Greetings from Scott's Run

I think I'm going to be brief all week while my kids are here because I'm distracted and playing catch-up in the evenings on email and sorting photos. Tuesday was a gorgeous day; we had a quiet morning doing some research for Paul's parents, then we had lunch (with cat assistance) and went to Scott's Run, which we haven't visited all together since 2014! We took the formerly annual stepping-stones photo (previous versions here. 

Then we took Daniel to Microcenter to buy a new laptop -- their prices are better than any he'd found in Seattle -- and we stopped in Dollar Tree, World Market, and Trader Joe's for various food items while we were in that shopping center. We had dinner with my parents, and when we got home, Adam worked on repairing a guitar that used to belong to his uncle Dave while Daniel set up his new computer. Some of the photos I took today: 

Poem for Tuesday and Carderock Park

How to Change a Frog Into a Prince
By Anna Denise

Start with the underwear. Sit him down.
Hopping on one leg may stir unpleasant memories.
If he gets his tights on, even backwards, praise him.
Fingers, formerly webbed, struggle over buttons.
Arms and legs, lengthened out of proportion, wait,
as you do, for the rest of him to catch up.
This body, so recently reformed, reclaimed,
still carries the marks of its time as a frog. Be gentle.
Avoid the words awkward and gawky.
Do not use tadpole as a term of endearment.
His body, like his clothing, may seem one size too big.
Relax. There's time enough for crowns. He'll grow into it.

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Monday mostly involved chores. Nothing interesting happened, apart from catching up on Once Upon a Time (lesbian love story good, having it be Henry's fantasy not so good), until the late afternoon, when we took a walk at Carderock, where we saw lots of birds and frogs and flowers, plus a low-flying helicopter, enormous houses, and the waterfall at Scott's Run across the river in Virginia:

















We were near Carderock so we could stop at the Bethesda Co-op, where we got wonderful crusty bread and strawberry moscato. We had Yankee pot roast for dinner for Patriots' Day since Paul grew up in Boston. Evening TV included the season finale of Supergirl, which I mostly liked though that speech was way too long, and Blindspot, which had some cringe-worthy homophobic stereotypes.

Poem for Friday and Scott's Run

It sifts from Leaden Sieves
By Emily Dickinson

It sifts from Leaden Sieves —
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road —

It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain —
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again —

It reaches to the Fence —
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces —
It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack — and Stem —
A Summer’s empty Room —
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them —

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen —
Then stills its Artisans — like Ghosts —
Denying they have been —

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I'm watching Christopher Walken chomp scenery as the most flamboyant pirate ever in Peter Pan Live (getting his hook polished, getting the first on his ass blown out, singing with a crew that must have been kicked out of Penzance for too much simulated sodomy, excuse me, leap frog -- seriously, there are more stereotypical moves in this than there were in La Cage Aux Folles, though I really miss Jason Isaacs' Mr. Darling anyway), and I don't have a lot to report besides chilly weather, bunnies, chores, and an article I'm not much in the mood to write. So have some Scott's Run scenery:

Poem for Tuesday and Family at Scott's Run

Dust of Snow
By Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

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I had ambitious catch-up plans for Monday but mostly I got the laundry washed, if not folded, and the photos uploaded to Flickr, if not sorted and unlocked. I blame this partially on Cyber Monday -- I could not believe the amount of mail I got, I felt so popular, nearly 200 emails devoted entirely to trying to get me to buy stuff, even from mailing lists from which I thought I'd removed myself years ago! -- and partially on the fact that Thanksgiving is better at inspiring me to make New Year's resolutions than New Year's Eve, while the latter in fact does a much better job of inspiring me to be thankful. People were weird on social media, inspiring me to avoid it.

The weather was amazing all day: cloudy but quite warm in the morning and afternoon (the bunnies were hiding when I took a walk just as the rain was starting, but I saw six deer, including the stag), then temperatures dropping very swiftly after dark, so that by the time we ate dinner we had to close all the windows and an hour later the heat came on. We watched the mid-season finale of Sleepy Hollow, which was a bit of a letdown but had Ichabod commandeering a motorcycle which made up for pretty much everything, then another episode of Madam Secretary, which I am loving and so grateful for On Demand! Family at Scott's Run:

Poem for Monday and Scott's Run

As You Never Bothered to Return My Call
By August Kleinzahler

What I had wanted was to be chaste,
sober and uncomfortable
for a sprawling episode on a beach somewhere
dirty, perennially out of fashion;
let the smell of cocoa butter drive deep memory wild
as the sun went down, a parti-colored blur,
examined through a bottle of pop
some kid gave up on only half-way through
and left to go warm in the sand.

The train ride would be long and hot,
and you, you've had it with men.
Me ...
        I'm sickened by the pronoun.
Tenderness seems as far away as Sioux City
and besides, it would have cost too much.
But you should have called,

if only since a preposterous little episode like this
is just the stuff to scare off extra friends,
like soaking their laps with corrosive fizz.
And us ...
              What an impertinence, us.
We could have played gin rummy and taken a stroll
into town or along the boardwalk, maybe,
                                      with dear old Godzilla,
the first one, the best one, the 1954 one,
reprising his role this one last time, raising himself up
over the horizon at dusk,
and hurrying us to a place we never would have
dreamt of
              going.

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We ended Thanksgiving weekend with a nice, relaxing day with our kids that started with everyone sleeping late, so we did not find Adam snow boots while Black Friday sales were still in effect, but he can probably make it till winter break unless we get an early snowpocalypse, which given the past few years is possible. Eventually everyone got up and we had lunch, then went to Scott's Run Nature Preserve right across the bridge to Virginia, where we hiked along the creek to the Potomac River, which is wide and flat there but kind of low, good for skipping stones and watching canoeists. Practically everyone we saw had a dog. We were a bit late in the season for our annual photo, so there were not many leaves left on the trees:


Here are Paul, Daniel, and Adam at Scott's Run.


Here is the 2013 version of the photo...


...and the 2012 version....


...and the 2011 version...


...and the 2010 version...


...and the 2009 version...


...and the 2008 version...


...and the 2007 version...


...and the 2006 version...


...and the 2005 version...


...and the 2004 version...


...and the 2003 version, in which I forgot to fix the settings so I got a blurry photo.

Because we were out enjoying the beautiful weather, we did not watch any of the Ravens game, which they blew at the end (kind of the way the Terps blew their game on Saturday, while Washington can't seem to win with or without RGIII). We did take Daniel food shopping, and we took both sons to Noodles & Company for an early dinner (I had the Indonesian peanut noodles with tofu, which was yummy), then to Cold Stone Creamery (which now has peppermint ice cream for the season, which is also yummy!). We watched what I thought was the mid-season finale of Once Upon a Time but apparently there's a new episode next week, plus we watched another couple of episodes of Madam Secretary, with which we'll catch up eventually!

Poem for Sunday, Carderock, Olympics

Onomatomania
By Thomas Lux

the word for the inability to find the right word,
leads me to self-diagnose: onomatomaniac. It's not
the 20 volume OED, I need,
nor Dr. Roget's book, which offers
equals only, never discovery.
I accept the fallibility of language,
its spastic elasticity,
its jake-leg, as well as prima ballerina, dances.
I accept that language
can be manipulated towards deceit
(ex.: The Mahatmapropaganda, i.e., Goebbels);
I accept, and mourn, though not a lot,
the loss of the dash/semi-colon pair.
It's the sound of a pause unlike no other pause.
And when the words are tedious
and tedious also their order--sew me up
in a rug and toss me in the sea!
Language is dying, the novel is dying, poetry
is a corpse colder than the Ice Man,
they've all been dying for thousands of years,
yet people still write, people still read,
and everyone knows that nothing is really real
until it is written.
Until it is written!
Even those who cannot read
know that.

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From Poets.org's Poem-A-Day on Friday, this lovely piece, about which Lux says, "I was annoyed by one of the occasional poetry-is-dead articles...I refute that notion."

We're watching the Olympics so there may be some rather distracted posts for the next couple of weeks. (If I ever thought perhaps we should boycott, The Book Thief and the Hitler Youth boy who desperately wanted to be Jesse Owens changed my mind; we need our gay athletes to have the support to excel.) We all watched the skating live in the morning; then we went out to Carderock, where the Potomac River was pretty high and the path was pretty muddy, but the weather was beautiful and we had a beautiful view of the waterfall at Scott's Run from across the river:









We had butternut squash lasagna for dinner courtesy Paul, then in the evening Adam's friend Daniel W came over and watched the Olympics with us for a while -- some of the skating we'd seen before and some skiing and snowboarding events we had not. I always get briefly excited about skating during the Olympics, then get annoyed about some seemingly arbitrary or fixed score and don't pay much attention during the intervening years. (Doesn't have to be Americans; my all-time favorite skaters are British and Russian.) Lots of people skating to Les Mis makes me smile!

Poem for Monday and Scotts Run

"I'm afraid of death"
By Kathleen Ossip

I'm afraid of death
because it inflates
the definition
of what a person
is, or love, until
they become the same,
love, the beloved,
immaterial.

I'm afraid of death
because it invents
a different kind of
time, a stopped clock
that can't be reset,
only repurchased,
an antiquity.

I'm afraid of death,
the magician who
makes vanish and who
makes odd things appear
in odd places--your
name engraves itself
on a stranger's chest
in letters of char.

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Our morning was spent doing chores -- Adam had to get forms signed for school, Daniel needed his new linens washed, things like that. Then, since it was Daniel's last full day at home, we all went out to Minerva for Indian buffet for lunch and ate lots -- they had more vegetarian choices than ever before, plus Tandoori eggs. After a couple of shopping stops, we went to hike to the river at Scotts Run, having realized that we might not be able to get everyone there in the fall for the annual family photo and wanting to do it while we had the opportunity, even if it will have greener leaves than usual!


A dog enjoying the creek at Scotts Run...


...and a snake enjoying the sun.


We had to climb over and around the branches of a big tree down across the path.


But we made it to the Potomac.


Here is Scotts Run falling to the river.


There were damselflies above the water...


...and toads hiding in the woods.


A variation on the annual family Scotts Run photo.

We came home and watched the end of the Saints-Texans game, sent Adam off to go swimming with a friend since he'd finished his summer homework, and had a small dinner since we were all still full from lunch. Then we put on the VMA Awards -- Daniel wanted to see Daft Punk, I wanted to see N'Sync, Paul wanted to see what was the silliest performance -- but after Miley Cyrus and the bears, we couldn't take any more and switched to this week's episode of The White Queen (wow it's hard not to hate Margaret), then the end of the 49ers-Vikings game. We did not see the Orioles win or the Nationals lose!