Greetings from Shrewsbury

It rained the entire day on Tuesday so it's all kind of a blur. I spent too much time doomscrolling, telling off people who just had absolutely no idea Graham Platner could be such a disaster for the Democrats I mean who could have seen that coming, and insisting that however evil you may think Taylor Swift is and for whatever reason, you just sound like a clown when you compare her to Donald Trump. 

I did, at least, get the laundry folded, some World Cup watched, and some reading done, and I got to chat with Chris for a bit in the afternoon. My DS9 group watched "Visionary" -- poor Miles O'Brien -- and when the Orioles game got too terrible we put on Swapped, which is beautifully animated, amusingly performed, and generally charming. Crafts for sale at the Scandinavian Midsummer Festival:

Poem for Thursday and Farrel-McWhirter Barnyard

People 

By Yevgeny Yevtushenko 

Translated by Boris Dralyuk and Jennifer Croft 

There are no boring people in this world.

Each fate is like the history of a planet.

And no two planets are alike at all.

Each is distinct — you simply can’t compare it.

If someone lived without attracting notice

and made a friend of their obscurity —

then their uniqueness was precisely this.

Their very plainness made them interesting.

Each person has a world that’s all their own.

Each of those worlds must have its finest moment

and each must have its hour of bitter torment —

and yet, to us, both hours remain unknown.

When people die, they do not die alone.

They die along with their first kiss, first combat.

They take away their first day in the snow…

All gone, all gone — there’s just no way to stop it.

There may be much that’s fated to remain,

but something — something leaves us all the same.

The rules are cruel, the game nightmarish —

it isn’t people but whole worlds that perish.

People die. Their deaths can’t be reversed.

Their secret worlds won’t be traversed

again. And all that’s ever left for me to do

is cry, How can we lose you, too?

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We had rain all day Thursday, very hard at times, though it let up enough in the afternoon that while we'd been thinking about going to walk around in the mall, we managed to walk to the beach instead and had it all to ourselves with the geese, ducks, and eagles. I was working on a project most of the morning and did some reading in the afternoon, then we ate dinner early so I could get on my Thursday night chat. We watched this week's Ghosts (cringe with Trevor's daughter), and we've been watching Twin Peaks afterward -- Richard Beymer in Oz! The pine weasel fashion show riot! Social media has been a shitshow of unprecedented proportions and the Seattle/King County votes haven't even all been tallied, so maybe tomorrow I'll read books entirely and avoid Facebook. Some of the Farrel-McWhirter farm animals on Sunday: 

Greetings for Election Night

Election Day in Seattle came with nice weather, at least until the wind and rain blew in tonight and knocked down some tree branches. I got some stuff done in the morning, then we ate lunch and went out -- to vote, to pick up prescriptions at CVS -- which had a grand opening party over the weekend and was giving away pillboxes, travel cups, various snacks, and bead sets for friendship bracelets -- and to take a walk at Marymoor since we were on that side of Redmond. For the first time in all our times going there, we were able to see Mount Rainier from the parking lot for the dog park! We came home so I could watch DS9's "The Alternate" with my Tuesday night group -- I love the Odo episodes. 

Then we ate goulash and followed the election results. I've kept my mouth shut about NYC because I don't live in NYC, but now that the election is over, I'll say that when someone claims he'll be the mayor for every Jewish New Yorker, then declares on election day that he supports BDS for NYC -- a man who has spent his political career delegitimizing, demonizing, and supporting the destruction of the state of Israel, long before the past couple of years when he insisted it was the current Israeli government and the war -- I have no doubt that he'll do everything in his power to make life miserable for Israelis and for American Jews who support their families and friends there because he says so. 

The Seattle-area races mostly went as I wanted, though we don't know all the suburban results yet (we mostly had Democrats vs Democrats and not a lot of DSA out here). The cats seem to have recovered from their ordeal yesterday though Katniss's kidney numbers are high and we have to find out whether to change their food again. We watched the Talamasca episode we missed Sunday -- it was okay, the show just isn't grabbing me the way the other Anne Rice-based shows did -- and The Morning Show, which was mostly about Jennifer Aniston and Jeremy Irons playing one parent-child and the outstanding Lindsay Duncan and Billy Crudup playing another. Some snapshots of my day minus the car wash:

Poem for Tuesday and Wildfire Smoke

Smoke 

By Philip Levine 

Can you imagine the air filled with smoke?

It was. The city was vanishing before noon

or was it earlier than that? I can't say because

the light came from nowhere and went nowhere.

This was years ago, before you were born, before

your parents met in a bus station downtown.

She'd come on Friday after work all the way

from Toledo, and he'd dressed in his only suit.

Back then we called this a date, some times

a blind date, though they'd written back and forth

for weeks. What actually took place is now lost.

It's become part of the mythology of a family,

the stories told by children around the dinner table.

No, they aren't dead, they're just treated that way,

as objects turned one way and then another

to catch the light, the light overflowing with smoke.

Go back to the beginning, you insist. Why

is the air filled with smoke? Simple. We had work.

Work was something that thrived on fire, that without

fire couldn't catch its breath or hang on for life.

We came out into the morning air, Bernie, Stash,

Williams, and I, it was late March, a new war

was starting up in Asia or closer to home,

one that meant to kill us, but for a moment

the air held still in the gray poplars and elms

undoing their branches. I understood the moon

for the very first time, why it came and went, why

it wasn't there that day to greet the four of us.

Before the bus came a small black bird settled

on the curb, fearless or hurt, and turned its beak up

as though questioning the day. "A baby crow,"

someone said. Your father knelt down on the wet cement,

his lunchbox balanced on one knee and stared quietly

for a long time. "A grackle far from home," he said.

One of the four of us mentioned tenderness,

a word I wasn't used to, so it wasn't me.

The bus must have arrived. I'm not there today.

The windows were soiled. We swayed this way and that

over the railroad tracks, across Woodward Avenue,

heading west, just like the sun, hidden in smoke.

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I didn't have an eventful Tuesday morning -- work and chores -- but it was primary election day, so after lunch we went out to drop off our ballots and to stop at Safeway for a couple of things. Then we came home to take a walk to the park. The smoke was a better today -- at least, we couldn't smell it -- though it was still cooler and more overcast than originally predicted. It's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow morning, which ought to help clear it out.

 

My Trek group watched DS9's awesome "In the Hands of the Prophets" (Winn and Bareil!), plus the episode of In Living Color in which Jim Carrey plays Captain Kirk because Paul Wesley channeled him so well in Strange New Worlds this week. Then we saw the end of the Orioles loss to the Phillies and the start of the Mariners victory over the White Sox around dinner. Now we're watching the season finale of The Buccaneers, which remains gloriously over the top.

Poem for Thursday and Swans Trail Newborns

Twelfth Night From The Willow Cabin 

By Mary Szybist 

Can you see through the window, the moth

(color of old handkerchief) flickering up

through the dark -- as if it would tell us something?

It doesn't. I continue to stack

the forks neck upon neck until they lie

still, they lie right. The moth flutters

lower. The cross-eyed cat approaches

with its tiny, bee-like mouth.

How can I say what it is to see it

brush you? As it denies me

even the smallest affection, I call it

Lucy, after the rich woman of Sicily

who spooned out

each of her eyes,

placed them on a platter,

and sent it to her suitor as a way of refusing...

What separates self from the flutter

of longing? They don't fit

the way these spoons fit into each other.

They are more like knives that won't stack.

We do not own ourselves. We do

we know not what, and fear it: yes,

I believe miracles might change me,

but I mean conversion from.

O sweet burn-all-over,

we do not distinguish thirst

from hunger, nor the cat

at our feet, temptation from

the moth at the window. O sweet

burn I have always wanted

this pleasure, this end

-- yet I intend to be gentle.

-------- 

Thursday was a study for me in how even smart people often would rather read two articles from sources that fit their bias and decide that they're experts in something they didn't know the first thing about a day earlier. I was out of spoons by evening just begging people to check their facts and getting accused of various prejudices over that simple request, without anyone giving two fucks why I and the people I was citing were feeling triggered, so although it was a pretty quiet day around here, I am not in a good mood. 

It was yet again a lovely day outside, a bit drizzly and cool for swimming so the beach wasn't crowded and the skies were full of birds. Our evening TV alternated between The OA, which I've been meaning to watch for ten years and which I'm already obsessed with (STOP BEING EVIL JASON ISAACS), and The Bear, which has some slow parts but I forgave everything because of the visit to the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, a tour we did many times when we lived in Chicago. More baby animals from Swans Trail Farms' festival last weekend:

Poem for Monday and Nature at Green Lake

The Sun Rising 

By John Donne

               Busy old fool, unruly sun,

               Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

               Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

               Late school boys and sour prentices,

         Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,

         Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

               Thy beams, so reverend and strong

               Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

               If her eyes have not blinded thine,

               Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

         Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine

         Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with me.

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, All here in one bed lay.

               She's all states, and all princes, I,

               Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honor's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

               Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,

               In that the world's contracted thus.

         Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

         To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.

 

-------- 

Monday was cool and overcast, but that's actually supposed to be the best weather we get for the next few days, so we went out to enjoy it after an uneventful morning of computer stuff and laundry. I made the mistake of actually discussing politics online with people, which took more screaming time than it was worth, so I needed a walk to the beach. 

We caught up on the Watson episode we missed on Sunday because it shares a time slot with Suits and the latter is still grabbing me more; I like Watson and I like Derian, but I need better character development and a much stronger background arc. Now we're watching the excellent "Broken" on House. Flowers and wildlife at Green Lake:

Poem for Wednesday and Downtown Frederick

A Song on the Water
By Thomas Lovell Beddoes

                      I.
As mad sexton’s bell, tolling
          For earth’s loveliest daughter,
Night’s dumbness breaks rolling
               Ghostily:
   So our boat breaks the water
               Witchingly.

                      II.
As her look the dream troubles
          Of her tearful-eyed lover,
So our sails in the bubbles
               Ghostily
   Are mirrored, and hover
               Moonily.

-------- 

Tuesday was a gorgeous day with lots of sunshine that brought out many crocuses and some daffodils in the neighborhood. I spent a bunch of it working on my scanning project and had nice conversations with people I hadn't talked to in a long time but with whom I used to exchange long letters. Paul made pancakes for lunch and veggie gumbo for dinner for Mardi Gras, though neither of us officially celebrates Shrove Tuesday. 

My Voyager friends and I watched the terrible "Favorite Son" -- vampire succubi in space! -- then Paul and I watched the State of the Union, followed immediately by this week's The Gilded Age which wasn't great but had to be better than the Republican response. Then we watched the first episode of Last Tango in Halifax at the suggestion of several people, which we liked. From around downtown Frederick's Carroll Creek Park: 

Greetings from Cabin John Park

Tonight my excuse for being quick is we're bingeing Peacemaker (we're watching episode seven, I think there's one more next week?). Friday was an absolutely gorgeous day, weather in the 60s, I took one walk around the neighborhood to see the daffodil shoots and snowdrops here, then when Paul was done with work meetings, we went to Cabin John Park to see if the crocuses were up yet (they were not, but there were lots of snowdrops there too). 

I also fought with my computer which hates the Windows update, uploaded a lot of photos, watched mixed team snowboard cross, and tried to keep up with the lunacy surrounding Valieva for whom I feel very sorry. Obviously this is on her coach and trainer, but she and her team must be disqualified for the reasons they're called the ROC and not the Russian team, and I suspect Putin actually wants us hating her instead of him when he invades Ukraine.