Square Dance

This morning I was reading something that mentioned square dancing--and Memory began his promenade ...

I grew up in Oklahoma in the 1950s, and square dancing was part of our curriculum at Adams Elementary School in Enid. Our music teacher--whose name I cannot recall--taught us, and I found out a couple of things: (a) I was decent (no more) at it, (b) it would arouse in me a fifth-grader's jealousy that I didn't even know existed.

There was some sort of school program coming up, and the teacher wanted to do a square-dance presentation for the parents. I was one of the four boys she picked from our class; I don't remember two of the other three, but the other one was a New Kid, a kid I'll call Lothario, a kid who was too damned good at square dancing for his (my?) own good.

The teacher took us out of class one day (there is no greater gift a teacher can confer upon a student) to get us organized for the presentation, and she asked the girls to pick their partners. I was positive that Linda C. was going to pick me because, well, I was in love with her. She liked me, too, I know (though Love had perhaps not occurred to her--but I could not have been more positive that it would--after all, I loved her, so ...).

There's a moment in the first Horrible Bosses film when the Jason Bateman character is sitting in a staff meeting; he is positive that he is about to receive the Big Promotion. But then the Horrible Boss (Kevin Spacey) declares that he has decided to add the position to his own. Bateman looks crestfallen,* shows Disappointment in its purest form.

Bateman is a great comic actor, but his display is but the faintest shadow of what I showed when Linda C., with first choice, picked Lothario to be her square dance partner. My first experience with Rejection (more would follow, believe me).

Some other girl picked me; I can't remember her name. But I do remember that I vowed to Dance My Heart Out--just to show Linda C. and Lothario that I ...

Made no difference. He was just a lot better than I. Linda C. knew it. So did everyone else (except me). Lesson learned (years later).

Square dancing was still somewhat part of the social scene when we moved to Hiram, Ohio, as I was about to enter the 7th grade. And here's a sweet moment ...

Just north of Hiram (not even a mile) lay the farm of the Pancost family. Father Roy was a farmer but also drove one of the school buses. His daughter, Joan, was in my class. And very, very early that year--perhaps after only a week or so of school--Joan invited me to a square dance in her father's barn.

I was touched. I didn't know anyone, really, and I was experiencing the fear all kids feel when their Cruel Parents yank them out of one place and take them to another (an experience I would "share" with our own son, later on). I really don't remember who else was there, but I remember having a lot of fun, surprising some of them with the "moves" I'd learned back in Oklahoma, and feeling an enormous gratitude to Joan Pancost for--as they say now--"reaching out" to the New Kid.

Postscript 1: When I was in high school, we went back to Enid over a spring break (I think I was in 11th or 12th grade). I had found out that Linda C. had been in a car accident and as a result had undergone surgery to remove one of her feet. I called her and drove to her house to see her (her dad, by the way, owned the major furniture store in Enid), and we had a wonderful talk. Lothario and the Square Dance did not come up. I would never see or hear anything about her again. We also did not talk about her foot.

Postscript 2: Near the end of my public school teaching career (1997), I taught a few terms in the Weekend College at Hiram College. One of my students was a Pancost, and, yes, he knew his aunt Joan very well. I told him, in class, what she had done back in 1956. He did not seem surprised by her kindness.

Postscript 3: When our son was in sixth grade (1983-84), he had such a lousy classroom situation in Hudson that we pulled him out of school after the first marking period. I paid his tuition to go to Harmon Middle School (where I taught 8th graders in nearby Aurora, Ohio)--one of our good decisions, by the way: He had a wonderful time there. Anyway, not long after he started (the 2nd marking period), a girl in his class, Kathy Piecuch (pee-ET-soo), invited him to a party at her house to meet other kids in his class. And when I heard about her invitation ... I wept ... remembering ...

*Crestfallen, by the way--I just looked it up--means a drooping head, crest meaning the head or top of anything; it dates to 1580, which means Shakespeare would have known it, a word his rivals surely knew personally; I just checked: The Bard used the word in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard II, and Henry VI, Part Two.

My Days (Years?) of Incompetence, 3

 Winter 1966. I'm doing my student teaching at West Geauga High School (Chesterland, OH). Eleventh grade English (American lit). In one of my college-prep classes, I skated quickly across the surface of E. E. Cummings' poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town," a performance that did not satisfy a very bright young man, Ed, who raised his hand and informed me there was a lot more to the poem than what I'd so superficially said.

He was, of course, right, but I didn't know what to say about the poem (other than it confused me--which I was not about to confess in class: I was supposed to be an authority, or so I thought).

So I lied. I told him that of course there was more to the poem--but, sigh, we just have to move on. Miles to go before we sleep and all that.

And, as I've written here for the past couple of days, Puritan Guilt has consumed me for nearly fifty years since that day. Throughout my long teaching career (45 years) I never taught that poem (though I did teach others by Cummings), and I guess I was avoiding it.

But last week, spending our annual week at the Stratford Theater Festival in Ontario, I decided, like the walrus, that the time has come. I took a printout of the poem along with me. I memorized it (three stanzas per day); I thought about it and talked about it with Joyce continually.

And now--a half-century later--I am ready to continue my conversation with Ed.

PS--I've pasted the poem below.

ED: There's a lot more to that poem than that.

DYER: You're right, Ed. There is. I'd planned to go on to some other poems--but since you're interested, let's stop and talk about this one. What do you see in it, Ed?

ED: It's a poem about love.

DYER: Anyone else see that? [Some hands, affirmative murmurs.] Well, Ed--or anyone--where do you see "love" in the poem.

ED: Well, noone loves anyone--even the children recognize it. A few of them, anyway.

STUDENT 1: And they get married, too.

STUDENT 2: And after they die, they're buried together, "side by side."

ED: And here's something else: They're living in a pretty town ... but the people in it are not too nice.

DYER: Explain.

ED: Well, they don't like anyone.

STUDENT 3: And they're all so busy, they don't seem to make much out of the deaths of anyone and noone.

DYER: What does Cummings say here about the dreams we have in life?

ED: They don't often come true.

STUDENT 4: I think that's true. In that stanza about marriages, he says that the people get married, are full of hope each morning, and then--

STUDENT 5: And then they say "never." They realize ...

ED: And from then on they "slept their dream." Their dreams and hopes ...

DYER: We see too, don't we, that as we grow older, we forget what we know. We become less observant. "and down they forgot as up they grew" Cummings says about children.

STUDENT 6: And--later: "how children are apt to forget to remember."

ED: This poem is kind of depressing, too.

DYER: What do you mean?

ED: Well, people are just repeating what they always do. All the time--all the seasons.

STUDENT 7: And not recognizing real love when it's right in front of them.

[This goes on for a while.]

DYER: What do you guys make of the look of the poem? The spelling, capitalization, spacing, and so on. If I'd turned this in to my English teachers, I'd get an F on mechanics!

ED: It's all on purpose.

DYER: What is, Ed?

ED: All of it forces you to slow down ... to read ...

STUDENT 8: To read more carefully.

[The conversation continues as we ... fade to black.]

***

Well, Ed, I hope this will do. I'm sure you would have had brighter things to say than I did here, but--wherever you are--I want you to know that I never forgot your comment.

It just took me a half a century to get around to dealing with it.

anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

spring summer autumn winter

he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men(both little and small)

cared for anyone not at all

they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same

sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few

and down they forgot as up they grew

autumn winter spring summer)

that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf

she laughed his joy she cried his grief

bird by snow and stir by still

anyone’s any was all to her

someones married their everyones

laughed their cryings and did their dance

(sleep wake hope and then)they

said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon

(and only the snow can begin to explain

how children are apt to forget to remember

with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess

(and noone stooped to kiss his face)

busy folk buried them side by side

little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep

and more by more they dream their sleep

noone and anyone earth by april

wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)

summer autumn winter spring

reaped their sowing and went their came

sun moon stars rain

My Days (Years?) of Incompetence, 2

Okay, I don't want to over-state things. Early in my career I was not Ichabod Crane or Wackford Squeers (the harsh schoolmaster from Dickens' novel Nicholas Nickleby), although, like Crane, I was ever hungry and admired some of the kids' lunches; my problem was ... cash flow. But I was pretty clueless about what I was doing in class. My heart, I believe, was usually in the right place, but my mind (and skill) lagged behind.

Anyway, I was writing yesterday about a student-teaching experience with E. E. Cummings' poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town"--about how I skimmed over it with my juniors up at West Geauga High School because, well, I didn't really know what was going on in the poem. And then a bright young man raised his hand when I tried to move on to something else. He saw more in the poem; I went on anyhow ...

Rather than give you a link to Cummings' poem, I'll paste it in at the end of this post. If you glance at the poem, I think you'll agree that it's ... unusual (not for Cummings but certainly for the Me of Then--1966). I could handle lines like "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" and "Once upon a midnight dreary"--but this sort of poem, at the time, was just beyond me. We'd studied very little poetry in high school--although one teacher, Mrs. Ruth Browning (English 9), had taught us lots of poetic terms--iambic pentameter and that sort of thing.

And when I got to Hiram College, poetry gave me the most trouble. Well ... poetry and Henry James (but that's another story). I always thought there was some secret message in a poem, a message available only to the cognoscenti, of whom I was not one.

In one of Prof. Ravitz's American literature courses we used this book--The Mentor Book of Major American Poets (1962). Nearly a half-century later, I would use this same book with my juniors at Western Reserve Academy (American lit class!), and I was stunned one day to discover that the book had not been changed in all the previous years. At the end of the volume, there's a little paragraph about each of the poets. And here's what it says about Robert Frost: Robert Frost (1874-) ...

Hmmm. Robert Frost died in 1963! But he's still alive (in all sorts of ways) inside The Mentor Book of Major American Poets. (I just checked on Amazon: It's still in print; you can still get copies.) Anyway, I used this volume with my WRA students clear to my retirement in June 2011! And Frost still lived!

One of the poets included in The Mentor Book is E. E. Cummings, and one of his poems, on p. 460, is "anyone lived in a pretty how town." I don't recall if Prof. Ravitz assigned that poem--or any of them by Cummings (I bet he did!), but if he did, I no doubt employed my wonted strategy in those years: skim and hope he doesn't call on me.

So there I was, that dark winter day in Geauga County, Ohio, trying to buffalo a student into thinking I certainly knew all about that poem--but I could tell from his mien and manner that he wasn't buying it. Neither was I.

(BTW: The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang traces back to 1891--to the late American West--the use of buffalo meaning intimidate or (when it softened, later) fool. But The Dictionary of American Slang takes it back to 1870--meaning fool.)

So--that pathetic winter day, I went on to something else. And--good Puritan that I am (well, in some ways)--I've felt guilty about it for nearly fifty years. Ed is now in the middle sixties, and I've never stopped feeling that I owe him something.

And so ... last week (while we were up in Stratford, Ont., for the play festival) ... I memorized it. And thought about it for hours. And now could have a wee discussion with Ed.

Which I will do tomorrow ... To be continued.

anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

spring summer autumn winter

he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men(both little and small)

cared for anyone not at all

they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same

sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few

and down they forgot as up they grew

autumn winter spring summer)

that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf

she laughed his joy she cried his grief

bird by snow and stir by still

anyone’s any was all to her

someones married their everyones

laughed their cryings and did their dance

(sleep wake hope and then)they

said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon

(and only the snow can begin to explain

how children are apt to forget to remember

with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess

(and noone stooped to kiss his face)

busy folk buried them side by side

little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep

and more by more they dream their sleep

noone and anyone earth by april

wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)

summer autumn winter spring

reaped their sowing and went their came

sun moon stars rain

My Days (Years?) of Incompetence

Let me speak for myself. Young teachers have a lot to learn. A lot. Even though I'm retired now, I still have dreams about classroom failures (sometimes, dramatic implosions and explosions). And at times I shudder with memory. Some former students (now Facebook friends) from those long-ago years (the mid-1960s onward) occasionally remind me of my follies (and, yes, cruelties), and--like most of the rest of you, I guess--I wish I had a select-and-delete feature on my memory, if not on the past itself.

From the start, I was mercurial, sarcastic, unprepared for class, impatient, peremptory, terrified to admit I was ever in error, fearing, of course, that students would lose respect for me if I admitted to being a human being. I remember Mrs. Nichols, my own Algebra I teacher back at Hiram High School (1958-59), who, when she made an error on the board, would invariably say that she was trying to see if we were paying attention. (I used that line myself a few (thousand) times.)

In my early years (decades?!) Error flowed from me like a torrent. Every day I said and did things that ranged from ignorant to stupid to (as I said) cruel. Over the decades the torrent gradually subsided--but never dried away. Even during my final years I was saying and doing things I later regretted, but they occurred far less frequently, and I'd grown to be confident enough that I had no problem apologizing to kids--often in front of the class--for my behavior. Or admitting that I didn't know something.

I'm writing about this because this past week I tried to do something to atone for a mistake I made back during my student teaching--West Geauga High School (Ohio), Winter Quarter, 1966. I was assigned to an eleventh grade English teacher who gave me four classes: Two were college prep, two were not.

I was in some ways relieved about the assignment. Eleventh grade English focused (and still often focuses) on American literature--and I'd had a wonderful preparation for this back at Hiram College. I'd taken more than a half-dozen courses in it--most with the best professor I ever had, Dr. Abe C. Ravitz (now a Facebook friend). So I was not too worried about the content of the course. (Little did I know!)

I was terrified about being in charge of a classroom, though. I'd never done it. In those antediluvian days our first classroom experiences came in student teaching. Sink or swim. (I would do some of both, every day.)

I spent a couple of days watching my supervising teacher handle the classes, and I was impressed with him (at first). And then it was my turn. And things actually went pretty well for a while. I was earnest; the students wanted to impress me (that ended fairly quickly). But I discovered almost immediately that I loved what I was doing. And I was working harder than I had ever worked before. Reading the assignments, preparing lesson plans, grading papers--these things and more kept me extraordinarily busy. But happy.

Then one day in one of the college prep classes I experienced my first failure--and told my first lie. I wrote about my student teaching--and this experience--a little bit in my memoir about my early teaching career (Schoolboy--available on Amazon), and, below, I've reproduced a truncated version of the story as I told it there ...

Oh, sure, there were mistakes.  Plenty of them.  Like the time we were doing E. E. Cummings’ poem “anyone lived in a pretty how town.”  I had not prepared much the night before (and didn’t really understand the poem too well), so in class I just asked some questions, said a few things, moved on to something else.

Mr. Dyer?

Yes?  I looked up.  A kid named Ed—one of the brightest in the class—had his hand raised.

There’s a lot more to that poem, I think.

I blushed.  Then lied: Oh, I know that, Ed.  Of course there is.  It’s an incredibly rich poem.  But we need to move on now—there’s so much to do … so little time …

Ed didn’t look satisfied.  

"anyone lived in a pretty how town"--even the title puzzles, doesn't it? But my supervising teacher--who, thank Zeus, was not in the room observing this day (he rarely came, actually--but that's another story)--had told me to teach the poem.

And so I did--sort of. I read it aloud to the class--laughed with them at the odd language--then, as I said, tried to move briskly on to something more comprehensible (to me).

And that was when Ed raised his hand.

To be continued ...

Teacher Shortage

In the summer of 1966 I benefited from a teacher shortage. A fresh graduate from Hiram College (English major), I applied for two jobs. Got two interviews. Two offers. Took the first one that came in--Aurora Middle School in Aurora, Ohio. Seventh graders.

As I wrote in my memoir about my early teaching years, Schoolboy (available on Kindle Direct), no one had much trouble getting a public school teaching job in those days. Salaries were abysmal (my first year: $5100); benefits were scanty; classes large (in my five classes that first year I had a total of 200 students); public respect was low. Other than that ... a great profession.

Actually, I loved my job, from Day One to Day Last (the spring of 2011)--except, of course, for the times I hated it, times that didn't ever really last very long. (And most of those times occurred later on, when the Test Storm arrived ...)

But every year back in the late 1960s there wandered into our building some new teachers who were barely qualified. The shortage was so severe that the State of Ohio was distributing large numbers of temporary credentials--almost as if they were dispensed from a passing airplane.

I write about this today because there was a Page One story yesterday (August 10) in the New York Times about a new national teacher shortage. I shared the item with my Facebook friends, and on the Times website today I see that it was Number One on the Times' list of most-emailed stories yesterday. (Link to the story.)

The Times writer mentions a number of factors: layoffs during the (earlier) down economy and young college graduates (in our improved economy) now seeking jobs that pay more.

Okay, makes sense.

But I think there's a more fundamental--and far more damning--reason: Public schools have become so enamored of standardized testing that teachers are fighting to become more than drill sergeants preparing their recruits for battles with the Enemy: the Test. (People have written sorrowfully about the disappearance of cursive writing; it's worse: Kids now prepare to fill in bubbles on an answer sheet.)

As recent years have gone by, tests have become more and more prevalent--and used for more and more things (evaluating not just kids but teachers and school buildings and districts and states). I think I've written here before that my grandson, who just completed fourth grade last spring, has already taken more standardized tests that I did, K-Ph.D.

It's the seduction of numbers, of course. You can add them, divide them, derive statistics with them. It all looks so ... real. But too few people are asking: Where do those numbers come from? What do they really mean?  Not much, I would argue. Except, of course, they mean stressed teachers (and administrators) and bored and unhappy kids.

(I do support diagnostic tests, by the way--the sort that answer questions like What are this kid's strengths and weaknesses? What do we need to work on?)

I noticed a sad fact as I flowed through my career: The people who know the least have the most say. Let me repeat that: The people who know the least have the most say.

Politicians who wouldn't survive five minutes in a middle school classroom (the kids wouldn't need to go to lunch that day--they'd quickly eat such fools alive), media pundits who have never graded a paper or supervised a lunch room, wealthy entrepreneurs who think their success in the business world confers upon them an expertise and authority in all things--these are some of the reasons that teaching has become an ever more joyless profession. And public education has become akin to an assembly line.

It has not been ever thus. Through most of my career we had a lot of choice in the schools where I taught. Gifted administrators (and I had a couple of wonderful ones) hired bright and creative and hard-working people and helped those teachers make their classrooms what they ought to be--refuges as rich as rain forests that teem with life, with the unexpected, with the widest (and maybe even wildest) varieties of possibility. Places where kids learn who they are--what they want to be--what this world is like.

As a result, most of my colleagues wanted to be there, wanted to see smiles on the faces of their students as they came into the room, wanted those students to be reluctant to leave. And--as Shakespeare once said--they bent thoughts and wits to achieve what they wished.

Today--of course there are many wonderful teachers out there, fighting the Good Fight. Of course there are fine administrators struggling to make their schools a place where kids want to go.

But it seems our political leaders--from both parties--are trying their best to make schools a Dead Zone, a place where the few remaining bird songs are measured rather than sung.

Stratford Sundries 7

1. We're home safely--about 11 last night. Ohio residents (former and current) will enjoy this: The very moment we crossed the line from Michigan, it started to rain--the only rain on our entire drive. Fortunately, it did not last long.

2. On Saturday night we saw a terrific production of She Stoops to Conquer (Oliver Goldsmith, 1773) at the Avon Theatre downtown. They had a huge turntable on the stage and used it to rotate set pieces around (surely the same device where sat the eponymous carousel in the musical we'd seen earlier in the week). It's basically a play about a prank--fooling a young man into thinking that he's in an inn when in fact he's in the house of the family of the young woman he's come to court. (On a family recommedation--he's never seen her.) He behaves boorishly (treating the family as if they were inn servants), and it takes a long, long, long time to realize what's happened.

The principals were outstanding (especially young Brad Hodder, who played the Deceived One)--as were the minor players. Time flew along. The picture shows long-time Stratford favorite Lucy Peacock (on the left) and Maev Beaty (who played The Young Woman). Beaty also played Miep Gies in The Diary of Anne Frank, and Anne herself (Sara Farb) played a somewhat obnoxious young lady in this one. Not Anne Frankian at all!

3. On Sunday morning, we cleared out of Mercer Hall Inn (the place we almost always stay) and drove about a dozen miles over to lovely St. Mary's, where they have an amazing Carnegie Library (stone exterior) and a Coffee Culture, where we sit and eat and read until time to head back to Stratford for our final show: The Alchemist (Ben Jonson, 1610), at 2 p.m.

The story is about three con artists (2 men, 1 woman) who, throughout the play, con a handful of deserving suckers--from the arrogant to the pompously pious to the heartless rich to the greedy, etc. The device? The alchemist's (supposed) ability to transform base metals to gold.

As Love's Labour's Lost, I thought, is sort of the grandfather of all Bromance comedies, so The Alchemist is a distant relative of all con-artist films (think: Oceans 11, etc.).

Great performances by everyone in a comedy in which flocks of words fly about the stage like startled birds.

4. And then--impossibly--it was all over, and we were in the car (about 4:30 p.m.), heading for Hudson, Ohio, awash in memories. This was one of the best seasons since we started coming up here every summer, beginning in 2001.

I remarked to Joyce that being there in Stratford is my idea of heaven: great plays every day, a little town with everything I love in easy walking distance (bookstores, coffee shops, kitchen stores, etc.), the streets full of people talking about Hamlet and books (I kid you not!). (And wireless that usually works.)

And--of course--best of all: Sitting in the dark, watching the wonders on the stage while holding the hand of Love itself.

Stratford Sundries 6

image from program cover

1. Last night it was Oedipus Rex, a play I first read back in college in the 1960s, then taught a couple of times at Western Reserve Academy in the late 1970s. I'd seen it only a time or two--and not recently--so I was looking forward to the Stratford production.

• We weren't too crazy about Oedipus himself last night. His vocal range struck me as somewhat ... I don't want to say "limited," but he seemed to have a volume control but not much else in the way of vocal coloring.
• They did the play in contemporary dress--with a standing microphone (at times) for members of the Chorus.
• We loved the seer Teiresias, who was sort of an androgynous character: a tall man (not the bent and withered figure you might have figured). He wore women's high heels--but also traditionally men's clothing. Mixed-gender adornment. Rather, representing all sorts of folks.along the gender continuum.
• And then there was the nudity ...
• At the end of the play--when Oedipus has learned the worst (unwittingly, he's killed his own father, married his own mother--had children with her), he, as we know gouges out his eyes so that he cannot see such a world where such things can happen.
• He re-entered the stage area last night, bloodstains on his entirely naked body, and he held forth for, oh, ten minutes or so in his Adamic costume.
• Okay--I perfectly well understand the artistic point: Oedipus has been stripped of all. Might as well dispense with the clothing, as well. 
• Butt ... (I mean, But ...) ...
• When actors disrobe in a public theater, I'm guessing that the attention of the audience members ... drifts ... a bit from the spoken word and begins to consider other ... things. Things of a more carnal nature?
• I mean, the words of Sophocles are nice and all, but, isn't that a package only a few feet away from me?
• Somewhere, Freud smiles as the war between the Id and the Superego rages on stages where nudity parades.

2. This morning (Saturday) we had the great good fortune to attend a talk and Q&A with writer Margaret Atwood, who for decades (and forty-some books) has been delighting both the literary world and readers of all stripes. She spoke at the Avon Theatre here, and there was a packed house. We had reserved seats, fortunately, and (also fortunately) were very close to the stage (fourth or fifth row). 

• She spoke about her use of Shakespeare in her writing, from the beginning to now. She is very witty and razor-tongued (which I loved) and brooked no foolishness. She said that a former boyfriend had tried to teach her to drive but had given up: You have no fear, he told her. She does not drive to this day.
• She told me something I didn't know--that there is a publishing venture for 2016: A publisher (can't remember which one?) has contracted with a number of writers to re-write some Shakespeare plays as novels. Jo Nesbø is doing Macbeth; Jeanette Winterson, The Winter's Tale; Howard Jacobson, Merchant of Venice; Anne Tyler, The Taming of the Shrew. And Atwood is doing The Tempest. Can't wait.
• There was a Q&A afterward, and I stayed for a few (she said that Shakespeare was her favorite writer), but then slipped out early (leaving Joyce behind) because ...
• There was a book signing in the Festival bookshop that adjoins the Avon, and I wanted to get a good position.
• I did.
• I was Number One! (I told the clerk I was a gross American--what did she expect?)
• There was about a 20-minute wait, and then in she came. I had two 1st printings with me (an older title, a newer).
• Dyer: Thank you so much for that presentation.
• Atwood: Hmmmmm.
• Dyer: I taught Shakespeare for many years to middle-school students.
• Atwood: Oh, how did they receive it?
• Dyer [lying]: We had a great time.
• Atwood: Which plays did you use?
• Dyer: The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing.
• Atwood: Yes ... comedies ...
• Dyer: Well--the war between the sexes; it still rages in middle school.
• Atwood smiles.
• Dyer leaves, wishing he'd mentioned Hamlet, which he'd taught for ten years at Western Reserve Academy. 
• Dyer has many other regrets about things he wished he'd said.
• Dyer remains happy with his two signed first printings.

3. And--later this afternoon--we're off to the Festival Theatre to see Hamlet, the last of the Bard plays we'll see this summer. Sadness reigns.

4. Speaking of which: We were in Watson's this morning, a store nearby that specializes in china and kitchenware. Downstairs, they have sale items. Walking by some piles of plates, I stopped, felt tears leaping into my eyes. For I saw a pattern that my grandmother Osborn had once had when I was a boy back in the 1950s in Enid, Okla., a plate with green ivy looping around the circumference. When we went to Grandma's for a meal (which was often--we lived a block away), we got to pick which plate we wanted (she had several pieces of mismatch that she used with family, never "company"), and I always picked the green-ivy plate. I'd not thought of that for decades, not until this morning ...

5. And then came Hamlet ... our matinee on Saturday.

• The show was at the Festival Theatre, the largest and principal venue up here. And the cast, again, was an A Team (didn't yet see a B or C Team this season). Some of our Festival favorites--Jonathan Goad (Hamlet), Seanna McKenna (Gertrude), Geraint Wynn-Davies (Claudius), Mike Shara (Laertes), etc. All were excellent. Except ...
• I thought Goad was a little flat in the first scene or so (I know: The Dane's depressed--but this was a bit much). But as the production went on, he became more and more energetic (feasting on the crowd's affection) and ended very, very strong.
• Bizarrely, during "To be or not to be" a cell phone buzzed not ten feet from his face. Not a full ring. That muted buzz. He went on, unfazed. I say "bizarrely" because a few years ago when Ben Carlson was playing the Dane, a full phone sang during "To be"--again, right from one of the very front rows. He stopped, waited, then continued.
• I like the Horatio but thought he lacked warmth. Somewhat too formal for my blood. He is Hamlet's best friend (about the only trustworthy soul in the whole damn story), and I just felt he was a little ... stiff.
• The touring players were great--lots of fun before there's lots of not-fun.
• I liked, too, that they played Polonius (Tom Rooney) not as a complete buffoon. I hate it when they do that--make a clown out of him. Yes, he's verbose, pompous ... but he has a heart, too. And Rooney helped us hear and feel its beat.
• They did the production in early 20th (or late 19th) century dress. (The soldiers had rifles.) Okay. Don't mind that. (The dress, in fact, seemed to advance as the story did.)
• They cut some famous lines (waited in vain for "hoist with his own petard") and moved some others around a bit. Okay. The Hamlet script is a hodgepodge from three known sources. No one knows what Shakespeare would have done/wanted with all of it. He surely would not have mounted a four-hour production in the Globe.

6. How did this Shakespeare guy do it?!?! I think he was an alien from the planet Genius.

7. Just had our last light supper at the York Street Kitchen (we were there for all five suppers!), and tonight we go see She Stoops to Conquer down at the Avon Theatre, where we began our day with Margaret Atwood. Then ... tomorrow ... we check out ... see The Alchemist at 2, then ... head for Hudson ...