It's been a good weekend so far. Friday evening I went to a production of Shakespeare's As You Like It in Woodland Park. Shakespeare in the Park is in its 22nd year, but this is the first production of theirs I've seen. It was very good. The play was much funnier live than it was on the page, and it wasn't just because of the mugging of the players ( Read more... )

So I spent the three-day weekend with my family in Central Oregon. Felt sort of overwhelmed when I got home yesterday. I don't know what all it is; maybe just a confluence of powerful emotions. My niece and her husband were there with another couple from Portland. Friday night my niece asked about Sharee, and we had a pretty emotional conversation ( Read more... )

I woke up in a crappy mood yesterday, but nonetheless I got a fair bit done in the morning, including some writing, hurrah. As usual, I started off with breakfast at Roxy's, and the streets of Fremont were already lined with chairs and blankets that people were laying down in anticipation of the Solstice Parade. It was raining. I was in a crappy ( Read more... )

Another quiet weekend. Yesterday the weather was nice enough that I got out in the yard and raked leaves and transplanted some daisies. (A fitting coda to Experiment Perilous, which begins and ends in a field of daisies.) Once again it felt good to do something physical. There was a recent study that argued that getting dirt on your skin is ( Read more... )

Last night I saw the first production of The Tempest I've ever seen, at the UW's renovated and renamed Jones Playhouse. I'm guessing the choice of this play as the post-renovation debut at the Playhouse was deliberate, since it made full use of the new catwalks, trapdoors, lifts, and other technical and mechanical features. It's a small, intimate ( Read more... )

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1) Haven't gotten much done this weekend. The main productive thing I've done is some work in the yard. There's a fair amount of autumnal clean-up work to do, and I've busted more sod in the front yard. The goal, still, is to plant a bee-friendly garden out front, although at this point I'm using up a lot of the new bed space transplanting things ( Read more... )

You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is I know how to curse.

-- Caliban in The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2

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I finished reading Shakespeare's The Tempest last night. It's the third or fourth time that I've read it, going back to college, and it remains pretty opaque to me. I think I really need to see it performed to get a better sense of the dramatics. What is the dramatic core of this story? Is it the restoration of the rightful political order? What is ( Read more... )