Hoping for the best but expecting the worst

I've long associated this song with freshman year of high school, but turns out it was released in September '84, which was the start of sophomore year.  Memory is funny.

Who waits forever anyway?

Immortality:

Forgotten now her fragile golden beauty,
The tilt of her proud chin;
Her quick bright words, her elfish wistful laughter;
Her dreams of lovely things that might have been.
But not a one has ever yet forgotten
Her one small sin. 

Jewell Bothwell Tull.

Dad said I have to be home by eleven

Aw man, I'm gonna miss Stairway to Heaven!

Deus, in adiutorium meum intende

Vespers:

In your extended absence, you permit me

use of earth, anticipating

some return on investment. I must report

failure in my assignment, principally

regarding the tomato plants.

I think I should not be encouraged to grow

tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold

the heavy rains, the cold nights that come

so often here, while other regions get

twelve weeks of summer. All this

belongs to you: on the other hand,

I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots

like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart

broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly

multiplying in the rows. I doubt

you have a heart, in our understanding of

that term. You who do not discriminate

between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,

immune to foreshadowing, you may not know

how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,

the red leaves of the maple falling

even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible

for these vines.

By Louise Glück

Они говорят, им нельзя рисковать

Было время, когда НАТО нужно было закрыть небо над Украиной, теперь Украина закрывает небо над Россией

— Ivan Zhdanov (@ioannZH) September 1, 2026

Happy to report that I still got it, baby: was able read that post all by myself without needing Twitter or Google to translate.  So that's nice.  

Wish I could find the time and energy to get back to learning Ukrainian.  Таке життя.

<exits singing, Закрой за мной дверь, я ухожу...>

First day of school and I'm already failing

It was Sadie's first day of Grade 9.  Thankfully, I don't think watching Wrath of Khan is gonna cause her probs in math.

What Are We Living For?

Empty Space:

There were two kingdoms only:

the first of them threw out both him and me.

The second we abandoned.

Under a bare sky

I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,

he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.

Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years.

He held my hand with a trembling hand.

“Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile.

Look, further on ahead, there

between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.”

Amrita Pritam.

Ticking Away the Moments That Make up a Dull Day

Everything is a conspiracy by the Illuminati to enslave us. Haven't heard a church bell in a while? Well that's cause the frequency of their ringing disrupts the New World Order's mind control rays so they got rid of them to keep us all under their control. It's so obvious! pic.twitter.com/KhT2Ooh49O

— Poker and Politics (@PokerPolitics) August 31, 2026

Well, back in Fletcher, Vermont, if you didn't hear the church bell ring, it was because I didn't wind the clock (happened a couple three times):

No conspiracy there, just forgetfulness...

PS - Brought the kids with me a few times on an individual basis.  They both thought it was cool, but Sadie was rather afraid of the rickety stairs and only went once.

Я жду ответа, больше надежд нету.

First day of school for both my high schoolers tomorrow! 

Gifts of Rain

I:

Cloudburst and steady downpour now
for days.
                 Still mammal,
straw-footed on the mud,
he begins to sense weather by his skin. 

A nimble snout of flood
licks over stepping-stones
and goes uprooting.
                          He fords
his life by sounding.
                         Soundings. 

Seamus Heaney. 

Launch Day

Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal.

Cool launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope this morning (I was asleep):

There was another launch on this date in '84:

STS-41-D (formerly STS-14) was the 12th flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program, and the maiden flight of Space Shuttle Discovery. It was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on August 30, 1984, and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on September 5, 1984. Three commercial communications satellites were deployed into orbit during the six-day mission, and a number of scientific experiments were conducted, including a prototype extendable solar array that would eventually form the basis of the main solar arrays on the International Space Station (ISS).

But wait, there's more!  Another in '83:

STS-8 was the eighth NASA Space Shuttle mission and the third flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It launched on August 30, 1983, and landed on September 5, 1983, conducting the first night launch and night landing of the Space Shuttle program. It also carried the first African-American astronaut to go into space, Guion Bluford. The mission successfully achieved all of its planned research objectives, but was marred by the subsequent discovery that a solid-fuel rocket booster had almost malfunctioned catastrophically during the launch.

I'll ignore the "almost malfunctioned catastrophically" part and turn to John Young for a different danger:

The situation at launch on 30 August turned out to be quite dangerous. Five days earlier, a tropical storm hit the Florida coastline, making landfall just south of KSC. Forecasters had seen the storm coming two days beforehand, but there wasn’t the time to roll Challenger back from the pad. It had to sit there and ride out the storm. Even after the storm was out of the way, the weather caused trouble. Heavy thunderstorms with lightning were in the area. The crew was told they could “man” the shuttle if they wanted to—a risky decision and not one that should ever have been left for the crew to make.

But hey, the crew and vehicle survived, so nothing could possibly go wrong in the future...

A little voice inside my head said

“Don't look back, you can never look back.”

Métempsychose

Metempsychosis:

I believe in metempsychosis:
I wish I were a kettle,
A solfeggio, a rain of roses,
A lobster's caparison, 

A fat cat black and possessive,
The bear with the pale white of the pole
Or the old pensive elm
Sleeping, with a magpie on its shoulder, 

Or you, wavering beauty,
With your tender eyes and firm breasts,
At times docile and then haughty
Swollen with sap and pure blood, 

Or the black and yellow
Salamander at the bottom of a stump,
The Gartempe River or the Scamander,
The double kiss mouth to mouth 

Everything that lives, cries, sings and prowls
—The condor or the falcon,
The toad in the emerald
And the flame on the zircon, 

The pyre where Hercules crackles
The lark in the gonfanon wind...
—Or the tuber, if you prefer,
Hidden in the earth, nameless. — 

Maurice Fombeure.

QOTD

Plough Jogger:

The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it...

Happy Shays' Rebellion Day to all who celebrate.