Baby, babe, let's get together

Ericka and I used to sing this a lot.  Anyway, we need to bring back bands with a lively wind section.

All Those Moments Will Be Lost in Time

The Old Weep Gently:

These old trees
Sigh in every leaf,
Look down their trunks
As if back down the years.
Old knots stay
Where limbs were torn away—
Little fist-rubbed faces
Of gargoyle grief;
While shadows
Slip down the trunks
Like tears.

Yvor Winters. 

And My Heart Goes Pitter Pat

GABBY WILLIAMS TODAY: 26 PTS - 4 REB - 2 AST - 33 MIN PLAYED GOLDEN STATE TAKES GAME 1 🚨 https://t.co/zwOox3YdJC

— Women’s Hoops Network (@WomensHoops_USA) October 17, 2026

My goodness, what a game.  My watch got a workout telling me how stressed I was.

I do very much like Atlanta, and as I've said elsewhere, I won't cry if they end up taking the chip.  But man, I want the Valks to win so bad.

In conclusion: Gabrielle Lisa Williams is a goddess.

PS - Let's see what my Guards can do tonight.

Update: Guards didn't do much.  2-2 is still better than I expected, so let's see what they can do in Game 5.

Gave my heart with zero stipulations

Makes me happy to see David B with Olivia R again.

Things I Think When My Teenagers Are Being Buttheads

“So many gods!”:

So many gods!
They’re like books—you can’t read everything, you never know anything.
Happy the man who knows but one god, and keeps him a secret.
Every day I have different beliefs—
Sometimes in the same day I have different beliefs—
And I wish I were the child now crossing
The view from my window of the street below.
He’s eating a cheap pastry (he’s poor) without efficient or final cause,
An animal uselessly raised above the other vertebrates,
And through his teeth he sings a ribald show tune . . .
Yes, there are many gods,
But I’d give anything to the one who’d take that child out of my sight.

Álvaro de Campos.

PS - I found the translator's notes to be illuminating.

I watch the ripples change their size

But never leave the stream of warm impermanence.

Weird How Much I've Been Thinking About This

A Double Dying:

After death comes bodily decay,
Then like your body
Your name begins to fade away.
Once in a while somebody

Among relatives and friends
Will remember a moment, a story,
Doubtless showing he misapprehends
Though intending to be appreciatory.

As months and years go by
Your name gets mentioned less and less,
Eventually will not signify,
Erodes to nothingness.

You die, you putrify,
Then once again you die.

Alan R. Shapiro.

#throwbackthursday

Mad that we had to leave the playground.  (2015)

I miss chaperoning school trips to OMSI (and the zoo).  (2017)

The world was moving, she was

Floatin' above it, and she was...

For Thee

Pencil Letter:

I know it won't be received
Or sent. The page will be
In shreds as soon as I have scribbled it.
Later. Sometime. You've grown used to it,
Reading between the lines that never reached you,
Understanding everything. On the tiny sheet,
Not making haste, I find room for the night.
What's the hurry, when the hour that's passed
Is all part of the same time, the same unknown term.
The word stirs under my hand
Like a starling, a rustle, a movement of eyelashes.
Everything's fine. But don't come into my dream yet.
In a little while I will tie my sadness into a knot,
Throw my head back and on my lips there'll be a seal,
A smile, my prince, although from afar.
Can you feel the warmth of my hand
Passing through your hair, over your hollow cheek.
December winds have blown on your face . . .
How thin you are . . . Stay in my dream
Open the window. The pillow is hot.
Footsteps at the door, and a bell tolling in the tower:
Two, three . . . Remember, you and I never said
Goodbye. It doesn't matter.
Four o'clock . . . That's it. How heavily it tolls.

Irina Ratushinskaya.

Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor

I used to play this in class on my iPod when discussing the Presentation Layer and compression (then I'd go off about ideas for future devices that Steve Jobs stole from me and turned into the iPhone).

Like a New Emotion

Some Feel Rain:

Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.
When it falls apart, some feel the moondark air
drop its motes to the patch-thick slopes of
snow. Tiny blinkings of ice from the oak,
a boot-beat that comes and goes, the line of prayer
you can follow from the dusking wind to the snowy owl
it carries. Some feel sunlight
well up in blood-vessels below the skin
and wish there had been less to lose.
Knowing how it could have been, pale maples
drowsing like a second sleep above our temperaments.
Do I imagine there is any place so safe it can’t be
snapped? Some feel the rivers shift,
blue veins through soil, as if the smokestacks were a long
dream of exhalation. The lynx lets its paws
skim the ground in snow and showers.
The wildflowers scatter in warm tints until
the second they are plucked. You can wait
to scrape the ankle-burrs, you can wait until Mercury
the early star underdraws the night and its blackest
districts. And wonder. Why others feel
through coal-thick night that deeply colored garnet
star. Why sparring and pins are all you have.
Why the earth cannot make its way towards you.

Joanna Klink.

Out of the blue and into the black

They give you this, but you pay for that.

Sul Muro Grafito

On the Scrawled Wall:

On the scrawled wall
that shades the random seats
the arc of the sky appears
complete.

Who any more recalls the fire that glowed
impetuous
in the world's veins—in chill repose
the opaque shapes are scattered.

Tomorrow I shall see the wharfs again—
and the wall—and the accustomed way.
In the future that opens, mornings
anchor like boats in the bay.

Eugenio Montale.