Last Saturday was “my” day, so after sleeping in, we took our time getting ready, and then I took Mer to Canton to see the movie Red Riding Hood at the $1.50 theater. I was seeing the movie largely on the basis of Amanda Seyfried being in the title role. I was utterly charmed by her in the movie Letters to Juliet, but quite a bit less so in the movie Dear John. Red Riding Hood fell somewhere in between – better than Dear John, but not so heart-warming and cute as Letters. I thought it was worth a risk at $3.00 for both of us.

It was a solid film. It was not too deep, and the acting was uneven in places; Amanda and Gary Oldman were very good all through the film, but some of the supporting roles were hit-or-miss. The film did a very good job with the wolf – the computer effects were not distracting at all, and the major part of the film keeps you guessing as to who the wolf really is. It was an entertaining film on the whole, and was worth the $3.00. AND I got to see a BBC America ad for Doctor Who before the film began!

On the way home from Canton, we swung by the Gurnish household to see if they would be interested in getting ice cream. They had just wrapped up killing some chickens to eat, but were happy to get ice cream. We had no problem waiting for them to get cleaned up. Nate and Rachel’s son decided to stay with the new neighbors’ two oldest girls, who are a little older than he is. An ice cream date turned down for two girls! Where are the boy’s priorities? We had a nice visit with the Gurnishes over ice cream, and then we headed home, albeit briefly.

We were pretty much only home just long enough for me to look up where in Kent our friends’ band Bethesda was playing. Having ascertained that, we headed to Kent. Bethesda was playing a twenty-five-minute set as part of a fundraiser to help a ministry raise funds that would help the poor. We had not been to a Bethesda show in months, so I wanted to support them and the cause. Sadly, the show was running about thirty or forty minutes behind, so we arrived in time to see Bethesda only to find out we had to wait. Meanwhile, a talented but very loud band played for about thirty minutes.

Bethesda finally took the stage, and it was great. They played mostly new songs, and I believe it was the debut for their new and very talented violin player. She added a nice sound that supported Shanna’s lyrical voice very well. There were a few minor sound problems (the bass amp went out during a song), but the sound was well mixed on the whole. While the show was short, it was good to see the band again, and we got to hang out with Shanna and Eric some before their set.

On the way home, on a whim, I swung into a mom-and-pop restaurant called Eddy’s. It turned out to be pretty good – the fries I had were excellent. We then headed home for the evening.

Last Tuesday, Mer took me on a late-night mid-week date to Kent State to see their production of Hamlet. She had “won” the tickets at CVCA’s auction. We have seen several productions at Kent, and I have generally liked them, so I was looking forward to the production.

The director’s notes were helpful. His vision for the play was to translate Hamlet to the near future, and to stage it in a style that emphasized corruption, scandal, and the hunger for power. He also decided to make Hamlet a Muslim, I think with the idea of making Hamlet even more of an outsider, since no one else was Muslim.

The scandal-vision of the play was evident from the opening of the play. The director felt free to shuffle scenes around, and so he opened the play with the new king, Claudius, singing a rock song while two college-aged girls in short skirts and open jackets (with bras) dance around him. He ends the song with a photo-op with Polonius, and then gives a televised speech comforting the nation about the sudden death of his brother. It worked pretty well. The vision of corruption kept coming back again and again, and it unified the beginning and end of the play. That was a great directorial choice.

One choice that was a great concept but was not carried out well was the treatment of the ghost of the play. The director had the ghost be projected around the stage using multiple projectors and using various speakers hidden around the theater. It was a brilliant idea. What was weird and undermined the effect was the fact that the director chose to make the ghost a computer-animated person. The “person” was real enough to make you do a double-take, but not real enough to maintain the illusion. Also, the ghost moved in general and generic ways, not interacting at all with the actors (because it could not). Finally, the mouth of the ghost never moved. I suppose a ghost could talk without moving its mouth, but it was a distraction that was not needed. The idea could have been carried out with a real actor being filmed backstage, to much greater effect.

The worst directorial choice was when Hamlet runs into Ophelia in the courtyard while her father and Claudius are hiding behind a curtain. The director had Ophelia deliver her lines while tipping Hamlet off to the fact that her father was there. Hamlet understands this and says some of his lines for their benefit. The problem is that by the end of the scene, Ophelia is bemoaning the fact that Hamlet is mad, and she played this to the audience and not to her hidden father. Since she has wink-wink informed Hamlet of the entire set-up, this long Hamlet-is-mad speech no longer makes any sense. By what the text is saying, Ophelia needs to really believe that Hamlet is insane. Hamlet may or may not be mad, and he may or may not know that Polonius is hiding behind the curtain, but it is really important that Ophelia really believe that Hamlet is mad.

The director made the interesting and jarring choice of having Ophelia killed by a king-and-queen bodyguard. The queen’s “Ophelia drowned” cover story becomes cover-up. It worked, but made the queen a much more sinister character than she normally is.

The director also made the strange choice of taking the most famous speech in all of English literature, and he moved it and interspersed it with Claudius’ prayer-speech, where he is trying to pray for forgiveness but cannot. It was an interesting thing to try, but the focus on stage was Claudius, and so it made “To be or not to be” become background and counterpoint for Claudius’ speech.

The acting in the play was mostly good, but it was uneven in places. Claudius and Polonius were brilliant. Gertrude was fine. I loved Ophelia when she was playfully interacting with her brother, but she was less convincing in her mad scenes. I was not a big fan of the female Horatio – I felt as if her delivery was very flat most of the time.

Hamlet was interesting. His delivery of the lines was almost flawless, and he played active scenes and mad scenes really well. However, his early scenes where he is in grief were unconvincing, and his introspective speeches were, as Mer put it, “Hamlet mellow” rather than Hamlet struggling to understand everything that was going on. The fact that Hamlet was a Muslim did not really enter into the play at all in any way that I could tell. If the director had not told me that Hamlet was a Muslim, I would have probably assumed that Hamlet was a devout religious man of some generic religion of the near future. It was not overly distracting, but felt forced.

One of the fun things that happened at the play was that Mer and I sat in front of two girls seeing the play for a class. We were able to chat with them at intermission, and helped clear up some of the things that were confusing them. It was great to get to feel smart.

I am glad I got to see the play. It ran long (about 3.5 hours with intermission), but did not feel long. It was good to see all the various new things the director tried, so I could see what worked and what did not. The strongest choice, to show political corruption, worked really well. The other choices worked less well, but the play still held together.

Last Saturday was Mer’s day, and we started it out by heading north to Lyndhurst to Hawken Middle School. A few months ago, Mer agreed to be the coach for the brand-new junior high Academic Challenge team. Academic Challenge is competitive trivia, basically, and CVCA has had a high school Academic Challenge team for years now, but the junior high team was new with Mer’s team. She has twelve seventh graders, and on this particular Saturday we were headed to the very first meet for the new team. Mer ended up having four girls and four guys come to the meet (the other four had schedule conflicts), and so she made a girls’ team and a guys’ team (a team is made up of four students, although because each round has three sections, you can have additional students substitute in).

Hawken Middle School is jaw-droppingly beautiful. The school is only three years old, and Hawken costs almost $25,000/year to attend, so the tuition buys you small classes and a stunning school. Each of the grades (six, seven, and eight) had its own wing, called a “pod.” Our meet was taking place in the seventh and eighth grade classrooms.

Hawken has a well-established team, so it was fielding four teams – two JV teams and two varsity teams. Since some junior high schools include ninth grade as well, it is permissible to have ninth graders on junior high teams. I’m pretty sure that all the members of Hawken’s varsity teams were eighth and ninth graders. They knew their stuff. The public high school from Kent also sent two teams, so there were eight teams in all. Each team went head to head against another team in a round, and so there were four matches going on during each round. Each question in a round was worth so many points, and at the end of all the matches, each team just tallied its own points, and the team with the most points won.

I was drafted to help, since they needed help running the meet. Mer and I teamed up:  she read the questions and I kept score. It was interesting. I knew the vast majority of the answers to the questions, but by no means all of them. The kids did very well, especially the Hawken varsity teams. The very last match of the day pitted our two CVCA teams against each other, and they were even in our room. It was a fun way to end the meet.

Since this was our very first meet for our team, we did not know what to expect. They did well – both teams were competitive, and our boys’ team finished third out of the eight teams, losing to the two Hawken varsity teams.

After the meet, we went home, where I napped while Mer ran and got groceries. In the evening, we went to a Teacher Appreciation Dinner thrown by the parents of one of Mer’s students. Every year, this family invites all the teachers that are teaching their sons to their house for dinner. It is a very thoughtful thank-you. We had gone last year as well, and the food is all homemade (including the pasta), and is very good. This year, the only teachers who could make it were us and the Churchills, which was a nice surprise for us, since they are such good friends. We had a wonderful dinner, and the family gave us gifts of rare coins (they collect coins) – they gave us coins from Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The older of the two sons, Steven, is in Royal Fools, so I know him pretty well, so it was a pleasant evening at the dinner table.

After dinner (and dessert – cannoli!), we all moved into the living room, where we all played each other in Wii sword fighting. It was a really funny thing to see, and Zach Churchill turned out to be the man to beat in the reaction-time sword game (a game where you need to slice fruit and other objects in a random direction faster than your opponent). I’m afraid I began to feel a bit poor for the last half hour or so, so I’m not sure I was the best company at the end of the evening. Overall, though, we spent about three hours there, and it was a good time.

Last Saturday, Mer and I slept in. Late. Since we had gotten back from the Pittsburgh airport after 1:00 am, and neither of us had slept in much or at all over break, we slept in on Saturday until about 11:00. Mer then took her time getting ready, and we headed to Akron to eat brunch at Wally Waffles. That was the first time we had been back since before the February diet; it was good to be back.

After brunch, we headed down to Aunt Mary’s old place. For about a year now, Aunt Mary has been holding on to her trundle bed (a single bed with a fold-away single bed stored underneath it) for us. Aunt Mary wanted to paint the room and clean the carpets, so we went down and took the bed apart and moved it to her old garage (I later went down on Monday with a borrowed truck and got the bed). That took about an hour. Since we were already near Canton, I drove into Canton itself, and went to Mer’s old neighborhood, to a park there that houses the McKinley Monument. It is an impressive domed structure that I had not been to since the mid-90’s. Mer is not sure she had ever been inside it. We did not stay long, but I had wanted to see the place since I had just finished a book about presidential assassinations, and McKinley was covered in the book. There is also a small and excellent museum near the monument that I have never been to, but we did not have time on Saturday to visit it.

On the way home, we swung by Nate and Rachel’s place to see if they wanted to go get ice cream at Strickland’s. They were game, so the five of us (with their son) drove our two cars over, and we ate ice cream and chatted for about 45 minutes. It was good to be mellow with the Gurnishes again – it had been awhile.

We spent a mellow evening at home. Before break, we had started watching the film version of The Kite Runner. We finished it up, and it was really well done. We have both seen a stage version of the book as well, and the film and stage version were different from each other, but both were very good. The Kite Runner was filmed in China, but I assume the landscape passes well for Afghanistan. The film also was almost entirely in Farsi (Persian) with English subtitles, so that was interesting to hear. After the film was over, we made it a fairly early evening.

Friday
– Went to Nate’s house (work at Urban Vision ministry was finished on Thursday).
– Tore off old back porch and burned the debris wood.
– I ran and got donuts about 10:30.
– Rachel made pizza and bread for everyone for lunch.
– Most students went next door to help in Brittian Bollenbacher’s house – staining and putting on polyurethane.
– Wrapped up around 3:30.
– Got back to school at 4:00.
– Should have stayed and helped clean up, but felt ill and tired and had to get Mer from the airport in Pittsburgh late, so I excused myself and went home.
– Showered and then went to bed at 4:30 – slept until 8:00.
– Left for airport at 8:45, picked Mer up at 10:45, got home around 1:00 and went to bed around 1:30.
– Good trip – as always, very impressed with the kids. They were great – hard workers and positive attitudes.
– I enjoyed the work, but especially the work Thursday with Hammer and Nails.

Thursday
– Went to Canton, to Hammer and Nails.
– Hammer and Nails is an offshoot of Habitat for Humanity – helps improve existing homes of people in need.
– Toured house that is headquarters. Hammer and Nails started out with $1,000 and one 4-foot-tall step ladder.
– They helped improve over 90 homes last year, and coordinated over 23,000 volunteer hours.
– We went to a home near Taggart’s Ice Cream.
– We tore down a back porch, dug new post holes (including needing to rent a jackhammer to break up concrete in one hole), and painted primer onto the separate garage.
– Homeowners were very nice and helpful. The gave us snacks and juice at lunch.
– I bought ice cream for everyone at Taggart’s.
– Homeowners made hamburgers and hot dogs for us before we left.
– Cleaned up and went back to CVCA. I had to return the jackhammer – got back to CVCA about 5:00.
– Went home and showered.
– Made special reel/”Sweet Dreams” mix for talent show that night. I skipped supper since I was full from the burger.
– Went over to CVCA and puttered around until the talent show.
– About ten acts – music, interpretive dance, poetry. Dubbs and I danced for about a minute to “Sweet Dreams (are made of these)” since that was a dream I had a few months back. It was pitiful, but well received.
– Had worship a little before 10:00.
– Craig let kids share about what they learned this week, then gave talk on the encounter at the Last Supper, where Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.
     – Surprising that a teacher would wash feet (servants did that).
     – Jesus models service for us – we should be ready to serve each other, and anyone God calls us to serve. Real servants serve, not just when they want to.
     – Craig challenged us to start with serving our families.
– Ended with another song.
– Came home – got home about 11:20.

Wednesday
– Hattie Larlham – made crafts with kids in morning, made Easter/spring cards in afternoon
– Stopped by Baskin Robbins/Dunkin Donuts on way home; Dubbs bought (I got a hot chocolate)
– Home, showered, made peanut butter and chocolate bars for Diakonos kids
– Supper
– Entertainment – Nerf gun war in school; went long
– Worship
– Craig spoke on woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with her tears and perfume
     – Surprising that woman would persevere to get into house, spend expensive perfume
     – Pharisee reacts with no love toward woman or Jesus (no common hospitality)
     – Jesus tells story of two debtors; rebukes Pharisee but story still offers hope to him (not taken, as far as we      know)
     – Woman leaves with her sins forgiven through her faith
– Small group meeting – went over day and talked of risks of becoming the Pharisee – too holy and good to love people correctly; still going on when I left at 11:30.
– Home about 11:45.

Tuesday
– Went back to Urban Vision to work on house. Nate stopped us by Crest Bakery to get a dozen donuts.
– Work at house was more demolition, scrubbing wooden floors, and yard work. Four students worked inside and four outside. We were all busy all day (left about 4:00).
– I bought the kids Dairy Queen ice cream because I wanted to.
– Went home and showered and paid bills that were close to being due.
– Went over to CVCA for supper – Mexican rice and chips.
– Practiced murder mystery for about thirty minutes (did not finish).
– Performed mystery – went well – lots of laughter, and it lasted about fifty minutes.
– Worship time.
– Craig spoke on Peter’s encounter with Jesus, walking on the water.
     – Jesus sends everyone ahead and spends day praying.
     – Peter initiates with a strange and surprising request.
     – Jesus works with Peter’s impulsive idea.
     – Jesus rebukes (teaches) Peter after Peter fails; now Peter learns and has a testimony (story) to tell.
– Grabbed dessert on way to small groups – excellent pumpkin cake, and I had a leftover piece of birthday cake (today was not a great day for restrained eating).
– Small group was excellent – funny small talk, then looking at Joshua exhorting the people to love God and then obey his commands and then cling to him. We need to love God first, then learn to cling to him as we fail (so we can love and then obey him more).
– Got home about 11:00.

Sunday
– Met at 4:00 for play practice, started at 5:00, official group at 6:00
– General business and welcome
– Made lunch for the next day
– Entertainment – three-legged dodgeball, four square, ping pong “X”
– Sundaes
– Worship
– Craig speaking on encounters with Jesus
     – Zacchaeus
     – Surprises on being a tax collector, Jesus calls by name
     – Surprise on his reaction – gives away money – seeks justice and mercy
– Met briefly with small group (six guys and Craig)
– Home at 11:30

Monday
– Off to job site around 9:00
– We went to Urban Vision – Akron mission to help kids with schoolwork and other skills
– Urban Vision has a small housing ministry; we went to work there
– Cut down bushes, took down water-damaged walls and ceilings, took out old bathroom
– Had to wait on dumpster, but then cleaned up mess
– Back to CVCA, but then I went home for shower
– Went out for cat litter, fruit, and possible students’ desserts (later in the week)
– Made soundtrack for evening entertainment on Tuesday
– Ate supper – chicken and potatoes and birthday cake
– Game night – puttered on computer and chatted with Dubbs and Nate
– Worship
– Craig spoke on woman at well
     – Surprises on Samaritan/Jew and man/woman
     – Woman very forthright
     – Jesus reveals himself outright to be the Messiah (not done anywhere else)
     – Woman tells everyone – she has hope; she was loved and valuable, so we are too
– Met in small groups; discussed accountability and answered some questions on marriage
– Home about 11:00

On Friday, Mer cashed in on one of her gift cards she bought at the CVCA Auction, and she took me to EJ Thomas Hall in Akron to see the University of Akron’s spring dance recital. I am not very familiar with general dance (outside of Irish dancing), so it was an interesting evening.

The vast majority of the dancers were women – I believe there were only four men in all (probably in excess of fifty women danced throughout the evening). The performance started with ballet dancers doing an interpretive dance about flowers. I was most struck by the women’s mostly exposed backs. On most of the dancers, their spine went into the back, so that there was a definite line where the spine was. I’m guessing this is a result of the strong muscles in their backs being so well developed. They also had obviously strong shoulders – not masculine, but just massive amounts of muscle in their necks and shoulders.

The second dance was a huge dance, full of motion and color and let-down hair that accentuated movement. It was probably my favorite piece, and it was danced by fifteen or twenty women. Especially at the fast-paced start, there were always ten or more dancers flying all over the stage. It was quite joyous.

There followed a dance exploration of relationships with various dance couples dressed all in white. It was interesting, and perhaps the easiest dance to follow all evening. As a surprise, many of the women in the couples caught or lifted the male dancer (who did return the favor as well).

After intermission was a scripted dance piece that was worked in with some minimal acting and a storyline about a self-help guru. It had some very funny moments, including a woman flipping through the TV stations and “seeing” the shows by watching actors mouth the words to the recordings of the shows. It was effective. The dancing came in later as various people tried to improve themselves.

The evening ended with a return to the ballet dancers.

It was a good evening, and it was not just a senior recital – there were first-year dancers out there as well. Everyone did well as far as I could tell, although the more experienced dancers tended to have more power. I am certainly not a dance expert, but I had a very good time. Just for contrast with the willowy and powerful dancers, Mer and I went out to Friday’s after the show to get dessert.