Weekends with Will: Final Notes on the Play and Other Cultural Activities

Well, we did finish the play (more than a week ago!), and we're now more than halfway through the movie version (again, 1935 with Mickey Rooney as Puck). Even though the girls understood the play well, seeing it is really cementing the whole thing for them. Puck is so much funnier acted out than on paper (and he's pretty funny there, too)!

We're delaying our next Shakespeare play until we go to South Dakota, but have decided on The Taming of the Shrew. We're hoping that my mother in law and Soccer Dad's grandparents might want to join in the fun, too.

Now, what in between? None other than The Lord of the Rings. We've decided that, since I'm working through The Hobbit with Little Girl and Big Girl already read it, we'd watch the movie in parts, reading corresponding portions of the book as we go along. In the meantime, Soccer Dad is trying to get through a bit of Kreeft's book on the philosophy of Tolkien to perhaps give some extra insights. I'm re-reading LOTR and trying to pull out what I can of the Catholic nature of the story. (I'm only up to Gandalf disappearing after warning Frodo not to use the Ring if he can help it, since he's not certain of its powers.)

Also, for Big Girl (during ballet lessons and library story times), I'm reading Tom Sawyer. I read Huck Finn when I was in the seventh grade, but this is my first time through Tom's story. What a lark! I sometimes have a hard time not laughing! I'd forgotten what a wonderfully dry wit Twain had!

We tried to rent Hello, Dolly from the library, but it was the Barbra Streisand version, and I wound up not even trying to watch it before I had to return it. (Oh, golly! It was due yesterday, and there it is over there!) I'll search for the WALL-E version ASAP - the girls are in love with Gene Kelly anyway. Yeah, me, too. ;)

And that wraps up the general cultural updates. Aside from this (and my working still), we're doing a lot of swimming. The girls have developed fins and gills, or they will soon due to the amount of time spent in the water. Thank God for the pool! What a great choice we made by picking the house with a pool!







Please browse my eBay items. Thank you.