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I had my fun watching my undoing on the TV
I had a pleasant dream last night. It was half mixed up with the book or the film of itself, but I always like when even fictional people turn out to be more interesting than their first appearances, so I enjoyed hearing a stiff shy teacherly type enthuse about ballooning with an animation he had not formerly been able to carry into his classes. Everything got vaguely action-packed after that. The previous dream I had which was not a nightmare dated from the night before the beginning of the move; it was the direct consequence of watching a movie which I would still like to write about and featured Peter Ustinov.
There must still be a global shortage of vanilla, because when I unpacked the bottles of vanilla extract I had carefully saved from the wreck of our pantry, my mother looked at me as though I had produced oranges in wartime. On the other hand, she has reserves of marzipan.
On second or third read, I still find Wildfire at Midnight (1956) the most frustrating of Mary Stewart's novels of romantic suspense. It was her second novel; it looks now like the outlier in her catalogue with its police inspector and country house cast of suspects for whom the heroine out of her element is more the reader's lens on the action than its catalyst; its plot is essentially folk horror, which feels intriguing and unusual for the time, but its romance suffers more from its era than any other novel of Stewart's I can bring to mind and so does its psychology. It does contain one of my favorites of her supporting characters, right up there with the incomparable Tony Gamble. I just really wish the central couple would stay divorced.
As 1776 season is upon us, please enjoy this rendition of "He Plays the Violin."
There must still be a global shortage of vanilla, because when I unpacked the bottles of vanilla extract I had carefully saved from the wreck of our pantry, my mother looked at me as though I had produced oranges in wartime. On the other hand, she has reserves of marzipan.
On second or third read, I still find Wildfire at Midnight (1956) the most frustrating of Mary Stewart's novels of romantic suspense. It was her second novel; it looks now like the outlier in her catalogue with its police inspector and country house cast of suspects for whom the heroine out of her element is more the reader's lens on the action than its catalyst; its plot is essentially folk horror, which feels intriguing and unusual for the time, but its romance suffers more from its era than any other novel of Stewart's I can bring to mind and so does its psychology. It does contain one of my favorites of her supporting characters, right up there with the incomparable Tony Gamble. I just really wish the central couple would stay divorced.
As 1776 season is upon us, please enjoy this rendition of "He Plays the Violin."
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Your dream is wonderful. I enjoyed hearing a stiff shy teacherly type enthuse about ballooning with an animation he had not formerly been able to carry into his classes. --I love this. It reminds me in a tangential way of Meg in A Wind in the Door being able to care about Mr. Jenkins when she remembers the lengths he went to to provide Calvin with shoes in a non-humiliating way. I mean it's different too: your dream is about someone being able to share their enthusiasms, which is not the same as showing their moral fiber, but the result is the same: a person snaps into focus as the special being that they are.
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I just stopped baking at all in recent months, so I hadn't run out!
--I love this. It reminds me in a tangential way of Meg in A Wind in the Door being able to care about Mr. Jenkins
I strongly suspect Mr. Jenkins of being a component of the dream. I had been thinking about him and A Wind in the Door lately.
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It was an excellent show. It was funny; it was emotional; every soloist took down the house. There was a great moment at the beginning when the cast got into character, changing from contemporary clothes into longcoats and buckled shoes; when, in unison, they rolled their socks over their shins to create white leggings, it seemed almost a magic trick. The production adds Abigail's now famous call, in a letter to John, but not in the original show, to "remember the ladies." Now, too, when Jefferson is drafting and reciting the Declaration, she is shown being dressed by an enslaved person; when Jefferson recites "all men are created equal," the enslaved person suddenly stops what they were doing, and stands, facing the audience. The production also pointedly makes the ending less uplifting than in the original production, because the slavery issue is made to hang over it. During "Molasses, to Rum, to Slaves," the back of the set had opened to reveal rum barrels stacked to the rafters. At the July 4th close, the barrels reappear.
Accompanying the show at the A.R.T. was an exhibit of a big, colorful mural of the date "1776," created by a large group of young artists, mostly of color, many queer and trans, and many first or second generation immigrants. It was accompanied by film of them making the painting while each explained what the American revolution meant to them, or did not mean, and how they could claim it for themselves.
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I am so glad to hear it! I read about the production before it opened, but for obvious reasons lost track of it completely. I have now looked at photographs and I really approve of their Franklin. I like the idea of the mural, too.
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Did it work for you or did you just find it an interesting choice?
(The version I linked is something completely different.)
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I did also watch the version you linked and I liked it very much. :D (The last 1776 I saw was at New Rep, and took a different tack on its consciously ahistorical casting wrt race and gender; Martha was played very romantically by a very handsome young man and Adams and Jefferson swooned over him as per the traditional staging.)
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Did you write this production up and I just missed it?
(The last 1776 I saw was at New Rep, and took a different tack on its consciously ahistorical casting wrt race and gender; Martha was played very romantically by a very handsome young man and Adams and Jefferson swooned over him as per the traditional staging.)
I have been saying that I really appreciate 1776 joining the ranks of musical theater that can be restaged like Shakespeare and classical drama outside of the specifics of its text, and now I appreciate it even more!
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Please do! I would enjoy it!
(I have not seen 1776 in years, but most of the musical resides rent-free in my head where it has been since my first exposure in eighth grade; this year it occurred to me that many of the reasons I imprinted on its Adams also account for Mingy and Phyllis Ann Karr's Kay; I thought you should know.)
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I think I missed what happened to your apartment. I am glad y'all got out safely.
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Thank you. "Wreck" is slightly misleading: the building didn't collapse on us or anything. We just had to leave under destabilizing and exhausting circumstances and are now looking for a real place to go.