Poem for Tuesday and Green Lake Spring

Addiction Sonnet 

By Sharon Olds 

A prejudice is an addiction, and it’s

contagious—parents infect their children.

And addiction’s obsessive, if a man finds it

difficult to show his love to his

son, it may be because his father

escaped with his life from the village in which

his own father had just been murdered

in a pogrom, his model as a father

a man in terror.

But addiction to such a silence can be

healed, as Carl and his son tried to do,

through hard work. Workers of the world,

unite, we have nothing to lose

but the death of the earth.

-------- 

I had a fairly quiet Tuesday morning, got some work done, found some music clips from the Grammy Awards, and got some amazing photos from younger son of things he saw above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, including the aurora borealis on several nights. (Older son was trying to persuade me to play God of War: Ragnarok, or at least telling me about the mythology.) It drizzled on and off, but not when we went to walk in the afternoon. Most of the friends in my Voyager group were running late, so we ended up not watching, just chatting and catching up. 

After dinner, Paul and I watched Gran Turismo, which I enjoyed -- not usually the case for me with movies about car racing, but I knew the main character in this one did not die in a fiery crash, since the real person stood in for the actor playing him in certain scenes. It feels kind of formulaic even though it's based on a real story, the underdog outsider triumphing, but it's still entertaining. Now we're watching Netflix's Alexander: The Making of a God to see if it's better than Oliver Stone's version. Signs of spring at Green Lake:

Greetings from Brookside

Saturday was a warm, summery day. I spent the first part of it in various parts of Cabin John Park spinning Pokestops to get research to find shiny Inkay (which I did not find very many of), then we drove a bunch of books to drop off at the Friends of the Library bookstore and headed on to Brookside Gardens. Only the little frogs were out of the water, but there were lots of turtles and many swallowtail butterflies among the flowers. 

 

We stopped at Giant, came home for some Facebook Marketplace pick-ups, had veggie sausages with apples for dinner, and we've spent the evening watching the first few episodes of Paper Girls, which starts out feeling a bit like Stranger Things but then really picks up momentum and it's entirely focused on women and how they grow up, at least the first half of the season. Plus there are some actors from The 100 and For All Mankind.

Greetings from the Dump

I had a very busy Saturday being a nerd and catching regionals and raiding Ultra Beasts for the Pokemon Go Fest 2022 finale event! Which was fun and I got lots of exercise walking around Cabin John Park, and I got to raid remotely with Daniel, Katherine and her dad, and Denise and several other out of town friends. We also went to the transfer station to throw out a lot of VHS tapes and recycle their cases. 

 

We have once again spent the evening watching For All Mankind, through the penultimate episode of the second season, and I'm glad I know there's a third season or I would have to watch the next episode to make sure it didn't end with World War III! I no longer think the Soviets beating us to the moon is a great thing for the world, though if I get President Ellen Wilson next season I reserve the right to change my mind again. 

 

Greetings from Carderock

We had gorgeous weather continuing on Saturday, which I got to enjoy outdoors a lot. It was a Pokemon Community Day, so I spent a while catching and evolving Galarian Zigzagoon, first near home, then at Cabin John Park, and then at Carderock, where we went hoping to see frogs and ended up only hearing them, but we saw a wide variety of herons and ducks, plus some turtles and lots of dragonflies. 

 

We just watched The Orville's "Gently Falling Rain" (which was pretty good) and "A Tale of Two Topas" (which is one of the best Star Trek episodes I've ever seen, with the slight complication that it's not actually Star Trek, but it's a better follow-up to the unsatisfying "The Outcast" than Star Trek has ever dared to do). Both these episodes feel like they're in dialogue with specific Star Trek storylines, which I love.

 

Greetings from Washingtonian Lake

Saturday was the June Pokemon Go Community Day, so I spent a bunch of the late morning/early afternoon catching Deinos -- shinies were much more rare than usual -- and, since I needed to return something at Kohl's, we went to Washingtonian Center, where it was very warm but we still got to see lots of adolescent goslings and ducklings while walking around the lake. 

 

Vudu had In Time super-cheap this week and since I like that movie despite its heavy-handed sci-fi metaphors, I got it and we watched it. We also watched CODA, which I absolutely loved -- I know not all deaf people were delighted with the focus on the daughter who could hear but I thought it was a beautifully acted family story and I loved the New England fishing town setting.

Greetings from Brookside

I originally had plans on Sunday to go to the Virginia Renfaire, but after some scheduling problems with the person I thought I was meeting there, I decided that the over-two-hour drive in each direction wasn't worth it. I hadn't planned on doing much for the second day of Pokemon Go Fest -- raiding and battling aren't really my thing -- but I accepted a neighbor's invitation to meet her kids' Pokemon friend group and did a bunch of raids with my friend, her friend, and their kids at Cabin John Park. Then we went to Brookside Gardens, where the rose garden is in full bloom, there are still lots of goslings, and many people were playing Pokemon there too! 

 

We drove through the Shriver Aquatic Center where I did several more raids including a remote one with older son, then we stopped at the food store again because we forgot mixed nuts and, more importantly, cat treats yesterday. We had noodles for dinner before watching the Jurassic World special of LEGO Masters, then Jurassic Park III, which I've only seen a couple of times, unlike the other Jurassic movies -- it's definitely not as well written or directed as the first two, but it's short and well-paced, the cast has a lot of nice chemistry, and sometimes a dinosaur movie doesn't need to be a metaphor for human hubris but can be a family story! 

 

Greetings from Cabin John Park

Saturday morning marked the start of Pokemon Go Fest, so of course we both managed to sleep late -- still getting on east coast time! So made sandwiches while I caught up, then we spent a few hours in the park with other people catching and raiding Pokemon, plus many dogs and their humans, lots of kids wanting to ride the train, and all the chipmunks and squirrels racing up the trees! 

 

We did some food shopping, talked to my in-laws, had more picnic-type food for dinner, just spent the evening watching the first two Jurassic Park movies -- we have tickets for Jurassic World: Dominion the Monday after it opens, and want to remember the details of the earlier ones -- I'd forgotten pretty much the whole cast of The Lost World so that was enormous fun and I'm excited!