Gonna be driving that Dodge Durango to Planet's abandonment and back. It's a "monster," said the rent-a-car guy when we picked it up an hour ago. Make sure you drive the speed limit and set the fuel/motor/thingee for economy or you'll get seven miles a gallon, he said. OK, sound advice, though doing the speed limit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and then I-70 in Ohio - the most speed-trapped road I've ever driven - was the plan.
First emotional hurdle over, Planet saying goodbye to her grandparents, who generously picked up the tab for dinner. When they drive out to see her they can stop at the ancestral hometown of Republic rather than make the through drive. Next weekend I'm buying them a webcam and setting up skype on their computer. Thank you everyone for coming.
Tonight we stay together one last night - we're going to try and help Planet pick a proposed schedule; she must take an Art class re: scholarship, and I think she might as well get the Intro Psych out of the way - then tomorrow we move her into the dorm where she spends her first night after family affairs and distractions, and then Sunday morning there's a big family breakfast, after which we're told at ten by the school to go the fuck away.
Regular programming below opening bit today, photos and stuff tomorrow, Sunday, maybe Monday. I'm curious to see what shows up here Tuesday: I think it won't be the maudlin of this week, though I can't imagine it'll be a return of Look! Obama sucks! but Hey Look! Crackers! except I can, since that's what draws the pings.
- The state of play.
- Fraudulent government.
- Barack Hoover.
- On why Obama sucks, or: when bleggal overlords spat.
- On the above.
- One reason HRC would have been better?
- Grapes of laugh.
- End game coming into focus.
- Emerging European crackerism.
- Endgame for Europe.
- Molon labe.
- The exchange of platitudes.
- Corporate's indoctrination of your child.
- Circular breathing. (My apologies to greyhoos - that was small of me.)
- Blogger was bloogering comments yesterday, bloogering the blogrolls today. Feel free to send email if you blogger bloogers you (though I'll be off-line until this evening), feel free to send me email if your kinding me and I'm not you.
- Fabio's tribute show to Conrad Schnitzler.
PARENTS
William Meredith
What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.
The last time we go to bed good,
they are there, lying about darkness.
They dandle us once too often,
these friends who become our enemies.
Suddenly one day, their juniors
are as old as we yearn to be.
They get wrinkles where it is better
smooth, odd coughs, and smells.
It is grotesque how they go on
loving us, we go on loving them
The effrontery, barely imaginable,
of having caused us. And of how.
Their lives: surely
we can do better than that.
This goes on for a long time. Everything
they do is wrong, and the worst thing,
they all do it, is to die,
taking with them the last explanation,
how we came out of the wet sea
or wherever they got us from,
taking the last link
of that chain with them.
Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,
to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.
