Tag Archives: Shakespeare

April 23, 2014 · 1:12 pm

Happy 450th Birthday, Shakespeare!

Shakespeare Bust 2014 by Katy Dickinson

Today is the traditional celebration of the birth and death of William Shakespeare – in fact, this is the Bard’s 450th Birthday! I am dedicating this, my 1,500th blog entry since I first wrote posted on 2 June 2005, to my favorite author: William Shakespeare.

I encourage you to spend today with the Bard:

Today is also the birthday of America’s Folger Shakespeare Library, that opened in Washington DC on April 23, 1932 and is home to the world’s largest and finest collection of Shakespeare materials.  Whether you loathe or adore Shakespeare, today is his big day!

On 3 May 2014, the St. Andrew’s Shakespeare Reading Group celebrated The Bard’s 450th birthday with a cake:
William Shakespeare 450th Birthday Cake

King Lear card by Katy Dickinson 2014
Antique German collectable card showing Shakespeare’s King Lear and his court

Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson

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December 28, 2013 · 11:08 am

After Christmas

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Only a few Christmas presents are left to be distributed. We sadly bid farewell to Jessica and Matthew, who have traveled back to their jobs. John and Paul and I are still happily investigating our own presents here at home. For me, this means watching the Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing” and the four movie set of The Hollow Crown (Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, “Henry IV” i and ii, and “Henry V”). Yesterday, John posted his code and instructions on how to program a Christmas tree, on: http://www.spcoast.com/wiki/index.php/Christmas2013.  Paul is enjoying post-final-exams, pre-quarter-start downtime. John and I went out on a movie date to see “Ender’s Game”, which was a good representation of that disturbing and superb book. It is pleasant to have some quiet days together.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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December 12, 2013 · 4:06 pm

Reading Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” Aloud

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The St.Andrew’s Shakespeare Reading Group decided to read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in honor of the season. Above you can see our hostess, Melita Thorpe, with John Watson-Williams dressed for his lead role as Ebenezer Scrooge. It took about 4-1/2 hours to read the entire short novel aloud (with breaks between staves for refreshments and a potluck dinner). We considered using one of the plays but decided that reading Dickens original 1843 text was better – since the plays both add and remove some of Dickens’ excellent prose. We distributed the text among our dozen readers:

  • Taking turns reading narration (about half a page before going to the next reader).
  • Dialogue was spoken as assigned parts.  Some famous parts (including the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) have no spoken lines. We doubled up on small roles.

It was a delightful evening! Several of us plan to follow up by going to the Dickens Christmas Fair (at the Cow Palace) and to the ACT “Christmas Carol” stage play in San Francisco.

Image Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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November 3, 2013 · 8:53 pm

Romeo and Juliet at Folger Shakespeare

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Tonight, my daughter Jessica and I saw a delightful production of Romeo and Juliet at the Folger Shakespeare Library here in Washington D.C. I am visiting the nation’s capitol with the TechWomen mentors and 78 emerging leaders from 16 African and Middle Eastern countries. Our formal meetings at the US State Department start tomorrow!

Opened in 1932, the beautiful Folger Shakespeare Library, theater, and garden is located on Capitol Hill. “Home to the world’s largest and finest collection of Shakespeare materials and to major collections of other rare Renaissance books, manuscripts, and works of art, the Folger serves a wide audience of researchers, visitors, teachers, students, families, and theater- and concert-goers.”

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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October 31, 2013 · 1:01 pm

TechWomen’s Last Week in Silicon Valley

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This is the last week for the 78 TechWomen mentees visiting the Silicon Valley from Africa and the Middle East. Next week, they move to Washington DC for meetings with the US State Department, the TechWomen program sponsors. Some of us 106 mentors will be going with them! Last weekend, Larissa, Imen, and I and our families rode the annual Ghost Train at the Roaring Camp Railroads in Felton, CA. We also joined the TechWomen farewell potluck picnic at Huddart Park in Woodside.  Imen joined our Shakespeare Reading Group, celebrating Halloween by reading Macbeth.

Today, Imen is giving her final technical presentation at Mozilla, the company which has generously hosted her this month. After our trip to the capitol, we will be sad to see Imen return home to Algeria.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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May 31, 2013 · 12:02 pm

Moby Dick and Shakespeare in Kickstarter

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Kickstarter just closed funding for a big successful project on the classic 1851 whaling novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville. “Moby Dick, or the card game” was backed for $102,730 (410% of the amount requested!). The whaling card game is one of ten Moby Dick theme Kickstarter projects listed, five of which were funded (four over-funded) and five of which did not meet their funding target. 50% success is a good since an estimated 75% of startups fail. Overall, Kickstarter has had 100,600 projects, of which 44% were funded (as of 30 May 2013).  In comparison, there have been 128 Kickstarter crowd-funded projects with a William Shakespeare theme, 43 of which were unfunded and three of which are still in process – at least a 66% success rate.  Literature is good business!

The Kickstarter projects with a Moby Dick theme since 2010:

  • Moby Dick, or, The Card Game by King Post
  • Jeff Finlin – “Moby Dick”
  • Emoji Dick by Fred Benenson
  • The Moby-Dick Variations: Theatre of Multiplicity by John Zibell
  • Sea Monster: a 3-D stereoscopic web series exploring new film grammar. by Gray Miller
  • A Beautiful Annotated Edition of Moby-Dick by Chris Routledge (not funded)
  • Project 40/Moby Dick by Benny Lumpkins (not funded)
  • HOLLYWOOD FRINGE FESTIVAL: ISHMAEAL by Benny Lumpkins (not funded)
  • Call Me Ishmael: One song for every chapter of Moby-Dick!!! by Patrick Shea (not funded)
  • Zomby Dick or, The Undead Whale by JD Livingstone (not funded)

When I was studying English at the University of California at Berkeley, seniors could follow one of four teaching paths: Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, or a great author chosen for that year. Melville was the author for my year. I wrote my honors thesis (“Goneril as a Complete and Motivated Character in King Lear”) on Shakespeare under Dr. Hugh Richmond but I was so tempted to study Melville. Of course, I am one of the 2,583 Kickstarter funders for “Moby Dick, or the card game”. I look forward to receiving my game copies, postcards, and the other goodies in a few months.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson
Links updated 3 April 2014

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April 23, 2013 · 3:51 pm

Attack of the Towhee, De Quincey on Macbeth and Murder

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In my 2008 blog entry Obsessed Towhee, I reported on a little brown bird attacking our car windows here in Willow Glen. What is probably that bird’s grandson has started attacking the house windows and those of WP668, our backyard caboose. The stupid California Towhee apparently sees his reflection in the glass and feels called to defend his territory against the other bird by knocking with his beak, flinging himself at the window, and smearing it with bird dirt. Sigh.

The Towhee moves from window to window knocking. I feel like I am in a performance of Macbeth:

Whence is that knocking?
How is’t with me, when every noise appals me?

The only good side is that regular knocking lead me to read the Thomas De Quincey 1823 essay “On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth”, which in turn lead me to De Quincey’s black humor essays “On Murder, as Considered One of the Fine Arts” and “Second Paper on Murder”, the source of the famous quote:

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.

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Images Copyright 2013 by Katy Dickinson

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