Warning: Cliché ahead.
Where in
tarnation did September go, eh?
I could blame the missing month on the fact that the Misses' swim team is now a USA Swimming club. The winter season began more than a month earlier than it once did, and their practice group meets five nights a week (late!) for nearly two hours.
I could blame the missing month on the schedule demands (practice and lessons) of two students who study two instruments each.
I could blame the missing month on an assortment of home projects, like washing every. single. screen. and. window.
I could blame the missing month on the Othello app. But I only installed that yesterday. Heh, heh, heh. (Speaking of apps,
Girl Detective recommends
this one. I installed that yesterday, too, and I agree with her:
Squee!)
To be perfectly honest, though, neither swimming nor music are to blame. Nor are the screens and windows. Or the app. Quite simply, the demands of shepherding two capable students, one of whom is angling to graduate two years early, through high school leaves me little time to chronicle said days. Be clear: I have
no complaints. I do, however, have a considerable amount of reading, grading, planning, and studying. Forget math, science, history, Spanish, logic and philosophy, writing and grammar. Consider literature alone. Our academic year began just seven weeks ago, and we've already studied:
■
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
■
Three Sisters (Anton Chekhov)
■
The Island of Dr. Moreau (H.G. Wells)
■
Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
■
Animal Farm (George Orwell)
■
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard)
To say nothing of our work on
Poetry 180 and the discussions and additional reading that evolve from that.
(
Aside: My AP English class didn't cover that much material in a
year, let alone seven weeks. Sometimes I don't know whether to be more amazed by the students or by the efficiency of this method of studying and learning.)
Naturally, we don't simply read these works. In late August, we saw the Tracy Letts adaptation of
Three Sisters at the Steppenwolf Theatre (reviews
here and
here) and are still in search of a more traditional interpretation of that play. More recently, we saw a marvelous production of
Hamlet at the Writers' Theatre. (Reviews
here,
here, and
here. We
loved it.) We saw the Branagh film and read and studied the play. (Resources included four related lectures from Peter Saccio's two Teaching Company courses.)
Synchronicity/Serendipity/Synthesis led us to watch
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) before the performance, so the Misses arrived feeling well versed in "antic dispositions." Like me, they tend to have a deep appreciation for what we call the "Modern Wing of literature" (akin to the
Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago), so they really poured something of themselves into our oral interpretation of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
We couldn't watch, read, and study
Ros & Guil without delving into Theater of the Absurd: We have the "Beckett on Film" production of
Waiting for Godot slated for this weekend's family film night -- this in addition to the 1980
Hamlet featuring Derek Jacobi and Patrick Stewart as Hamlet and Claudius, respectively. (Why? Because Professor Saccio said so. He also insisted that we see the 1948 version with Laurence Olivier. And we will.) I was unable to secure a copy of the 1961
Waiting for Godot my son and I watched. Featuring Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel as Vladimir and Estragon, respectively, it was simply perfect. Here's hoping the "Beckett on Film" production works (nearly) as well. (
Aside: Having learned that Brian Dennehy, who I just saw in
The Iceman Cometh at the Goodman Theatre (related entries
here and
here), is slated to appear in
Waiting for Godot at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival next season (short announcement
here), we think we may already know how the 2013 edition of "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" ends.) We'll read the play next week, but "for fun," we're also reading
Watership Down (Richard Adams).
Looking ahead, in early October, we'll "kick it old school" by reading and studying Sophocles'
Oedipus Rex and
Electra, the latter of which because we have tickets to see
Elektra at the Lyric Opera. Similarly, in advance of seeing
Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses at the Lookingglass, we plan to read an adaptation of Ovid's
Metamorphoses and/or selections from Charles Martin's translation (even though, yes, I know, Zimmerman used the David R. Slavitt).
We'll reread and re-watch
Henry V in celebration of St. Crispin's Day and then it's on to
It Can't Happen Here (Sinclair Lewis), a tie-in of sorts with
Animal Farm and with our political philosophy / U.S. Constitution / presidential election unit in history;
The Misanthrope (Molière), on which
the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's The School for Lies is based; and
The Murder of Roger Akroyd (Agatha Christie) -- just because.
Even if my students don't ever seem to require a reading break, I know
I will, so I've decided that the month of December will be given over to
The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien) in anticipation of
the film (December 14).
Speaking of "in anticipation of the film," Mr. M-mv and I are looking forward to
Les Miserables -- both
the movie (December 25) and
the upcoming production in Chicago. We already have tickets to the latter, so we will
finally be able to introduce the Misses to our favorite musical. (No, I don't think we'll be reading the novel, not even the abridgement. Not this year, anyway.)
And speaking of musicals, we'll see
Sunday in the Park with George at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater this fall, which we will, of course, complement with a trip to the Art Institute to see
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.
But now I am beginning to stray from the original topic: literature.
And the month of September, nearly gone.
Enough about us, then. What are you reading, seeing, studying, doing?
