Poem for Saturday and Mount Vernon Sheep

The Sheep
By Ellis Parker Butler

The Sheep adorns the landscape rural
And is both singular and plural—
It gives grammarians the creeps
To hear one say, “A flock of sheeps.”

The Sheep is gentle, meek and mild,
And led in herds by man or child—
Being less savage than the rabbit,
Sheep are gregarious by habit.

The Sheep grows wool and thus promotes
The making of vests, pants and coats—
Vests, pants and coats and woolen cloths
Provide good food for hungry moths.

With vegetables added to
The Sheep, we get our mutton stew—
Experiments long since revealed
The Sheep should first be killed and peeled.

Thus, with our debt to them so deep,
All men should cry “Praise be for Sheep!”—
And, if we happen to be shepherds,
“Praise be they’re not as fierce as leopards!” 

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It was colder on Friday than Thursday but that didn't stop us from taking a walk in the afternoon after a quiet morning and a lunchtime Google Meet with our kids and my parents, visited by several pets. In between I got some work done, kept some cats warm, and ate leftover labneh which always makes for a good lunch. 

We had dinner with my parents (from CPK so I got Thai pizza, yay) and spent the evening afterward watching the national figure skating championships -- I always root for Starr Andrews and Gracie Gold but Isabeau Levito was mesmerizing. From Mount Vernon earlier in January, the sheep at the upper and lower enclosures: 

Greetings from Mount Vernon

Another quick post after a nice day in gorgeous weather with Cheryl and Paul, which started with grilled cheese and a viewing of Enola Holmes 2, which was fun to watch again right after the first -- great cast and more consequential story, Brown and Cavill are delightful. Then we went to Mount Vernon, which still has its thematic decorated trees in the visitor center, the Christmas camel at the farm, and holiday sweets on the table in the mansion's New Room. 

 

When we got home, we did a lot of physical work for a couple of hours -- for me it was packing up the children's books upstairs, then moving boxes of photos onto their shelves so there's no chance of the photos being damaged in a non-climate controlled pod -- then had peanut soup and sourdough with cheese for dinner. We saw the end of the Rose Bowl and started watch the Buffalo-Cincinnati game, saw the horrific Damar Hamlin collapse, and ended up watching The Dr. Seuss Baking Challenge.

Greetings from Accokeek

The weather was strange on Saturday -- though there was a low chance of rain, we had two periods of downpour and a sky that was threatening and beautiful all afternoon. We went to the National Colonial Farm at Piscataway Park in Accokeek, where we saw Mount Vernon across the river but very few boats in the choppy water, then walked through the farm, where we saw lambs who had been born ten minutes earlier, plus pigs, cows, and other barnyard animals, and then turtles, geese, and lots of birds and bunnies around the pond. The view driving home of National Harbor and the DC monuments against the clouds was spectacular. 

 

We had cassoulet for dinner, then we caught up on Kung Fu, which we've missed the past few weeks. I think this season is better written than last but for some reason the interaction among the characters isn't grabbing me as much, or maybe it's rewatching Versailles late night as the only possible satisfactory follow-up to Our Flag Means Death. I am disappointed SNL did not make a single scarf joke about Jake Gyllenhaal, too. 

 

Poem for Wednesday and Mount Vernon Lambs

The Shepherd
By William Blake

How sweet is the Shepherd's sweet lot!
From the morn to the evening he strays;
He shall follow his sheep all the day,
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.
For he hears the lamb's innocent call,
And he hears the ewe's tender reply;
He is watchful, while they are in peace,
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.

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Tuesday felt like summer -- temperature over 75 in the afternoon, kids running around yelling on the play equipment, daffodils fading as bleeding hearts emerge, wrens singing everywhere. It was also belatedly opening day for the Nationals, who have finally gotten team coronavirus tests under control, and though it started badly, with Atlanta hitting home runs in the first, but it ended with the Nationals winning, so that was lovely to see. Of course we also took a walk to enjoy the weather. 

Dinner was leftover "ham" and cheese pie, then my Voyager group watched "Resistance" -- the episode with Joel Grey -- which still holds up very well, particularly his performance and Kate Mulgrew's. Afterward we watched this week's Supergirl, with an unbearably stupid trial of Lex Luthor and not enough Kara or Lena, followed by this week's Last Week Tonight, on which John Oliver pointed out that Jeff Bezos is a better Lex Luthor than Lex Luthor anyway. Mount Vernon spring lambs: 

Greetings for Pesach

Happy Passover! This is a quick entry while watching the end of SNL after a busy day: morning chores, early lunch, drive to Mount Vernon to see the new lambs (plus lots of flowers in the upper gardens, skinks in the woods, and actors playing various Washington-era residents talking about life there). We hit traffic on the way home and discovered that it was from people in the various parks along the Potomac, looking at the cherry blossoms from there since the Tidal Basin streets are closed to traffic for social distancing. 

We went to my parents' for the first night of Passover and a very informal seder, though I'm not sure it was less organized than last year's, when we had more people on Zoom. We talked at various points in the evening on Google Meet with my kids, my sister and one of my nieces, and we ate lots of great food made by my mother (charoset, matzoh ball soup, carrot souffle, real and fake chicken, various desserts). When we came home, we watched a bit of basketball plus the season two finale of Ghosts. More downtown photos later! 

Greetings from Mount Vernon

It was very nice out again on Saturday, so we decided after lunch -- and after it became obvious that Maryland had too many players out with positive coronavirus tests to beat Indiana -- to go see the sheep at Mount Vernon and the views of the river. We didn't go into the mansion, so I'm not sure how decorated it is for the season, but we briefly saw the decorated Christmas trees in the part of the visitor center that opens onto the grounds and we got to admire Aladdin the camel, visiting for the holidays to celebrate the fact that George Washington once brought a camel to Mount Vernon to entertain his grandchildren: 

 

 

We had ravioli for dinner, caught up on the Pac 12 games that were actually being played, then because we had randomly come across it the other day and we saw both prequels, we watched Angel Has Fallen. I could feel my brain cells shriveling as we watched -- Morgan Freeman should be very happy that his character was in a coma for most of the movie. At least Danny Huston looks like he's having fun playing (spoiler alert) That Exact Character Danny Huston Plays In Every Single Movie; Gerard Butler just looks cranky and puffy with bad fillers. I feel less embarrassed about having watched bad princess Christmas rom-coms!

Poem for Saturday and Mount Vernon Balloon

After Morning Rain
By Sam Hamill

A few small sails, barely moving,
dot Fidalgo Bay. As the sun burns away
the last pale clouds, a confluence
of robins descends to explore
my neighbor’s garden—
brown grass, muddy beds and the last
fading roses of the year.

It is September, the end of summer.
My backyard maples turning orange
and red and gold. From my high window,
the great mountain looks
painted on the horizon line,
small mountains at its feet, then
headlands and the Salish Sea below.

I can read no more today
about the agonies of this world,
its desperate refugees, the men
of arms and gold whose death tolls
are as numberless as the stars.
I’ve grown weary, impatient,
as I’ve grown old.

After this morning’s rain, I dream
only of a woman’s gentle laughter,
her fingers on my arm as we sip wine
in the evening, telling tales,
lighting the heart’s small fires
that will get us through the rains
of autumn and dark winter.

Alone at my window, I watch
a silent world and find it
welcome, my own silence welcome.
Longing has its own quiet place
in the human heart, but love
is sometimes rapturous, noisy,
almost uncivilized, and knows
no boundaries, no borders.

And what am I but its solitary
pilgrim—lost, found, lost again—
on the long journey whose only end
is silence before the burning
of my body, one last moment
of flame, a whiff of smoke
washed clean
and gone with the rain.

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Friday was overcast for much of the day and then it rained, so I didn't go anywhere exciting. I decided to upload the rest of our 2016 Seattle trip pictures since I'd started before Facebook pulled the bait-and-switch on me, and because I had to individually change the dates and locations on every single photo, that took pretty much the entire afternoon.

We watched the musical Fame since Andrew Lloyd Webber put it on his YouTube channel, and it was all right, but mostly it made me nostalgic for the movie, which it braver about both growing up gay and hanging tough to be an actress (I feel like the musical was written for high school students to perform) so I'm watching that now. Balloon launch at the Colonial Fair:

Poem for Friday and George's Estate

When I'm Old
By Michael Holding

When I'm old and mankey,
I'll never use a hanky.
I'll wee on plants
and soil my pants
and sometimes get quite cranky.

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I have nothing exciting on Thursday apart from fighting with Facebook's sucky new interface. I have a bunch of photos uploaded but I can't make them public or move them into the right albums. Either it will eventually get fixed, or people have seen all the old photos I can manage to post! After some necessary work, I went back to my neglected scanning project on old papers and found elementary school stuff in a folder with college essays! 

We caught up on The 100's penultimate episode (wondering how bad the death count will be but it's time, next week) and on the season finale of Dead Pixels (it's a ripoff that Usman's wife and her coworker weren't having sex in the kitchen while Usman was trying to defeat the Hive Mother). Now I'm watching A Simple Favor because I was in the mood for it. From Mount Vernon on the grounds around the Colonial Fair: