I wonder as I wander

I apologize for not giving due notice that I would be bowing out of the Christmas Blog-a-day Challenge for a week (which, it seems, was for me a blog-an-every-other-day Challenge) while we spent some time in Port on the Neches with my parents, where the bayous are aplenty and the internet is dial-up. At least at my parents' house. They do have a computer--one that could easily make it into a computer antiquities museum--that they probably start up about once a quarter when my mom checks her email which is full of cutesy and annoying forwards from her friends who actually know how to forward things. My favorite thing about staying with my parents is that my mom is always telling me, demanding even, to go take naps while she entertains the children. They also have this awesome sunroom full of fun toys where Harper can play as loudly as she needs to and Hudson can nap in an entirely different part of the house. It seems palatial compared to our cozy little set-up. You might think that Hudson would sleep great while we are there. Unfortunately he realizes that he is Somewhere Different and this is Terribly Vexing to him for around 3 days. Once he settles in it's about time to go home. It then takes him a day or so to get settled back in at home. I didn't mean to create this fastidious little man. If we end up with a houseful of kids, I'm sure I'll look back and give a wise, self-deprecating chuckle when I think about how I tried to get a toddler to play sotto voce while I unloaded the dishwasher with nary a clink of fork against spoon.
What if I pick a poet a month and read a poem a day for an entire year? I think I'll start with Yeats. January is a gloomy Irish kind of month.
I knew Mrs. B would want to see "Sweeney Todd" because she was to the theatre born. There are lots of good musicals that center around a rather ominous premise ("The Sound of Music"--Nazis, ""Fiddler on the Roof"--pogroms, "Les Miserables--French Revolution..) BUT it's to provide conflict and maybe there's a ballad in a minor key and a mean looking fellow in a uniform. From what I've read about "Sweeney" there is on-stage and now, on-screen, throat slitting. And even if the violence is really stylized I still say eww. It's probably terribly bourgeois of me but it seems a musical should be more about singing and dancing and less about throat slitting and revenge. This is a whole issue that has seeped into the arts in the last 50 years or so. For something to be Important it has to be shocking.
I have lots of new pictures but can't download them until we find the white cord thingy that I haven't seen since the move.