Strike that. Reverse.

Well, the violin teacher was able to accommodate a morning lesson, so violin is back on... at least for the summer. And I'm actually rather glad: Now both girls have second instruments, both of which were their original first-choice instruments.

Dropping voice, which was two hours every Monday night, and the second riding lesson, which included some training in the stables and so took three hours every Friday night, has returned [insert quick math] five hours of white space to the family calendar each week. Mama Bear breakdown avoided. Heh, heh, heh.

By the numbers

7
The number of activities we were juggling for a couple of weeks there.

Piano, guitar, violin, voice, swimming, horseback riding (twice a week!), and archery.  

Phew! After several references to Mama Bear's meltdown in The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Pressure, the Misses and I took a good look at the schedule. Last added ended up becoming first deleted: Voice and violin are on PAUSE -- at least until after summer swim season; ditto on the second riding lesson.

Ahhhhh. That's the sound of our family calendar sighing in relief.

9.28
The number of miles we biked on Monday.

9.78
The number of miles we biked on Tuesday.

11.23
The number of miles we biked today.

We have walked daily since my surgery last August, but in April we must have increased our mileage too rapidly -- either that or all of the walking on concrete finally took its toll: I ended up with heel pain in my left foot. I invested in new sneakers and new insoles. I wear protective "inside shoes." I iced. I rested my foot by walking shorter distances and biking. But the pain returned. I'm going to bike the rest of this week and all of next, then try walking again. If there isn't an improvement, well, then I guess it's time for a doctor's opinion.

7 ±
The number of books on my nightstand with active bookmarks. I really need to finish something.

1
The number of times I water the "back patch" each day.

On Mother's Day, I determined that I had neither the time nor the inclination to garden the reclaimed area, so we prepared the soil and threw some grass seed. We're already seeing green. Yay!

x
The number of days until I blog again.

After a pleasant respite last week, we're back to our lessons. The Misses study year-round, which means that I teach (prepare, study, mentor, etc.) year-round. Couple that with their slate of activities (one of which, archery, is my pursuit, too), our daily walks (well, rides), and my reading, and, well... I'll see you when time permits.

Spring. Break.

Summer swim season begins soon. The piano competition is just weeks away. It was time for a little break.

So we took one.

It was unplanned.

Unexpected.

And all the sweeter for being such.

We've read and drawn and (responsibly) sunned. We've (GASP!) gardened. We've stayed up late to stargaze, slept in because we could, and taken our morning walk in the early evening.

It was a good and much appreciated respite.

Job shadow: Animal training

Earlier this week, the Misses spent the morning learning about the field of marine mammal care and training by "shadowing" the trainers at Oceans of Fun. They assisted in the daily activities involved with caring for the seals and sea lions (i.e., feeding, cleaning, and training) and participated in the morning show to demonstrate some of the skills they had acquired.

Because of the hands-on nature of  programs like this and the "trainer for a day" experience at Shedd Aquarium, they have been able to explore this career path in a meaningful way. (Later this year, they will participate in a similar program at the Brookfield Zoo's Seven Seas.)   

Note: The photos were taken by Oceans of Fun staff.

Link. Think.

■ Sketchbooks: Turning the Pages at the Art Institute of Chicago

Artists have long used sketchbooks to jot down ideas and to work quickly outside their studios. This selection of Art Institute sketchbooks ranges from the eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries, and appears in order by artist name. The Cézanne, Redon and Weber books were standard issue for the late nineteenth-century, and all include an extra flap inside the front or back binding for holding a pencil.

■ Learning That Works (Time, May 14)

Unfortunately, the education establishment's response to the voc-ed problem only made things worse. Over time, it morphed into the theology that every child should go to college (a four-year liberal-arts college at that) and therefore every child should be required to pursue a college-prep course in high school. The results have been awful. High school dropout rates continue to be a national embarrassment. And most high school graduates are not prepared for the world of work. The unemployment rate for recent high school graduates who are not in school is a stratospheric 33%. The results for even those who go on to higher education are brutal: four-year colleges graduate only about 40% of the students who start them, and two-year community colleges graduate less than that, about 23%. "College for everyone has become a matter of political correctness," says Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University. "But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than a quarter of new job openings will require a bachelor of arts degree. We're not training our students for the jobs that actually exist." Meanwhile, the U.S. has begun to run out of welders, glaziers and auto mechanics--the people who actually keep the place running.

■ The Beating Heart Donors (Discover, May 2012)

The reason for denying beating-heart cadavers anesthetic during the removal of their organs is hard to pin down. (Some experts say it is because anesthetic will harm the organs.) Nevertheless, administering anesthetics to BHCs during organ harvests is becoming more common in Europe, according to Robert Truog, professor of medical ethics, anesthesia, and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Despite their strong opposition to brain death, Truog and Shewmon both refuse to acknowledge the possibility that some donors may be in severe pain during organ harvests, even though they acknowledge that some donors did exhibit reactions similar to inadequately anesthetized surgical patients who afterward reported pain and consciousness. Shewmon said the donor reactions were simply “bodily reactions to noxious stimuli.” I asked if an experiment could be designed to answer the question of pain in donors. He said no.

■ LEGO Queen Elizabeth

No words needed

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

Volkening Heritage Farm

"You must be very angry at your mother."

Are You My Mother? (Alison Bechdel)

Graphic memoir. Having branded Fun Home "Don't miss!" (related entry here), I wanted to read Bechdel's follow-up memoir on its release. Reviews have been mixed, though, even within one publication: the NYT and the NYT; Slate, Kirkus Reviews, and NPR.

And my own review is somewhat mixed, too. Intelligent, insightful, and abundantly gifted with both text and illustration, Bechdel blends personal history, including conversations with her therapists, with wisdom culled from her close reading of both Donald Winnicott and Virginia Woolf -- all in an effort to navigate what some have described as the most fraught relationship in the world: mother and daughter. Heady and universal stuff, right? So why am I not responding to it with the same degree of discovery and appreciation that  underscored my reading of Fun Home? I wondered. Then, the following exchange (pp. 200-203) between Bechdel and her mother helped me define my vague sense of frustration with parts of the work:

"The self has no place in good writing."

"Uhhh...Yeah, but don't you think that... That if you write minutely and rigorously enough about your own life... You can, you know, transcend your particular self?"

"Wallace Stevens wrote transcendent poetry, and he never used the word 'I.'"

I'm a fan of rigorous -- ruthless, even -- self-evaluation, but in some sections of Are You My Mother? writing "minutely and rigorously" resulted in the opposite of transcending "your particular self" -- and it was in those narrative weak spots that I grew restless.

That said, I do recommend this book, particularly to those who heeded my Fun Home recommendation.

Leading at the Edge

From the publicist:

In Leading at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition,, Dennis N.T. Perkins presents Shackleton as a model of outstanding leadership against formidable obstacles -- a model for all leaders in today’s turbulent business climate and world of rampant risk and uncertainty.

As Perkins explains, “The Edge” is a concept with two dimensions: the Survival Edge, the limits of human endurance, and the Performance Edge, the pinnacle of individual, team, and organizational potential.

Throughout the book, Perkins demonstrates how lessons from the first dimension -- inspiring stories of Shackleton and others -- can be applied to organizations confronting contemporary challenges such as global competition, a precarious economy, and the need for constant innovation, growth, and change. To lead the way, he provides a compass -- 10 leadership principles and strategies, the underlying ingredients of triumph that enabled Shackleton’s men to persevere, bond, strive, and survive.

In addition to a review copy (see M-mv's disclosure statement), FSB Associates also supplied the following article by Perkins, adapted from Leading at the Edge.  

What Makes an Exceptional Leader?

A Comparison of Historic Antarctic Expedition Commanders

 

On December 14, 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team made history as the first expedition to reach the South Pole. Thirty-five days later, on January 17, 1912, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole, with five exhausted men. None survived the brutal journey home. Another noted British explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, never reached the South Pole. While failing to achieve the first overland crossing of Antarctica, Shackleton succeeded at bringing all 27 members of his expedition party safely home, after 634 days of unbelievable hardship, and winning their cooperation, commitment, respect, and admiration.

Some one hundred years later, fascination with the race to the South Pole continues. And so do debates over which of the three Antarctic commanders was the best leader. To gain deeper insights into one of the most exciting and controversial chapters in the history of leadership under adversity, I devoted a decade to research, including traveling to the Antarctic to study the trailblazing paths of these famed expeditions. As I share in my book, LEADING AT THE EDGE, the polar adventures of Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen provide fundamental leadership lessons for any leader -- no matter what race must be run:

• Effective leadership requires a clear strategic focus. With single-minded determination, Amundsen set his plans and priorities on winning the race to the South Pole, for the glory of standing there first. Scott lacked such focus. He assembled the best scientific minds and equipment available for an unprecedented research expedition. But he also aimed to claim the "reward of priority" for the British Empire. Striving for both goals, Scott failed doubly.
  
  
• Successful leaders are open to new ideas. As a Norwegian, Amundsen began with an advantage over his British rivals: comfort with skiing. Yet, he continued to refine his skills, importing ideas from the Eskimos and developing an integrated set of competencies -- skiing, dog-handling, clothing, and carefully-planned diet, pace, and rest -- for polar travel. Scott and Shackleton, however, were surprisingly resistant to the use of novel methods. Ultimately, both relied on the slow, grueling technique of man hauling.


• Leaders need to draw on the collective wisdom of the team. As a leader, Scott believed it was his unique responsibility to analyze situations and draw conclusions. His decisions were closely held and sometimes revealed at the last minute. Consequently, members of his expedition had only a limited understanding of the rationale behind their course of action. In sharp contrast to Scott, both Amundsen and Shackleton solicited ideas and opinions from their men. Through this process, Amundsen and Shackleton gave team members a sense of control and value, resulting in greater ownership and commitment.


• The best leaders forge strong bonds. Despite their differences in personality, the ebullient Shackleton and the understated Amundsen had strikingly similar approaches to leadership. Both were acutely sensitive to the emotions of their men and skilled at managing conflict. Both emphasized individual ability above rank or social status. And both participated in everyday expedition life, including menial chores. "These behaviors, both practical and symbolic, reinforced the message of unity," Perkins observes. Although Scott's doomed polar party stayed together until the very end, his detachment, emphasis on hierarchy, and unilateral decision-making style created barriers to team cohesion and damaged morale.


• Leadership success is often relative and always personal. Flaws aside, Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott shared qualities -- exceptional perseverance, determination, and courage -- that are crucial for any leader. Was Shackleton a success or a failure as a leader? The answer, Perkins contends, depends on the yardstick used. Shackleton created a team that worked together against enormous odds to overcome staggering obstacles, and divided their last rations, equally and willingly. He led his team to safety through extreme hardships and hazards. Still, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition did not achieve its goal: crossing Antarctica. "Shackleton can be seen as a success or a failure, or a little of both," Perkins acknowledges. "I believe the more important question raised by Shackleton's adventure is a much more personal one: How do you measure your own success as a leader?"

 Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

"Yes, indeed, I was still a child."

First Love (Ivan Turgenev)

Fiction. Robin of 52 Books 52 Weeks declared April "Read a Russian Author" month. I generally skip challenges, but two posts in my reader prompted me not to: this one and this from The Paris Review blog, each of which mentioned Turgenev's novella. What a heartbreaking, old-fashioned slip of a book. (Check out this review at Reading Matters.)

In grad school, someone pressed Fathers and Sons on me, but I resisted. For twenty years, I have resisted. I'm not even certain it is still on my shelves, but given how much I appreciated the deceptive simplicity of First Love, I must reconsider.

A complete list of books read in 2012 can be found here.

"I thought of everything I had given up for reading."

The Night Bookmobile (Audrey Niffenegger)

Graphic novel. The panel in which she describes reading as if she were eating for two made me wonder if Niffenegger were making a sly comment about why some people read what they read. In other words, do we choose to read, say, Middlemarch on the el train because we think we look clever -- or because we actually want to read Middlemarch? What happens when we read with an mental eye to what our personal librarian will think of us? What happens when we read for all the wrong reasons? What happens when reading supplants life utterly?

"Years passed."

Alexandra is a character not entirely dissimilar to Henry Bemis, who also read without much investment in the life going on about him. For that reason, the book reminded me of a "Twilight Zone" episode -- dark and ambiguous.

Postscript: I am not a fan of Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife. At. All. But I found this book rather interesting thought-provoking and compelling, apparently, as it remains on my mind.

A complete list of books read in 2012 can be found here.

Screen-Free Week

Those of you familiar with my TV Turnoff and screen-time awareness posts (begin here, if you're not) are probably interested in Screen-Free Week, which began on Monday.

As I've said before, I certainly won't advocate a week-long screen fast, but I don't think any harm can come of suggesting that a periodic evaluation of our time management, including an earnest evaluation of the amount of time we spend in the company of screens rather than faces, is, quite simply, a good idea. If some people require an event to remind them to do this, well, fine.

Turn away. Turn off. Whatever. Just remember: Life is short.

Spend it in ways that enliven your selfhood.

A long and happy marriage

Over the weekend, Girl Detective sent me the link "15 Ways to to Stay Married for 15 Years." And then this morning, I saw this. (Embedding does not seem to work for all M-mv readers, so I've included a link as well.)

Mr. M-mv and I will celebrate our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary this month. For the record? Both of these meditations on marriage contain essential truths.

They say an enduring marriage is part luck, part work. Thank heavens for my good luck and his hard work.

I have always loved candid shots best. This is why.

Goofy. Imperfect. Fun. Real.

Reading life review: April

Books read in April: 13
Books read in 2012: 43

■ The Fiddler in the Subway (Gene Weingarten)
Essays; journalism. I begin and set aside many worthwhile books -- books I thoroughly enjoy and/or appreciate as I am reading them but inexplicably "forget" to finish. These abandoned friends end up at the bottom of a towering book stack of reproach or, as is the case with Fiddler, shelved. A couple of weeks prior to seeing Joshua Bell at Symphony Center (related entry here), I wanted to share Weingarten's Pulitzer Prize-winning feature "Pearls before Breakfast" with the Misses. "I have that book," I thought. But, as it turned out, I had never finished it; I had shelved it. I have finished it now, though. Contents include the heartbreaking and difficult story "Fatal Distraction," which earned him his second Pulitzer; "Fear Itself"; and "The Peekaboo Paradox" (retitled "The Great Zucchini" in the collection).

■ Mr. Monster (Dan Wells)
■ I Don't Want to Kill You (Dan Wells)
Fiction. After reading I Am Not a Serial Killer two years ago, I wrote, in part, "Wow! I haven't met a sociopath this interesting since Joyce Carol Oates' Zombie." The two follow-up novels are nearly as compelling as Wells' mixed-genre (psychological thriller / mystery / horror) introduction to John Wayne Cleaver.

■ The Memory Palace (Mira Bartók)
Memoir. In her NYT review of The Memory Palace, Melanie Thernstrom writes:

Bartok’s tone shifts frustratingly from intimate and confessional to distant and elusive. Boyfriends appear and disappear with little or no explanation. In one section she has met a man; the next section opens a year into their crumbling marriage. Then, suddenly, she is engaged to a different man, about whom we learn almost nothing.

Since she so incisively describes Bartók's narrative device -- the fable-based metaphor of the memory palace -- it seems frustratingly obtuse of Thernstrom to accuse Bartók of shifts in tone. To me, the "broken," disjointed, and even opaque nature of parts of this beautifully, magically wrought narrative is precisely what one would expect from a writer who had not only endured sustained horror during childhood but had also suffered traumatic brain injury in adulthood. In other words, Bartók's memory palace must, by unintended design, possess unfurnished, incomplete, and dark rooms. Highly recommended, particularly to fans of Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle.

■ Going Bovine (Libba Bray)
Fiction. Granted, it's an utterly unrelated context, but I couldn't help but hear Charlie bellowing, "I'll show you the life of the mind! I'll show you the life of the mind!" (Barton Fink, 1991) as I read Bray's teacup-ride of a novel. After all, what are we shown if not the emotionally rich life of a dying teenager's mind (and a wry, observant, and imaginative teenager, at that)? Come for the clever chapter titles ("In Which a Brief Sanctuary Is Found, I Fail to Comprehend Jazz, and I Am Forced to Have a Conversation with My [expletive] Father"), and stay for the physics, the references to don Quixote, and all of the truth good fiction tells.

■ Timon of Athens (William Shakespeare)
Play. With the Misses, in anticipation of this (which was absolutely terrific, by the way; related entry here).

■ The Pen Commandments (Steven Frank)
Non-fiction. With the Misses, who, although they are far from reluctant writers, both responded to Frank's playful, youth-oriented humor. They agreed that students would appreciate his clear approach to what, for some, is a painful exercise. Recommended.

■ The Difference (Jean Chatzky)
Non-fiction. Chatzky was a guest on one or another WGN program a few months back, and her pragmatic financial sense was appealing. When asked to give the audience a plug, she referred listeners to her website and The Difference. The book seems to be pitched to those who have made or are making a number of financial errors (e.g., failing to save), but it could be used as an introduction to the subject of personal finance.

■ iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us (Larry D. Rosen)
Non-fiction. I think an ad for this appeared in the same issue of The Atlantic that carried the feature "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" Appreciative of the synchronicity, serendipity, and synthesis at work, I read Rosen's survey of the mental health concerns amplified and exacerbated by the overuse of technology -- on the Kindle. Heh, heh, heh. The chapters on narcissism and OCD are particularly eye-opening.

■ The Lifeboat (Charlotte Rogan)
Fiction. One of the books Aunt M-mv gave me for my birthday, this is a competently written first novel with a neat hook: A young widow narrates (unreliably, of course) her tale of survival following the sinking of the luxury ship on which she and her new husband had been passengers. Related article here.

■ Retirement without Borders (Barry Golson)
■ The World's Top Retirement Havens (ed. Margaret J. Goldstein)
■ Let's Go: Peru, Ecuador & Bolivia (ed. Michelle R. Bowman)
Non-fiction. Yes, there is a theme here, and, yes, more titles like this will likely appear on my reading lists in the coming years as this is a topic that greatly interests us. Some related links here, here, and (less sunny) here. This article may also interest some of you, by the way: "What's a Gap Year and Why Might You Need One?" (Entrepreneur, April 7) Cool, right?

Timon of Athens

Evidence suggests that Timon of Athens was never staged in Shakespeare's time, which would explain the many inconsistencies in the text. In the capable hands of director Barbara Gaines, though, this rarely performed play becomes a slickly told parable about "friendship" and personal finance.

There is so much to admire about the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's contemporary take on Timon, which makes ample use of current technology (e.g., Painter displays a likeness of the wealthy and generous Athenian using what appears to be an iPad), but the images that linger long after the play has concluded are that of the Flavius Fund ticker and the ambiguously shadowed face of Sean Fortunato (as Flavius) as he steps apart from his "friends."  

Brilliant.

Still, one limitation of the work is the title character himself. Apemantus wryly observes of Timon, "The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends." In other words, because he doesn't learn much (anything?) from time spent at either extreme, there is no middle for Timon, which makes him, well,  difficult, to say the least. This is a textual weakness, however, and it is one around which Ian McDiarmid maneuvers adroitly. (You may know this Scottish actor better as Palpatine from the Star Wars series). His emotionally gripping performance, which is also surprising physical in nature -- McDiarmid dashes about, leaps atop a table and then back to the stage, plunges into a cave, minces about its edges, and, finally, leaves the world as he entered it -- plumbs what can only be described as Timon's latent Lear-like depths.


Great stuff here, folks. Highly recommended. Timon of Athens runs through June 10.

Is that a poem in your pocket?

Choose a favorite poem and carry it with you to share with family, friends, colleagues... even strangers on the el train.

From the Academy:

Poems have been stowed in pockets in a variety of ways, from the commonplace books of the Renaissance to the pocket-sized publications for Army soldiers in World War II.

You'll find more information here.

The poems in our pockets today:

Miss M-mv(ii): "The Poet's Song" by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Miss M-mv(i): "Piano" by D.H. Lawrence

Mrs. M-mv: "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

The Iceman Cometh

I know you become such a coward that you'll grab at any lousy excuse to get out of killing your pipe dreams. And yet, as I've told you over and over, it's exactly those damned tomorrow dreams which keep you from making peace with yourself. So you've got to kill them like I did.

Nathan Lane as Theodore "Hickey" Hickman. Brian Dennehey as Larry Slade. Stephen Ouimette ("Slings and Arrows") as Harry Hope. John Judd (Prospero in the recent CST production The Feast: An Intimate Tempest) as Pet Wetjoen.

I cannot WAIT to see this.

Being Shakespeare

We celebrated Shakespeare's 448th birthday a day early by attending Simon Callow's one-man show Being Shakespeare, which runs through April 29. Framed by the seven ages of man speech from As You Like It, the play blends biography (and a dose of speculation) with excerpts from Shakespeare's work. Callow -- engaging, deft, moving, wry -- proved particularly effective in the latter, his takes on Falstaff and Bottom being especial favorites of ours. Highly recommended.

Looking for ways to celebrate Shakespeare? Check out the posts collected under the Bardolatry tab and visit Happy Birthday Shakespeare, "a project by bloggers around the world to celebrate Stratford's greatest son."

Link. Think.

WIRED: The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.

The Atlantic: Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?

Rising narcissism isn’t so much a trend as the trend behind all other trends. In preparation for the 2013 edition of its diagnostic manual, the psychiatric profession is currently struggling to update its definition of narcissistic personality disorder. Still, generally speaking, practitioners agree that narcissism manifests in patterns of fantastic grandiosity, craving for attention, and lack of empathy. In a 2008 survey, 35,000 American respondents were asked if they had ever had certain symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. Among people older than 65, 3 percent reported symptoms. Among people in their 20s, the proportion was nearly 10 percent. Across all age groups, one in 16 Americans has experienced some symptoms of NPD. And loneliness and narcissism are intimately connected: a longitudinal study of Swedish women demonstrated a strong link between levels of narcissism in youth and levels of loneliness in old age. The connection is fundamental. Narcissism is the flip side of loneliness, and either condition is a fighting retreat from the messy reality of other people.

The Atlantic: Meet the New Boss

After that experience, no one was surprised that Rahm abandoned Rich Daley’s practice of taking town-hall questions directly from voters in favor of questions e-mailed in or submitted on Facebook. His staff says that he interacts daily with average Chicagoans, so why waste time on there’s-a-dog-on-my-lawn complaints? But screening many of the questions plays into the impression of the mayor as a man obsessed with orchestrating events and cultivating his public image. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that even the president of the United States takes questions from all comers at town-hall events.

This doesn’t quite make Rahm the control freak of popular imagination.

The Atlantic: E. O. Wilson’s Theory of Everything

His theory draws upon many of the most prominent views of how humans emerged. These range from our evolution of the ability to run long distances to our development of the earliest weapons, which involved the improvement of hand-eye coordination. Dramatic climate change in Africa over the course of a few tens of thousands of years also may have forced Australopithecus and Homo to adapt rapidly. And over roughly the same span, humans became cooperative hunters and serious meat eaters, vastly enriching our diet and favoring the development of more-robust brains.

By themselves, Wilson says, none of these theories is satisfying. Taken together, though, all of these factors pushed our immediate prehuman ancestors toward what he called a huge pre-adaptive step: the formation of the earliest communities around fixed camps.

"Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all / To envious and calumniating time."

This coming weekend, the The Shakespeare Project of Chicago presents Troilus and Cressida, a "problem play" inspired by Homer's Iliad. Below, associate artistic director Barbara Zahora and dramaturg Michelle Shupe discuss the production.

~ Performance Dates ~

Saturday, April 21, at 10 a.m.
The Newberry Library

Saturday, April 21, at 2 p.m.
The Wilmette Public Library

Sunday, April 22, at 2 p.m.
The Highland Park Public Library

The Shakespeare Project of Chicago was created in 1996 to bring to life the words of William Shakespeare, present his plays to the community for free, and foster the talents of members of Actors’ Equity Association.

By the numbers

0
The number of daily walks we've missed in the last four weeks. Good for us, and good for us!

2
The number of bike rides we've taken since March 10.

5
The number of riding lessons Mr. M-mv and I have watched since March 10. Yeah, you guessed it: Horses trump bikes lately.

4
The number of books I finished this week.

2
The number of books I hope to finish tomorrow.

11
The number of number of times this week I've mentally intoned, "I should blog that."

24 ±
The number of back issues in the basket. I really must catch up on my periodical reading. (And, no, I don't enjoy reading them on the iPad.)

8
The number of fresh sausages lined up in the refrigerator. Mr. M-mv cooks for us all weekend. What a man!

13
The number of boxes Mr. M-mv carted to [insert bookstore here] after my shift-sort-dust-shelve-purge project last week.

7
The number of times I said, "I sure hope it rains," over the last two days.

2
The number of eagles we saw while eating lunch in the park on Wednesday.

2
The number of songs I downloaded from iTunes this month: this one and this. It's a long story, but in a related aside, did you know Henry Mancini wrote "Baby Elephant Walk"? Miss M-mv(ii) is working on "Moon River" with her voice teacher, and you know I like that ol' synchronicity, serendipity, and synthesis.

36
The number of lectures in Peter Saccio's Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. My son, who adored Harold Bloom, could take or leave the professor, but the Misses are quite smitten.

x
The number of days until I post again.

Belated Easter wishes

A short list of cool things

1. Short Shakespeare! The Taming of the Shrew at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Review here.

2. Flowers at the Lincoln Park Conservatory.

3. Being Shakespeare, starring Simon Callow. Article of interest here. Soooo looking forward to this.

4. My boots.

5. Flying kites.

6. Issue 32 of Sweet Tooth. If you're not reading this, you should be.

7. Our oldest cat -- What a good-looking guy, eh? -- and my school bag.

Happy Good Friday!

From the archives: Happy Good Friday!

Click to enlarge: Habits redux

Right-click on the infographic to open it in a new window, then magnify it.
Related entry here.

Boot envy revisited

Apparently, she now envies me my boots. Heh, heh, heh.

It's here!

April is National Poetry Month! (Related entry here.)

Reading life review: March

Books read in March: 7
Books read in 2012: 30

■ Immortal Bird (Doron Weber)
Memoir. I loaded Immortal Bird onto the Kindle after reading a favorable review in Entertainment Weekly. The memoir deals primarily with the illness and death of the writer's oldest son, Damon, particularly the ways in which healthcare professionals failed to provide consistent diagnoses and appropriate care. The book is also Weber's love song to his son, and it may simply have been too soon for him to pen those lyrics. In a nutshell? I wanted it to be a better, emotionally truer book than it was. Weber's wife and other two children are, at best, tertiary characters in this "family memoir," and Damon is so over-praised that he fails to become real to the reader.

■ The Scarlet Pimpernel (Baroness Emmuska Orczy)
Fiction. With the Misses, followed by the 1982 movie ("Sink me!") with Ian McKellan as Chauvelin and Jane Seymour as Marguerite. A re-read for me.

■ Sister (Rosamond Lupton)
Fiction. An Amazon Best Books of the Month selection in June 2011, this beckoned to me from a table at Barnes & Noble when we were in Chicago for A Midsummer Night's Dream. A beautifully written blend of family drama and murder mystery, this was an altogether satisfactory book.

■ Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books (Leah Price)
Non-fiction. A delicious confection. Related entry here.

■ The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg)
Non-fiction. Highly recommended. Related entry here.

■ The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
Fiction. A re-read. Related entry here.

■ The Taming of the Shrew (William Shakespeare)
Play. Another re-read, with the with the Misses, in anticipation of this. Can it really be five years since I last read this? Related entries here and here.

Boot envy

I don't want to ride, but I sure wouldn't mind a cool pair of boots. The only thing that prevents me from "borrowing" Miss M-mv(i)'s is that I am a 9W while she is a 9N. Otherwise? I'd so have worn them to the movies today.

That's right. We went to the movies. The Misses were keen to see -- What else? -- The Hunger Games, so we worked, studied, and practiced yesterday, so we could beat those weekend crowds by attending an early show today.

A mini-review: This slick, well-acted movie surpasses the book. The novel, which I re-read last week in anticipation of seeing the film, tells a terrific and engaging story. It's just that this reader thinks the movie retold it better -- and more memorably.

And for the record, Woody Harrelson as Haymitch? Brilliant.

The kind of day it is

After nearly two weeks of May- and June-like weather (when it hit 83 here on Wednesday, I actually flipped the system from HEAT to COOL), we are enjoying this gray, rainy Friday morning.

Friday is art day, philosophy day, math test day, and catch-up-on-our-reading day, and these are the optimum conditions for such pursuits. Granted, we missed our walk this morning, but we're hopeful it will clear in time to walk with Mr. M-mv this evening.

Mrs. M-mv recommends:
❧ "Your Brain on Fiction" (NYT, March 17)
❧ The Power of Habit (Charles Duhigg; non-fiction; related entry here)

Miss M-mv(i) recommends:
❧ "Friends with Benefits: The Science of Animal Friendships" (Time, February 20)
❧ Exodus (Julie Bertagna; YA futuristic fiction)

Miss M-mv(ii) recommends:
❧ "How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy" (The Atlantic, March 2012)
❧ Skyship Academy: The Pearl Wars (Nick James; YA science fiction)

Fine Art Friday. Yes, on Wednesday.

Having arrived in town with nearly two hours spare on Sunday, we were able to spend time in the Art Institute before crossing the street to see Yo-Yo Ma at Symphony Center.

What caught our eye?

❧ J. Ellis Bonham, March 5, 1825
William C. Bonnell; American (1804-1865)
Something about the fresh, caricature-like nature of Bonnell's three portraits of the Bonham family captured our imaginations.

❧ Sister Tuesday, 1934
Leslie G. Bolling; American (1898-1958)
The self-taught Bolling also demanded attention via "Sister Tuesday," which is housed in the same gallery as Bonnell's portraits.

❧ The Gothic Arch, plate 14 from Imaginary Prisons, c. 1750
Giovanni Battista Piranesi; Italian (1720-1778)
About the Carceri d'invenzione:

This series of 16 copperplate etchings, dating from the 1760s, is as ambiguous in content as it is in representation of space. Massive architectural forms loom above darkly shadowed spaces, and stairways lead nowhere while insignificant human figures are barely noticeable. Sharp, deep diagonals are counterbalanced by flat planes and dense patterns of line to create interlocking, mysterious compositions. Source.

❧ Antoine Odier, modeled c. 1832/35 (cast 1929/40)
Honoré-Victorin Daumier, French (1808-1879)

It comes as no surprise in this day and age that political cartoons can raise a ruckus, but this was also true during the turbulent climate of 19th-century France when satirist Honoré Daumier was delighting the new petite bourgeoisie with his clever political caricatures. Of course, they didn’t delight everyone; in 1831, his transformation of King Louis-Philippe into the all-consuming giant Gargantua was seized by police, and Daumier was tried and convicted for “fomenting disrespect and hatred against His Majesty’s government and of offense to the King.” After serving six months in prison, Daumier directed his political critique towards parliamentarians, producing a series of small grotesque busts including [Antoine Odier]. Likely he was not making any friends with these gentleman either. Source.

Link. Think.

The Atlantic: How Frictionless Sharing Could Undermine Your Legal Right to Privacy

And the problem with frictionless sharing is that it may leave the door open for the government to collect and use information without a warrant.

Chicago Tribune: Yo-Yo Ma plays chamber music at Orchestra Hall

The drive among classical music producers is to make a highly formal, disciplined occasion seem for listeners as casual and relaxed as possible.

The assumption is that severity in programming, presentation and even attire frightens away audience members who, perhaps more than anything else, need to feel comfortable.

[Note added: Related M-mv entry here.]

The Chronicle Review: Eric Kandel's Visions

Neuroaesthetics isn't, its pioneers say, just an elaborate parlor trick: Hey, look at this nude, or this Henry Moore sculpture, and this circuit over here lights up. Rather, it is fundamental to an understanding of human cognition and motivation. Art isn't, as Kandel paraphrases a concept from the late philosopher of art Denis Dutton, "a byproduct of evolution, but rather an evolutionary adaptation—an instinctual trait—that helps us survive because it is crucial to our well-being." The arts encode information, stories, and perspectives that allow us to appraise courses of action and the feelings and motives of others in a palatable, low-risk way. Sometimes instinctively, sometimes more consciously, artists play with perception's variables in keen acknowledgment of the viewer's active role, which the art historian Ernst Gombrich poetically called the "beholder's share."

The New Criterion: Future tense, VII: What's a museum?

As manifestations of private wealth transferred to the public trust, American museums were founded, in part, to represent virtue. The visual education offered to the public by these museums through their permanent collections is not just an education in art history but also a lesson in how individual hard work can become an expression of virtue by giving over objects of beauty to the public trust. No other country has seen such private wealth, accumulated through industry, willingly transferred to the public good. Even as institutions around the world now attempt to supplement their own government funding with private support on the American model, the philanthropic culture of the United States remains a singular phenomenon. The countless “American Friends of . . . ” groups that now exist for cultural institutions around the globe are testament to America’s continued abundance of philanthropic energies.

The New York Times: The Freedom, and Perils, of Living Alone

What emerges over time, for those who live alone, is an at-home self that is markedly different — in ways big and small — from the self they present to the world. We all have private selves, of course, but people who live alone spend a good deal more time exploring them.

[Noted added:You'll find a related article here. Seven or eight years ago, I read and appreciated Eric Klinenberg's first book, Heat Wave, a "social autopsy" of the deadly Chicago heat wave of 1995.]

You'll find the library of my links here.

Studying

"This is the best thing I've ever heard.... Hey! Come on! Give it up, people! This guy can really play."

August 19.

Six Seven months ago.

That's when we purchased our tickets to see Joshua Bell, Leif Ove Andsnes, and... Yo-Yo Ma!

Oh, and... swoooon! Was he ever worth the wait!

And, yes, I have violated every exclamation mark maxim, but... Ohhhhh! Swooooon! He was AWESOME!

The "Arthur" episode from which the title of this post is taken.

Horses and the girls who love them