We're linking tongues and moving on

Most of today does not bear repeating, but in the afternoon my mother and I went to the Museum of Science and looked at the frogs: they were still beautiful. The dart-poison frogs, which look like metallic glazes. The waxy monkey frog, sitting up on its branch with delicate, unsticky fingers and opposable thumbs. Bullfrog tadpoles, fire-bellied toads; even a clawed Xenopus, whose name I learned almost twenty-five years ago from a children's abecedary, As I Was Crossing Boston Common. The Brazilian milk frog is the one that I love. Its skin is like celadon, softly watered with black; it crouches with only its throat flickering and its eyes are wide rims of gold. There are three or four of them near the beginning of the exhibit, the first frogs the visitor sees after the initial materials. I can imagine them in clay and faience. They look like things recovered from the ancient world.

On a channel that unfortunately cut for commercials, I caught the last third of The Magnificent Seven (1960) earlier tonight. I need to rewatch it and Seven Samurai (1954); I saw them both at the same time, probably not later than my first year of high school.

The Pliny moment yesterday was the Great Meadows of Arlington and Lexington, burning. Being wetlands, they should regrow soon. I still think conservation land should not be catching on fire. I imagine someone was smoking, and I wonder if I can invoke contrapasso against them.

There are not enough good stories with shape-changing and frogs.