The dreams of the warriors

So here's a weird example of how my mind works.

Last evening I drove out to downtown Beaverton and watched the 2009 anime film "Summer Wars". It was great popcorn, gorgeously animated in the best anime style, and hit all the mange/anime-lover (i.e. me...) buttons; high school romance/angst, family drama, high-tech danger, goofy secondary characters, samurai, squid, baseball. It's fun.

After the show I went and looked it up and was unsurprised that the director was the same person who did "Belle", the gorgeous anime version of Beauty and the Beast that my daughter took us too several years ago. 

 

Well done, Hosoda-san.

 

Anyway, as I was reading I was a bit bugged by the title.

 

Yes, it's about a war (well, "cyber-war") and it takes place over two days in summer, so, "summer wars", fine. 

 

But.

 

The Japanese title is "サマーウォーズ in katakana, which is "Hepburnized" in the Wiki as "Samā Wōzu".

 

Okay, now; because I'm me (and do military history and martial sports that have Japanese connections) I'm very familiar with the Japanese word for "war".

 

And it's not "Wozu", it's 戦争, "Sensō". 

 

I tried looking for some sort of katakana or hirigana versions that could be translated as "wozu". 

 

Nope.

 

Then I plugged the katakana title directly into romaji, and Dr. Google gave me this: "Samāu~ōzu".  

 

That's also not "war"; indeed, try and look up "ozu" and all you you get is either a place name or a personal/family name. All the other links went directly back to the film, suggesting that the katakana don't mean "summer wars" in the general sense of "wars fought during the summer" but specifically "the movie "Summer Wars".

 

So now I'm baffled; is the title some sort of phonetic "English"? "Summer" ("sama") "Wars" ("wozu") invented just for the flick? If so...why? Why not just call it 夏戦争; "Natsu Sensō", "Summer War(s)"? Is there some particular reason or meaning for naming it the way they did?

 

I'm now hooked and I want to know.

 

Doesn't make the flick any less fun; indeed, now I want to know more about the movie. 

 

And that's so me. 

 

Sad, but there it is.

 

O shiri no itami

 Actually, no; the pain is in the leg, not in the ass.

This was this morning; left calf - technically it's the "gastrocnemius", the big muscle of the calf - wrapped up and laid over a cold pack, watching poor Everton take a Manchester United hiding.

To get here...well, this winter I went back to the beginner kendo class run through the Parks & Recreation district out in Beaverton by the westside kendo club, Obukan.

I played kendo at Obukan thirty years ago, back when I lived out there (married to a different woman, but that's a whoooooole 'nother story...). I never progressed beyond Rokkyu - the lowest rank - but enjoyed the hell out of it.

(I enjoyed the hell out of the marriage, too, mind, but that's really a whole 'nother story...)

Then I got divorced, moved away, started playing soccer, wrecked my hips, got them replaced and then my knees started to go, got them replaced (in the process somewhere changing women, which is a whole 'nother 'nother story), and then retired. 

With more time on my hands I started thinking about kendo again.

I fenced European style in college - just foil, and just for my own entertainment - and studied karate in the Shorin-ryu style after I got out of the active service, but something in kendo scratches me in all the right places more or less.

My only real question was whether I could return to being a good kendoka after thirty years and with legs full of replacement parts.

Well...so far so good, until last night, when I managed to strain something in my leg, probably pushing my dead ass forward, since the left left is the "pushing" leg in kendo. 

Ouch.

What was kind of odd is that when I played goalkeeper I was always banging myself up. Broken fingers, bruised shoulders, damaged knees...I was the king of pain, and all of the dings were just a thing. 

I'd put my knee braces on - I had two huge rubber-and-metal ones that pretty much took all the weight off the knee - and ice them down, wrap up the shoulder, get the fingers set, and go off to work.

It's been a decade since I've had a sports injury, and I'd forgotten how irking they are. And I'm ten years older, too, so instead of walking it off I've been sort of hobbling around and that as little as possible...

Anyway, just an idle sort of Saturday, and a kind of transition piece away from the politics. I'll be back later in the week with something more hopeful.

Oh, and the title? It's supposed to be "pain in the ass" in Japanese, tho after poking around a bit it sounds like there isn't an exact equivalent for the meaning of the term; the closes seems to be うざい ("Uzai"), which is a contraction of "urusei", "rude" or "noisy", and to bark "uzai" at someone is apparently a way of letting them know they're being a pain in your ass.

Or leg.

Which is what I need to limp off and ice down. No, thanks, I can see myself out. I'm good

Things you didn't know you needed to know

So you probably didn't know that your white blood cells are actually microscopic buxom chibis that work by hitting pathogens with teensy little rocket propelled grenades. 

I know, right? In hindsight is seems so obvious.

Apparently this little character is from an anime, はたらく細胞ＢＬＡＣＫ (Hataraku Saibō Burakku), "Cells at Work! Code BLACK" in which the protagonists are anthropomorphized cells including our little RPG-shooter.

That may be the most Japanese thing I've heard in a loooooong time.

Portland is Burning!

 Wait! No! I mean...Portland is on fire! 

We're LIT! Not actually burning! No smoke, no flames!

No. Just no. Outside of the usual assload of scruffy street people, Portland is fine.

So we braved the Antifa arson mobs the other day to poke around downtown, and ran into two of our favorite places here in the Beehive of Terrorism.

The first was Scrap.

Scrap is...well, pretty much everything. You want old stickers? Weird metal bits? X-ray prints? Patterns from the 1970s? Glitter, ribbon, postcards from 1908, decoupage (who knew that decoupage was even still a thing?), back issues of National Geographic?

Scrap's got 'em.

The Bride goes to paw through the fabric and other sewing treasures. 

I just like the congeries of weird and bizarre old vinyl, hubcaps, and random shit that the place has scrounged up. 

Sewing Susan? Ohhellyes!

There's even some stuff that is not entirely appropriate for the kiddies!

 

This is a postcard, BTW. I'd pay good money to see the look on the other folks at the post office when you take that out of the post box.

Even the street randos like them some Scrap!

Then down to near Pioneer Square to the downtown Kinokuniya.

Our local outlet of this Japanese bookstore has every manga and most anime every released (of course), and it is pretty critical for keeping up with Spy x Family and The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen and all my other manga favorites.

But it also has every cute, silly, whack, funny, goofy, and just Japanese thing that a would-be otaku could ever crave.

 

All topped off with a stop at St. Honore boulangerie for coffee and a croissant?

Because that's how we roll here in Little Beirut.  

Burn, baby, burn!

Shizukesa ya

 

"Oh, tranquility"...

...is the first line of one of Bassho's best known poems:

閑けさや　岩にしみいる　蝉の声 (Shizukesa ya/ Iwa ni shimiiru/ Semi no koe)

Oh, tranquility
Penetrating the very rock.
A cicada's voice.

 

The voice that penetrated the very rocks along the path up to the Japanese Garden last Thursday wasn't the cicada's, but the modern avatar, the gas-powered leaf blower. Why the groundskeeping staff couldn't have done that work on Monday when the garden is closed, I don't know.

The cold sunshine illuminated the maple golds and reds, though, as bright and bitter as the east wind that carried from the polar high that loured over the continent straight down the gorge and up against the West Hills.

物いへば　唇寒し　秋の風 (Mono ie ba/ Kuchibiru samushi/ Aki no kaze)

When you say something
The lips feel cold.
The autumn wind.

The value of membership is in being able to enjoy the quiet - well, the normal quiet - of this place before the crowds arrive. I've been coming here for ten years or more, and the carefully curated wilderness never fails to find a peaceful place within me.

Less leaf blowers help with that, mind.

The fall color is perhaps the most popular time for the garden, when photographers descend in troops to make art from the maples. Apparently the single most popular spot is "The Tree", the big red maple alongside the upper pond. So much so that the staff has barred off the Tree and posted a set of rules to keep the fighting down to a manageable level.

夏草や　兵どもが　夢の跡 (Natsu kusa ya/ Tsuwamono domo ga/ Yume no ato)

The summer grass
All that remains
Of the dreams of the warriors.

Or photographers, for that matter.

I with my little phone was no threat to their massive lenses. 

I took my snapshots, paused, and passed on.

As did she.

粽結ふ　片手にはさむ　額髪 (Chimaki yu/ Katate ni hasamu/ Hitai gami)

While holding the Chimaki dumpling
Her other hand held
Her bangs.

The Way of the Cat (猫侍 )!

 My Bride bagged the "one-free-month" sub to Amazon Prime late in December. So far she's been disappointed that most of the movies that are worth watching aren't free, and the ones that are free are worth shit.

(I could have told her that before she did, if I didn't value my ass...)

I'm not nearly as arsed about the movie thing (at least, not nearly as pissed off as when fucking Comcast moved the old movie channel ("Turner Classic Movies") over to the pay side, the bastards.) and so I've tooled around the site looking for entertainment options, and in so doing stumbled across 猫侍 - the first season of Neko Zamurai, a 2013 series presumably aired on NHK.

It's just a goof, on both the classic Kurosawa-style samurai tropes as well as cats and cat people in general. It's silly, sometimes serious, often funny, and truly, deeply weird in ways that only genuinely Japanese pop culture is weird.

The macguffin is that our hero, an out-of-work samurai (or ronin) is trying to get hired on with a new daimyo in Edo-period Tokyo. This is working out about as well as you'd think (you might not recall but we discussed the problems the samurai-class ran into after the end of the warring states period back when we talked about Shiroyama in 2011) and he's about at the end of his katana when a flunky for the local mob boss comes to him with an offer.

Turns out the boss has recently become hooked up with a cat and has gone all gooney over the possum, neglecting his yakuza-y business. Flunky wants to pay Madarame - the ronin/samurai - to put a hit on the kitty.

Of course he can't, and the rest of the series is about his misadventures trying to hang on to his new furry friend whilst dodging the Hanzo-the-Razor detective parody, Shimazaki.

Of course there's a cat-crap-ton of other silly business, including Madarame's adorable neighbor Wakana the donut vendor...

...and his local vet and sorta-crazy-cat lady Oshizu who tries to make him smile while teaching him the Way of the Cat (for a guy who's faithful to his wife back in the country Madarame seems to run into all sorts of adorable cat-ladies...).

There's even an Edo-period cat cafe just because, well, cats.

So far it's been good fun (tho it's hard to see how the showrunners will get a happy ending out of it - the detectives are closing in on our hero and he's set himself up to take a dive in the big swordfight against his old comrade/rival, so we'll see...) both on it's own and as a send up of both classic chanbara (チャンバラ) flicks as well as modern Japan, cats, and cat-support-staff (of which I am self-admittedly one).

Very watchable, if you're in the mood for a light and clever trifle.

nyaa! にゃー!

(A note on にゃー!: The Japanese expression for the sound a cat makes is "nya", and the characters in the show use it a fair bit, so I've been hearing it regularly for a while now. 

It still seems very odd, since even as they say it, it doesn't sound like "meow". But just like "wan" is the noise a Japanese dog makes, "nya" is a Japanese cat, and that's just how it is. Funny thing, language.

But what is kind of odd is that the title of this show is written in hiragana as 猫侍. In romaji you'd write that Neko Zamurai and translate it precisely as "Cat Samurai", which makes total sense given that the show is about a samurai that is all about his kitty.

But for some reason the title is regularly given in English as "Samurai Cat";

which totally doesn't work, because it implies that the samurai IS the cat, and is also the title of an actual pop culture thing, the Nineties series of heavy-handed satirical light novels by someone named Mark E. Rogers. 

Nya!)

Friday Jukebox: アニメミュージック・ビデオ Edition

I was going to write a post about how I and my nefarious antifa terrorist friends have been lighting off fires in the Oregon forests, but, y'know what? Fuck that. It's been a shitty week, and I wanted to post something fun.

So...these are something called "anime music videos"; they're fan-made, and take clips from anime - that is, Japanese animated films, and set them to music. I stumbled across them reading Athena Scalzi's fun little post on the subject over at Whatever.

Here's the first one. The bulk of the anime is an utterly adorable little slice of life series called Tamako Market, たまこまーけっと , which is, well, adorable.

Couple of notes: the bit at the very end - which is definitely NOT from the rest of the anime, is from another show, Kyousougiga (京騒戯画)

And now I reeeelly want to find the episode of Tamako Market that's sampled at about 2:12 in the video, because I want to find out about the hammer and three nails. WTF? Crucifixion? In an adorable slice-of-life show? Seriously?

The music - which is a huge part of what makes it art - is a song titled "Crabbuckit" performed by the Good Lovelies. Big props to Tamako, the Good Lovelies, and to Copycat Revolver, who made it.

And the second is here:

This one is a lot more complex, and includes the following anime: Your Lie In April, Virgin Soul, Magi and the labyrinth of magic, Beyond the Boundary, Yuri On Ice, Death Parade, and Free!!!

I don't know why I like this one so much, but I think it's the combination of the utterly goofy pop song ("Dance Monkey", by Tones and I) and the clever editing by Light Raider, the creator. 

Anyway, that's for Friday. 

I'll be back this weekend with my take on these damn fires.

兜 を脱ぐ : Kabuto o nugu

The little phrase above translates as "take off the helmet". It has passed into Japanese idiom from the feudal period as meaning "admit defeat", or "surrender".

We the People have surrendered to the Plague, and, being a Plague, it will respond by killing thousands and tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of its' prisoners.

Because that's literally what plagues do.

It doesn't have to be this way.

I get that we can't stay locked down forever. People got no jobs. People got no money. People are going to have to get out and work...and that means they'll want to get out and play, too. And, being American and greedy and stupid, we don't "get" that we just can't go back to Dave and Buster's like we did before and not get the Plague.

But.

There are ways to get out, and ways to get out. We seem to have decided to get out the stupidest and most infectious way possible. We're mobbing back into public spaces and, most critically, breathing our infections on each other. Because, it seems, less-stupid-and-infectious would include one simple and effective way to do this better.

Wear a fucking facemask.

"Japan’s population is about 38% of the U.S., but even adjusting for population, the Japanese death rate is a mere 2% of America’s. This comes despite Japan having no lockdown, still-active subways, and many businesses that have remained open—reportedly including karaoke bars, although Japanese citizens and industries are practicing social distancing where they can. Nor have the Japanese broadly embraced contact tracing, a practice by which health authorities identify someone who has been infected and then attempt to identify everyone that person might have interacted with—and potentially infected. So how does Japan do it?"

It's really that simple.

Japan has a longstanding tradition of masking in public.

I've been out and about during the Plague because of my job. Almost no one is masked; easily less than half, and (except in places like the whole foods store) usually about a quarter. I am...but it doesn't help me. I don't have the Plague yet; I need the other people, who do, to cover their nasty diseased pieholes.

And what I hate about that is that a hell of a lot of that has a hell of a lot to do with this:

The Trumpkins are explicit in refusing to cover their faces during a plague because it's not manly, it's not "free", it's sissy...aw, fuck, who cares why. They're goddamn idiots and if they were only killing themselves they could happily go to hell in the same handbasket.

But they're not. They're killing you and me.

So maybe we're going about this all wrong.

Maybe what we need for these chucklefucks is this sort of mask:

Would all these heroes mask up if they could strut around behind a 面頬, a menpō, like a badass samurai?

I'm long past trying to reason with these numbnuts. If giving them a cool ninja mask would make them stop acting stupid?

Works for me.

But, sadly, no. It won't work.

Because the proudly ignorant sonsofbitches wouldn't do it. Not even for a badass samurai mask. Because they'd prefer to burn the place to the ground rather than do anything that might make some pussy lib'rul somewhere smile.

This is what they think wearing a mask means:

That's really it. That's all there is to it. I mean...look at the damn idiot cartoon. "I want safety, not freedom" Wha...freedom to catch the fucking plague? "I want medical tyranny"...medical...the fuck?

Just look at it.

There's no logic there, no sense, no real reasoning. It's just all loud-n-proud fuckyew! because we're a house completely divided, and if they can't do exactly what they want and tell us pinko commie lib-simp cucks to suck it, they'll dynamite that fucker and dance on the ruins.

So.

We're all just gonna get the fucking plague.

Winter garden (冬 庭園)

いざ行かむ　雪見にころぶ　所まで

"Let’s go out
To see the snow view
Where we slip and fall"

Since we didn't get the February Snowpocalypse we anticipated, I took advantage of the sunny midday and went to the Japanese Garden.

初雪や　聖小僧が　笈の色

"The first snow
That the young Hijiri-monk has
The color of the wooden box"

The color of the wooden box perched on the bamboo post isn't a Hijiri-monk, but a common Northwest forest thrush. But perhaps since it's a Hermit Thrush it is monastic enough.

市人よ　此笠うらふ　雪の傘

"Hey, townspeople,
I’ll sell you my woven hat,
The snow umbrella"

初雪や いつ大仏の 柱立

"The first snow,
When is the pillar set up
For the Great Buddha?"

箱根こす 人も有らし 今朝の雪

"Some people
Would cross the Hakone Pass
Even though the moaning snow"

All of the poems are by Bashō Matsuo (松尾 芭蕉), as they were the last time we visited the Garden.

Bad Samurai

Came across this little snipbit while researching the Bun'ei 11 post from last month and it was too good not to share with you. It's from Thomas Conlan's In Little Need of Divine Intervention; his 2001 study of the Mongol Invasion Scrolls of Takezaki Suenaga.

Keep this in mind; this is Suenaga's own story, most likely as told by him to his artist(s)/calligraphers, and intended to win him recognition from the bakufu. This is our Boy from Higo trying to make himself look good in front of the boss. Got it? So, here's Suenaga in 1281, having finally weaseled his way onto an assault boat and gotten some Mongol, reporting to his superior, Gota no Goro Totoshi (who is described by Takezaki as having been "despatched from the Kanto", meaning that he was the shikken's direct appointment as commander of forces in Hakata in 1281):

"At dawn on the sixth, I arrived at Gota Goro's temporary lodging and explained in detail what had happened in battle.

"I knew this is what you would say," he said. "You haven't changed from (the) previous battles. Without your own boat, you repeatedly lied in order to join the fighting. You are really the baddest man around! I will notify our commanders about you. I also heard that Shikibu no bo will stand for you as a witness. If there are any further questions, have them contact me." And so Gota Goro also volunteered to stand as a witness for me."

Stand as a witness? Stand as a witness to you being the biggest damn fuckstick in Kyushu sounds more like, Takezaki.

Keep in mind that the Japanese are among the most circumspect people and written Japanese the most euphemistic language in the known world. Gota Goro calling our boy Takezaki the "baddest man around" translates into modern American English as "Jesus Fucking Kami, what a ginormous goddamn fucking asshole you are, Suenaga!" But this is the Higo Hellraiser's idea of "standing witness" for him; he deliberately included this story in the most polished resume' he could think of as a way of claiming a reward.

Did this guy Takezaki have some big brass ones, or what?

Friday Jukebox: Soothing Japanese Techno-Pop Edition

Dunno. A friend of mine sent me this, and I just put it on repeat and worked at my desk for about an hour while it played, occasionally peeking in to watch the sararīmen do their odd little herky-jerky dances.

It's been a busy week, that Tours post is being a stone-cold bitch, and I've had to completely shun the electronic news because otherwise I risk just going out and forcing some poor idiot with a fucking Teatard bumper sticker off the road, jerking him out of his car, and beating him over the head with a fucking fence picket. So this was perfect: I wanted something mindless and soothing and poppy and this worked a treat.

Hope you had a good week and are looking forward to a good weekend.

(After I put the first video on heavy rotation I found this one, even more ridiculously Japanese-techno-poppy cool. The bit at the end, where the Boys are doing all sorts of crazy moves in front of Leon Trotsky's tomb? Completely insane with awesomesauce. Enjoy.

Squirtle Unchained

The grandparents are here this weekend, so it's been all socializing and entertaining and doing things that will produce grandchild adorability to entrance grandparents. So you can imagine how little of "everything else" I'm getting done.

One thing that did occur to me while I was doing all this kid-and-grandparents stuff.

I really hate the hell out of Pokémon.

You're familiar with this kid thing, right? It's basically a card-combat game that has franchised out into movies and television. There's about a gajillion versions of Pokémon crap; cards, books, movies, and a television show. The Boy is a semi-regular Pokémon consumer. He "plays" the card game tho he cheats like a goddamn investment banker (he just ignores rules he doesn't like) and he watches the movies and the television show.

It's not the incoherent "plot" or the ridiculous characters that get me about this silly thing; it's the entire premise.

Which is about enslaving fictional animals and forcing them to fight each other.

Sound nasty? That's because it is.

I've mentioned this to the Boy who agrees, shrugs his shoulders, and goes off to watch another episode. He gets that this is a goofy Japanese anime' series and geez, pop, quit being such a derp.

But the whole Pokémon macguffin drives me kinda nuts.

The premise, if you've never encountered it, is simple, as the Wiki entry says:

"...a Trainer that encounters a wild Pokémon is able to capture that Pokémon by throwing a specially designed, mass-producible spherical tool called a Poké Ball at it. If the Pokémon is unable to escape the confines of the Poké Ball, it is officially considered to be under the ownership of that Trainer. Afterwards, it will obey whatever its new master commands, unless the Trainer demonstrates such a lack of experience that the Pokémon would rather act on its own accord."

And what these mooks command is that these critters fight each other.

So this is basically Spartacus only with freakish little cartoon monsters. To make it a little more palatable the little buggers don't fight to the death; they are "knocked out" - by getting blasted with lightning or fried with fire. Tell me that you get your ass zapped by a Pikachu lightning bolt and see how "knocked out" you feel.

And don't get me started on Pikachu, the Vidkun Quisling of the Pokémon universe. He pals around with the TV series hero kid and helps him zap and beatdown the various people and critters he meets. He's a Judas Goat, betraying and helping his buddy Ash enslave new gladiators.

The entire notion squicks me out.

I won't put the thing off-limits, but I do try and make the point that the central idea of Pokémon is based on a notion that civilized people pretty much tossed into the trash heap of history hundreds of years ago.

He nods and smiles and ignores me completely.

I still want to think that there's some alternative Pokémon universe where Squirtle gives Ash the finger, kicks Pikachu's little rat ass and stomps off down the road vowing to fight for his own Pokédamned reasons or never again.

Tennoheika Banzai!

And Happy New Year, 1937!

From all the folks here at Imperial Japan!

Loved this series of New Year's Cards reprinted at the ever-informative Pink Tentacle, who also tells us about the flight of the Kamikaze, the first Japanese-made aircraft to make the trip from the Land of the Rising Sun to Europe. Something about the precociously delightful urchins with their Hinomaru (日の丸), toy battleships and planes, the artless depthlessness of the artwork, the weird combination of ukiyo-e coloring and draftsmanship with the artifacts of the aggressive Japanese military of the late Thirties...

...it's perfect!

Yes, they're now an aging nation of pacifists perched on the Pacific Rim mollifying their senescence with tentacle porn and bad pop music.

But sixty-two years ago they were flying, all right, and pretty soon they were gonna use all this technology to tank up the Kates and fly over to visit the big boys with the big toys, so sorry, regrettable incident, wake up call from Tokyo, Yankee!

We got yer New Year right here!

Senzai Hishõ

One of Portland's genuine treasures, and one of its secret gems that I most enjoy is its Japanese Garden. Saturday was cold and rainy, but the wonder of the Garden is that is is meant to be enjoyed in all seasons, and the rain lent the garden a rare beauty that is hidden from the viewer of only sunny days. So we set out up the rainy and winding path to seek what enjoyment we could find at the end.No one travels
Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.Won't you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.First winter rain--
even the monkey
seems to want a raincoat.Clouds appear
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.Spring rain
leaking through the roof
dripping from the wasps' nest.The years first day
thoughts and loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.In all the rains of May
there is one thing not hidden -
the bridge at Seta Bay.Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

old pond;
a frog jumps into
the sound of waterWinter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms.My little daughter;
Is that burden not heavy
For your small fingers?(The Sakuteiki is a garden book with notes on garden making that dates back to the late seventeenth century. Its oldest title is Senzai Hishõ, "Secret Extracts on Gardens", and was written nearly 1000 years ago, making it the oldest work on Japanese gardening. It is assumed that this was written in the 11th century by a noble man named Tachibana no Tichitsuna.)

Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉; ?, 1644 – November 28, 1694) was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku.

(Thanks to the Portland Japanese Garden for the beauty of the outing, and Matsuo Basho for the beauty of the poetry...except for the last, which is my own and my daughter's.)