It was the last Sunday before Christmas, and I was just starting to get into the mood.  As a deeply nostalgic, sentimental human, I require certain seasonal harbingers and talismen to trigger that numinous burst of warmth from deep in the fibers of my being: the Christmas Spirit. I’ve always loved Christmas. It’s a holiday full of songs and stories designed to make us remember we have heartstrings and play on them. Years ago when I was teaching high school English and analyzing storytelling for a living, I created a Christmas week assignment of analyzing the iconic Bass/Rankin Rudolph the

As a writer and English teacher I’m always looking for signs. I went back to yoga last week and on the inspirational quote board someone had written: “Remember me.” ~ Your body It was an apt point, without question. It’s also what the ghost of Hamlet’s father said to him at the end of their first meeting. It was if that quote was there just for me. Not only to remind me to start exercising and eating more discriminantly again, but to remember my Dad. And Hamlet. And the work I want to do to share his story. Today is

I’ve said it before. As a teacher and a writer, I don’t cotton to the concept of being lost for words. Dig around. Thesaurus it! Be like Shakespeare and make up the words you need. Nonetheless, as I teach Senior Girls Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, I find myself at a loss for fresh ways to describe the horrors of slavery. I keep saying “insidious” and “corrosive”,  “unimaginable” and “incomprehensible”, but honestly those words just seem lame.   How do we talk about the horrors people perpetrate upon each other? In grad school a

Creeping like snail unwillingly to school. It’s a line from Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” speech about the seven ages of man. All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. (As You Like It 2.7.146-154)   Well it’s been a month since school started–five weeks,

We were wondering what it would be like. I was excited and curious. My parents were curious and trepidatious. A female Hamlet? One of the many good things about studying and teaching Shakespeare is that you are always, and I mean always, learning new things. It’s a license, an invitation, nay a requirement to be a life-long learner. I had seen and savored Oscar Isaac’s Hamlet, at the Public Theater in New York, twice this summer, and was looking forward to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s production featuring Lenne Klingaman in the title role. There’s a long history of female actors

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.                                [HAMLET 2.2.420-426] My Spring of Shakespeare has sloped into my Summer of Shakespeare. I was lucky enough to see the Public Theater’s JULIUS CAESAR in Central Park–the day after two of its main sponsors pulled out in protest over the production’s references to today’s

You know how when you learn a new word and then you start seeing it everywhere? That’s how I have been feeling about Shakespeare all spring. A little more than a year ago, when I was planning my very first tour of Shakespeare’s England, I perhaps somewhat naively said to my traveling companion–who studied at RADA, lives in London, and knows a heck of a lot more about Shakespeare than I do–that, gee, Shakespeare is really trending. She laughed and mentioned, well, it is the 400th anniversary of his death. Yes, yes, I knew that. But I still couldn’t help

The moon is waning, My joints are paining, My mood is draining, Next up will be raining. I can’t stop thinking in verse or in rhyme; Oppressed with the sense that I’m losing to time. It’s a green and nipping month of May. The peonies bud tight against the cold. And they said April was cruel. Graduation is four weeks away, and it really doesn’t feel like it. I’m teaching round two of HAMLET to restless Seniors, a poetry unit to Sophomores, and I can’t curtail the compulsion to sum up life in blank verse, rhyming couplets, or figurative language. The

I think the cruel part of April has passed. It’s Shakespeare’s birth (we assume) and death day and everything in the Northeast Corridor of the US is in rich, new green and bloom. Today marks the end of a year of around the world celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. Somewhat maudlin, but I’m sure in 2064 (I’m guessing I will not be here) they will make a big deal about his 500th anniversary of his birth. And plus, Shakespeare never really died, did he? Even while living he had a deep sense of the immortality of stories

March is my hardest month. Which is sort of pathetic considering a week of it is spring break. But I always have a lot of papers to grade over spring break. And new classes to get ready for. March is my hardest month. My dad’s birth day and death day in the same month. I wonder if it will always be damp, dark and difficult. This year I spent all of March deeply immersed in writing–or not writing–Act 3 of my memoir. Someone who knows Shakespeare’s body of work much better than I do @mollybooth said that Act 3s are

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.  [Macbeth 2.2.49-52] Sleep. When you really need it, wherever you can get it–a 10 or 20 minute doze in a crowded train or plane, or an extra three or four times of hitting snooze before the day ahead–is absolutely glorious. Sleep is a common motif in Shakespeare’s plays, especially the tragedies, histories, and of course, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the above passage from Macbeth, Shakespeare likens life to

I can’t talk. Somewhere at the end of last week, after the fifth Bikram yoga class in seven days, and increasing difficulty breathing, I lost my voice. This is a huge liability for a high school teacher. I could do my job in a wheelchair–but without a voice? When things are really bad, people say: “There are no words.” As both a writer and an English teacher, I’ve taken issue with this sentiment: of course there are words, I just haven’t found them yet! There is so much symbolism behind the idea of having a voice. Speaking up. Being heard. Giving someone

I love HAMLET. Every spring I have the great privilege to teach HAMLET to high school seniors. And I’ve spent over a year now deeply immersed in the process of writing a memoir about Teaching Hamlet as My Father Died. But now, this weekend, I’m seriously considering not teaching HAMLET come March. I was already feeling called to make some adjustments to my lectures about death of parents and the nature of mourning because four of our 54 seniors have lost a parent. Our school is at the heart of a small, tight-knit, generations-old community, and the fall of a

For well over a year now I have been deeply immersed in the world of grief, examining the process of getting on with life and work (in my case, teaching high school English) in the wake of great personal loss. I’m working on the second draft of my memoir, TEACHING HAMLET AS MY FATHER DIED, and besides wanting to birth this story and share it with the world, I have also had a burning sense that I really need to “finish this book before someone else dies.” Too late. As life would have it, this November, just I was trying

The inscription on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and much of London after the Great Fire of 1666. Last week I attended the funeral of a beloved grad school professor, Bill Meiers. His departure from the planet was truly a shock. He was a vibrant 56 year-old who had completed over 100 marathons and double digit triathlons. He had more zest and enthusiasm for life than anyone I’ve ever met. He packed in at least two very full lifetimes worth of activities, adventures, and service into his 56 years. The priest who

I believe so strongly in the power and value of WORK. Have To’s. Things you are committed to. How you do your job is important. There are days you do not want to face life, your job or the world. It seems too hard. But it is by stepping into the breech of responsibility, with professionalism and common sense, that Divine Inspiration can flow in, and that transformative moments can occur. Today was one of those unavoidable “Elephant in the Classroom” days. Some students are thrilled and excited, some are sad, even heartbroken or scared. Many have so much they

I feel like Don Corleone alone in my garden. Where are the orange wedges? This level of solitude is what I need. And this cool air sunny warmth. My father was in my dream this morning…living in some way station  efficiency adobe-style apartment not far from a construction site in the middle of parched earth nowhere. We were visiting him, trying to cook something, a little worried about how much time we had before we had to leave. For some reason whenever he’s in my dream I’m always trying hard not to be in a rush. I wonder what would

I’m a big believer in signs. Providence. Serendipity.                                                                   Whatever you want to call it. This weekend is our high school’s equivalent of homecoming, and yesterday two Distinguished Alumnae came to speak to the Senior Girls to kick off a weekend of activities. One of the women is celebrating her 40th reunion, and the other her 50th. Both have had rich, diverse lives and careers, and each spent