The Little Review

Poem for Friday

2008-05-16T03:30:00Z

Blake
By Adam Zagajewski
Translated by Clare Cavanagh

I watch William Blake, who spotted angels
every day in treetops
and met God on the staircase
of his little house and found light in grimy alleys—

Blake, who died
singing gleefully
in a London thronged
with streetwalkers, admirals, and miracles,

William Blake, engraver, who labored
and lived in poverty but not despair,
who received burning signs
from the sea and from the starry sky,

who never lost hope, since hope
was always born anew like breath,
I see those who walked like him on graying streets,
headed toward the dawn's rosy orchid.

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If I hadn't posted the lyrics to Vienna Teng's "City Hall" less than a year ago, I'd have posted them today -- I was singing them all of Thursday afternoon after I got the news from California. Finally news that puts an unreserved smile on my face! Because while I think the woman in the MySpace suicide case deserved to be indicted, that's not exactly happy news, and the news out of China about the quake toll keeps getting worse, and while it's nice enough that Brad and Angelina are having twins it's also boggling to me that that's a top news story.

I met gblvr for lunch, insisting on the mall so she could get sushi and I could see if Sears had the same skort I got yesterday in another pattern but they didn't have it in my size. Then I persuaded her to come back to my house because I had some stuff for the con.txt giveaway table (old fan club newsletters and zines) and art by mamadracula for the art show, which then led to me calling the artist herself to wax nostalgic about when we both loved Voyager and all related fannishness. I spent the early evening going through a huge stack of magazines -- mostly EW, Smithsonian, British Heritage and Astronomy with a few others thrown in -- trying to figure out what we wanted to save out of the huge number we need to recycle. If anyone knows a specific issue in the last three years that you're dying for and that you suspect I won't want (like, you can't have any Russell Crowe covers or Jamestown landing anniversary stuff), let me know!

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I can think of no nicer way to describe the Smallville season finale than an enormous letdown, but really I could say that for the season itself, too...I wasn't bored the way I've been at times in earlier years but it was so wildly inconsistent that I didn't know what show I would be watching from week to week and I often didn't care. On the one hand, Lana was in a coma for much of the latter part of the season, thus sparing us Kristin Kreuk's acting, and her farewell message would seem to indicate that she's not going to be around so much next season...except of course they've teased us with that possibility before and then had her all over the show again. And on the other hand, we've lost Lionel for good, and possibly Brainiac as well unless there's another copy of him out there, and Martha hasn't been a presence even in occasional mentions, and Kara has been so inconsistent that I actually thought it might be her even though it made sense that it was Brainiac for the first part of the episode.

At least there was plenty of might-have-been Clark/Lex love in the finale. Lois wants to know why Lex and Clark were so close for so long, and Clark says sadly that sometimes people don't turn out to be what you thought they were. Lex justifies his attack on the Traveler and the Fortress with the wounded cry, "Who am I to turn my back on my fellow man, especially after you turned your back on me?" And then makes his farewells, "I love you like a brother, Clark, but it has to end this way. I'm sorry." Is that "I love you like a brother" the way Remus embraced Sirius like a brother in Prisoner of Azkaban? *cough*

But really, not much else made me smile, other than Brainiac taunting Clark that he can't kill another man and Clark announcing, "You're not a man" while my whole family was saying just that aloud, hah, and Lana apparently making her farewells via a mix CD except it turned out to be a DVD recording which isn't nearly as much fun. If Michael Rosenbaum isn't coming back, how are they going to recover Clark but not Lex? Do I care enough to tune in next season? Doubtful, but Adam says he still wants to watch, so I suppose I may, too.

The Next Gen episode I need to review Friday came across a lot better by comparison -- "The Defector," one of several superb bottle shows this season. With Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner doing Henry V.

Poem for Thursday

2008-05-15T03:50:22Z

A Spring Day
By Masaoka Shiki
Translated by Janine Beichman

On how to sing
the frog school and the skylark school
are arguing.

A spring day
A long line of footprints
On the sandy beach.

Double cherry blossoms
Flutter in the wind
One petal after another.

At the full moon's
rising, the silver-plumed
reeds tremble

entangled with
the scattering cherry blossoms --
the wings of birds!

--------

The major event of my day was my annual visit to the OB-GYN to discuss such thrilling matters as familial cancer history, whether I would be a good candidate for DNA screening, whether the benefits of progesterone-based IUDs outweigh the disadvantages, the fact that emergency contraception is most effective if taken within 12-14 hours rather than the 24-48 advertised, how it would be nice to be John McCain's 96-year-old mother in terms of her health, spirit and intellect (though not, you know, to be John McCain's mother) and the fact that she and I both have sons who become very upset if they see a cat catch a small rodent. I like my OB-GYN very much and would probably think about inviting her to lunch if I knew her in some other context, but the rest of the yearly exam pretty much kills any urge to see her socially!

Then I went to the mall to meet my mother for lunch, stopping in Sears because I got there early and discovering that they have belted cotton skorts on sale for $13! And denim shorts for $9 -- both of these are half price, along with pretty much everything in the store through this weekend, and since those and a new bathing suit were pretty much my only remaining shopping requirements before we go out of town next month, this was a very successful shopping trip. (Can you tell how much I do not enjoy clothes shopping?) Also, Sears has penguin hooded towels, so younger son, who used a Bug's Life towel since -- well, pretty much since A Bug's Life was in theaters -- now has not one but two new towels for the summer. And because I know I am not the only person around who looks for penguin items, Claire's has penguin nesting dolls for $8. *whistles* Mom and I had yogurt and granola and ran into the father of my oldest friend, whom I missed at this year's Superbowl party.

A woman spins alpaca wool (with her alpaca visible over her head) on Sheep & Wool Day at Frying Pan Farm Park last weekend.

Here are some little knitted alpacas for sale in the barn.

This woman is winding sheep yarn onto a spindle.

Another woman was dyeing yarn...

..and demonstrating carding and hand spinning.

These girls were demonstrating finger weaving. I walked through most of the animal pens knotting yarn over my fingers. *g*

The Moffett Blacksmith Shop, built in 1917 and moved to Frying Pan Farm Park from nearby Herndon, has a working forge where this volunteer was straightening nails found in a Baltimore shipwreck.</center>

Son made us watch Deal or No Deal filmed in South Africa...if you're the host in another country, do you have to shave your head like Howie? I liked the dancing and the drummers, otherwise disliked the show as usual. Then we watched Boston Legal, in which William Shatner gets his opportunity to run for President of the United States -- he's Canadian and Kirk would have to run for President of the Federation, a thankless job if ever there was one, though at least Spock could be his running mate!

After a flashback with Denny saying that if he was president, he'd nuke Iraq and Iran before breakfast, Denny's old adversary Paul Cruickshank visits and asks to speak to Denny alone, though Alan insists that they're married. Paul has come representing the RNC; they think McCain is as boring as Denny does, and want Denny to run for president. Alan calls this ridiculous, but Denny points out that not only did Ronald Reagan have mad cow but people like Jesse Ventura run for president all the time. In a Q&A with Republican leaders, Denny says that despite the recent Supreme Court case, he is for the death penalty, calls abortion murder and is a staunch supporter of the Republicans' most important contributors...not the Religious Right, whom he finds hypocritical and sanctimonious, but the NRA, and he has the guns to prove it.

Meanwhile, Dana has been arrested by an undercover agent and wants Jerry and Katie to represent her. Katie says they have a conflict of interest since Katie worked for Lorraine and the D.A. will want Dana to name her employer, but Dana says she won't give up Lorraine's name. Indeed, D.A. Mary (Gina Torres!) says she'll release Dana in exchange for a name, but Katie deftly says she needs to see the evidence against her client first, then shows it to Lorraine, who thinks it's ambiguous. Unwilling to take a deal that would admit wrongdoing and implicate Lorraine, Dana asks Jerry to challenge the state's law against prostitution.

Meanwhile, deadpan Renee visits Shirley, announcing that she was denied employment on the basis of gender and wanting to sue the Archdiocese of Boston for refusing to consider her as a priest. Shirley persuades Carl to join the case and gets the Not Gay judge, who calls it a sacrilegious act of heresy until Shirley cites the Bob Jones University lawsuit in which the school lost tax-exempt status for its ban on interracial dating. The Archdiocese argues that in the Church, men and women complement each other but have different roles, which Carl calls sexist. When the priest on the stand says that the Church doesn't modify its positions based on opinion polls, Carl says sure they do, and cites reversals on such issues as slavery to prove his point, saying that he has no bias because he's a Jew and they made one of his own almighty. He believes Orthodox Judaism, Islam and most branches of Christianity are just as sexist as Catholicism, and none of them should be entitled to government-sanctioned bigotry.

Alan is concerned about Denny meeting potential donors and having a physical, saying that their balcony days could be over and America does not need Denny with his finger on the nuclear button. When Denny bumps into Dana, he holds out his credit cards, then hits on Lorraine, then goes to his office to study pictures of Hillary Clinton, saying, "She has mad cow." Alan guesses that it could be post-traumatic stress disorder from dodging bullets. Yet they agree that Barack is just too pretty -- Denny thinks he used to be Whitney Houston -- and Denny confesses that while he knows he can kick Obama's or McCain's ass, he's not sure about Hillary.

In court, Jerry calls the Massachusetts law against prostitution arbitrary, saying that legalizing it would lower the number of rapes and diminish organized crime whereas keeping it criminal doesn't make it go away, just makes it more dangerous. The D.A. says that even if he's correct, it's an issue for the legislature rather than the courts, and the profession victimizes women even in places where it's legal. Jerry asks why they're wasting money going after prostitutes when they could use it to support the troops, then gloats, "I said it, 'Support our troops!' I win!" But of course he doesn't, and after one more attempt to get back together with Jerry, Dana vanishes, thus protecting Lorraine's identity and the myth of clean, attractive, pleasant prostitution rings being run by slinky, sexy British lawyers who just want a tad of excitement in their lives.

In Shirley and Carl's case, the defense argues that people in America can be free to practice the religion of their choice and Renee can choose a faith other than Catholicism, but Carl counters that America tolerates bigotry as long as it's cloaked in religion -- not just against women who have to cover their faces or sit separate from men, but gay-bashing and ignoring ethnic genocide elsewhere in the world. "Religion is a mean legacy," he observes, quoting Pat Robertson on his fellow Christians being Antichrists, Jerry Falwell on 9/11 being a punishment against homosexuals and the like. Carl says that he is a spiritual man -- "I go to temple, I pray, I believe in God" -- but he believes religion must stop allowing discrimination while seeking safe haven in the Constitution. The judge admits he had a dream in which he met God and She was furious that his honor didn't do a thing for women's rights, so he agrees that the government should not back Church bigotry with tax breaks, and finds for Renee, Shirley and Carl.

In the middle of his physical, Denny is brought on stage to shouts of "Surprise!" and lifelong friends laughing as the band plays "Hail to the Chief." Paul admits that the idea of Denny as president has all been a big joke, but as Denny stands there spluttering sadly, the FBI bursts in, ordering everyone down on their knees with their hands on their heads. They accuse Denny of fraudulently posing as a candidate, forcing Paul to admit that it was a rather mean practical joke. Then the FBI agent says, "You have all been had by Mr. Denny Crane." He knew an hour into the proposal that it was a joke, but let it run its course so he could one-up them all. And he still wants money from a large bet Paul lost to him months earlier. Alan tries to assure Denny that people are just jealous of Denny's success but Denny, who can't believe some of his oldest friends were in on it, says he has to remind himself of what's really important here: "They didn't get me. I got them."

On the balcony Denny tells Alan that he still thinks he'd make a fine president -- he'd stop outsourcing to the Chinese, drop a few bags of grain on Africa if he can figure out where the starving people are, add France to Axis of Evil...invite Hillary into Oval Office for a little taste of honey. Alan says that last is vulgar, so Denny asks what Alan wants in a president, and Alan says he would like to return dignity to the office. American culture is dumb, fat, schlocky, superficial...we have TV shows about whether we're smarter than a second grader and a president who isn't. But Alan wouldn't vote for Denny for purely selfish reasons, to keep him on the balcony. He thinks it's time for Denny's generation, which built the current America, to hand over the keys to the next generation. (Note: David E. Kelley is pretty obviously voting for Obama.) Denny is willing to consider this as long as he can also consider a threesome with Hillary and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. "Denny Crane, king for a day," he says. "Wow." And Alan, toasting their friendship, says "wow" too.

As for the current administration, it's too little too late, but at least the Department of the Interior has finally declared the polar bear a threatened species. Wow, you noticed? But still, this is better than nothing!

Poem for Wednesday

2008-05-14T03:48:37Z

Inheritance
By Eavan Boland

I have been wondering
what I have to leave behind, to give my daughters.

No good offering the view
between here and Three Rock Mountain,
the blueness in the hours before rain, the long haze afterwards.
The ground I stood on was never really mine. It might not ever be theirs.

And gifts that were passed through generations—
silver and the fluid light left after silk—were never given here.

This is an island of waters, inland distances,
with a history of want and women who struggled
to make the nothing which was all they had
into something they could leave behind.

I learned so little from them: the lace bobbin with its braided mesh,
its oat-straw pillow and the wheat-colored shawl
knitted in one season
to imitate another

are all crafts I never had
and can never hand on. But then again there was a night
I stayed awake, alert and afraid, with my first child
who turned and turned; sick, fretful.

When dawn came I held my hand over the absence of fever,
over skin which had stopped burning, as if I knew the secrets
of health and air, as if I understood them

and listened to the silence
and thought, I must have learned that somewhere.

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Most of Tuesday was a catch-up/chore day for me, except for lunch with vertigo66 whom I had not seen in ages! We met at the Corner Bakery and I went early so I could walk around the lake and see if there were goslings, but I only saw one lone baby with the older geese -- I think they must have spoiled the eggs but missed this one, because there have been years where there were more than 30 babies. I took home as much salad as I ate, and I stopped at Target to get this penguin towel for younger son and this shark towel for older son, among other travel necessities.

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I folded yesterday's laundry and watched this week's The Tudors On Demand; I wonder whether I will want to watch next season, because it's impossible to root for Henry or even feel sorry for him at this point except as an exemplar of the axiom that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I'm not even sure who I really like at this point (Jane is too sweet and innocent and bendable to everyone else's will to take seriously, and we all know how long she lasts after providing the much-demanded son, anyway). Plus no matter how much I dislike Henry, I am incapable of rooting for Thomas Boleyn to be Lord Protector of England.

Much of my late afternoon and evening was taken up with moving books among the new bookcase in the basement and various others; most of the poetry is now upstairs, all of the photography magazines are downstairs on shelves, the new fiction is shelved with the old fiction although not remotely alphabetized as yet. This will be a many day project. I was sorry to see that Robert Rauschenberg has died; he was a monumental talent. And I feel awful for the people trapped in the natural disasters in Asia -- the images from that high school in China are unbearable.

Poem for Tuesday

2008-05-13T03:06:29Z

Towards Kiyomizu
By Yosano Akiko
Translated by Dennis Maloney and Hide Oshiro

Towards Kiyomizu, crossing Gion
under moonlit cherry blossoms
this evening, everyone passing
is beautiful.

The passionate gaze of the bride
contradicts the white Hagi flowers she holds;
the god of love slyly
smiles this evening.

Listen, Lord!
Love is the voice of admiration
for violets
in the purple evening.

Hair unbound from this hot house
of lovemaking scented with lilies
I dread the night
fading to pale rose.

--------

I spent a very soggy Monday with dementordelta, who braved traffic through flooded Virginia to get here. Sadly, because of the rain, we could not go see goslings or Great Falls or anything scenic, and I didn't feel like fighting with traffic being rerouted in the rain so we just went to the mall for lunch. But then we spent the rest of the afternoon watching hot men -- first Daniel Radcliffe in the deleted scenes and interviews for My Boy Jack (I must say that Kim Cattrall really impressed me in the latter; it's so nice to hear her talk about something other than Samantha, though she's the only thing I really loved about Sex and the City).

Then I wanted to show her Captain Jack on Doctor Who -- I still like his character better there than on Torchwood, though the latter grew on me last season -- so we watched "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances," followed by Jack's farewell and the Doctor's regeneration in "The Parting of the Ways." My children came home in the middle of this and insisted that we watch the Dalek army, too, so younger son could show off both his new stuffed Dalek and his remote control action figure. And then I had to show Delta "The Shakespeare Code," partly because of the Globe Theatre and the actor playing Shakespeare, partly for all the Harry Potter references. And she brought me seahorse socks, a penguin magnet and a fantastic book on Legendary Britain!

Pigs at Frying Pan Farm Park.

The sow, Lucy, delivered nine piglets on March 27th.

Lucy is known as a blue butt sow. There is also a Hampshire sow on the farm who had piglets earlier this year.

Lucy, however, was by far the largest pig we saw on the farm.

The little piggies were adorable and quite well-behaved compared to the goats, who tried to chew our clothing...

...but they smelled about the way you would suspect from this photo, at least until the stall was cleaned. *g*

The goats and pigs live in the big red barn. The sheep-shearing at the festival took place under the tent to the left.</center>

We had turkey burgers for dinner and I got four loads of laundry done over the course of the day, though none of them are folded yet. I also did some work on my bookshelves -- we have a new six-shelf bookcase down the basement for the books that have piled up on various tables, and I moved some stuff I never look at down the basement so I could move more art books and poetry upstairs. Every time local basements start flooding, I get the urge to move the heavy art books off lower basement shelves, even though we had to replace the rug and put in a sump pump not long after we moved in. At least the noisy drain cleaning of last week seems to have been well worthwhile: our cul-de-sac did not flood!

'Boston Legal' Gets Fifth Season!

2008-05-12T13:33:09Z

This is sufficiently good news to warrant its own post. Reports suggest cast cuts are likely, but I don't care -- as long as Spader, Shatner and Bergen return, they can continue to play musical supporting cast. I'm not attached to any of this year's additions nearly as much as I was to Paul and Brad but I still love the show.

Also, since this is a gratuitous post of fannish joy, here are photos of the Daleks my mother-in-law knitted for my sons. It's an adaptation of the pattern formerly posted at Entropy House that seems to have disappeared.

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Poem for Monday

2008-05-12T03:41:23Z

The Hand
By Mary Ruefle

The teacher asks a question.
You know the answer, you suspect
you are the only one in the classroom
who knows the answer, because the person
in question is yourself, and on that
you are the greatest living authority,
but you don't raise your hand.
You raise the top of your desk
and take out an apple.
You look out the window.
You don't raise your hand and there is
some essential beauty in your fingers,
which aren't even drumming, but lie
flat and peaceful.
The teacher repeats the question.
Outside the window, on an overhanging branch,
a robin is ruffling its feathers
and spring is in the air.

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I spent Mother's Day with my parents and in-laws, with my husband doing all the cooking and nearly all the cleaning, so it was a very nice day even though the weather was miserable! Paul made monkey bread and eggs benedict casserole and waffles for brunch, then w*e went to Brookside Gardens for the annual Wings of Fancy butterfly show, but the wait to get in was so long that we ended up just walking through the conservatory looking at the flowers and plants. Then we came home, played Mexican Train Dominoes and had dinner -- coq au vin, noodles, French bread, green beans, salad and derby pie. So I ate very well. *g* My mother got me Crocs (which I had told her I wanted); my immediate family had already given me my gift, a Nikon Speedlight, which I used to take family photos.

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We spent twenty minutes carrying defunct computer equipment from our basement out to my in-laws' truck in the pouring rain; there's a group of people in my father-in-law's church who takes old equipment and fixes it for kids who can't afford computers, and we had stuff down there dating back to a Mac Color Classic. So I got very wet and spent the rest of the evening sitting around in sweats watching Evan Almighty on HBO, because that is a totally entertaining movie with lots of animals that shows corrupt politicians the error of their ways, and really, how often do movies about God do that without turning all repulsive like The Ten Commandments. That would be a much better movie if the plagues were things like elephants blocking the overseers from tormenting the slaves and Pharaoh distracted by penguins swimming in the Nile.

Poem for Sunday

2008-05-11T03:25:42Z

Dead
By Sarah Harwell

The way my daughter sleeps it's as if she's talking
to the dead. Now she is one. I watch her eyes roll
backwards in her head, her senses fold

one by one, and then her breathing quiets to a beat.
Every night she fights this silent way of being
with all the whining ammunition she has.

She wins a tired story, a smothered song, the small
and willful links to life that carry her away.
Welcome to the Egyptian burial. She's gone to Hades

with her stuffed animals. When she wakes,
the sad circles disappeared, she blinks
before she knows me. I have listened

to one million breaths of her. And every night
my body seizes when she leaves to go
where I am not, and yet every night I urge her, go.

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From Poet's Choice in Sunday's Washington Post Book World. "Whether a child recklessly runs into traffic or clings until peeled off, every mother must balance keeping said child safe while urging him or her to self-reliance," writes Mary Karr. "The mother in Sarah Harwell's 'Dead' recounts one of the small miseries of parenting: nightly wrestling a wakeful child toward sleep, which -- in mythological terms -- is within the kingdom of Hades. Harwell's frustration leads her to examine how she implanted the daughter's clinginess since her own body seizes when the child finally 'leaves to go/where I am not.'"

Karr adds that the poem's form echoes the speaker's dilemma. "The first stanza has two end rhymes: rOll/fOld -- a pattern of matching that devolves into deliberate half-matching and finally unmatching ends of lines: bEat/bEing; awAy/HAdes; waKes/blinKs. In the last stanza, there's a perfect twinning: 'she leaves to GO'/'I urge her, GO.' On an unconscious level, this final replication exceeds the early rhyme but also thwarts it when the two sounds become identical (as the mother and daughter must not). The mother's relief at the child's departure ultimately prompts self-indictment for ordering the girl into Hell. Without such boundless rivers of guilt, maternal love would be cheap stuff. Hardly worth celebrating."

Not having had enough of sheep last weekend (because how could anyone have enough of sheep, really), we went Saturday once the rain stopped to Frying Pan Farm Park's Sheep and Wool Day, where we got to see all the animals at Kidwell Farm -- a 1920s dairy farm, with alpacas, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, horses, and of course sheep and cows -- plus the blacksmith shop and country store on the premises that sells fresh eggs and cleaned wool from the farm. There were crafts -- I made a lanyard weaving loops of fluffy yarn over my fingers -- and sheep shearing all afternoon, plus a chance to visit with and pet this year's lambs. It wasn't very crowded in the craft tent, where people were demonstrating dyeing, carding, spinning and knitting, and the weather was gorgeous, mostly overcast and not too chilly. Some baby animals for Mother's Day:

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Adam was being amusing this morning and asked what if Daisy's name wasn't really Daisy -- the people we adopted her from told us that it was, but what if they were wrong? So I was quoting Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to him about the naming of cats, and we ended up deciding that we should subject our children to the DVD of the London staging of Cats whose date I have been unable to ascertain but it must have been the 1990s; it has Elaine Paige, the original Grizabella, and Ken Page, who played Old Deuteronomy on Broadway, and John Mills, who was not the original Gus but is probably better known than anyone who did. I haven't watched any version of Cats in a decade -- since before I had cats or saw the Russell Hotel! -- and it was enormous fun.

Happy Mother's Day, if you are a mother or have a mother or know a mother...I will be with my mother and mother-in-law, meaning my husband has been put in charge of the festivities! *g*

Poem for Saturday

2008-05-10T03:53:16Z

Self-Portrait
By Mary Oliver

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs!
There are the roses, and there is the sea
shining like a song, like a body
I want to touch

though I'm not twenty
and won't be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Oliver's Red Bird, published by Beacon.

I was going to have lunch with cidercupcakes, but it was rainy and miserable all morning and she had to work in the afternoon, so we decided to postpone a week. I expect to be well-fed for Mother's Day, and we had dinner with my parents (barbecue chicken, mini potato knishes) so it's probably just as well if I did not eat out again! I wrote a review of "The Vengeance Factor", the episode I did not remember at all, and howled and cheered at Katha Pollitt on Backlash Spectacular!

fridayfiver: Buy me flowers
1. Who do you adore? My children.
2. Who adores you? My cats, though mostly when they're hungry.
3. What's in your pockets? I have no pockets in these jeans!
4. Who can you talk with for hours? mamadracula.
5. What sounds great today? Great Big Sea's "Gallow's Pole" which arrived as a free download when I preordered Fortune's Favour!

thefridayfive: Meaning of life
1. If you knew that you had only one day left to live, what would you do for the 24 hours? Go somewhere gorgeous with my family and friends close enough to get there in time, preferably by the shore.
2. Do you think that life has meaning? Yes.
3. What was your favourite childhood toy/object, or some of your favourites? (Remember childhood according to the United Nations is anywhere from 0-18 years, so this is a fairly broad span of time). A stuffed rabbit named Big Bunny, my Sunshine Family and their house, an incomplete Tarot deck given to me by the son of my parents' friends, my Star Trek action figures (plus a Glinda the Good Witch doll also made by Mego).
4. When you clasp your hands, do you put your right thumb over your left thumb, or your left thumb over your right thumb? Right over left, which I understand is typical of right-handed people.
5. If you had to teach the most ignorant person on earth the most difficult thing you have ever learned, how would you go about doing it? With chocolate as incentive.

fannish5: What 5 series/books/movies can you rewatch/reread time and again?
1. The Tempest, the only play of Shakespeare's that I think actually reads better than it plays.
2. Star Trek, no bloody A, B, C, D or E...the original.
3. A Wrinkle In Time, Madeleine L'Engle's masterpiece, which I read several hundred times before college.
4. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, though if time were no object, I would reread all 20 Aubrey/Maturin books regularly.
5. Jesus Christ Superstar, to which it took me a while to warm up after Evita -- whose original Broadway cast album I listened to once a day throughout high school, and which I have seen on every stage from the National Theatre to a local high school with great pleasure -- but as movies and movie soundtracks go, JCS never fails to delight.

A white stork in the Maryland Zoo's Africa region.

Two African rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?) and an ostrich.

Two adult female giraffes and a young male, the newest addition to the colony.

Polar bear sleeping in the sun in the Arctic region.

Mother camel nursing a baby. Her mate gives rides -- kids can ride on him.

Last weekend, Baltimore's Druid Park opened a new bike path that runs right past the zoo.

Zookeepers and volunteers brought out animals to greet the first bikers...

...including a kookaburra, toucan, tortoise, rabbit and chicken.</center>

Friday night TV was wonderful -- I was going to watch Battlestar Galactica no matter what because of Nana Visitor, but I actually enjoyed the episode more than the last, oh, twenty or so, even if it's no Sarah Jane Adventures. The second part of "Warriors of Kudlak" did such a lovely job paying tribute to Star Trek, too. "Yeah, right, like 'Beam me up, Scotty,'" scoffs one of Luke's new friends among the kids kidnapped from the laser tag place, and then, when they find out where they are and Luke asks for a cell phone, "We're in space, Luke! Who're you gonna ring? Have you got the number for Captain Kirk?"

And there were other lovely moments, like Sarah Jane looking out at Earth with Maria instead of the Doctor this time and saying she thought she'd never see such a sight again, then adding, "Maybe if everybody could see the Earth from up here, they'd appreciate it more." And turning into Warrior Mom! "My name is Sarah Jane Smith and I want my son back!" Interesting that in the next episode she chooses Maria rather than Luke as the person she trusts the most, though there's so much Luke doesn't know about being human that it makes a kind of sense, though of course I just love the female bonding. And then Sarah Jane vanishes with the Dementor, no, the Nazgul, and Maria has to save the world again all by herself! What an awesome girl. I am going to be so sad when Sci-Fi runs out of episodes.

I'd seen "Planet of the Ood" before so I had the annoying experience again of noticing cuts, but that's still a fantastic episode, so many moments I love. I really want the music for that episode, and I love Donna's journey from fear to "You've got a box, he's got a Ferrari" to the lecture she gives the Doctor about judging humans to wanting to go home to hearing the Ood sing with joy.

Then there's BSG. Where the women are still batshit crazy. Should it make me feel better that most of the men are at least moderately batshit crazy as well? If one Six is losing it over who killed her, does that have implications for the rest of the Sixes, especially since Cavil already thinks she's almost as crazy as the Threes? (Gratuitous lesbian kissing thank you very much.) Meanwhile the dying women may have their medication to blame for their craziness but they're listening to Baltar the Messiah -- even LAURA is listening to Baltar the Messiah, and it makes me want to puke. Not even that lovely scene at the end between her and Bill could get rid of the bad taste of that.

Okay, I think I have answered my own question, because Bill is not batshit crazy and Lee is not batshit crazy and Helo is not batshit crazy, and even though maybe none of them will be inspired genius-nutters like Starbuck, they also won't ever be, well, genius-nutters. My favorite female, Sharon, isn't batshit crazy but the Eights clearly have issues of their own. Nope, still not feeling good about the show, but I certainly wasn't bored and if Lucy Lawless is really coming back, that alone may keep me happy enough to see it through to the end. Though I reserve the right to change my mind.

Poem for Friday

2008-05-09T03:31:18Z

She-Fox
By Esther Raab
Translated by Kinereth Gensler

In the night fields a hungry she-fox
blasts, alone.
A single horn-blast -- then silence,
her voice like blood pouring into the night.
She is not one of the visitors and claimants;
sad, she blasts
just once -- then a hush.
Mutely the night's vastness answers.
When the cub suckles the last milk
her voice brims with the world's grief.
A stand of pine trees schemes and threatens,
fences sweep by.
Myrrh from nettles in the open fields
is as heavy as fog.
Chickens are sheltered in the coops,
and a pack of dogs squabbles through the emptiness.
A hungry she-fox lifts her head to the Pleiades,
a cold star mirrored in her eye
could be a tear in her pupil.
The cub will suckle at life's sad marrow --
the howl of foxes splits the night.

--------

Another poem from Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought's feature on feminist Hebrew poetry posted here. Raab, notes the article, "reverses the male-centered poetic iconography. She communicates an auto-erotic intimacy with the landscape and a familiarity with native Palestinian flora and fauna...the conflict between personal and collective demands characterizes many national literatures. Freeing a personal voice from the grip of the collective is an ongoing project in Hebrew literature, with women's writing leading the way."

Let me begin by mentioning the awesomeness of the Platypus. And presales for Great Big Sea's Fortune's Favour start Friday at noon. And yay Wil Wheaton -- vertigo66, what shall we do the night the Star Trek movie opens? Go out to dinner, then watch "Amok Time" and "Requiem for Methuselah"? *g*

Today I had the pleasure of lunch with perkypaduan, followed by the first hour or so of the director's cut of American Gangster, though she had to hit the road so we will finish it next week. It was not immediately apparent what, if anything, was added in that first hour, but I only saw the theatrical version of the film once. I also helped son a bit more with his web page and captioned photos on Picasa and contemplated things I need to buy before we go on vacation at the end of next month, like another bathing suit and some shirts that are nicer than t-shirts but don't need ironing and hopefully an inexpensive skort. I loathe shopping for clothes.

Little girls pet lambs at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival last weekend.

There was a fantastic selection of dyed wool...

...and hand-spun yarn like this beautiful collection.

There were also finished sweaters, scarves, gloves, socks, shawls, hats and pretty much every other article of clothing.

This is just-shorn llama wool (is it called wool if it's from a llama?).

And here is an unhappy sheep awaiting the same fate. It was baaing woefully.

There were sheep of every size and color, with varying horns and ear sizes...

...a great many of which were for sale.</center>

We had jacket potatoes with turkey stew for dinner and watched Smallville, which would have been fun if it had embarked on this storyline while certain characters were still alive and had developed it over several seasons, but now seems to be playing "Canon? What canon?" with its own second season on top of chewing up and spitting out the previous history of Superman as I understand it. It's so very Da Vinci Code, right down to the secret society hiding clues in a foreign church and a faraway castle (is that church really in Montreal? Because it's beautiful), and as much as I miss Lionel, having Lex face up to having possibly killed his father for nothing, then unraveling his secret, would have made a great long-term arc.

Instead it's all getting crammed into half a season, though, and we get Edward Teague (the always wonderful Robert Picardo) only for a single episode in which he has to be a lunatic from the start, so wonderful moments like Edward's casual acknowledgment and dismissal of the fact that Lex killed Lionel get brushed past, and good lines like Jimmy saying Chloe "went Scully" on him barely register. More X-Files two years ago would have been fine, but at this late date it feels contrived. And the "Kal-El is Jesus" parallels at this late date are really, really irritating...Chloe using the cross to save the Savior! Ick! Now, what happened to the whole second season revelation that Jor-El sent his son to rule humanity? Suddenly Jor-El was such a humanitarian that he sent an off switch to random humans? Now Lex knows where the Fortress of Solitude is and will soon know what Clark is...canon, what canon indeed.

The Next Gen episode I watched to review is one I don't remember at all -- it was like brand new old Star Trek! Fun! Political commentary Thursday made me want to throw up all over people I like, far more than the opposition, so I am going to ignore everything until the Democrats have a nominee and then hold my nose and vote for him or her no matter who it is or who gets disenfranchised, insulted, underestimated, marginalized or misquoted between now and then. Sigh.

Poem for Thursday

2008-05-08T03:11:28Z

The Water Queen of Jerusalem
By Rahel Chalfi
Translated by Tsipi Keller

The Water Queen of Jerusalem
dives into history
history is hard and she grows fins
there is no air so she invents
gills rowing through memory

the Water Queen of Jerusalem owns
a bathing suit made out of Yiddish

the Water Queen of Jerusalem wallows
on a stone beach in
Ladino
is afraid of the rising water level in Arabic

the Water Queen of Jerusalem has no
sea in Jerusalem
she has a history
Jewish
and she holds
just holds her head
above water

--------

For Israel's 60th birthday, a poem by a modern Israeli writer. Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought had a feature reproduced here about feminist Hebrew poetry, saying, "Contemporary Israeli women's writing challenges the Hebrew language, tearing it at its seams, invading areas formerly restricted to masculine discourse...Chalfi (1945-) first explored a powerful feminist persona in aquatic imagery: in the poem 'The Water Queen of Jerusalem' the city is overwhelmed by its cultural baggage, while the protagonist herself is almost drowned. She triumphs, mutating into an ichtyoid in a process of evolution and definition of her subjectivity."

Not the most exciting of Wednesdays. I worked on html for a web page for my son, who has decided that he desperately wants his own domain for penguin photos and the like, but for some reason a photo that loads fine on a local html file won't work when I upload the file to the web (I think it's because his new domain forwards to a page on my web site, so there are essentially frames keeping the domain URL in place and the frames are somehow screwing with the tables). Then I took younger son to the orthodontist, where we got some bad news: not only do the braces need to go back on, but because it's considered a new phase in his treatment, with new molds and a new apparatus, we have to refinance and argue costs with our insurance. So it's painful for all of us! At least the braces won't have to go on till we get back from our long trip this summer so they won't affect what he can eat while traveling. He has one adult tooth that is refusing to budge from the gums because his mouth is small and it would just fit straight between the teeth but it's coming in at an angle, so there has to be more room. Sigh.

</center>

I see that the Olympic torch made it to the top of Mount Everest...I have mixed feelings because of the Tibet situation but it's a neat idea to take the Olympic flame to the top of the world, though I was wondering how they managed to light it with so little oxygen. Climbing is one of my favorite sports to read about, though not people who think the 8000 meters plus mountains are the only ones that count and not wealthy amateurs who pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of losing toes, limbs or their lives in exchange for possible bragging rights. I made it up Mount Washington in the White Mountains, but I don't dream of climbing on Denali, let alone the Himalayas, though I would dearly love to walk around Mount Kailas.

Poem for Wednesday

2008-05-07T03:32:29Z

The Water-Fall
By Henry Vaughan

With what deep murmurs through time's silent stealth
Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat'ry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide, and call,
As if his liquid, loose retinue stay'd
Ling'ring, and were of this steep place afraid;
The common pass
Where, clear as glass,
All must descend
Not to an end,
But quicken'd by this deep and rocky grave,
Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.

Dear stream! dear bank, where often I
Have sate and pleas'd my pensive eye,
Why, since each drop of thy quick store
Runs thither whence it flow'd before,
Should poor souls fear a shade or night,
Who came, sure, from a sea of light?
Or since those drops are all sent back
So sure to thee, that none doth lack,
Why should frail flesh doubt any more
That what God takes, he'll not restore?

O useful element and clear!
My sacred wash and cleanser here,
My first consigner unto those
Fountains of life where the Lamb goes!
What sublime truths and wholesome themes
Lodge in thy mystical deep streams!
Such as dull man can never find
Unless that Spirit lead his mind
Which first upon thy face did move,
And hatch'd all with his quick'ning love.
As this loud brook's incessant fall
In streaming rings restagnates all,
Which reach by course the bank, and then
Are no more seen, just so pass men.
O my invisible estate,
My glorious liberty, still late!
Thou art the channel my soul seeks,
Not this with cataracts and creeks.

--------

I got to get out of the house and have lunch with gblvr, yay! We had grand plans to go to P.F. Chang's but it was so crowded that we said to heck with it and opted for the quicker pleasure of Texas BBQ (which cost a lot less and frankly I like as much as most Chinese, though now that I know about that vegetarian place, I have a new favorite restaurant). I also got to meet wojelah, who shares my adoration of Donna Noble and did not run screaming when I admitted that I like Sam Carter better than Rodney McKay. Somehow while we were in the mall we managed not to notice the earthquake that hit the DC region, though on the scale of disasters I keep being grateful that I live here instead of in a major hurricane zone, tornado zone, etc.

Month-old baby African elephant Samson was born at the Maryland Zoo on March 19th.

He only began making public appearances last week.

The trainers are working to get Samson used to playing with people.

His mother, Felix, came to the Maryland Zoo from Arkansas last year.

Samson likes to try to climb the tall boulders in the enclosure, which he's not supposed to do yet.

Mom weighs more than 7,000 pounds; Samson weighs about 350 pounds at present.

The zoo also has a young giraffe, many baby penguins and a baby camel.</center>

Finally we watched The Golden Compass, which I liked well enough -- it's probably my favorite Nicole Kidman role ever, she's so much better cold and insincere, heh -- but I could also see why it didn't catch on as the next Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc. I started to feel a bit Farscape about all the talking animals -- give us more Asriel, even if his name is ridiculously pretentious, already -- and I was really looking forward to the alleged Church-bashing and was sorry it was so subtle, and that the world was still so hierarchical and aristocratic in many ways. Just like in C.S. Lewis's books, there's a rightful hierarchy and a wrongful hierarchy even among bears! And I'm kind of embarrassed at what Pullman obviously thinks American stereotypes are like.

Now, I hate to talk about the election, but did Hillary just imply that she's running for Vice President? Not that I am in any way complaining -- I would love that ticket, not sure it's even under consideration, but I hope Obama thinks about all the people who did vote for her and their reasons. For everything she says that makes me roll my eyes, I still feel like I have a much firmer sense of her plans in office than I have of his; I know which of her ideas and McCain's he thinks are misguided but I haven't seen firm alternatives in most cases. It would make me so happy to see Clinton and Obama working together.

The pictures from Myanmar are so upsetting, but it's almost as upsetting that only now does the world media seem to notice that there are thousands of refugees already -- more than in Darfur, according to some reports -- and the government is actively blocking humanitarian aid. It's a nightmare situation on top of a nightmare situation.

Poem for Tuesday

2008-05-06T03:30:50Z

Executive Shoeshine
By Mary Jo Salter

It may go on snowing forever,
but meanwhile, how he's basking
in the sun of his own multitasking!
He's perched erect on his throne
looking down on the airport food court,
as the silver snail of a cell phone
earpiece hooked to his ear
hangs on his every word.
No way to cut him short
until the runways are cleared
and they've finished out there de-icing
the right wing, then the left wing
of all those planes before his.
Could he strike us a deal with the weather?
The man hunched below him polishes
one wingtip, then the other.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Salter's A Phone Call to the Future, published by Knopf.

Not a very eventful Monday; I mostly finished laundry, caught up on phone calls and tried to learn how to use my new speedlight -- an early Mother's Day present so I'll have it on our trip this summer and can hopefully take better photos of relatives, indoor scenery and the interior of the HMS Surprise. *g* Younger son came home from school all excited because he had found several caterpillars on the way; later, son's best friend came over excitedly to tell me to bring the camera because a bird had laid eggs in one of the nest boxes on their deck (received and painted as party favors a few days ago -- on Tuesday I am going to Michael's to get one of them!).

Freshly sheared and groomed sheep awaiting their opportunity to go before the judges at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival last weekend.

A wide variety of sheep came to the festival from all over the country...

...producing a wide variety of wool and related crafts.

These sheep, for instance, are from "Ewetopia" in New York!

There were also locally bred alpacas...

...and llamas (if you were my son, this would be your cue to start chanting, "Here's a llama, there's a llama, and another little llama...").

Plus there were live performances, including Maggie Sansone on hammered dulcimer with several other local folk musicians.

The festival drew a wide range of people -- reenactors in period costume, organic farmers in flannel, bearded men in pro-life t-shirts, renewable resource champions wearing Obama for President buttons, Muslim women in hijab scarves, cancer survivors in head scarves and Walk For Life t-shirts, African-American men in kente cloth, women in old-fashioned solid color dresses that wouldn't have looked out of place among the Texas Mormons, you name it.</center>

For dinner we had Mexican food to celebrate Cinco de Mayo (well, Tex-Mex, since I doubt anyone involved in that victory over the French had hard-shell chicken tacos and mini cheese quesadillas). Then we were going to watch The Golden Compass which apaulled brought home on DVD last week -- he enjoyed the book -- but older son took forever taking his shower, so we postponed that. Fannish comment: I was delighted to read on The Leaky Cauldron that Natalia Tena said whiny Tonks is entirely absent from the film of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince...sometimes the cuts in the films are really delightful improvements on Rowling's pathetic self-indulgence and lack of coherent editing. Plus there's a rumor that Jason Isaacs appears in a flashback scene in the film, which would delight me greatly if true. I'm so irritated that they're making two movies out of Deathly Hallows that I'm not feeling any particular desire to see Half Blood Prince, though finding out that the filmmaker may have more sense than the novelist about certain things makes me feel somewhat better.

Hope everyone is keeping safe from tornadoes, cyclones and all the other disasters that seem to be whirling around the world. I'm sad that Mildred Loving has died and still astounded that her lawsuit demanding the right to intermarriage took place during my lifetime. I'm hoping my kids are just as shocked and horrified one day to realize that gay marriage wasn't legal during their lifetimes.

Poem for Monday

2008-05-05T03:30:31Z

Opera Night at Caffe Taci
By Adam Kirsch

No curtains here, no chandelier to raise;
She takes the low stage and begins to peal
Long airs of anguish, to distracted praise
From the gourmands of opera and the meal.
She wears the helium shoulderpads of dresses
Sold in a suburban bridal shop,
Rigid in velvet, while the waitresses
Lounge at their ease in cottons from the Gap;
Whatever third-rate coach she studied with
Could not undo the mannerism that
Half-shuts her eyes and splays her lipsticked mouth,
The cartoon mincing of a marionette.
It's all just as it should be. For the crowd,
The sensual pampering and dignified
Consumption; in return she is allowed
To sing, gauche and ignored, beatified.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Kirsch's Invasions, published by Ivan R. Dee.

Daniel was still recuperating from his upset stomach on Sunday morning and Adam was fed and entertained at the Hebrew school's birthday party for Israel, so those of us at home had a quiet morning and a relatively small lunch before deciding it was too gorgeous a day not to go out somewhere. Since Daniel was feeling much better, we went to Lake Whetsone Park in Gaithersburg for our annual look at the goslings produced by the goose colony there (previous years here and here). Lake Whetstone also has a great blue heron colony at the top of the tall trees in the center island, plus ducks and ducklings, cormorants, turtles, cardinals, red-wing blackbirds, barn swallows living under the boardwalk and many other animals. Adam found a caterpillar that accompanied up on our walk for a while on his arm. It was gorgeous and cool in the woods and there were birds singing everywhere.

</center>

For dinner Paul made jacket potatoes with chicken tikka masala -- Daniel doesn't eat that anyway, so he didn't mind having plain chicken and noodles -- then we all watched Doctor Who's "The Poison Sky" which I liked much better than its prequel for a whole lot of reasons. Much of it was little things -- that momentary glimpse of Rose on the viewscreen when the Doctor is addressing the Sontarans, Donna's mother whacking the car window with a hammer when the Doctor's sonic screwdriver wasn't saving her father (and then Donna whacking the Sontaran with a hammer later, yay for practical solutions!), the eye-rolling and mass exodus by his peers at the nerd genius's Moonraker posturing, the Doctor saying "Are you my mummy?" when ordered to wear a gas mask, Donna smacking the Doctor after he gets teleported back from his attempted martyrdom, the Doctor saying he knew clone!Martha wasn't the real deal almost from the start -- but I was also happy to see the English fight back rather than waiting for the Doctor to rescue them. And the preview for next week, hee! Is the blonde daughter Susan's mother from the First Doctor era, and is she Four and Rowena's, Eight and Grace's, Nine and Rose's, Ten and Reinette's...? Who else is blonde, since my knowledge of Companions has some giant holes? I don't suppose she could be Sarah Jane's; we'd know if Sarah Jane had had a child before Luke.

Then we watched The Tudors, which surprisingly dropped the opportunity to suggest that Anne had Catherine murdered -- I was so sure she was going to convince her brother or someone to poison Catherine, since she's talked about wanting her and Mary dead so often. But I was really glad they didn't go that route, even though they offered no explanation why Catherine died so young, apart from a broken heart. They're back to Henry being over Thomas More's death and turned on by Anne (son, who was in the room reading, asked why Henry liked to be choked during sex; I had no good answer immediately ready), so even though Jane Seymour is very pretty, it's not clear to me how they're going to work Henry into the murderous frenzy necessary to bring her to her well-known end.

I'm trying to find decent coverage of the British election, because our press isn't covering it for shit and the UK press is presuming more knowledge of British party politics than I have. Yesterday at the Sheep & Wool Festival, I told my mother-in-law that I wished someone was covering the Zimbabwe election controversy instead of garbage like Barbara Walters' love life, and a Muslim woman patted me on the back and said she was glad to hear someone who cared about real issues and then started lecturing about Rachel Corrie's foundation and the situation in Gaza. I almost bit my tongue off not arguing point for point...

Poem for Sunday

2008-05-04T03:50:51Z

Memory
By Heather McHugh

Whatever I am taught,
let me remember it.
When the big fish comes out of the water
we can see the bottom of the pond.
When the big toad comes out of the water
we can see the bottom of the well.
When the kingfisher dives into the water
his brain becomes clear.
When the cheek of the pregnant antelope was marked
her child was also marked.
If there is one piece of meat left in the pot
it will surely be taken by the spoon.
Everything the landlord does
is known to the swallow.
Everything that is in your brain,
my father,
let it be known to me.

--------

In Yoruba villages, "a poet or singer could rank with a great hunter," writes Mary Karr in Poet's Choice in Sunday's Washington Post Book World. "Yoruba artists fed the people's spirits and kept channels to the capricious gods flowing. The Yoruba's chain of 'talking drums' carried news vast distances." McHugh was inspired by Ulli Beier's translations of ancient Yoruba songs, and Karr says the poem above "lucidly capture[s] both the nature of consciousness and how the stories we inherit shape us," beginning with a longing for permanence, then leaving to gain experience, "but it's only in returning to the water of experience, plunging back through memory -- as the kingfisher does -- that the mind clears. In a single instant of recall, the poem argues, we can experience all our time, all our tribe's time. From this transcendental instant, the poem shifts to very practical concerns: how much meat is in the pot and the dishonesty of one's landlord. But it closes with plaintive longing for permanence and connection."

Saturday we took our annual trip to the Maryland Zoo's Breakfast With the Penguins, for which we had to get up very early and at which we got a bit sunburnt but it was worth it as always! This year there was a lot more food...in addition to all the breakfast meats and eggs and pastries, they had about eight varieties of bagels from a local place with several different flavored cream cheeses, plus fresh fruit and fruit juices as well as coffee for the adults and penguin squeeze bottles for the kids. (The penguins get smelly cold fish, so it's just as well there was no lox. *g*) There were two penguin ambassadors waddling on the grass and most of the zoo's 45 African penguins swimming around the penguin enclosure, along with some greedy gulls and a cormorant. This year, instead of bidding on a penguin painting, we bid on a private tour of the penguin enclosure to be held at a later date, and even though someone outbid us at the last minute, they offered to let us do it too for our bid price so we will be going back to see the inside of the enclosure soon!

These are Ascot and Tails, the ambassador penguins at the breakfast. We first met Ascot two years ago when she was a chick.

Only the zoo staff were allowed to hold the birds...

...but the penguins were happier on the ground anyway, waddling around pecking at dandelion stems.

When they got agitated, the zookeepers picked them up and calmed them down.

The penguin with the light blue band has caught the fish I threw in, which it promptly threw back and gobbled down.

The cormorant swam over and grabbed several of the fish!

But most of the penguins were content to wait their turn, or to stand around waiting to be hand-fed inside after the crowd had gone.</center>

We walked around the zoo a bit because there is a baby African elephant, Samson, who only just began appearing in public this week, as well as a young giraffe and lions, cheetahs, cranes, a porcupine, chimpanzees, rhinos and lots of other animals in the Africa section. We stopped by the Arctic zone, but we didn't see much of the rest of the zoo because we had plans to meet my in-laws at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I had never been before, and was expecting a bunch of local sheep and a couple of craft tents -- I had no idea of the size of it, and it's entirely free, even parking! We walked through four enormous barns of sheep, alpacas and llamas, several of which were being sheared and primped for judging, as well as dozens of craft displays and at least three musical stages, on one of which Maggie Sansone was playing. My in-laws are just back from three weeks in the UK and brought us Cadbury, Scottish souvenirs and a bunch of little Vikings in honor of their Swedish heritage.

On the way home we stopped at Ikea to get a bookcase -- now that we know where it is in College Park, we can't seem to stay away -- and had an early dinner there since the food is so inexpensive and we'd skipped lunch due to the size of our breakfast. It would have been a perfect day except that against my better judgment I watched the Kentucky Derby when Paul put it on, though I'd said after Barbaro that I was through with horses racing, but I didn't stick to it after we visited Churchill Downs two summers ago. Now once again we have had to watch an animal die for a big-money race, this time on the track after coming in second -- "It's not supposed to happen," the trainer said, but it happens far too often and I'm done watching the sport and supporting that kind of treatment even passively from my living room. Older son ended up with an upset stomach from our crazy eating and hectic hours today, so it was a quiet evening at home with the kids.

Poem for Saturday

2008-05-03T03:31:01Z

Pre-War
By Cornelius Eady

In mid-November wind off the Mountain
An American flag, left behind by the previous owners,
Stutters on the pole.

Fall loosens its grip:
Dead seed and leaf skitter across the grass,
Smoke ghosts up the chimney.

I hear the mid-morning news
As I watch the mid-morning sun
Wash from the needles of the pines,

Our first dust of snow.

The weather tests the weak spots in the sill,
Stoops our stride, thickens our shirts,
Has come to nest.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Eady's Hardheaded Weather, published by Putnam.

My day was mostly chores -- laundry and reviewing "The Price", one of the Next Gen episodes that soured the show for me the first time around even though I'm enjoying it more on nearly every level this time through...amazing what several years of mediocre sci-fi TV will do. The kids had friends over after school since it's a weekend and therefore video games are allowed, plus they took part in a big water gun battle with half the neighborhood kids that left them soaking wet. We had dinner with my parents (salmon, mmm) and I captioned and organized photos. What was I going to do, read the British election returns and mourn the Wizards' playoff loss and fret about tornadoes?

fridayfiver: I'm still
1. Describe where you grew up: Suburbia. Plenty of trees, reasonable proximity to Washington, DC if you have a car, and all the usual school and community ennui.
2. Do you wear any jewelery? When I go out, my wedding ring, one of my pagan rings and almost always earrings. At home, none.
3. What do you have too much of? Belly fat.
4. Who is a fool? John McCain.
5. What's your nickname? Littlereview, obviously!

thefridayfive: Nice things
1. What's one of the nicest things a friend has ever done for you? Gave me web space when I couldn't afford it.
2. What's one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for you? Offered me a freelance writing job based on something I'd posted on a fan site.
3. What is a trait in another person that you instantly admire, and that draws you to them? Generosity.
4. What is a trait in another person that instantly repels you, and prevents you from forming a close relationship with them? Thinking they know better than everyone else.
5. Time to vent: tell us about something rotten someone has done to you. Plagiarized me from something we'd written privately together in something she published.

fannish5: What were your five favorite resurrections?
1. Spock, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.
2. Buffy, "Bargaining, Part One," Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
3. Xena & Gabrielle, "Fallen Angel," Xena: Warrior Princess.
4. Jack Harkness, "The Parting of the Ways," Doctor Who.
5. Apollo, "War of the Gods," Battlestar Galactica.

I now know that we were meant to have three cats, because we have three beds.

This means Cinnamon can sleep on older son's bed all day while Rosie sleeps on younger son's new bunk bed...

...and Daisy has the biggest bed all to herself.

Rosie often demands her solitude.

Cinnamon will sleep anywhere, on the backs of couches, on people's clothes.

Being the most social of the cats, Daisy never complains if someone joins her.

But I think it's really cute when all three of them share space.</center>

Watched The Sarah Jane Adventures, Doctor Who and then BSG because it was there and none of us bothered to change the channel. Still not liking the latter much at all but I have little interest in the CBS vampire show, not having fallen for a vampire since I was a teenager, and anyway I think that's on in the earlier hour. Sarah Jane delights me in so many ways -- I love seeing a woman older than me, not tied to any man, attached to a faerie child she rescued, surrounded by kids whose intelligence she never underestimates and whom she treats like adults.

I was a bit shocked at the extent to which she expected Maria to hold it together and save her father -- and Maria did! Young Captain Jack Harkness could have taken lessons from her -- but my favorite moment in the new episode was when Clyde said the missing kid didn't have time to make friends, he was too busy with his Nintendo, at which both my kids looked up from their Nintendos and paid attention for the rest of the story, which takes place largely in a virtual game complex like our local Shadowlands where kids are disappearing from the Combat 3000. I preferred the earlier episode in some ways -- the archaeology storyline, Phyllida Law -- but really I've liked the entire show very much.

I'm so pissed at Sci-Fi for the cuts they're making in Doctor Who; this time I'm seeing the US TV versions much closer to the uncut ones, so they're much more obvious, so as much as I love the Pompeii episode, I'm really irritated that the last scene is missing with the Doctor and Donna as Roman household gods! BSG...well, I've said from the get-go that I really don't like Starbuck, I don't like the way she's written, I don't like the edge-of-madness shit whether it's divine inspiration or just plain being screwed up, and I don't like watching a show where I'm regularly rooting against a major female character but this series rarely leaves me feeling like I have a choice.

Kara is so fucked in the head where Leoben is concerned, and it's being handled so irresponsibly, so pathetically...between that and Ron Moore's messianic fantasy lived through Baltar and his gaggle of grrlz, though what Baltar really wants is the legitimacy of being admired by someone like the Chief...ugh, I can't even talk about it coherently, I just want notes to remind myself of all the things I don't like about the series for the next time someone gives me the "BSG is better than DS9 and B5 combined!" hyperbole.

Poem for Friday

2008-05-02T03:25:24Z

In the Junk Store
By Charles Simic

A small, straw basket
Full of medals
From good old wars
No one recalls.

I flipped one over
To feel the pin
That once pierced
The hero's swelling chest.

--------

Another from "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from That Little Something, published by Harcourt.

I actually got out of the house for fun today! I met perkypaduan at the mall for lunch and very important shopping such as a glittery scarf at Hot Topic, bargain books at Borders and shampoo at Bath & Body Works (if they have discontinued the signature scent lines in favor of that Fekkai stuff, I am going to be so irritated!). Came home to get kids, my mother stopped by for a bit, I got my new Shutterfly books so read those and then played with photos for a while -- I have pretty much everything uploaded to Picasa that I want there, now I just need to organize and caption it all. apaulled decided he was in the mood to barbecue chicken for dinner, so we used the charcoal grill for the first time this season, then made s'mores because how could we not, really?

A bird-of-paradise plant at Brookside Gardens' greenhouse last month...

...and false bird of paradise, or heliconia, which I've read is actually a cousin of the banana.

I'm not certain whether these are bananas or plantains -- they look kind of small for bananas, but they're very green and young and the tree is very tall.

Unripe coffee beans...

...and one of the few already coming ripe!

A white camellia...

...and pink and fuschia azaleas blooming on the same plant.</center>

I thoroughly loved this week's Smallville; even without all the various people who are no longer with the show, it was my favorite in ages and ages. It's a Wonderful Life makes such a nice format for exploring things in fantasy, even though I really don't much like the movie, with the angels and the suicide storyline -- it totally makes sense as something Jor-El would do to Kal-El, though, and how much fun to see the universe unspooling the way it's supposed to according to older canon! I like the new Clark Kent, Martha and Jonathan's adopted son, and was sorry he didn't stick around...and Paris with kids is the perfect place for Lana, I wish she was there right now in real canon. And Chloe has a hot fiance, and Lois is hot for Clark, all of which fit in better with my view of the Superman universe than Smallville's current direction.

Now, the timeline makes no sense to me -- if this is supposed to be real Smallville time, how can Lex possibly be over 35 and thus old enough to run for President? I am glad they returned to the nuclear war Lex is supposed to start as President, a storyline in play since Cassandra back in the first season, and I was so pleased to see Clark in his nerd glasses (I really like Tom Welling in nerd glasses!). It's too bad they had to make Kara such a bimbo that she didn't figure out about Brainiac herself and of course she didn't really destroy him when she thought she did. Sigh. But I never thought much of Supergirl, so I can't say it's outrageously acanonical. Now if only they'd let Lana wake up in Paris instead of Clark and Lex both still obsessing over her...shit, I just read that Michael Rosenbaum is not coming back for Smallville's next and almost certainly last season, so I guess I better enjoy it while I can.

Also watched a bit of the Pistons-Sixers blow-out and the Star Trek episode I need to review tomorrow ("The Price," which makes Troi look really stupid, not one of my favorites at all), then tried to watch the news but it was all the death of the DC madam and Rob Lowe's nanny and Barbara Walters' affair with a senator. At least Ted Casablanca made me howl by suggesting that his readers write fan fiction about himself, Jake Gyllenhaal, Patrick Dempsey and Tobey Maguire, all of whom used to belong to the same gym. "Makes great reading material (and more)," writes Ted.

Poem for Thursday

2008-05-01T03:25:50Z

To Hold
By Li-Young Lee

So we're dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,
measuring by eye as it falls into alignment
between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I'm lucky,
she'll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day we'll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we'll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn't for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I'll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling
more and more detail into the light
of a joint and fragile keeping.

--------

From "Absence, Opera, Beans, Dreams", a selection of verse from new collections published in The Washington Post Book World's poetry issue the week of April 20th. This one is from Behind My Eyes, published by Norton.

Once again I have no exciting news of my own so I'll just link to stuff I was reading today (somewhere in the world there must be something people are talking about besides celebrity indiscretions, political candidate antics, consequences of the NFL draft and the fate of the Grand Duchess Anastasia but I couldn't find it). I am ever in Hawaii, I want to go to Surfing Goat Dairy where people get to feed and milk the goats and sample 20 different kind of cheeses made there. And speaking of animals, I was reading about the escaped pig balloon and Paul says the funny thing is that it isn't the first time something like this happened -- when Pink Floyd shot the original Animals album cover with the pig flying by Battersea Power Station, the pig broke free and eventually landed in a field near Canterbury. And I'm sorry, but when I first read about the Greek "take back 'lesbian'" lawsuit, I thought at first it was a joke by The Onion and when I found out it was for real, I kept snickering rather than being indignant.

This last photo is not National Arboretum koi, obviously, but the view of the orchid display in the visitor's center.</center>

Actually I don't need to get going on Clinton, Obama and the idiocy that is the Democratic Party at present because Boston Legal did it for me...and the side story was about cloned beef on the market, brought by a woman with whom Denny falls instantly in love and rides horses. So it was a really divine hour of television. Amidst a discussion of the show's move to Wednesday and not being sure whether it will be back next year, a woman comes in wanting a lawyer to deal with the FDA signing off on cloned meat. She's a rancher, Sunny Field, of Sunnyfield Farms, and Denny asks her to marry him before she's finished explaining her issues with "the mad cows in charge of the asylum." Denny begs Carl to work on the case with him because he needs a heavy hitter for the consumer advocate issues while Denny is himself busy hitting on Sunny.

Alan is busy with Shirley, who wants to sue her nephew because he's going to vote for Obama. When Alan says he believes the nephew has that right, Shirley explains that Mitchie is a delegate whose district -- and indeed whose state -- voted for Clinton, but it's a dirty party secret that delegates don't have to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. Mitchie insists that it's a duty but not an obligation, and at 22 feels certain that Obama is the right choice, which Alan recognizes as within party rules...unless they sue the Democratic Party. They get the Not Gay judge, and Wolf Blitzkrieg of CCN has a field day trying to interview them.

Meanwhile Carl and Denny get the jibber-jabber judge, who asks how they can be suing Food and Drugs. Carl must explain that it's the FDA they want to sue, and after Sunny flirts with him, she explains that the FDA doesn't even require cloned food to be labeled so there's no way for the public to avoid it even though it hasn't been properly studied to see if it's healthy. She talks high levels of hormones in surrogate mothers, massive doses of antibiotics, pharmaceuticals in the human food supply. In private, Denny tells her how much he's infatuated, but Sunny warns him that she treats men like horses: "I ride 'em hard and I turn 'em out." Though Alan thinks he's out of his mind to want to commit after one date, Denny is certain that she's The One.

Shirley testifies that while the Democratic Party rules may technically allow pledged delegates to vote for someone else, it's not what the party advertises will happen when it asks voters to participate in primaries. In private, she and Alan have a shouting match -- he's annoyed that she really brought this case out of support for Hillary, she's furious he brings up big party politics and dynasties to support Barack -- but they end up agreeing that the system is rotten no matter which candidate one prefers. Mitchie parodies Bill Clinton on stand and quotes Obama and then Dean, making Alan say that the boy sounds like the Little Engine That Could and wonders what he'd think if delegates voting their conscience chose Kucinich. The Democrats explain that delegates are necessary to stop the popular vote from allowing someone silly like a comedian to get the nomination, but Alan points out that currently it's big business picking the candidates. The judge agrees that the nomination process is not democratic -- "This is how we ended up with Bush" -- but denies Alan's motion.

Denny and Sunny ride horses together, and despite a serious setback -- Sunny says cows shun animals that have Mad Cow, then furrows her brow when her entire herd flees from Denny, who tells Alan how devastating it is to be diagnosed by a fellow cow -- Denny asks her to marry him. Carl trounces the FDA lawyer, naming piles of FDA-approved supplements that caused fatal problems and citing all the dangerous drugs that had to be removed from the market, but the jibber-jabber judge keeps changing his ruling so that Denny isn't sure whether he won or not when Sunny comes to give him her answer. She wants to marry Denny, but she has bought a farm in Montana and wants him to move there with her. Crushed, Denny admits that there's someone else, "my best friend," and refuses to uproot his life away from Alan.

On the balcony, Alan says he's sorry but Denny knows that he's really relieved and forgives him when Alan explains all his own issues with finding love. "While many people embrace the promise of tomorrow, too few celebrate the joy of now, and nobody does that like Denny Crane," says Alan. Denny replies that when you have Mad Cow, now gets high priority, especially when you're sitting on the balcony sipping scotch with your best friend. They drink to now. That's right -- Denny broke up with The One for Alan. Heh. Happy Beltane!

Poem for Wednesday

2008-04-30T03:45:38Z

From 'The Prodigal'
By Derek Walcott

III: II

The tidal motion of refugees, not the flight of wild geese,
the faces in freight cars, haggard and coal-eyed,
particularly the peaked stare of children,
the huge bundles crossing bridges, axles creaking
as if joints and bones were audible, the dark stain
spreading on maps whose shapes dissolve their frontiers
the way that corpses melt in a lime-pit or
the bright mulch of autumn is trampled into mud,
and the smoke of a cypress signals Sachsenhausen,
those without trains, without mules or horses,
those who have the rocking chair and the sewing machine
heaped on a human cart, a waggon without horses
for horses have long galloped out of their field
back to the mythology of mercy, back to the cone
of the orange steeple piercing clouds over the lindens
and the stone bells of Sunday over the cobbles,
those who rest their hands on the sides of their carts
as if they were the flanks of mules, and the women
with flint faces, with glazed cheekbones, with eyes
the colour of duck-ponds glazed over with ice,
for whom the year has only one season, one sky:
that of rooks flapping like torn umbrellas,
all have been reduced into a common language,
the homeless, the province-less, to the incredible memory
of apples and clean streams, and the sound of milk
filling the summer churns, where are you from,
what was your district, I know that lake, I know the beer,
and its inns, I believed in its mountains,
now there is a monstrous map that is called Nowhere
and that is where we're all headed, behind it
there is a view called the Province of Mercy,
where the only government is that of the apples
and the only army the wide banners of barley
and its farms are simple, and that is the vision
that narrows in the irises and the dying
and the tired whom we leave in ditches
before they stiffen and their brows go cold
as the stones that have broken our shoes,
as the clouds that grow ashen so quickly after danw
over palm and poplar, in the deceitful sunrise
of this, your new century.

--------

I did nothing but chores, so I have nothing exciting to report. Well, I did sleep kind of late because I had all three cats in bed with me, thus forcing me to contort into the kind of positions in which it is possible to sleep only if you have three cats in bed with you, but nothing besides that! I spent some time looking at The Old Bailey Online just because it's so cool that it's there (and after seeing the Sweeney Todd extras, I was really curious to see all the murder and robbery transcripts, not to mention Oscar Wilde's indecency trial. All of which makes me think of that father with the daughter in the basement in Austria -- if The X-Files had done that as a story, I would have said it was unrealistic and vile (I did say that about "Home"). There's no prison terrible enough for that guy. Ugh.

Red foot tortoises from Central America. They have a 50-year life span.

Larger cousins, African spurred tortoises, which eat cacti and sub-Saharan grasses and can live to be 80.

Much smaller Russian tortoises, which live all over Asia and hibernate more than half the year. They can live to be nearly 100!

The local Eastern painted turtle also hibernates but their life spans are only 30-40 years.

This is a black throat monitor lizard, a carnivore from Africa that can inflate its body when intimidated or angry.

A blue-tongue skink from Australia, an omnivore that occasionally bites fingers as they look like something edible.

And a bearded dragon, also from Australia, hoping for a big yummy worm to go with his veggies.</center>

After he finished his homework, older son wanted to watch the Tenth Doctor Who devil episodes ("The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit") because he was in an Ood mood, so that's what we did tonight...Doc and Rose threatening to become domestic and the awesome black hole. I'm so relieved Obama publicly told Wright where to stick it -- I have zero tolerance for anti-Semitic bigotry, I don't care if you're blathering in the name of Jesus or liberation theology or some massive US conspiracy theory. And I have never given a crap about Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana, having boys with no tolerance for her or her music, but she'd seen the photos before she left the shoot and knew exactly how they made her look, and she is now trying to have it both ways looking sexy in Vanity Fair while claiming she didn't mean to look sexy...it's her prerogative to make money titillating pedophiles, but the one of her sprawled all over daddy with her belly exposed is more disturbing than the photo with the sheet and every adult handler knew exactly the messages they would send. Again, ugh.