Tag Archives: St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

March 18, 2013 · 12:47 pm

Shakespeare Reading Group – Update

Since the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California) Shakespeare Reading Group started meeting in 2012, we have read:

Last night was Antony and Cleopatra. I had great fun as the ambitious and deadly Octavius Ceasar (whom Rome later called the Emperor Augustus). John read Domitius Enobarbus (who gets most of the famous lines in this play) with delightful energy. Melita Thorpe was the subtle Egyptian Queen Cleopatra, and John Watson-Williams read Antony (Marcus Antonius, Consul and Triumvir) with verve. All of the other major characters had great fun dying dramatically – it being a tragedy after all.

As is true for many Silicon Valley social events, the professional backgrounds around our table were highly varied. In addition to the expected high-tech gurus and computer company executives, our cast included among others, a church Deacon, mortgage expert, haematologist, astronomy travel director, social worker, physiology professor, technical writer, video director, artist, and physical therapist – all of who enjoyed an evening with The Bard. We will read Othello in May.

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March 18, 2013 · 12:06 pm

Sacred Threads Embroidery – Chairs

Yesterday, the Sacred Threads group at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (Saratoga, California) displayed the first two of the chair seats they are replacing – which look very good! I wrote about the Sacred Threads embroidery ministry last year when they finished a set of beautiful kneelers for the sanctuary.

The current project is more ambitious: re-covering the many dozen chairs in both St. Andrew’s chapels. The original 50-year-old chairs were caned – but those seats are falling apart. After research, Sacred Threads group leaders found it would cost about US$300/chair to re-cane (lasts about 50 years) but only about US$250/chair to replace the old cane seats with embroidery (lasts about 200 years). Caning has to be done professionally but church members can embroider once the materials are purchased. This was an easy decision! The new chair seat designs are inspired by the stained glass church windows by Mark Adams.

October 2012 – chair project presentation:

Original chairs:

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December 22, 2012 · 11:58 pm

Merry Christmas

Best wishes to you and your family for a happy holiday season, from all of us here in the Silicon Valley!

Between trying to get the construction workers finished enough to be out of our house by Christmas, and all of the usual holiday preparations and activities, December 2012 has been particularly busy. There has finally been sufficient progress on the new porch to allow us to have family and guests in the house. The roof and final plastering were finished just before dinner yesterday – barely in time for us to go Christmas caroling on the cable car in San Francisco. Jessica and Matthew were able to get off from work to join us for Christmas – for which we are very joyful!

I went shopping in Chinatown with Sally and Lorene (our tradition for over twenty years). We were sad to see the closed up Sam Wo restaurant where we used to eat raw fish salad for lunch during our annual walking tour of Grant Street stores.
John and I were delighted to hear our young friends Max and Beth perform as part of the Cantabile Youth Singers at the ornate St. Joseph Basilica in San Jose.
My son Paul and I picked out and walked home a Christmas tree – which sat in a bucket of water on the driveway for two weeks until the contractors left and we could move all of the furniture back. Jessica and Matthew and Paul brought the tree inside and decorated it tonight. The decorations are eclectic but cheerful. I still need to put out the nativity figures John bought in Bethlehem.
My EfM class went to see the Bethlehem Christmas story re-enactment, and then went out to dinner together and exchanged gifts.
Last Sunday was the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church children’s pageant.
We have very much enjoyed Willow Glen’s enthusiastic Christmas light displays – which give every street its own twinkly charm as we go about our holiday business.
Today we went to the Dickens Fair at the Cow Palace in San Francisco to enjoy a Victorian Christmas, high tea, and last-minute shopping.
Tomorrow, John starts cooking for our Christmas feast on Tuesday!

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Tagged as Charles Dickens, Education for Ministry, Episcopal church, Jessica, John, Matthew, Paul, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Willow Glen

November 3, 2012 · 11:02 pm

El Camino Real Convention

This weekend was the annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of El Camino Real on the Central Coast of California. I was a delegate to convention from my home parish of St. Andrew’s in Saratoga. My husband John and our neighbor, the Reverend Stephenie Cooper, ran the computers and visual system for their fifth year. In front of the big screen were about 300 lay and clergy delegates and in back of it were Stephenie and John sitting amidst a dozen computers in a nest of cables keeping the business running.

My contribution was being a roadie (helping them move equipment in and out) and providing photographs to spice up the presentations. Our much-loved Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves has a good sense of humor and enjoys the funny pictures. She even brought her two Bishop Barbies to the convention. In 2010, the women of St. Andrew’s gave her the first doll (in red robes), who has now been joined by a second in white vestments.

One of the impressive presentations was by a youth group who brought a chain of 508 plastic bags, representing the number thrown away every second in California. The chain wrapped around the convention hall twice – making a powerful visual point about taking better care of our world.

Silicon Valley Halloween

Halloween is serious fun here in the Silicon Valley. Spooky house decorations go up weeks in advance, people come to church in funny hats and silly outfits (for “Boo Sunday”), companies have costume parties, waitresses work dressed as clowns, stores give out candy to kid parades, and tonight the sidewalks are full of children dressed as cats, bugs, princesses, super heros, and monsters walking from house to house trailed by their parents, greeting neighbors with “Trick or Treat!”.

Shakespeare Reading Group

The community at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church has just started a Shakespeare Reading group, with me as the official Shakespeare Mentor. Tonight, 13 of us met to read Midsummer Night’s Dream together. Melita Thorpe hosted the event and organized the pot luck supper. As the Shakespeare Mentor, I recommended MSND movies to watch in advance, sent out an email with background on the play and recommendations for how to read Shakespeare, brought texts to read from, and distributed roles for the evening. My favorite MSND films are those of 1935, 1968, 1996, and 1999 (see details on the Midsummer Night’s Dream wikipedia page section on films).

My advice on reading Shakespeare socially:

Shakespeare wrote play scripts – not literature – reading a Shakespeare play is entertainment and you should enjoy yourself!
Trust the punctuation – pause not at the end of a line or at a rhyme but only at the period ending the sentence.
Read as quickly as you can using a normal tone – no special accent is needed for most roles.
Keep going – do not pause between speeches or scenes – the characters should sound like they are responding to each other.
If there is a word you do not know, give it your best guess and go on (or you can ask for advice!).
The gender of the role and of the reader do not have to match – remember that Shakespeare had an all-male cast.
If the lines in your script do not match the lines in someone else’s, don’t worry about it – Shakespearean scholars don’t always agree on the text – just keep reading.

Everyone enjoyed the evening – several of the readers made us all laugh. I am looking forward to future meetings!

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Tagged as Episcopal church, Mentoring, Shakespeare, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

September 2, 2012 · 11:23 am

Play in a Garden

Last night, my husband John helped to run the light board for a community theater group presenting the short play “Christ in the Concrete City” by Philip W. Turner. The production was by the Saint Andrew’s Players, directed by Melita Thorpe, and was held at dusk in the garden of St. Andrew’s Episcopal School (Saratoga, California). It was an interesting play, at times disturbing, and a fun evening.

Tag Archives: St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Shakespeare Reading Group – Update

Sacred Threads Embroidery – Chairs

Merry Christmas

El Camino Real Convention

Silicon Valley Halloween

Shakespeare Reading Group

Play in a Garden

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