Poem for Wednesday and Nordic Museum Vikings

I Tried to Find a Dinosaur
By Kenn Nesbitt

I tried to find a dinosaur.
I started in my yard.
I dug and dug for days and days.
The work was long and hard.

I dug through dirt and mud and muck.
I dug through rocks and soil.
My arms grew sore. My legs grew weak
from all the sweat and toil.

I shoveled tons of gravel out.
I moved a bunch of stones,
until, at last, to my surprise,
I found some fossil bones.

I put the bones together in
my bedroom on the floor.
When I was done, those bones had formed
a half a dinosaur.

My parents weren’t too happy when
I told them of my goal.
I found a half a dinosaur,
but then they found the hole.

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My Tuesday was pretty low-key -- a trip to CVS for contact lens solution and toothpaste, a walk in the rain, and I finally finished Kris Waldherr's The Lost History of Dreams, which I started reading on the plane back from Seattle -- but I am having a "cancer sucks" week now involving multiple friends, all people around my own age. It's making me really sad.

My Voyager group watched "The Raven" -- an episode in which I like Seven and mostly like Janeway -- then Paul and I watched Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which fulfills both the haunted house and global catastrophe promises of the first Jurassic Park and also keeps the intact-family theme of previous films. Viking artifacts from the National Nordic Museum:

A reproduction of the Oseberg ship, found near Tonsberg, Norway (yes, New Asgard), which contains a burial chamber for two high-status women.


A Viking picture stone from Gotland, the island apaulled's paternal ancestors came from. (I actually own a reproduction of the ship on this stone on a necklace I bought several years ago!)


Key events of the Viking era, including the invasion of England.


Tools, some dating back to the Bronze and Iron Ages, discovered in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.


Adornment items including a trefoil brooch, shield pendant, Thor's hammer, and amulet in the shape of a Valkyrie.


Items important to seafarers: a compass, a piece of feldspar to track the sun on a cloudy day, and a raven -- Odin's bird -- to indicate the nearness of land.


School reproduction of a Viking boat.


Me and Odin in the Norse Mythology section.

Poem for Wednesday and Westboro Baptist Fail

Discovery
By Florence Ripley Mastin

The gray path glided before me
Through cool, green shadows;
Little leaves hung in the soft air
Like drowsy moths;
A group of dark trees, gravely conferring,
Made me conscious of the gaucherie of sound;
Farther on, a slim lilac
Drew me down to her on the warm grass.
“How sweet is peace!”
My serene heart said.

Then, suddenly, in a curve of the road,
Red tulips!
A bright battalion, swaying,
They marched with fluttering flags,
And gay fifes playing!

A swift flame leapt in my heart;
I burned with passion;
I was tainted with cruelty;
I wanted to march in the wind,
To tear the silence with gay music,
And to slash the sober green
Until it sobbed and bled.

The tulips have found me out.

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I had quite a nice Tuesday despite spending more than an hour of it standing in the rain, since I was among friends in a happy, uplifting crowd. The hatemongers from Westboro Baptist Church had announced plans to protest at my high school -- the same high school from which Adam graduated 30 years after I did -- because the school has a LGBT student group, and though the principal had requested that there not be a counter-protest for a variety of safety-related reasons, a bunch of parents agreed that we should at least show solidarity with the LGBT kids. We knew the county police would be there so we knew it would be safe for everyone.

So I parked several blocks away, which is necessary during school hours due to parking restrictions, and walked to the school, bumping into several other parents I knew including the mother of one of Adam's high school friends on the way. Once I arrived, I ran into the Hermans, my parents' good friends whom I've known since I was a baby, so I got the added pleasure of getting to catch up with them while people were arriving, blasting Madonna and Sara Bareilles and waving signs (though given the weather, I opted for a rainbow tie-dye skirt and rainbow umbrella). There were a couple hundred of us; there were fewer than five from WBC!

















The rest of the day was not nearly as interesting, though Paul was working from home so at least I got to see him. I did work, did chores, folded laundry while catching up on Once Upon a Time, and eventually had dinner, before which we watched this week's Flash (so glad Harrison isn't dead in all universes), Agents of SHIELD (I knew they'd do that to May, and oh, come on, Coulson, ICK!), and Limitless (better every week, especially the women characters). We are sad because our neighbor's cat, whom she's had since our kids were small, has died...but tomorrow we may be getting back Heather's rescue kittens!

Poem for Saturday and Prairie Dogs

The Akedah Cycle 8: Together
By Rachel Barenblat

The two of them walked together
Yitzchak and Ishmael
they never spoke again
after their mothers quarreled

Yitzchak and Ishmael
beneath the cloudless sky
after their mothers quarreled
exchanged one last embrace

beneath the cloudless sky
Sarah and her son
exchanged one last embrace
before the three-day journey

Sarah and her son
drew water from the well
before the three-day journey
barefoot in the dust

drawing water from the well
Avraham plumbed the depths
barefoot in the dust
asking God for insight

Avraham plumbed the depths
he looked up to the mountain
asking God for insight
his heart afire with fear

he looked up to the mountain
they never spoke again
his heart afire with fear
the two of them walked together

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From 70 Faces: Torah Poems (also on her web site).

Friday was quiet. I had a bunch of work to do and a bunch of mail to answer -- weird how a single night with no electricity/internet can put me way behind. The weather was gorgeous, low 60s and overcast most of the day though we had some afternoon sun while I was outside. My eye is STILL bugging me and still gross, which at this point is extremely annoying -- it's been a week!

We had dinner with my parents, watched this week's Telefon episode of Nikita which I enjoyed despite the predictability and "Dagger of the Mind" factors, then thought we were putting on the first episode of the new season of Boardwalk Empire but it ended up being the last episode of the last season, so we have to catch up tomorrow. (Could someone spoil me please if Jimmy did anything terrible to Angela? She's not in any of the ads.)

Fannish5: Name five characters whose religious beliefs are important to them.
1. Dana Scully, The X-Files
2. Kira Nerys, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
3. Stephen Maturin. Master & Commander
4. Evelyn Ryan, Dawson's Creek
5. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars

The Friday Five: Cellular/mobile phones
1. When did you get your first cell phone? Sometime in the late '90s.
2. How old were you at the time? In my early 30s.
3. What type of phone was it? Qualcomm made it for Bell Atlantic Mobile.
4. What type of phone do you have now? A Droid Incredible 2 on Verizon.
5. Do you prefer calling or texting/mailing? Texting/mailing.

Here are the prairie dogs at the Maryland Zoo. Apparently whatever was growing outside their pen was more exciting than what they were fed, because although a couple of them were eating their zoo rations, several of them were climbing the fence to eat whatever was outside it: