus there was a band singing sea shanties and a Cardboard Boat Regatta which I'd thought meant people tossing models into the water but was actually cardboard boats crewed by several people in a race. 

There were food trucks (Paul got fried Twinkies) and since Salem's tall ship the Friendship is being restored, Pride of Baltimore II was visiting and letting people tour the deck. We had brought a picnic and ate it at a table behind the Custom House, which was also open for tours and had an actor dressed as Nathaniel Hawthorne talking about his work there. We got to see the scales and measuring equipment, the public stores for items no one could pay duties on, and the original wooden eagle that adorned the roof. 

Since we were in Salem, we also visited several of the witch shops -- lots of Tarot, crystals, herbs, crafts, and statues, though I didn't buy any -- and walked through the downtown before driving in the late afternoon to Revere Beach. The water was much warmer than I expected and there were clam shells, mussels, and some snails, plus many seagulls and a few pigeons looking for dinner. We were at the nearly empty north end of the beach and I got so much sand in my toes that I rode the rest of the way home barefoot.

 

We ate cheesesteaks for dinner and watched part of the terrible horrible Orioles game against the Phillies before giving up and putting on the start of the second season of A Good Girl's Guide To Murder, which is pretty well written and acted but very dark. And we discovered that the rain last week stained one of our windowsills, so we cleaned that up. Now I must sleep after a really nice day!

Greetings from Wildfire Smoke

Thursday was another smoky day, though not as bad as Wednesday; it seemed to be clearing in the morning, then came back in the afternoon. So I was mostly indoors again, though we did get a walk in the evening and the bunnies seemed to be doing all right. I worked on setting up the Star Trek Tarot cards Paul drew me as a gift over 30 years ago for printing and I read some more of The Book of Air and Shadows. 

We had veggie burgers for dinner with cheese fries and I just got off a Thursday night chat which ran two hours, so I'm running late, but we only watched a bit of tonight's one baseball game (Phillies-Mets) and half an episode of Discovery. Here are ships and skyline in the background from Sail Boston, including Bunker Hill Monument, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and (I'm told) the building where Paul works:

Greetings from Hobbit Holes

I did some sorting of clothes and freecycling in the morning, then after lunch I worked on my Star Trek Tarot deck -- once I started researching companies that print decks, I realized I needed to add margins to every card. It was very hot until late afternoon storms blew through, after which we took a walk and saw a deer for the first time in our neighborhood. My DS9 group watched "Prophet Motive" -- which I absolutely despised when it first aired, but now the Bashir storyline resonates because of things the show hasn't even revealed about him yet, and I'm just going to assume we only see the Prophets through Ferengi eyes so they're completely distorted. 

The Orioles game was such a disaster that we had the Nationals-Red Sox on before it ended, then we watched The Sheep Detectives, which is very enjoyable, has adorable animals, has fun with the English murder village tropes, and lets lots of good actors baaaaa. Now I'm watching more fourth season Discovery, in which the Trill really need to shape up their anti-rejoining laws because if Dax couldn't date Lenara since their previous hosts were married, there really should be a rule against dating someone who shared your symbiont and now has an artificial body and you're psychologically linked. Tougas Family Farm's goats have Hobbit holes and overhead bridge walks:

Poem for Monday and Rhode Island Elephants

An Elephant in the Dark 

By Jalalludin Rumi 

Translated by Coleman Barks 

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.

No one here has ever seen an elephant.

They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come out

saying how we experience the animal.

One of us happens to touch the trunk.

A water-pipe kind of creature.

Another, the ear. A very strong, always moving

back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg.

I find it still, like a column on a temple.

Another touches the curved back.

A leathery throne. Another the cleverest,

feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain.

He is proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place

and understands the whole that way.

The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark

are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there,

and if we went in together, we could see it.

-------- 

Most of my Monday involved chores, as usual -- laundry, bathroom, kitchen because the stupid sugar ants keep coming no matter how much dusting and how many bait traps -- plus the start of the semiannual photo migration because I organize my photos in folders dated by half-years. That reminded me that I had scanned the Tarot deck Paul made for me for our anniversary in the early 1990s but never cleaned up the card images, so I started doing that, too, while we were watching the Germany-Paraguay World Cup game in Boston that the latter unexpectedly won. 

I missed the start of the Orioles game because the soccer went into sudden death penalty kicks after being tied for a long time, and then I didn't watch the end because the top of the final inning turned into such a disaster. In between we ate dinner and took a walk once it was finally cool outside and the bunnies started emerging, though the strawberry moon still isn't fully up. I'm watching the start of the fourth season of Discovery hoping it's better than the third season, and my laptop's 8/* key isn't working right, which is driving me insane. Here are the elephants at the Roger Williams Park Zoo: