BEDA 8: Baby eagles!
Hello there! I think I’m finally on the upswing of this cold, which is, ah, awesome. I had a trying and busy morning, but I was back in my room by 2:00, and spent the remainder of the day not moving very much xD My stellar friend C. came by with a care package (apples, oatmeal, tea, applesauce) and talked and hung out. We also watched The Town, which I rather liked! C. is from Boston, so she had a lot of cool commentaries and insights. I love it when movies are firmly rooted in a place, especially one I have some knowledge about. I recognized quite a few places!
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I have one very important link for you today: a live feed of a bald eagle’s nest in Iowa.
Two gorgeous eagles and three babies, being majestic and cute 24/7! I emailed my mom late last night to alert to her to this amazing thing, and we’ve since been texting one another all day with comments. “Oh no, that one tiny baby looks cold!” “She isn’t feeding the one on the left as much!” “Your brother thinks the big one looks sick!” Like, as if we know anything about eagles — as if this pair of eagles hasn’t hatched a dozen eggs before these three — but still! You care so much about them! Go forth and enjoy.
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Today’s poem is my second favorite piece featured in The History Boys, the play I mentioned yesterday. Phillip Larkin is another of the great British war poets, though perhaps the youngest of the bunch, a teenager during WWII. His “MCMXIV” is a masterpiece.
In trying to quote my favorite lines, I end up highlighting more than half the poem. The imagery is just so specific, so perfect that I, an American teenager for whom the world wars are not even a memory, understand something like “Shadowing Domesday lines / Under wheat’s restless silence.” The beginning of the last stanza is probably my favorite part. So well put! Innocence is there and then it’s gone, in the blink of the proverbial eye. Larkin could not have conceived of an event like 9/11, which I discussed at length in class today. He died in 1985, so he saw most all of the wars fought in the twentieth century. A sad thing to remark upon. Anyway, my point is that the poem is incredible, and the tight, detailed, sad-but-not-sappy lines are models for my own writing.
