The Little Review

Poem for Saturday

2009-11-07T04:43:18Z

Grief
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death--
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

--------

I had a pretty quiet Friday -- visit to the post office with insanely long line and only two windows open, walk in the gorgeous chilly late fall woods with lots of squirrels gathering acorns for the winter, and writing my negative-to-scathing review of Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Perfect Mate". Plus lots of getting up to shoo cats off the heating vents -- there are three vents on the main level of the house and three cats, so I have to check the front window, under the desk, and the back window, and by the time I'm finished, whoever I booted out of the front window is already moving back. This is how I woke up this morning (photos by amused husband who couldn't convince the other woman to budge):

Rosie's very favorite position for sleeping is smushed between Paul and myself, but if he's not there, she is content to smush me.

If I am very lucky, I also get Cinnamon smushed against my legs on one side and Daisy smushed on the other.

Of course, it is not necessary for a person to be in the bed for cats to take it over. They prefer it unmade or at least mussed from cat wrestling.

Daisy is in a submissive kitten pose because she knows she is about to get in trouble for sleeping on the vent. Rosie is, as always, unconcerned. Cinnamon at the moment of the photo is asleep upstairs at the foot of Adam's bed in a pile of stuffed animals.

Daisy's inappropriate spots for keeping warm are not restricted to other people's pillows or heating vents, either.</center>

thefridayfive: Seasons
1. Which one is more irritating - being too hot or being too cold? Too hot, unless it's absolutely arctic.
2. Were you born in the winter or the summer Winter. The 28th of Kislev, so during Chanukah that year.
3. What are your favourite foods to eat when you need to warm up and cool down? To warm up: hot bombay potatoes. To cool down: coconut bubble tea.
4. Which one are you more likely to suffer from - hayfever or flu - and does it run in your family? Seasonal allergies. No one in the family gets them much.
5. You are granted a day of perfect weather whenever you like. What day do you place it on and why? Whenever the next time I'll be in Glastonbury will be.

fannish5: Name 5 characters whose wardrobe you would love to have.
1. Morgana, Merlin
2. Olive Snook, Pushing Daisies
3. Minya, Xena: Warrior Princess
4. Kai Winn, Deep Space Nine
5. Eleanor Rougement, Eastwick

We watched our usual fall Friday lineup with football in between and after. Neither sci-fi show impressed me overmuch - big epic tragic stories leave me unimpressed these days, there are just too many of them, and I always expect reset buttons sooner or later. Smallville, at least, had some lovely lines and a guest star I had no idea about: Julian Sands! As Jor-El, though without Jor-El's memories or gravitas, really, so as happy as I was to see him, I wasn't emotionally engaged with his storyline. It was worth watching the entire episode, though, for Oliver's promise that he still has Clark's back, and Chloe's line when she found out that Clark kissed Lois: "You've had feelings for Lois since like the 1930s!" As for Sanctuary, I already saw I Am Legend, I absolutely don't buy that Will and Kate had a poor doomed baby together (Ashley's only been gone two weeks) let alone that Magnus went off to find out how to die slowly since she apparently doesn't have the guts to try beheading herself, and there was no Henry...definitely not my favorite hour of the series.

Poem for Friday

2009-11-06T04:39:32Z

Preludes for Prepared Piano 2: Sonnet for Caesar
By Estill Pollock

One of his horsemen conveys a letter in Greek characters.

Caesar requires more metaphors against decipherment:
ambition, corruption, power, up to and after
the Ides of March (zip file of this,
force-marched to the territory of the Nervii).

For my part, I haue walk'd about the streets
submitting me unto the perillous night,
in a public place, in a street near the Capital,
before the house of Brutus.

Caesar had minted the first coin with the image of a living Roman.

Elizabethan pronunciation of the likeness:
a portrait of storms and blood crazed crowds,
low string tremolandos, the tutti gesture
clearing to fanfares.

--------

I spent a very nice afternoon with gblvr, who came over (and even provided her own sushi because I am a terrible hostess) and brought the first season of Leverage. The first time I ever saw Arrested Development, I shrieked because one of the series creators is a boy I went through elementary school with, and I had a similar experience in that one of the creators and writers of Leverage is the guy who was the editor of 34th Street, the weekly magazine of The Daily Pennsylvanian, which is where Paul and I met. I feel that I am probably therefore too biased to evaluate the series intelligently, but I will say that the three episodes we watched were extremely entertaining, especially the comic wedding story our former editor wrote.

Roddy Road Covered Bridge near Thurmont, Maryland.

Only three of Frederick County's covered bridges still remain.

My kids climbed over the cement blocks that protect the original stones...

...surrounding the creek as it approaches the bridge.

Loy's Station Covered Bridge is surrounded by a park...

...that has play equipment and fields for sports.

This is a photo of my kids shortly before Adam managed to step in the creek and ruin his shoes.

At the right angle, you can see horses through the bridge.</center>

As for evening TV, I had read some information about the novel upon which FlashForward is based that gave me an inkling what this week's big shocker would be -- I knew that it was possible for people in the novel to commit suicide and thus change their futures, suggesting that other possible futures can be changed as well -- and I thought the guilt and panic were very well played, though I wonder where they're going to go with the girl who remembered dying and thinking she deserved it. Then I did something I never did before: watched a full episode of Supernatural! I'd read spoilers about the format of the episode and figured that might make it worthwhile, plus I had to review one of my least-favorite Next Gen episodes, "The Perfect Mate," afterward so I figured that even if SPN was as sexist as I've often been warned, it would only help give me perspective.

I am sure this week isn't remotely typical enough to draw any conclusions about the show, but we all did a great deal of laughing. The only misogyny I saw was a parody of the sexism built into sitcoms and soapy medical shows, with bikini bimbos and swooning over hot stud doctors by women who should be professionals. The fake herpes ad had us all howling, as did the slo-mo replays of the nutcracker hitting Sam, and "That feels really uncomfortable" when Dean opened his trunk when he was the car is one of the funniest things I've seen on TV all year -- tell me someone on the staff doesn't know about Winchestercest. The ending was kind of lame -- "I wish this were a TV show" -- but what a surprise (NOT), it's Highlander and in the end there can be only one. And I've just finished watching Jon Stewart's parody of Glenn Beck, so I did plenty of laughing this evening around rolling my eyes at Star Trek.

Poem for Thursday

2009-11-05T04:41:21Z

Southeast of Eden
By Glyn Maxwell

Together they took the least space they could.
Entered each other deeply, to be less,
to throw one shadow only, to be still
for all the world while moving for each other.

—So space, so barely dented, might not bruise
and cry, and time come running. To this end
breaths went untaken till the only end
of that (this side of nothing): the great sigh
that gives the place away . . .
And out they come,
exiting one another with the kiss
to heal the bruise and be the bruise and there
they sit. The only angel in this case

came only there to point them, in their first
amazing silence, to two peaceful desks.

--------

Another from this week's New Yorker.

I had a spectacularly uneventful Wednesday -- did a bunch of reading, worked on some job stuff, took a walk with a neighbor whom I've known for many years but only recently discovered has an amazing history (she grew up in Palestine, her mother taught Moshe Dayan, she fought in the Israeli war of independence). The county traffic lights are all screwed up because of a massive computer failure that has the lights all out of sync and I kept getting e-mails telling me that local roads were going to be clogged, so I stayed close to home.

I am depressed about a bunch of things from Election Day, but mostly I am infuriated at how the media -- even reporters who should know better -- are trying to spin two weak gubernatorial candidates as a referendum on Obama, and not even talking about the places where the Democrats made gains. Yes, the Maine vote is very disappointing, but as in California with Prop 8, it was very close and involved lots of money from a relatively small group of bigots...the numbers are shifting in the right direction even if it's not as quickly as they should.

Adam resting on the rocks on Catoctin Mountain last weekend.

Here he strikes a pose at the Hog Rock overlook...

...which I think was named for this rock, which doesn't look like a hog to me, though maybe a little.

The leaves were past peak, but there was still plenty of color...

...making the views gorgeous toward both Frederick...

... and the Blue Ridge.

There was also plenty of green on the forest floor -- thick spongy moss full of water when one stepped on it.

Here's one more of the color with the sun on the mountains.</center>

We started to watch the World Series and yet again disliked the way it was going early on -- plus we cannot stand the Fox announcers -- so we put on the third episode of the current season of Merlin, which I liked because it had lots of Morgana, but did not like because it was lots of shrieking, sniveling Morgana instead of the one whom Uther says never ran away from anything in her life -- if only Uther were in charge of her storylines. (And if only the Druids had anything to do with, you know, Druids, but that's a whole different rant.)

It's no Witches of Eastwick, which remains my favorite show of the new season, though it still hasn't been picked up for the season (and this being ABC, I am betting they pull a Pushing Daisies and don't actually cancel it but don't pick up the back end of the season, leaving it hanging). For once I felt like all three women's storylines were balanced, and I really liked what was going on with Joanna! I hope Joanna's replacement at the paper is going to be her new crush because he is so much hotter and smarter than Will, and HE will appreciate her super awesome powers.

And I don't want ANY of them sleeping with Darryl and am hoping Roxie comes to her senses later in the next episode than the preview shows, but I particularly don't want ALL of them sleeping with Darryl so I am all in favor of other boyfriends, even undeserving ones. Or Joanna/Penny, Joanna/Kat, etc. but particularly with Roxie and Joanna -- you don't Get Over Things just because you packed away your dead husband's stuff along with your dead boyfriend's, and you need something other than a lover to make you feel better about yourself when you come out of denial about not having a job, money, boyfriend, etc. Kat could probably have good mindless strings-free sex with Darryl which I bet is why she's the one least likely to at the moment.

Still, some things I adored: Darryl's ad for the wonder water of Eastwick, the psycho music they played whenever Joanna tried telekinesis, Roxie announcing "That wasn't the curse, that was just me shoving an old man into an open grave," Cybill Shepherd plunging what look like knitting needles into Bun's back and making red ants come out, and her last line, "We're going to have to kill him again" -- ahahaha yes! How can I not love a show with five awesome women, no matter what it's based upon? "You're not alone, you've got me" -- rock on, sister.

Poem for Wednesday

2009-11-04T04:34:24Z

November Philosophers
By Katie Ford

Nothing is nothing, although
he would call me that, She was nothing.
Those were his words, but his hand was lifting
cigarettes in chains and bridges
of ash-light. He said he didn't want his body to last.
It wasn't a year I could argue
against that kind of talk, so I cut the fowl
killed on the farm a mile out—brown and silvery, wild—
and put it over butter lettuce, lettuce then lime.
I heated brandy in the saucepan, poured a strip of molasses
slowly through the cold, slow as I'd seen
a shaman pour pine tincture over the floor
of my beaten house.
She seemed to see my whole life
by ordinance of some god
who wanted me alive again.
Burnt sage, blue smoke. Then sea salt shaken
into the corners of violent sadness.
She wrote my address
across her chest
to let everything listening know
where my life was made.
We waited, either forgetting what we were
or becoming more brightly human in that pine,
in her trance, in the lavender I set on the chipped sills,
not a trance at all but my deliberate hand cutting
from the yard part of what she required.
Now wait longer, she said, and I did as I would
when the molasses warmed over the pot enough
to come into the brandy,
to come into the night
begun by small confessions—
that this was just a rental, and mine just a floor,
that the woman he loved was with another man,
his mother mad, his apartment haunted in the crawl space.
Then I told of the assault at daybreak between
the houses. Heat, asphalt, all of it and my face toward
the brick school where the apostolate studied first-century script
and song. There must have been chanting,
as it was on the hour.
What we said was liturgy meant only for us
and for that night. Not for anyone else
to repeat, live by, believe. Never that.
Our only theories were inside of our hands,
flesh and land, body and prairie.
I reached to smoke down his next-to-last,
which he lit and made ready.
The poultry like a war ration
we ate all the way through.
What we wished, we said.
What we said, we found that night
by these, and no other,
means.

--------

From this week's New Yorker.

I spent a lovely day with melissaukgirl, who drove down from Columbia for what was supposed to be lunch out but ended up being an afternoon at Great Falls, a quick lunch at my house and then Voyager's "The 37s" and Due South's "Odds" (the hand-holding episode, as starfishchick says). I haven't watched any Voyager in half a decade and was startled by two things: how stiff the acting seemed and much I love the Janeway/Chakotay scenes, still, in spite of everything. Also, I still have very great affection for Sharon Lawrence's Amelia Earhart. The actor who played Fred Noonan, David Graf, died quite young of a heart attack, so the episode is kind of sad-nostalgic all around. By then we had realized that traffic was going to be terrible so I told melissaukgirl to stay for dinner and she got to listen to my kids go on about politics and Spore.

A snake wound around a tree by the river at Great Falls. It has a faint orange pattern on its back and much more orange underneath -- anyone want to guess what kind of snake it is?

The reproduction packet boat Charles F. Mercer has been raised out of the C&O Canal for the winter.

The river, running dark because of all the fall leaves, was relatively low today...

...though not as low as the canal, which had been drained empty in places for repair work and was covered in duckweed where there was water.

Water was flowing well at the river dam, however...

...and just below it, where these Canada geese were diving and eating off the river bottom.

You can see our shadows and the shadow of the bridge upon which we were standing across the bottom of this photo of one of the river's whirlpools.

I haven't been inside the visitor center in the tavern since they started renovating it, so imagine my happy surprise to find several new exhibits about history and life on the river.</center>

In the evening my family watched the pilot of V, which was okay yet not particularly good -- decently acted and fun to see a bunch of familiar actors, but predictable and slow to get going. Then we watched The Universe's "Science Fiction, Science Fact," which was a lot of fun in that it had many Star Trek clips (including a diatribe about the scientific implausibility of the destruction of a certain planet in the reboot, heh), plus interviews with Trek's onetime science adviser Andre Bormanis and BSG's Kevin Grazier, who had the best line of the night talking about communicators and noting that our cell phones have more technology than Star Trek's communicator had: "I mean, did you ever see Mr. Spock playing Tetris?"

At 10 we reluctantly put on the news, having already received e-mail alerts with expected bad news about the Virginia gubernatorial race. We watched as they called New Jersey for Christie, took some comfort from the fact that the Democrat had a healthy lead in the NY 23rd Congressional District race, realized that the Maine vote on gay marriage wasn't going to be tallied any time soon and put on Comcast's very good classical channel before Jon Stewart. I hope I wake up to good news.

Poem for Tuesday

2009-11-03T04:48:53Z

Rimbaud's Kraken
By Nicky Beer

Citizens, awake! These are not the low, mild
clouds of your usual daybreaks—behold
the slowly-advancing arms of the apocalyptic
monster, already filling with a pink, sinister light!

The city is a coral reef flaunting electric crustaceans,
a lewd feast laid out for him under the heavens.
He will fiddle harshly the nude steeple of the church,
thump the opera house roof in a savage tom-tom.

His music will make the pauper priests and debutantes
run wild in the street, shucking moth-eaten cassocks
and silk-and-diamond unmentionables to careen
off one another like lascivious pinballs.

Look out, schoolteachers! He's come to suck the bones
from your bodies, to toss your slumping skins
like hobo overcoats into the gutters where you'll
spend your last breaths belching out chalk dust.

The savage urchins, those diminutive monsters
who set fire to the backs of stray dogs—
all at once they'll shriek in terror to see
their fingers turn to sardines in his thundering shadow.

The public monuments will swarm with snails,
their slime-trails a griffonage of queer divinations.
Don't bother running to the sewers to hide—
the pipes have already come alive in their catacombs, ready to strangle.

Citizens, it's all his! Your only chance now is to sprout
another quartet of limbs and clear the way as he unfurls
down the thoroughfares a hundredfold, while the paving stones
squeal like spinsters under the thick, obscene banners of his arms!

--------

The kids had no school due to teacher's meetings on Monday, so we met my Paul's parents at the visitor center at Catoctin Mountain National Park. The leaves were a bit past peak but the weather could not have been more beautiful -- about 60 degrees with mostly clear skies -- so we hiked to two spectacular views at Hog Rock and Blue Ridge Summit Overlook. Then we drove to two of Frederick County's three remaining covered bridges, Loy's Station and Roddy Road, where there were more colorful leaves at the lower elevations. My in-laws took us out for dinner at the Cozy Inn, oldest continuously operating restaurant in Maryland run by the family that founded it, which regularly serves the staff at Camp David and has been visited by dozens of presidential visitors.

Daniel and Adam atop Hog Rock on a Catoctin Mountain nature trail.

They always appreciate the many rocks to climb on...

...like this one, which Adam scaled before we reached the base.

This is Loy's Station Covered Bridge, which the Union Army traversed during the Civil War.

Here is the bridge from the other side, with my family in front.

And this is Roddy Road Covered Bridge, which traverses a smaller stream.

Here is the entrance to the Cozy Inn, which has a caboose permanently attached.

The museum has a small Camp David museum with exhibits about each president at the retreat.</center>

We got home in time for Heroes, about which I have little to say (bored with traveling circus, fed up with history rewriting, no longer care about long-term regular characters, sick of resurrections of some first-season characters and rewritten backstories of others). Then we watched Monday Night Football, since Philly apparently plays better when we don't watch than when we do -- I am perfectly happy with the idea of the Saints as Super Bowl champions -- and Jon Stewart's team coverage of sports fans was a delightful ending to the evening.

Poem for Monday

2009-11-02T04:29:16Z

Octopus Visiting Your Garden
By Nicky Beer

Your fishes, violet and yellow-gilled,
bob on lengths of green twine in the light.
Bait or catch? I ask.
You cannot answer.

Your air is so very sad,
sadder still these winds, these staggering ponies,
these weak cousins to my moving waters.

It's like the touch of unbodied souls.

It's the difference between the oily surge
in your chest and the dish of blood
under the surgeon's table.

I will never understand your stones.
They seem shucked and stunned,
like they've forgotten
how to talk to one another.
They wear the faces
of senile men staring into the sun.

I love your grass, though, the way it tastes
in my arms. Pastoral, you say.

--------

We had a very quiet day after Halloween, in large part due to the weather -- we had intended to drive the two hours to Chestertown for the Sultana downrigging, but it was coming down hard at noon, and we reluctantly decided we didn't feel like traveling all that way in miserable driving conditions to stand in chilly rain on slippery ship decks. We briefly pondered going to the Day of the Dead celebration at the National Museum of American History, but by then we figured it would be very crowded, and having been to the fabulous weekend-long celebration at the Native American museum the past couple of years, we decided to pass. So we did terribly exciting things like grocery shopping, CVS, and (in my case) laundry, which is not going to get done on Monday since we're meeting my in-laws at Catoctin National Park -- the kids have no school due to teacher conferences.

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

Here is the 2008 version of the photo...

...and the 2007 version...

...and the 2006 version...

...and the 2005 version...

...and the 2004 version...

...and the 2003 version, in which I forgot to fix the settings so I got a blurry photo, but it inspired me to try to do it right the next year and then it became a point of comparison in terms of how tall everyone is.</center>

It wasn't a bad football day -- the Ravens won by a big margin over undefeated Denver, the Vikings beat the Packers, we saw quite a bit of both games, and the Redskins had a bye week. In the evening we started to watch the World Series, but when the Yankees went ahead, we turned it off and watched Due South instead -- "Mountie Sings the Blues," which we all loved (Fraser singing, Huey and Dewey writing a terrible country song actually penned by Paul Gross), and "Good for the Soul," which was okay (I don't like over-the-top Fraser at this point, here he seems more like the guy from the first season who doesn't understand how police work actually works, and the mob figures are all caricatures). Oh and dark_cygnet made my day by pointing out that Zienia Merton (Sandra Benes from Space: 1999) was minister in Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith! Now we are hoping the Phillies pull this out, yay Pedro Feliz!

Poem for Sunday

2009-11-01T03:50:39Z

Post-Mortem
By Nicky Beer

To me, you have bequeathed
a half-dissolved
apple, a spider,
and three crescents
of your fingernails.

A large Y of black stitches
has split your trunk into thirds --
a child's rendition
of a bird migrating
towards your feet.

The arc of the scar
on your right calf
reminds me of a hooked trout
I once saw leaping
from the surge of a stream,

a curve of light shaped
by the moment between life
and the infinite space
just above it.

Smoke-browned fish on a white plate,
dawn-grey body on a silver table --
we do not like to linger
on how the dead may still nourish us.

Later, I will tell your family
what no one ever knew,
but you may have suspected:

you had two exquisite,
plum-colored kidneys,
lustrous and faultless
as the surface of a yolk.

--------

"Several years ago, I saw a fascinating documentary about medical cadavers called 'Still Life: The Humanity of Anatomy,'" writes Beer in The Washington Post Book World. "I was particularly touched by how the students endeavored to be respectful to their subjects, even going so far as to have a memorial service for them at the end of the year. Around the same time, I had to get an ultrasound of my kidneys. I remember vividly the sight of my bladder, ghostly and greenish on the monitor, and realizing that even though it had been working tirelessly on my behalf for my whole life, this was the first time I had ever seen it. These two experiences made me consider how relative the idea of intimacy can be. On the one hand, those medical students, necessarily, will never know the names, occupations, passions or fears of their subjects, but they will relate to the bodies in a way that is completely unique, inaccessible even to the subjects' loved ones."

We spent Halloween afternoon at Scott's Run, just as we did five years ago. The weather was gorgeous, quite warm for the season -- nearly 70 degrees. The leaves are just past peak here, still plenty of gold and orange on the trees beginning to turn brown, and lots on the ground with even more falling every hour (we had to sweep the porch twice before evening) so it was a perfect afternoon to spend in the woods and looking at the trees flanking the Potomac River. We saw many dogs, since this is a dog-friendly park -- it was at one time a private estate that the citizens of Fairfax County wrested away from a developer who wanted to cut down all the trees, voting to raise their own taxes to buy and protect the land -- and a heron on an island in the river. Then we came home to carve our pumpkin, which we hadn't managed to do earlier in the week.

Although I did not dress up, I did have my witch t-shirt and jack-o-lantern drawstring pants on. Want some candy?

Daisy, of course, had to keep up her tradition of "helping" to carve the pumpkin.

Here is how it looked fully carved on our porch at night fell.

Adam went as a hippie (that's a Peace, Love & Penguins shirt he's wearing). I am not sure what his friend is supposed to be other than menacing.

My neighbor, who grew up in Greece, is wearing a vintage European Carnival mask. I am wearing a $6 witch hat headband from Claire's.

These are some of the decorations on their porch...

...and in their yard.

This is the mother of Adam's good friend as the Cat in the Hat with her two little boys as Thing One and Thing Two -- she made all the costumes.

These are the decorations in front of their house, including a giant spiderweb, fog machine, strobe light, and her mother -- who recently moved here from Venezuela -- in the witch hat.

We always end Halloween at my parents' so they can see the kids' costumes, even though Daniel decided he was too old for trick-or-treating this year and didn't want to dress up. (The hat on Paul belongs to my mother and was stuck on his head for display purposes only.)</center>

When we got back from trick-or-treating at my parents, it was only a bit after 9 p.m., and we remembered that we were going to have an extra hour of sleep because the clocks go back, so we put on the 1931 Frankenstein with Boris Karloff as the monster. This bears very little resemblance to the novel, which I shrieked to see was attributed in the credits to "Mrs. Percy B. Shelley" -- oh, but her mother would have been displeased -- but it's the basis of nearly every ripoff and parody ever filmed, which makes it both unintentionally hilarious in places and unwittingly epic in others. I hadn't seen it since college, so had not realized how much "The Mob Song" sequence in Disney's Beauty and the Beast owed to this movie when I saw that. I suppose we really should show the kids the Branagh film but I find I'm more in the mood for the Mel Brooks version of the story now!

Poem for Saturday

2009-10-31T04:34:15Z

I Went To Heaven
By Emily Dickinson

Part Four: Time and Eternity
LIV

I went to heaven,—
T'was a small town,
Lit with a ruby,
Lathed with down.
Stiller than the fields
At the full dew,
Beautiful as pictures
No man drew.
People like the moth,
Of mechlin, frames,
Duties of gossamer,
And eider names.
Almost contented
I could be
'Mong such unique
Society.

--------

Poem for cidercupcakes in honor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date."

This is going to be an all-fannish entry, so if fannish is not your thing, you may want to move along. I wrote a review of Next Gen's "Cost of Living" -- which I love, though if you can't stand Lwaxana Troi, you'd be forgiven for not feeling the same -- while waiting for the second segment of "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith" to air. When my family got home, we watched both parts, and I love that episode even more, right from the start, when Mr. Smith and K-9 get jealous of each other's abilities and start competing. When I first heard the episode title, I predicted that Sarah Jane's husband was either going to be an alien villain in disguise or that he was going to be an innocent pawn who would nobly sacrifice himself for her sake, and I'm very glad it was the latter; it was more like the Doctor having to let River Song die, made both Sarah Jane and Peter Dalton stronger characters, and was touching if, well, predictable.

I laughed a lot too, and just as much during the first half, while Luke, Rani and Clyde were joking that they didn't want to have to watch grownups kiss in public (I loved Sarah Jane saying "Cheek!" when Luke said he didn't know people her age did those things). Having just watched the aforementioned Buffy episode "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date," I found it amusing as well as sad that Sarah Jane has the same problems with dating that Buffy does; how do you tell your boyfriend about your job, or hide it from him, without making him flee? Of course, none of the kids would have recognized the stuttering TARDIS sounds as such but I expected more alarm from everyone, not just Clyde, when Sarah Jane orders Mr. Smith to shut down completely right after detecting the anomaly. The whole idea that she needs someone reliable, she doesn't even know where to send the Doctor an invitation -- as if he'd come purely to be happy for her, and not to save the world -- that makes me sad. I actually prefer her relationship with Clyde! Though I did snicker at Clyde's line about hoping the Doctor is as good as Sarah Jane says, and the Doctor's reply that journalists are always exaggerating but he is pretty amazing. Also Rani telling the Doctor to call her Sarah Jane rather than Sarah and his reaction...hee!

Not sure about the whole "there's nothing outside" from either a sci-fi or visual standpoint; it was hard to look at the screen at times, particularly when Sarah Jane, silhouetted in painfully bright light, talks to Peter about his "angel" and suspects he was using the red kryptonite ring to manipulate her (I am very glad she accepts the proposal before she puts on the ring, otherwise there would be very icky consent issues since they apparently were together for two weeks afterward). But you'd think the Pantheon of Discord would know that Sarah Jane is not so easily tempted by now, and would never fall for a man who isn't strong enough to do the right thing once he understands what it is, that he's already dead...it's very much like Rose's father, living up to his greatest potential for love and duty just as he realizes he has to die. I bristle at Clyde deciding he needs to go fight the Trickster because "it's what Sarah Jane would do, it's what the Doctor taught her" -- all right, but she learned from plenty of other people too, and Peter has learned enough from her to do what he knows she would do.

The Doctor's implication when he finds her, I think, is that ultimately Sarah Jane is more important to protecting Earth than he is himself, talking about the things she's going to do. When she asks if this is the last time she'll see him and he says he hopes not, I assume that means he knows that the until-now Doctor does not see her again in her future...does "don't forget me" mean him, Ten, his current incarnation, or is he actually sort of jealous of his previous self and possible future self? It's a nice conundrum. I mean, Peter doesn't deserve Sarah Jane, but really I don't think the Doctor does either. And I'm really glad Peter loved her and made her realize she could have a happy love life with someone, just not him -- more Martha, less Rose, without the violent erasure that Donna got. Anyway, I was completely satisfied with this episode, and wish Torchwood would take some cues from Sarah Jane.

Painted pumpkins in the store at Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch.

In addition to pumpkins, a variety of gourds are sold there.

Plus there are Halloween decorations for sale, including witches...

...and painted gourds designed to serve as birdhouses.

The pumpkins at Jumbo's were so picked over, though, that we got ours from this small local market.

They sell excellent corn and vegetables all summer, and, at this time of year, many varieties of apple, all locally grown.

A cool spring and lots of rain during the growing season made this a tough year for pumpkins -- there are plenty of big ones, but a lot of them aren't fully orange.

Still, there's plenty that can be done to make a less-than-perfect pumpkin festive!</center>

thefridayfive: Memory and Desire
1. What is your happiest memory? Being at Stonehenge for the first time with my family.
2. What is the most important life lesson you've learned? Being poor sucks, but wealth is no guarantee of happiness.
3. What is the most difficult decision you've had to make? Whether to drop out of grad school.
4. What is the best thing about your life? My kids.
5. What is the biggest challenging you're facing right now? Finding a job that's enough hours doing something I actually want to do.

fannish5: Five favorite fannish Halloween costumes - that you have worn, or seen someone else wear. My tastes are simple and I am easily impressed.
1. Yoda from Star Wars, which I wore in college (it was a cheap storebought one, but I was short enough to pull it off better than most adults, heh).
2. Pikachu from Pokemon, worn by older son.
3. Harry Potter from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, worn by older son (who did not then need glasses, so he had fake costume glasses).
4. Bele from Star Trek, worn by Paul (created with black and white face makeup plus a neutral-color turtleneck and trousers).
5. Jim Morrison, whom my friend Suzy's then-boyfriend agreed to dress as because she had a total fetish (we're talking hundreds of old magazine photos taped inside her closet door). He didn't look much like Jim, but he must really have loved her to agree to try.

My parents are home from California but my father is sick, so we didn't have dinner with them; instead Paul made apple and cheddar strata with chicken in mushroom sauce, both of which were fabulous. Then we watched Smallville, which I didn't think was such a great episode -- it's like they can't figure out what to do with Oliver from week to week, though Tess is awesome and I love her -- but I forgive everything, even the stupid Good Morning Metropolis storyline, for the last few seconds when Clark and Lois finally kiss, though this is so much earlier in the season than I was expecting for that that I am now worried how many stupid ways they'll be split up in future episodes a la Clark and Lana. Then we watched Sanctuary, which also had some silliness, but also had awesome women -- I always love Magnus, and go Kate! (I don't think Magnus is fooled by her for a second, which is part of the fun.) Also, any episode in which a geek gives the Live Long and Prosper hand gesture to misunderstood alien creatures before becoming a successful comic book writer gets bonus points from me.

Poem for Friday

2009-10-30T03:44:38Z

The Pope's Penis
By Sharon Olds

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat-and at night,
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

--------

I spent a delightful afternoon with cidercupcakes, who forgave me for not having anything exciting to feed her and brought Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons one and five. First we had to get my irritable DVD player working; it had decided it was a Region 2 player, and rejected all my professional discs with a "Wrong Region" warning, requiring that the machine be restored to factory settings -- something not easy to learn from the minimal manual. But we figured it out, and then we watched "Teacher's Pet" and "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date" (which I had not seen before, never having watched the first season), plus "Checkpoint" (which I had seen, but it's one of the best ever, with the Council of Watchers and Glory and how Buffy lays the smackdown on everyone and how Giles adoring her).

A turkey stealing food from a calf in a barn at South Mountain Creamery.

Since it was Fall Harvest Celebration weekend, there were cheese samples...

...and containers of cream to be shaken by hand to make take-home servings of butter.

A singer was performing in the large barn...

...where there were also ice cream samples, farm toys, and historic farm equipment.

This calf was only a couple of weeks old. You can see some of the adult cows behind her, outside near the dairy delivery trucks.

These two calves were sharing a stall, and a water bucket.

Alpacas don't live at South Mountain Creamery, but these (plus yarn made from their wool) were visiting from a nearby farm.</center>

I am liking FlashForward a lot, though I feel like that could turn on a dime if they killed off the wrong character in the wrong way or just screwed around and dragged things out too long. Right now the pacing is terrific and I like all the characters; I like that the men are as focused on their relationships as the women, and the women as focused on their careers as the men, and it's a reasonably diverse cast without too many obvious stereotypes. I particularly love Janis (the actress who plays her is terrific too), and I really like the Mark/Olivia/Lloyd triangle complicated by Dylan and Charlie's obvious attachment...it's messy and interesting and Lloyd obviously has all sorts of secrets much worse than the ones Mark is keeping from Olivia, so she's contemplating leaving one man she can't trust for one with with bigger skeletons in his closet.

I can't say that I enjoyed the World Series tonight, but a lot can happen in Philadelphia!

Poem for Thursday

2009-10-29T03:50:13Z

The Freshness
By Jalaluddin Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

When it's cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.
Inside the majesty.

--------

I don't have a great deal to report other than my delight at seeing President Obama sign the inclusive hate crimes bill into law -- the first time a federal measure has protected GLBT rights along with the rights of other citizens. Now if only he would keep his campaign promise to overturn Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I will feel better about him despite his backtracking on health care and Afghanistan -- it isn't as if Americans hadn't been explicitly told that he intended to overturn it when we elected him, he said so several times -- no one can complain he turned out to be a secret liberal! I had a nice afternoon in that there were three white-tail deer walking in the woods at the same time I was, and I wasted far too much time in the late afternoon and evening setting up a Superpoke Pets club, then inviting people and explaining clubs to them since Superpoke didn't bother to do so before having them go live (and promptly crashing a bunch of other things). I think I may have irritated a couple of people by making Adam an officer, but he wanted an officer badge, and what's a mother to do?

Me and my kids enjoying the fall color on High Knob at Gambrill State Park last weekend.

The tea house at the summit of High Knob can be rented out for weddings and other events at Gambrill.

This was the view from the overlook facing Middletown and South Mountain.

The color was even more amazing on South Mountain itself, looking down from the Washington Monument.

The color on this tree was already past peak at that elevation when I took this photo of Paul and our kids.

The approach to the monument follows the Appalachian Trail where it crosses through Washington Monument State Park.

This tree was in the parking lot by the picnic table where we ate lunch.

And the foliage all around was equally spectacular.</center>

We watched the World Series until Eastwick, and it was a happy couple of hours indeed...if the entire series goes this way, I will cease complaining about anything the Redskins do this season (I know I said I wasn't rooting for the Redskins till they changed their name, but I simply cannot root for Dallas or the Giants, and now that Michael Vick is on the Eagles, I would prefer the Cowboys in a crunch...the entire division makes me barf). I adored Eastwick this week -- an entire episode about female bonding in which men and what they want are secondary, particularly so far as Kat is concerned -- I am loving her character lately. I still can't warm to Joanna, she seems fundamentally selfish to me in a way that Roxie and Kat are not; her interest in exposing Darrell is not to protect the town but to become a celebrity news person. And yet she is intelligent enough to get Kat: "Will doesn't really know me...he certainly doesn't love me...you on the other hand walked through fire for me, if that isn't love I don't know what is." That's a lovely, lovely scene, and makes it easy to leave the bad witch/pagan stuff to the side.

Poem for Wednesday

2009-10-28T03:30:44Z

My Great-Grandmother's Bible
By Spencer Reece

Faux-leather bound and thick as an onion, it flakes—
an heirloom from Iowa my dead often read.
I open the black flap to speak the "spake"s
and quickly lose track of who wed, who bred.
She taped our family register as it tore,
her hand stuttering like a sewing machine,
darning the blanks with farmers gone before—
Inez, Alvah, Delbert, Ermadean.
Our undistinguished line she pressed in the heft
between the Testaments, with spaces to spare,
smudged with mistakes or tears; her fingers left
a mounting watchfulness I find hard to bear.
When I saw the AIDS quilt, spread out in acres,
it was stitched with similar scripts by similar makers.

--------

Another from this week's New Yorker.

I have absolutely nothing worth reporting -- it rained all day, I had a bit of a headache though managed to stave off a migraine, I did lots of dumb organization things and started playing around with holiday card ideas that I ended up scrapping because I didn't really love any of them -- does anyone have any brilliant suggestions for a holiday/New Year card with a Southern/New Orleans theme, preferably with some fannish tie-in that works for both the locale and the holidays?

A view of fall foliage through the Civil War Correspondents Arch at Gathland State Park.

Gathland was the home of Civil War journalist George Alfred Townsend, built in Crampton's Gap, where William B. Franklin's Union corps fought Howell Cobb's Confederate force during the Battle of South Mountain.

This is the lodge where GATH (as Townsend signed his work) often had breakfast; the building above is the mansion.

These ruins are all that is left of GATH's library.

His books, however, have survived, and some remain in print. The Limoges candy dish was part of a set with the Gapland logo (as it was then known) in gold.

The museum has family photos as well, plus letters from Townsend to various colleagues and friends.

The War Correspondents Arch is the most famous structure at Gathland now. The Appalachian Trail crosses directly in front of it.

There are several memorials, national and state Civil War Trails signs, and descriptive markers around the barn ruins (at left), the memorial arch (at right), and the mansion (directly behind me as I took the photo).</center>

Since we have no Tuesday night chill-out show -- maybe when V premieres, if it doesn't suck -- we watched the second episode of the second season of Merlin, "The Once and Future Queen." I liked it much better than the season premiere despite an ongoing shortage of Morgana, who better get lots of screen time in upcoming episodes; I love Gwen, though, so I was happy to see her get so much attention, and I love that she'll tell off Arthur without any concern about their relative social positions. I don't think they have any chemistry -- she has lots more with Lancelot, and Merlin, for that matter -- but chemistry isn't exactly what Arthur/Guinevere is known for, anyway, though I am wondering how that will work on this series, since Arthur clearly won't be marrying the daughter of King Leodegrance if he ends up marrying Gwen.

Poem for Tuesday

2009-10-27T03:31:11Z

Letter to Tsvetaeva
By Nina Zivancevic
Translated by Charles Simic

Ah, now our time has come, Marina.
You visit me at night while I sit alone
with a glass of wine in hand
—you who do not need a key—
for you the most secret door of my room
is always open:
abandoned by our mothers,
we both loved children and poetry,
and hated Paris and poverty,
wearing the one and only dirty dress,
we kept clear of landlords and cops.
We both had blue eyes, many lovers,
and the incapacity to live with anyone.
Ah, I almost forgot: our fathers, too,
had similar jobs—they occupied themselves
with museums and art . . .
Still, I got angry yesterday
when someone called me Marina . . .
I'm neither important nor odd enough
to send daily reports to Beria . . .
How furious I was that you hanged yourself!
What courage, what a double cross, what a lie,
what a betrayal of poetry . . .
Marina, I'm a child as you can see,
about you and life I really know nothing.

--------

From this week's New Yorker.

It was a busy yet unexciting day -- many dozen photos cropped, color-corrected and otherwise manipulated, three loads of laundry washed, sorted and folded, two packages wrapped, addressed and taken to the post office, one long walk enjoyed since the weather was gorgeous, things like that. I tried to read the news but between not being able to figure out who's standing where on the public health care option, not seeing what the problem is if there's no McDonalds in Iceland and not being happy with the direction of Change We Can Believe In, I decided to let Adam try to explain Spore to me instead -- which was probably an even bigger mistake! I did refrain from buying my penguin Tarot cards, which I consider an accomplishment -- I did not refrain from buying myself Tarot cards with my $5 plus 30% off coupon at Borders over the weekend.

Piggies enjoying pumkpins at Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch on Sunday.

There was a petting zoo that included these sheep...

...and some small round goats and chickens, who were sharing a pen.

It is rare for me to think that a cow is particularly pretty -- usually I just think they're adorable, if they're clean -- but this one had unusual markings and was really quite beautiful.

Adam got to pet another calf as well as several at South Mountain Creamery earlier in the day.

Smaller children could have pony rides at Jumbo's.

Here are my kids surrounded by a very few of the pumpkins for sale there.

I'm not sure what kind of squash these are -- I don't think I've ever eated one -- but they were my favorites in the "weird pumpkins" patch!</center>

After dinner (tuna pomodoro, mmm) we watched last week's two-part Sarah Jane Adventures episode, "The Mad Woman in the Attic," which despite being a reset-button episode was very enjoyable -- more so than the season premiere, I thought. I love that everyone still thinks about and talks to Maria even if she's not appearing and Rani resents how much attention she gets (are we to understand from the alternate future-forward at the end that Rani marries Luke and they go visit Maria in America?). I love the seaside resort, which reminds me of the one we visited in Plymouth a few years ago; younger son won a free game of miniature golf there, and still has the token to go back and use. I didn't mind Sarah Jane's expected speech about friends being all you need -- it reminded me of Lisa Moscatiello's song "In the Here and Now" (which, really, could be my theme song for Sarah Jane, and I'd make a songvid if I made songvids). I particularly love the flashbacks with previous Doctors, even alongside the prediction of Ten returning when such predictions always turn out to mean bad news in Whoverse.

Then we watched Heroes, which is like three different shows as it follows three different storylines, and as has been happening for the past two seasons for me, it feels so disjointed that I have trouble having any overall positive feeling. I am very, very tired of the Sylar-in-Matt's-head storyline, I don't think Greg Grunberg is a good enough actor to play it really well, of course they wrote Janice preferring Sylar in bed to Matt, it all feels vaguely icky and badly done. Whereas now that they got their gratuitous lesbian kissing out of the way, I actually really like Claire's uncertainty with Gretchen, which makes sense to me for someone who's been through what she has (and I'd sort of forgotten about the fact that she's a virgin). I'm wary of it because I have no confidence that these writers will do anything besides exploit the whole two-college-girls-together thing, but I appreciate how it was handled this week. As for HRG and Tracy, Ali Larter and Jack Coleman are two of my favorite actors in the franchise, but they seem to be floundering for things to do with them, and I only felt badly up to a point for the boy who can't help killing people...he could so easily have grown up to be Sylar.

Poem for Monday

2009-10-26T03:46:51Z

Grimalkin
By Thomas Lynch

One of these days she will lie there and be dead.
I'll take her out back in a garbage bag
and bury her among my sons' canaries,
the ill-fated turtles, a pair of angelfish:
the tragic and mannerly household pests
that had the better sense to take their leaves
before their welcomes and my patience had worn thin.
For twelve long years I've suffered this damned cat
while Mike, my darling middle son, himself
twelve years this coming May, has grown into
the tender if quick-tempered manchild
his breeding blessed and cursed him to become.
And only his affection keeps this cat alive
though more than once I've threatened violence -
the brick and burlap in the river recompense
for mounds of furballs littering the house,
choking the vacuum cleaner, or what's worse:
shit in the closets, piss in the planters, mice
that winter indoors safely as she sleeps
curled about a table leg, vigilant
as any knickknack in a partial coma.
But Mike, of course, is blind to all of it -
the gray angora breed of arrogance,
the sluttish roar, the way she disappears for days
sex-desperate once or twice a year,
urgently ripping her way out the screen door
to have her way with anything that moves
while Mike sits up with tuna fish and worry,
crying into the darkness, "Here kitty kitty,"
mindless of her whorish treacheries
or of her crimes against upholsteries -
the sofas, love seats, wingbacks, easy chairs
she's puked and mauled into dilapidation.
I have this reoccurring dream of driving her
deep into the desert east of town
and dumping her out there with a few days' feed
and water. In the dream, she's always found
by kindly tribespeople who eat her kind
on certain holy days as a form of penance.
God knows, I don't know what he sees in her.
Sometimes he holds her like a child in his arms
rubbing her underside until she sounds
like one of those battery powered vibrators
folks claim to use for the ache in their shoulders.
And under Mike's protection she will fix her
indolent green-eyed gaze on me as if
to say: Whaddaya gonna do about it, Slick,
the child loves me and you love the child.
Truth told, I really ought to have her fixed
in the old way with an airtight alibi,
a bag of Redi-mix and no eyewitnesses.
But one of these days she will lie there and be dead.
And choking back loud hallelujahs, I'll pretend
a brief bereavement for my Michael's sake,
letting him think as he has often said
"Deep down inside you really love her don't you Dad?"
I'll even hold some cheerful obsequies
careful to observe God's never-failing care
for even these, the least of His creatures,
making some mention of a cat-heaven where
cat-ashes to ashes, cat-dust to dust
and the Lord gives and the Lord has taken away.
Thus claiming my innocence to the end,
I'll turn Mike homeward from that wicked little grave
and if he asks, we'll get another one because
all boys need practice in the arts of love
and all boys' aging fathers in the arts of rage.

--------

We had a perfect autumn day -- temperatures in the low 60s, sky brilliant blue with a few wispy clouds -- for our annual fall foliage tour of Frederick County parks, Middletown shops, and pumpkin patches. We went first to Gambrill State Park, then stopped at the Snallygaster before heading to Washington Monument State Park, where we had a picnic before climbing to the tower. Then we went to Gathland State Park, where we visited the museum, which isn't always open, before heading to South Mountain Creamery, which was having a festival with visiting animals and food samples since last weekend's Frederick Festival of the Farm was largely rained out.

We saw more animals at the petting zoo at Jumbo's Pumpkin Patch, but the pumpkins themselves looked so picked-over at this point in the season that we ended up stopping for a pumpkin at a farm stand closer to home that always has large, nice-looking fruit. We came home for a late dinner as it was getting dark, so it was a long afternoon, and I will let the photos tell the story:

My kids climbing on the rocks at Gambrill State Park atop High Knob, which offers excellent views of South Mountain.

This is the garter snake that Adam found sunning itself up on the rocks.

The Washington Monument of Washington County, seen here from the field of boulders below...

...was playing host to thousands of stink bugs, as were the buildings in Gathland State Park.

The leaves around the ruins at Crampton's Gap (were Gathland is located) were spectacular.

South Mountain Creamery was having a festival with other local farms, including one that raised these alpacas and others that provided many of the food samples at the tents.

This calf was born the day before yesterday. It tried to nurse on my hand, my arm, my shirt, my hip, and everything else that came within range of its mouth.

At Jumbo's we got to pet calves as well, plus goats and sheep, and Adam got to balance a pumpkin on his head.</center>

Poem for Sunday

2009-10-25T04:38:56Z

Refusing at Fifty-Two to Write Sonnets
By Thomas Lynch

It came to him that he could nearly count
How many Octobers he had left to him
In increments of ten or, say, eleven
Thus: sixty-three, seventy-four, eighty-five.
He couldn't see himself at ninety-six --
Humanity's advances notwithstanding
In health-care, self-help, or new-age regimens --
What with his habits and family history,
The end, he thought, is nearer than you think.

The future, thus confined to its contingencies,
The present moment opens like a gift:
The balding month, the grey week, the blue morning,
The hour's routine, the minute's passing glance --
All seem like godsends now. And what to make of this?
At the end the word that comes to him is Thanks.

--------

"My mother was buried on All Hallows Eve, 20 years gone now...her death at 65, 11 days after my 41st birthday that October, along with the routines of leaf-fall and withering, have always conspired with the liturgical calendar to make All Saints and All Souls a memento mori for me -- a time of year when I contemplate the dull math of time and mortality and their opposites," writes Lynch in Poet's Choice. "So much of poetry depends on such counting and calculation, figuring and refiguring the stressed and unstressed syllabics of language, the iambics of our heartbeats and heartbreaks." Lynch adds that he used to write sonnets on each birthday "to keep track of time, its confines and limitations, its reoccurring themes -- how every end has a beginning in it: this October giving way to that November. The older we get, the less pressing the past and future become...the older we get, likewise, the less we seem to count. Which accounts, I suppose, for the title of this 15-line poem."

Since it was a rainy, gloomy day, we went out after younger son got home from Hebrew school volunteering and lunch to see Amelia. I knew the film had received mixed-to-poor reviews, though I stopped reading after a few because they all seemed to have the same complaint -- that the movie was a pretty straightforward biography, that it was a bit too reverent and didn't seem spontaneous enough, despite a cast including Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, and Christopher Eccleston. I wasn't thrilled to learn that the movie was based largely on Susan Butler's not-the-greatest biography, yet I must confess that those reviews actually encouraged me far more than if the critics were gushing about what an avant-garde retelling of Earhart's life it was or what unexpected titillating details were included.

No, she wasn't conventional, but risk-taking in biopics often means a disservice to the subject, and I really didn't want a Marie Antoinette-style view of Earhart as fashion icon and sexpot, though her biographers always go on about her clothing line and her extramarital relationships. Mira Nair sticks very close to Earhart's own writings -- a lot of the film's dialogue is based on her books and letters, which sometimes gives it a rather formal quality, though Earhart supposedly was fairly reserved once she became famous, aware that people were hanging on her every word even when she was trying to have private conversations. There aren't any big revelations; her life and her disappearance have been meticulously chronicled, so that even people who aren't remotely interested in aviation or feminism know who she was, what she did, and how she vanished. There's a sweet scene between her and the child Gore Vidal, based on Vidal's own recollections of her and a bit of embellishment for storytelling -- even people who knew her personally as he did seem to have idolized her in recollection. It's little wonder that the film tends toward reverence toward its subject.

I think the compulsion to structure the film as a love story between Earhart and her husband George Putnam puts some reins on the storytelling -- the discretion in filming her affairs ends up making them look not as passionate as I hope they were -- but if she'd been having wild sex with Fred Noonan the night before their plane disappeared, that would have irritated me much more. No one can be sure of the details of Earhart's love life -- in Nair's version, she sleeps with Gene Vidal but not Noonan, though the latter quite often becomes her lover in fiction about Earhart, I think because it's preferable to believe that she ran away to find happiness with Fred than that they died shouting at each other about whose fault it was they couldn't reach Howland Island. Earhart almost certainly wasn't a virgin when she met Putnam -- she was engaged to someone else who does not appear in this film -- but there's no evidence that she and Vidal were involved beyond his son's belief (maybe hope) that they were. She did write that she did not intend to hold Putnam to any medieval code of fidelity, nor would she consider herself so bound, but exactly what that meant in terms of how they conducted their private lives was well protected by those close to them.

There have already been biopics about Isak Dinesen, Howard Hughes, and other people whom I don't think are nearly as interesting as Earhart but whose filmed scenes of flying over Africa, surviving a plane crash, etc. are so famous that although Earhart was a pioneer, the film itself doesn't feel like it covers new ground. (That wouldn't necessarily have bothered Earhart, who didn't complain about losing races to other women since any triumph for a woman aviator made it easier for others to fly; she wanted to win in large part because she had to remain famous and successful in order to get the funds to keep flying.) Maybe for someone who isn't an Earhart fan or who didn't like Out of Africa or The Aviator, the familiar soaring-music-and-sweeping-cinematography combination might be more of an annoyance. I'm not particularly a Hilary Swank fan -- I think she's talented but some of her film choices haven't been things I've wanted to see at all -- and Gere has been hit-and-miss for me too, so I'm really pretty unbiased toward the actors when I say they nailed the characters. Eccleston has perhaps the hardest role -- not a lot of dialogue -- and although his accent is slightly less convincing than McGregor's when he does speak, I think his performance is a lot more memorable.

Here in honor of the film are photos I've posted before but feel like posting again of Earhart's Lockheed Vega at the National Air & Space Museum.

Earhart's Lockheed Vega, sold to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in June 1933 and displayed there until it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution in September 1966.

You can see the manufacturer mark on the tail. This plane (well, the same model) appears in Amelia.

Earhart flew this plane on several of her historic flights, including the Hawaii-California flight that she was the first to achieve.

A model of the Electra in which Earhart and Noonan disappeared during their attempt to fly around the world.

Earhart's trophy chest at the Air & Space Museum.

Earhart's flight jacket is at the museum's Udvar-Hazy Center (which was having the annual Halloween Air & Scare tonight, but sadly I think my kids are too old, or rather they do).

These scissors are at Udvar-Hazy as well.</center>

Otherwise, I finished my review of "The First Duty", and we watched two episodes of Due South -- the sublime "The Ladies Man" (I love passionately anti-death-penalty TV shows, and okay, Ray K is awesome) and the ridiculous "Mojo Rising." The weather has finally cleared up, so Sunday we are doing our annual tour of South Mountain fall foliage at the state parks!

Poem for Saturday

2009-10-24T04:12:50Z

Pilgrim's Progress
By Meghan O'Rourke

The dog did no harm.
The bee did no harm.
The grass, the grave grass, no harm.
The wind did no harm.

The mud did no harm.
The fly, the sticky fly, no harm.
The snakes did not hurt us.
The trees did not either.

The sky, no harm, the moon,
no harm. The wild cats of San Juan,
sleeping in the wet harbor,
did no harm!

The river did no harm.
The land kept going green.
It is bright here, where we sleep
by the lake. Let us pause

to praise the warm, cool
light as it bends
around the unharmed earth,
our faces buried in the woollen dark--

How could you think
it would hurt us? What made you worry?
That whisper the earth makes, turning in space?
I hear it too. It only does what it must.

--------

I got to have lunch with hak42 and adrith -- the former being in town visiting the latter for the marathon on Sunday -- as well as gblvr, who drove me to Silver Spring so we could meet them at Potbelly. There was a guitar player doing acoustic covers ("When I Ruled the World," "Another One Bites the Dust"). After we ate, we wandered around Borders and Ulta for a bit. Then gblvr drove me home so I could work on my review of "The First Duty," which I still have not finished because I got distracted watching Sense and Sensibility, which we put on because we couldn't remember what we said we were going to watch from last time. I hadn't seen it in ages and thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I still find both Dashwood sisters unnecessarily melodramatic.

The flame atop the Eternal Light Peace Memorial at Gettysburg National Battlefield.

A memorial for Pennsylvania's Irish Brigade, based on a general's recollection of having seen a dead soldier lying against the stones.

Upraised cannons at Gettysburg mark the spots where the generals had their headquarters. This was the site of the headquarters of Major General Sickles, who lost a leg in the battle.

Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore, created the North Carolina monument on Seminary Ridge depicting a wounded Confederate officer urging his men to carry on without him.

Near one of the battlefield's barns, a monument to the 90th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry with a sculpted bird's nest marks the spot where a large oak tree stood along the regiment's line of battle.

This is how it looks seen from above, from the tower giving views of the battlefield and the city of Gettysburg beyond. There's a local legend that Confederate fire knocked a nest out of the original tree and a Union soldier risked his life to replace it.

Along nearby Doubleday Avenue are several other monuments topped with birds, plus a memorial for Sallie, a terrier who was the mascot for the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and stood guard over the wounded.</center>

thefridayfive: Last Song on Earth
1. If the world was ending and you could listen to one song, what would it be? "The Sands of Time" by Jennifer Cutting.
2. How did you first come across that song? Lisa Moscatiello sang it with Ocean Orchestra at a free concert in a Virginia park.
3. If it reminds you of a person, is that person still with you? It doesn't remind me of one single person.
4. Does anyone else know what that song means to you? I've talked about it connected to several fandoms so probably there are people here who would know.
5. Where would you listen to it, and with whom? I assume at home with my family, though if I got a choice I'd listen to it at Stonehenge with everyone I know.

fannish5: Who are your 5 favorite non-humanoid characters?
1. Diefenbaker, Due South.
2. Jack, Pirates of the Caribbean
3. Jiji. Kiki's Delivery Service
4. Norbert, Harry Potter
5. Meeko, Pocahontas

We watched Smallville -- any episode with that much Oliver Queen generally pleases me, but this one was pretty disjointed and the conclusion was downright silly -- I am all in favor of Chloe and Oliver working together (and getting together would be all right with me too, since the preview with Clark kissing Lois is a thing of beauty), but the whole "save Ollie with a bad stereotypical Asian casino girl" plot is really too dumb to excuse. I liked Sanctuary better -- lots of Henry, and Kate is growing on me, but I am starting to wonder if I need spoilers about the fate of Ashley (is the actress signed for the season?) and I'm really not sure why Will was on such a "you have to let go" kick so soon; chasing down the people who did what they did to Ashley before they can strike again seems like a fine idea, I must admit. Weather's supposed to be terrible tomorrow so I am planning to take the kids to see Amelia!

Poem for Friday

2009-10-23T03:31:21Z

Mom as Fly
By Terese Svoboda

A fly with a human head
heads for your screen. It's Mom,
toting groceries and laundry

way too tiny. An interruption in scoring.
But first score a bill worth
the trouble. Mom! A twenty?

The fly mounts the monitor
and notes the debt to education
remains unpaid.

But past midnight theorems
are not her thing. Way faux,
as in eternal, those problems.

She hand-rubs. You crush her,
forgetting anguish might lead to food.
No buzz to you equals a fast connection,

where all relationships worship
the math, holy Pythagorean. But you
don't have the millions of eyes

she had to watch over something.
What was that something?
Your hand drifts to a pimple.

Could it be?
Dad decks you bad,
the triangle so over.

--------

It was not a very eventful Thursday around here. I did some chores, finished tampering with the photos I was working on yesterday so I could burn discs for my parents and sister, did some reading, wrote to my senators about two separate issues, and starting working on a review of Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The First Duty" which we all watched this evening, in honor of which I shall post some photos (reruns from several years ago) of the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys, California where my brother-in-law and his wife were married in the Japanese Garden in 2002, but which is probably better known to everyone reading this as Starfleet Academy.

Pelicans enjoy the evening at the Japanese Garden in the midst of the water filtration plant.

The administration building of the water reclamation project is recognizable as the administration building of Starfleet Academy...

...though the Academy is supposed to be in San Francisco, so the Golden Gate Bridge has been digitally inserted into the scene.

At least two species of egret live in the protected garden, the great egret...

...and the smaller, dark-billed snowy egret.

The gardens also have waterfalls, willow trees, and a garden-within-a-garden, the teahouse and tea garden (roji) where my brother in law had his wedding reception after the ceremony on the log bridge.

I love seeing all the birds amidst the plantings and lanterns.</center>

I liked FlashForward a lot this week -- it's so nice to see someone who's a lesbian when it isn't merely a ratings ploy, and given the state of the world and everyone else's relationships, it doesn't bother me that she has issues with intimacy -- the joke about her vision of the future being on the space station having a three-way with Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin must definitely be taken as a deliberate distancing tactic once the snickering stops, but I like her ambivalence about whether she wants to be married, whether she wants to be a mother, why she's fine with a new lover going through her belongings yet feels violated when she finds out the new lover looked up her future. She interests me a lot more than the president with his predictable ex-mistress, Mark and his once and future drinking problem, or Demetri and his impending murder. I'm assuming she's not dead from that gunshot since she's listed in future episodes, which pleases me.

We have had to turn the Yankees-Angels game off twice tonight because every time we put it on, the Yankees come back. At least the Florida State-UNC game is close.

I'm trying to decide whether to see Amelia this weekend despite the mediocre reviews (all the same complaints -- script so bombastic that only the film's score can compete, the actors can't do a thing with the overwrought lines -- basing anything about Earhart on Butler's bio instead of Rich's seems like a bad idea to me to begin with). Yet is there any chance I will not love a biopic about Earhart starring Swank, Gere, McGregor & Eccleston?

Adam shared this with me and made me laugh a lot.

Poem for Thursday

2009-10-22T03:38:48Z

Epithalamium NYC
By Anne Carson

I washed my hair the morning I got married put
on
red boots found license woke C. set off for City
Hall
had ceremony drove to Fairway got cups of tea
sat
at bench on boardwalk watched man & woman
at
next bench come almost to blows over her having
put
ketchup on his egg sandwich too bad they couldn't
just
trade hers had the sausage Don't ever put ketchup
on
my egg sandwich he clenched You handed it to me
she
cawed meanwhile their aged father paying no heed
was
pulling out bits of paper one after the other That's not
it
he'd say That's one from four years ago beautifully
mild
he searched on his wife I bet kept track of the list
when
she was alive bluish mist lifted sank on the water a
statue
(Liberty) slid us a wave from way across the bay.

--------

I had the pleasure of lunch with perkypaduan, originally scheduled for my house with bad TV, but we ended up meeting at the mall, where we went to pretty much every store dementordelta and I didn't hit on Monday plus some that we did -- Bath & Body Works (because I had to buy Twilight Woods roll-on perfume), Temptation ($3 peace-sign bracelets), Old Navy (Halloween t-shirts on sale for $3.75), Hot Topic, Spirit of Halloween, and the food court, to which I brought a peanut butter sandwich because I still haven't figured out what in the mall I can safely eat, which sucks, though means I have more money for stupid stuff like roll-on perfume and bracelets. In the late afternoon my mother came over with old family photos that my sister wanted scanned for a project for her daughter's Bat Mitzvah, so I present to you some not-very-cleaned-up historical family photos scans:

My mother's father, grandmother, aunt, mother, and brother, clockwise around her in the middle.


My father's mother as a girl and her family.	My father's father, the older boy, and his family.


My mother's mother's parents...	...and my mother's parents.


My mother's father, mother, and brother...	...and my parents, on prom night.

Glee pleased me this week, not because any of my complaints about the characters or the writing have diminished -- I can't care about anyone, can't feel sorry for anyone, but I love the music despite the bad lip-syncing and I can only be relieved to have an episode with no Terri. Though having Sue's teeth blunted over some caricature of lurve makes me very sad, though the sight of her in that suit was almost worth the price of admission. Did we know before that Puck's name was Noah or that he was supposed to be Jewish, because oh please, his mother is a worse stereotype than Rachel whom I can forgive at moments when I remember that she has two daddies...anyway, his "Sweet Caroline" made the first half-hour for me, and Emma's Audrey Hepburn impression made the second half-hour (the bad lip syncing there is forgivable because "I Could Have Danced All Night" is just as off in the movie). Really, though, as favorite moments go, the Sue/Will jitterbug wins it all -- I am thinking that Sue and Terri should shack up together and I might forgive some of the rest. Either that or Puck should get Terri pregnant. Also, I really howled over Finn's "Leaders are supposed to see a future where things are better, like Thomas Jefferson or that kid from the Terminator movies."

Eastwick remains my Wednesday night unapologetic guilty pleasure (spare me the insensitivity-to-Wiccans speech, it's Halloween season and there are more damaging witch stereotypes on half the doors in my neighborhood, plus Eastwick takes itself even less seriously than Glee). I love "The Naked Now" episodes -- well, I suppose this is more the Red Hour from "The Return of the Archons," but it falls into that same fine "hey, let's find an excuse for an orgy!" category, and is just plain fun -- whereas Heroes has to slap its desperate-for-ratings lesbian kiss all over YouTube before the episode airs, Penny and Joanna just go there, and it's awesome -- the first Joanna moment I've loved all series! Okay, Roxie needs to respect Mia and stay out of her diary, and Kat needs to knuckle down and just decide to be who she is -- if she wants to run a 5K for charity, she should tell Darrell to go fuck himself and do it, THEN sing in a piano bar. Oh, and isn't pastor wife also Finn's mother? I had a very confused crossover moment there! I wish they'd drop the ominous predictions and just have fun, because I get the impression from its ratings that the series isn't going to be around long enough to solve its mysteries.

Poem for Wednesday

2009-10-21T03:50:24Z

Gardening in Cardoso
By Michael Longley

Wildflowers become weeds
In this small triangular
Garfagnana garden
Where I uproot herb robert,
Spurge, wall-devouring
Valerian, garlicky
Ramsons, dead nettles.
What about oregano
No higher than dogs' piss,
And pennywort protecting
The lizard's hideaway?
I cut back the wild fig tree,
Its roots under the casa
Squeezing our water pipes,
Dozy snails its only fruit.
From acacia—beeless,
Unrelieved—a sexual
Heaviness marries me
And five old women—last
In the village to chant
The Whitsun rosary next
Door at San Rocco's shrine.
I leave them shepherd's purse's
Seedpods—little hearts—
Spoon-shaped petals on spikes.

--------

From this week's New Yorker.

It was not a terribly eventful Tuesday. The main event for me was my annual mammogram -- it's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, ladies, go get screened if you're late! I have never found mammograms all that uncomfortable, so the main stress for me is simply having breast cancer in the family and Jewish genes which automatically mean I fall into a higher-risk category. I never want to go anywhere right before a mammogram because of the no-deodorant rule, and afterward I want to go right home and shower and put deodorant on...hey, I am perfectly happy to go out with no earrings, no bra, even on occasion no shoes, but take my antiperspirant away and I feel exposed and icky! So there went my morning and early afternoon, bookended by loads of laundry and a long walk because the weather was simply too gorgeous not to enjoy.

Adam wanted me to track down an eclectic list of songs for him for his MP3 player in the afternoon -- some of which (Weird Al's horoscope song) apparently won't even be released until next week, some of which (some song by DJ Splash) apparently only exist on YouTube videos -- so that took a while. After dinner (low-sodium pumpkin sloppy joes, which were fabulous) I put on Due South to watch while folding laundry and folded very slowly so we could make it through both "A Likely Story" and "Odds," both of which I enjoyed, though I preferred the former...I like the show's self-awareness this last season, the fact that they know enough to try to defuse "all Italians have Mob connections" stereotypes before launching into yet another storyline about Italians with Mob connections, the fact that both Fraser and Kowalski's completely screwed up attitudes toward and relationships with women are discussed. Then we watched this week's Sanctuary since we forgot about it Friday night and I really enjoy the actors no matter what sci-fi flaws the show may have.

The Alabama Memorial at Gettysburg National Battlefield.

The Tammany Regiment, 42nd New York Infantry. The Tammany Society (which later became the Democratic Party's Tammany Hall) was named for Native American leader Tamanend.

The 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment Monument.

The Pennsylvania State Monument.

The Louisiana Memorial.

A statue of General Warren on Little Round Top from the spot where he looked out to find that General Sickles' Third Corps had moved, leaving the high ground undefended until Warren sent for reinforcements.

A Pennsylvania Reserve Infantry memorial that I liked because it looks like a henge.</center>

Poem for Tuesday

2009-10-20T03:52:48Z

Subterranean
By Jill Bialosky

She did not know when it would happen
or how it would overtake her
or whether she would allow herself.
All I know is that she could not take it anymore
lying day after day underneath the hollow tree, waiting,
consumed by a kind of fire,
wondering if there is a type of love
that saves us or whether there was more
to the world than the familiar paradise
of her mother's complicated and vivid garden.
She smelled nectar in the labored-over
chrysanthemum and amaryllis,
but could not taste it.
I know if it were a flower it would have bloomed
in the cumulus overhead
void of volition and sin,
translucent as the filmy underside of a leaf.
If it were an animal she would have followed it,
but it was amorphous as feeling, weightless as dust,
turbulent as an entire undisclosed universe
radiating from the inner core beneath the earth
and, still, she longed for it.
Restless, she wandered from the elm
to the school-yard to smother an intensity
she could not squelch or simmer.
The wind swooned. Cement cracked. Deep into the underbelly
light traveled, no one in sight but his immense shadow,
and then a figure appeared out of the imagined dream
and matched it. So powerful, not for who he was
but for how her mind had magnified him
like a bug underneath cool glass,
every antenna and tentacle aquiver.
No sign of where she had been
or who she came from. Only knowledge
that it would never be re-created
except by this: putting words down on a page
and that she had forever compromised
the joy of summer for a dismal, endless winter.
And as the field of force gathered,
raping every last silvery bough,
tantalizing each limb,
she forgot even the feel of herself.
When it was over she felt moisture. Rain.

--------

dementordelta and I spent a totally indulgent Monday shopping for silly stuff and watching Due South -- do days get any better than that? We went to the mall in search of the Halloween store, but on the way in we stopped in Claire's, where we got owl earrings and bat sproingers and a penguin necklace and an elephant wallet among other things. Then we walked into Bath & Body Works to smell their wonderful new Twilight Woods lotion and discovered that all the candles were on sale. Then we stopped in The Icing, which had snake rings, and peeked in Brighton, which had owl keychains, before heading to Build-a-Bear, which was sadly out of witch outfits but had the little hats and shoes. Heading upstairs, we stopped in the Hallmark store (lots of bat items), Hot Topic (more Twilight merchandise than I can bear), and Yankee Candle (spiced pumpkin mmmmm) before we finally reached the Halloween store, at which point we were so hungry that we didn't try anything on before leaving for lunch!

Oh, and since we are twelve, we also bought giraffe friendship necklaces. Note for future reference: there are few angles less flattering in photos than smushed-together-for-phone-camera.

I was a very dull lunch date considering that I'm still not sure what I can safely eat out, so I had tuna and stole some of dementordelta's baklava while we watched some of my favorite dS episodes (sad with awesome soundtrack "Juliet is Bleeding" through awesome in every way "We Are the Eggmen"). Then she left to drive home, I had dinner and proofread Daniel's essay on the Doctor Who episode "Blink" which apparently they watched in English class to discuss rhetorical devices in horror movies, and we all watched Heroes, which continues to leave me completely unenthralled (and no Louise Fletcher this week makes it that much less exciting). We've been jerked around so many times, where one minute Sylar, Angela, Noah, et al are supposed to be sinister if not downright evil while they next we're supposed to feel sorry for them, and where Hiro goes from being a brilliant superhero to a feeble doofus and back, that I've really disconnected from caring about the characters. At least the Angels won!

Poem for Monday

2009-10-19T03:35:34Z

From 'Fathers in the Snow'
By Jill Bialosky

2.

After father died
the love was all through the house
untamed and sometimes violent.
When the dates came we went up to our rooms
and mother entertained.
Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night,"
the smell of Chanel No.5 in her hair and the laughter.
We sat crouched at the top of the stairs.
In the morning we found mother asleep on the couch
her hair messed, and the smell
of stale liquor in the room.
We knelt on the floor before her,
one by one touched our fingers
over the red flush in her face.
The chipped sunlight through the shutters.
It was a dark continent
we and mother shared;
it was sweet and lonesome,
the wake men left in our house.

--------

We had a beautiful Sunday to make up for the miserably rainy cold Friday and Saturday -- the sky cleared while we were driving to Gettysburg to meet my in-laws and stayed beautiful all day. My mother-in-law had a recorded audio tour of the battlefield on cassette tape, so after a brief stop in the visitor center, we drove around while listening to the narration about the locations and the events of the battle that unfolded there. Since the weather was so nice, we stopped and got out to walk in several places -- we even climbed the observation tower overlooking the battlefield and President Eisenhower's farm. The park wasn't very crowded and the temperature was perfect.

My kids, husband and father-in-law at the Eternal Light Peace Memorial on Oak Hill, dedicated during the 75th anniversary commemoration of the battle and lit by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Irish Brigade memorial, one of my favorites with its Celtic decorations and sad dog, looked beautiful surrounded by changing leaves.

Little Round Top also looked quite colorful from across the orchards.

Indications that autumn had arrived were all over the park. It was a bit muddy from all the rain, but not enough to make any place we stopped hard to walk around.

Adam found several woolly bear caterpillars but I have never known how to interpret their stripes about whether winter will be harsh or not.

Robert E. Lee sits atop the Virginia memorial, the only Southern general so celebrated among the monuments in the park.

Thousands of horses as well as people died at the Battle of Gettysburg. Still, we saw many happy horses giving tours to visitors.

The Trostle Farm barn, standing at the time of the battle, has Confederate cannon ball holes still visible.</center>

We offered to let the kids climb on the rocks at Devil's Den even though we expected it to be muddy, but the kids, who had eaten lunch at 11, were ravenous and we needed to get home relatively early, so we had an early dinner at Red Lobster to celebrate belatedly both boys' birthdays with my in-laws who have been driving to the west coast and back in their camper visiting Paul's brothers, other relatives and friends all summer. I ordered off the lighthouse menu since it was the only way I could be sure how much sodium I was getting, and I must say that their wood-grilled salmon is excellent by any standards; I was sad at first not to be able to order cajun shrimp, but I really didn't miss it.

Once again I'm glad I didn't spend any of the weekend waiting for the Terps, Redskins, or Ravens to win...I think Favre and the Vikings will be my NFL team this season!

Poem for Sunday

2009-10-18T03:59:11Z

Rules of Contact
By Jill Bialosky

A Ball is cracked into the air and the underlings
In their red caps field it. A line drive; another
to the boy at third. Get under it. Don't be afraid.

Let's hear some chatter. It's late in the day.
Have you noticed that everyone is separating?

A mother from the bleachers remarks, knitting
her anxiety into careful knots. Where are the sparrows?
The sun rests over the awning of trees,

wind's compass stopped, gone awry.
One boy refusing to comply steals second.

Is disorder a rally against resignation?
Boys bow their heads beneath the sun's glare.

The boats along the Hudson move in slow motion,
unmoored from the dock.

How to quell the current rising against the boat?
How to trust what moves beneath it?

The Lord of the Field hits a high fly,
in homage to his disciples. Look alive.

Get behind the ball. Stay on top of it.
Hurled faster than the speed of light

the ball travels from one boy's mitt
to another boy's in perfect orchestration.

My son won't let me kiss him anymore,
a mother on the bleachers decries.

--------

"There is a poetic synchronicity to the game of baseball, to the rhythms on the field and a lolling trance the observer falls under," writes Bialosky in Poet's Choice. "For the last four years my 14-year-old son has been infatuated with the art of baseball. He has played on a baseball travel team, and I have spent many a humid summer afternoon or wind-swept evening watching his games in baseball fields...it is the secret language between fathers and sons, players and coaches, teammates and rivals, mothers chatting with one another in the bleachers that has enchanted me and inspired this poem."

So far this weekend has been a real washout. The Frederick Festival of the Farm was taking place today, where in previous years we visited lots of sheep and alpacas and piggies, but it rained even harder than it did on Friday, so after lunch we grumbled and acknowledged that it probably wouldn't be much fun to walk around in the mud in such chilly temperatures. Instead we did chores closer to home -- Mom's Organic Market (for the best bulk nuts in the area), Petco (for kitty litter, though we had the added amusement of watching the dogs in line for the low-cost rabies shot clinic), Michael's (because it was next door to Petco and had entertaining Halloween decorations), CVS (for shampoo, since I had $14 in CVS Bucks that had to be used this weekend) -- see how boring we were? I've had enough of the rain, and it's supposed to continue nearly all of Sunday!

A 1918 Hebern Electric Code Machine with single rotor on display at the National Cryptologic Museum.

A book for decoding Union ciphers sent by telegram during the Civil War.

This reproduced slave quilt illustrates some symbols that had secret meaning for would-be freedom-seekers. The wagon wheel may have signified a place where a slave could find a wagon in which to hide during travel. The basket pattern, four down on the far left, warned slaves to weave a different route. The pattern with four diamonds, fourth from the left at the top, is a crossroads, in this case indicating Cleveland, Ohio from which escapees could cross Lake Erie to Canada. The boat pattern two below probably also signified Lake Erie. The "tumbling blocks" two in and three down meant that a fugitive should hurry on. The quilts could be hung on laundry lines where anyone passing could see them but only those familiar with the code would understand the meanings.

An exhibit on how the Japanese code known as Purple was broken, including several parts of cipher machines captured after World War II. The U.S. had broken the code by 1941 and a decrypting machine was used to decipher the message on December 6th telling the Japanese ambassador to break off diplomatic relations with the United States, but it contained no information about an imminent attack.

The Enigma machine, invented by the Germans and sold commercially between the world wars. The Nazis kept using it during the war and Allied codebreakers, particularly the British, decrypted many messages that helped their struggle.

The government of Sweden, which came into possession of captured Nazi encryption machines after the war, loaned this one to the museum.

As the sign says, these were America's first spy satellites, designed to observe and transmit intelligence information.

This painting from the display on Civil War encrypted messages is called "Signals From Little Round Top" where we are likely going with my in-laws tomorrow...or, if the weather is truly terrible in Gettysburg, then we will do the battlefield driving tour and not leave the van!</center>

We finally watched the first episode of Merlin of the second season, and I must admit to being rather disappointed -- I was expecting something bigger somehow, not necessarily the start of an arc but at least an indication that the characters had grown somewhat from where we left them. If anything, they appear to have gone backward -- far from being willing to give his life for Merlin, Arthur is ready to replace him over a few minor mishaps, while Morgana is waking up screaming without looking for ways to console herself and Uther is still muttering about sorcery. Mackenzie Crook is always entertaining but his character loses all interest once possessed. Only Gaius seems ready to make leaps forward; he's actively encouraging Merlin to use magic now, and to seek out the dragon, not warning him about the dangers. It's enjoyable enough, but really fluffy.

Then we watched the two-parter that started the third season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which I enjoyed a great deal more. It still has the limitations of the show itself -- apparently Sarah Jane must make a speech about the wonders of the universe and having people to share them with in every single episode -- but I much prefer that to the dooooooom that has overtaken Doctor Who, and I really like all three of the kids -- I still miss Maria, and I miss Sarah Jane's relationship with her, though it makes sense that Luke rather than the girl across the way would be the child she's closest to and mentoring most directly. There were lots of silly moments that made me laugh out loud -- Clyde's padawan joke to Luke, the Judoon concluding that human females are smarter than men because the females know enough to stay out of the way, Rani's "Who do you think you are, Jack Bauer?" And all the moments where the Judoon tripped themselves up being sticklers for rules made me snicker, too.

But really, the contrast with the Doctor is my favorite part, even though he's clearly been talking to her or at least sending information to Mr. Smith since she knows things about the Judoon that Unit doesn't. Despair is linked to evil here -- the villain is lost in his own grief for his own world, it's made him destructive, very much the way the Daleks paint the Doctor and at times the Daleks don't seem so far from wrong. The Androvax gives a very Torchwoodesque warning that someone will destroy Sarah Jane, but unlike the gloom that follows Jack Harkness as well as the Doctor, Sarah Jane shrugs it off in a very no-nonsense way -- the universe for her is not about decay but new things being born all the time. She's such a breath of fresh air in the franchise and on TV in general, definitely my favorite corner of Whoverse.

Poem for Saturday

2009-10-17T04:41:25Z

The Plums
By Mirabai
Translated by Andrew Schelling

The plums tasted sweet
to the unlettered desert-tribe girl -
but what manners! To chew into each!

She was ungainly, low-caste, ill mannered and dirty,
but the god took the fruit she'd been sucking.

Why? She knew how to love.
She might not distinguish
splendor from filth
but she'd tasted the nectar of passion.

Might not know any Veda,
but a chariot swept her away -
now she frolics in heaven, ecstatically bound
to her god.

The Lord of Fallen Fools, says Mira,
will save anyone who can practice rapture like that.
I myself in a previous birth
was a cowherding girl
at Gokul.

--------

My kids had no school on Friday and we had planned to go to some of our favorite places to see the changing leaves -- Gathland and Gambrill State Parks -- with Paul's parents. But it rained from dawn till dusk, so we decided that this really was not the day for it. Instead we went to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, where we looked at the Hubble deep field photos and watched a Science on a Sphere presentation about how we study the changing Earth. Then we went to the National Cryptologic Museum at Ft. Meade, which was fascinating and larger than we expected -- in addition to exhibits on the NSA and national security code-breaking, there were exhibits on codes and language in general, including the Rosetta Stone, hobo signs, slave quilts, and historical encoding contraptions that Dan Brown would love.

A rocket and autumn tree behind Goddard Space Flight Center's visitor center.

Me attracting plasma to my head on a dare by Adam, who took the photo.

The weather center and overcast sky beyond.

Adam tries his hand breaking World War II codes at the National Cryptologic Museum.

From the NSA Rare Book Collection, Jacopo Silvestri's Opus Novum, published in 1526 -- the second-oldest book on cryptology in the world.

A Choctaw Nation Medal of Valor given to a World War I Native American Codetalker.

Viet Cong annotations of allied troop movements hidden in children's school notebooks.

A plugboard, or stecker in German, allowed an operator to change the value of any character manually, used with the German ENIGMA cipher. (You can see Adam's reflection in the mirror set up to make the back visible.)</center>

fannish5: If you could erase five characters from any fandom, who would you choose? If it's one fandom, I suppose it had better be Star Trek.
1. Seven of Nine, Voyager. I would love to know what that series would have become if it had not become about her breasts.
2. Losira, Star Trek. Because "That Which Survives" should be erased from memory.
3. Reg Barclay, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yes I know we're supposed to identify with his adorable pathetic loser-ness, but I only ever felt condescended to by his existence.
4. Ambassador Soval, Enterprise. Really, I despise what was done to all the Vulcans on Enterprise, but I'm picking Soval as representative because I like T'Pol in spite of everything and as a senior Vulcan, he should have some modicum of logic.
5. Keiko O'Brien, Deep Space Nine. I hate hating on women, especially someone who's a wife and mother as well as a professional, but if there was ever a female character on television written as whiny, shrewish, and selfish as Keiko, I can't think of whom.

Speaking of Star Trek, here is my review of Next Gen's "Cause and Effect", about which I don't have a great deal to say except that it's very enjoyable. I forgot to mention that I spent a lot of Thursday riveted to the TV watching Balloon Boy, like a lot of the rest of the world, and now that it looks like the parents designed the entire stunt (at taxpayer expense) and instructed their six-year-old to lie to police and newscasters, thus freaking him out and making him sick, I want the biggest possible fine slapped on him and child services checking up on those kids' "home schooling" at every possible opportunity (I'm not sure it serves anyone's interest to put the parents in prison, though if this really does turn out to be fraud, there should absolutely be charges).

Daniel's high school, Montgomery Blair, is celebrating its anniversary tonight and had a big gala at Strathmore Hall emceed by Ben Stein, who is an alumnus. He only just got home, a bit after midnight, because the choir was singing at the reception. It sounds like he had a good time, but we old people are pretty tired from waiting up for him to call!

Poem for Friday

2009-10-16T03:30:56Z

Truro
By Elizabeth Spires

I found a white stone on the beach
inlaid with a blue-green road I could not follow.
All night I'd slept in fits and starts,
my only memory the in-out, in-out, of the tide.
And then morning. And then a walk,
the white stone beckoning, glinting in the sun.
I felt its calm power as I held it
and wished a wish I cannot tell.
It fit in my hand like a hand gently
holding my hand through a sleepless night.
A stone, so like, so unlike,
all the others it could only be mine.

The wordless white stone of my life!

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Another not-very-eventful day -- yeah, I am having a quiet week. Got up early to get witch plushies for me and Adam so our penguins can celebrate Halloween in style, though mine is happily in Sherwood Forest right now, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Wrote a review of Next Gen's "Cause and Effect" to post Friday because I won't actually get any writing done, in all likelihood -- the kids have no school, so we are going to the NSA National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade and maybe the National Wildlife Visitor Center at the Patuxent Research Refuge. My mom got me some low-sodium stuff from My Organic Market, so now I know where to get salt-free bread. We had dinner with my parents -- my mom cooked stuff I could eat, and I thought the shrimp corn chowder in particular was really good.

Glass paperweights at Art of Fire for sale on the Countryside Artisans Fall Tour.

Son visiting with the dogs at Something Earthy Pottery Studio.

Also at Something Earthy, ocarinas in the shapes of animals.

Iron Antler Forge makes skeleton bodies for pumpkin heads to decorate lawns at Halloween.

The alpacas at A Paca Fun Farm were curious about visitors until the visitors got close enough to pet them. Then they backed off.

Autumn-colored yarn at Dancing Leaf Farm...

...and autumn colors in the trees above the sheep.</center>

We all enjoyed this week's FlashForward more than last week's, though I could see how that could turn again on a dime...I am enjoying the actors, both the ones whose work I know and the ones I've never seen before, and I like the tension between work/professional life and family/spiritual commitments that they're all struggling with -- the frequent TV pattern of women being focused on relationships, men being focused on careers isn't much in play, and when there aren't artificially constructed moral dilemmas involving Nazis or terrorists, the characters seem pretty real to me. The rest of our evening was taken up with baseball; I am halfheartedly rooting for the Dodgers, but I don't much care, so long as the Yankees lose.

Poem for Thursday

2009-10-15T03:45:57Z

A History of Origami
By Bill Hicok

two women in three days
       cried on the green bench in the park
                where i found a dollar
                folded into a boat.

i thought it was the crying bench and cried
       on the crying bench
                when it became available.

                               i cried
by thinking of all the people
       who've never broken a shop window, not the baker's
       window, the bead-seller's,
                who sells beads for purposes
                i find hard to list: necklaces,
                        the hanging of strings of beads
       in doorways, the owning of beads
                               just in case.

breaking a shop window with a piece of shale
the size of my heart, a piece of shale
                on which i've drawn my heart, not my actual heart
                        but my feelings of my heart,
                               since i've never seen my heart,
       would set something free.

i don't know what that something is
                but it would be free.

and my heart would have survived its travels
       through glass, its jagged voyage
       through my reflection.

you see now why i cried: none of this is real.
until i can answer yes to the cop who asks, is this your heart
                among the ruins of your reflection?
                   i won't be a man, despite what my anatomy
                insists.

it insists
       that i overcome a sense of resistance when i move,
       that i move
as long as i am able to move, and when i am unable
                to move, that i stop.

it would be free and look like a bird, an actual bird
       or a dollar folded into a bird, a dollar bird
                        in a dollar boat.

which is to say
                i believe origami arrives
                        when we need it most.

i can't prove this but i can't prove
                you're a good person though i suspect
       you're a good person.

you who opened the door.

you who tipped your hat.

you who ran into the fire and carried
       the fire safely out.

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Another from this week's New Yorker.

My day involved rearranging Barbie dolls; folding laundry; taking a long trip to the grocery store where I read literally a hundred labels; doing a lot of research online about ingredients and concluding that, while I can easily live without cheap Chinese food for the rest of my life, I am facing a tragic separation from every kind of cheese I love; trading in SPP to get Adam an animated chimney sweep penguin; and watching Doubt. The latter has terrific performances, as I expected, but it felt overdramatized and talky -- it was very obvious that it had been a play -- and I thought it completely chickened out on addressing the central question, which may be cute for theatregoers who get to go have chi-chi intellectual discussions about did-he-or-didn't-he, but lets the church hierarchy and potential child abusers completely off the hook in a way that really pisses me off. Oh yes, we're all guilty of something, so we're really in no position to judge a man who molests a child! In fact, mean teachers are the equivalent of child abusers! Roman Polanski is no worse than a terrifying middle school principal, let the poor man go! Maybe I had the wrong upbringing -- I didn't know any adorable Amy Adamsesque nuns -- but it felt very contrived and I either disliked or didn't believe in all the characters.

An alpaca at A Paca Fun Farm.

A leaf platter with caterpillar at Something Earthy Pottery Studio.

One of the resident cats at Art of Fire under a display of glass ornaments.

A beautiful metal vent cover from Iron Antler Forge.

Some of Dusty Road Pottery's studio work.

Some of the yarn for sale at Dancing Leaf Farm...

...and one of the sheep from whose wool it is spun.</center>

Glee...all right, I know it's the most popular thing on the internet right now, but I must admit that I'm thisclose to not watching, and it's really only the music keeping me around. When every single character is written as a caricature, I suppose it keeps a show safe from people objecting to potentially harmful stereotypes -- you can actually write The Gay Boy, the Black Diva, the Pushy Jewish Girl, the Total Nerd, and no one can complain because everyone else is such a joke as well. But it makes it really hard to feel anything about them and their problems. I've never been less moved by a coming-out scene than I was by Kurt's a few weeks back (the sensible heels line killed it for me), and I can't take Quinn seriously enough to feel anything about her situation. Terri is beyond pathetic, her obstetrician is appalling -- and since when can you tell the sex of a fetus from an ultrasound at ten weeks? And I find it a bit hilarious that, in an episode addressing the marginalization of minorities, the legendary Supremes song gets sung by the whitest girl on the show. At least we get Sue, whose comment on Will's job as a Spanish teacher, "We all know about your devotion to that dying language," is practically worth the price of admission. At least maybe they won't bring her down, because they want the laughs more than character development. And I enjoyed the drippy Avril Lavigne song from Eragon.

As for Eastwick, I am doing my best not to get attached because I know it's on the fence and last week it was even beaten by Leno. I readily admit that it's uneven...as far as I'm concerned, there is still not nearly enough Darryl Van Horne, and I'm not just saying that because I want to see Paul Gross. In fact, I adore that this is a show about three women and their friendship and how it empowers them -- which is why I think the show needs to be addressing more directly how devilish Darryl fits into that in this version of the scenario. Does he empower them or do they empower him, does he need them or is he toying with the whole town through them? I vastly prefer his relationship with Roxie because she won't let him not treat her as an equal even when she needs his help, but Kat is growing a spine and hopefully Joanna will stop simpering eventually. I don't think the mystery of Darryl can be dragged out too long; what is important here is what the women will do when they realize they're not just unconventional but potentially facing something very sinister, and ultimately, if the writers are smart, controlling it.

Poem for Wednesday

2009-10-14T03:30:21Z

From Weymouth
By Will Eaves

What made you wake me so early
And with a look of mischief say,
A start this fine's surely a sign
The sea is calling us today?
The train was blue, the water green:
A tinted postcard sent in May.
I'm sure I must have held your hand
In backstreets crammed with grockle shops
And pubs and reeling fishermen.
The smell I couldn't place was hops.
I rode in state along the beach,
Beside the ride that never stops.
I missed a few easy lessons.
The teacher smiled, as if to say
It's fine—it would have been a crime
To hear the call and disobey.
What did you do? The train was blue.
We had tea at a beach café
And well-thumbed fish-paste sandwiches—
That gritty complement to hours
Spent toeing desperately the line
Around two limpet-cladded towers
The sea and I besieged, the moat
I'm sure I must have said was ours.
What made me want to go early
And with a look of mischief say,
But I'm hungry? You wrote in haste:
His Highness made the donkeys bray.
The train was blue, the water green.
Yours, waiting by the beach café.

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From this week's New Yorker.

I had two medical procedures today, one at 8 a.m. and one that was supposed to be at 3 p.m. but didn't get started till nearly 4:30 due to idiocy on the part of the staff -- and the endless sitting in the overheated waiting room was by far the best part of being in that office, which ought to tell you what my late afternoon was like. Even though I had driven myself, I called Paul to meet me and follow me home in the van because I was so dizzy and nauseous for half an hour that the nurses parked me on an examination table so I wouldn't pass out as they left one by one since the office closed at 5:30.

In fact, the best part of my day before 6 p.m. was taking a boring two-mile walk around the neighborhood -- those of you who know how tedious I find exercise for its own sake will appreciate exactly how much the rest of my day sucked. I knew things were not going to go well in the very early morning when a woman threw a hissy fit because I picked up a magazine it didn't look like anyone had been reading since it was tossed on a chair while she was with a nurse, and that really set the tone for the rest of the day. At least Rosie seems somewhat better -- only a couple of sneezes. Wednesday I am staying home and folding laundry and being glad I get to do just that.

King Henry VIII, his ex-queen (who now identifies herself as his sister), his current queen, and courtiers waiting to greet their subjects at Revel Grove.

Lovers' Bridge, a popular spot to pose for kissing portraits.

Actors read Shakespearean sonnets...

...the Free Lancers jousters' lances strike and shatter...

...acrobats perform high above the heads of faire-goers...

...the Squire of the Wire juggles knives while crossing a tightrope.

A vulture sculpture by Roger Swezey.

And a Faire farewell (shot directly into the late afternoon sun, sorry about the glare).</center>