The $6 dress that I found at Target today inspired me to post a link to this site that alerts you to good deals/sales going on at stores around town. Check it out!
Archives for May 2009
Put This in Your Pipe and Smoke It, Lacan!
On Tuesday I started my 3 week Mayterm class at UD. The title? Shakespeare’s Later Plays.
Yesterday’s class was okay. We discussed Act 1 of Othello and cautiously felt out each other’s personalities, stopping only for a 15 minute coffee break and a reading of the syllabus (6 shorter papers plus the 15 page final one! BOY do I have my work cut out for me!). The best part of the day, however, was when I ran into my professor from Medieval Lit, who said that she’d just gotten done with my paper from this last semester. Her critique: she disagreed with my thesis, but thought the paper was excellently written.
Okay, I can live with that! I’d hate to be bad at writing papers, you know, since that’s what I TEACH. It’s nice to shake off the “OMG this is my first grad school paper!!” jitters. Plus I researched and wrote it in a week.
But today’s class…….oh man. It was awesome. I was riveted for all 3 hours. It was like Torrey all over again, only better. To clarify, this class was not better than all Torrey sessions. But it was better than all of my Torrey sessions on Shakespeare. Come to think of it, it was also better than all of my English classes on Shakespeare. The reason, I believe, is that it was a class full of grad students who were English majors AND had read of UD’s core curriculum as Undergrads. They have a thorough knowledge of all the Great Works of Literature that we read in Torrey (one girl even said that she re-translated the first 6 books of the Metamorphoses for a paper she just wrote) which helps when you’re pretty sure Shakespeare was influenced by most of them.
So for 3 hours we discussed, with the professor offering very little interference. In fact, when he wasn’t acting as the moderator he was just as excited as the rest of us to be reading and discovering themes in Othello. Sure, we bounced around a little bit too much for my liking. But it’s our second day, and I could already hear that we were listening to and building upon each other’s viewpoints. Everyone was excited. In fact, I talked Jesse’s ear off for an hour when I got home. Suddenly $700 for this class seems like a bargain!
And guess what. Not once did we discuss Racism. Or Feminist Empowerment. Or Queer Theory. Despite the fact that’s OTHELLO.
It was as if we were all saying, “MODERN LITERARY CRITICISM BE DAMNED!!!WE’RE CLASSICISTS!!!”
There. Now I am going to go read King Lear. I can’t wait for tomorrow.
My Giant Beanstalk
Dear Basil the Giant Beanstalk,
I really don’t know what to do with you. Between all of the rainclouds that block the sun and all of the neglect that I lavish so freely, you were supposed to be dead by now. Not that I wanted this, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that…I’ve never had a plant stick in this relationship for too long. I’m at a loss for where to go next. It seemed like it was just yesterday, you were so tiny…now you are demanding independence from the kitchen window because your mean mother won’t transplant you.
I think we should have a DTR, because I’m not sure where this relationship is headed. Are you going to want some sort of long-term committment from me?
Recital #2
I am calling this post Recital #2 because it was my second one. I already put one on last Saturday for my Southlake/St. Peter’s students, but I don’t have any pictures from that one yet, so I haven’t written a post on it yet.
This recital was for the 4 students that I still have through my old music studio from last year. 4 students is a far cry from the 30+ that I had last year, but I still had to go, show up early, clean up, etc. Add onto it that I was given the WRONG time by the music company’s director (my STUDENTS corrected me…!) and it made for a more stressful event than it needed to be.
But I just had to share one of the performances with you because I think it’s impressive, funny, and endearing, all at the same time. The performance was impressive because the performer, Mattie, just turned 5 and is going into Kindergarten next year. She’s a big slap in the face for all the companies out there who say that 5 is too young to start piano.
The performance is funny because…well, she is using the pedal in the song, and normally students who are using the pedal are older, taller, with longer legs. With this tall bench, she had to sort of brace herself, halfway off the bench, which meant that she was slowly sliding backwards the entire song. I saw it happening, but didn’t want to startle her by moving her closer in.
The endearing part of this clip is that even though Mattie had to STOP in the middle in order to scoot back in, even though the audience thought she was finished and started clapping, she still kept poised, cool, confident. I have seriously never seen such stage presence in a person. She’s one of those children who makes you feel insecure in comparison.