Last Saturday was a fun day. Mer and I headed over to our pastor’s house, and picked up Ken and Janet. We then headed down to Columbus, which was about a little over a two-hour drive from New Baltimore. We had a good time visiting with Ken and Janet in the car. It was a pretty and sunny day, so travel went just fine.

We were going to Columbus to see an afternoon production of The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. Mer and I had seen the same show a few months ago up in Cleveland, and had really enjoyed it. So, when I found out it was coming back to Columbus, I wanted to get tickets for Ken and Janet.

We got to Columbus about an hour before the show started, so we used the time and nice weather to wander the block-and-a-half to Ohio’s state house. The grounds of the state house are lovely, but the state house itself is just okay. It is classical in design, but lacks a dome, which makes it look slightly unfinished and slightly squat. We wandered the grounds for about fifteen minutes and then went back to the theater.

The theater was very lovely. The play was exactly the same as it was in Cleveland, so I will not go into any detail here. I enjoyed it very much again, and Ken and Janet seemed to like it quite a bit. The main actor of the show, Max McLean, came back after the show for about ten minutes to take questions from the audience. Mer and I like that sort of thing, so we stayed for it.

After the show, we drove through the Short North neighborhood of Columbus, which seems to be very happening. It was cute, and had lots of non-chain restaurants and shops. We ended up, by design, at Mozart’s, just north of the Short North area. Mozart’s was voted to have the best dessert in Columbus, and they served dinner as well, specializing in schnitzel. Schnitzel is meat (in our case, chicken) that is beaten very thin, coated in bread crumbs, and then fried in herb butter. I had not had it in over a decade, so I got some, with an Italian spin – tomato sauce, cheese, and bacon. It came with a pasta that I had never heard of, and so it tasted very much like an excellent chicken parmesan dish. Mer and Ken got the same thing, with Janet opting for pork tenderloin. We had the option of eating outdoors on the patio, which we took. It was a lovely place to eat.

After dinner, we did get dessert. Actually, we got multiple desserts. Ken and Janet got pastries and Mer and I got two each, but then the waiter came by with some free sorbet. I took a few bites of Mer’s, and it was really good. The desserts were excellent, although not necessarily jaw-dropping. I suspect Mozart’s gets the reputation for having the best desserts because they have a huge variety of excellent options.

After supper, we headed back home. We dropped Ken and Janet off in New Baltimore, and we got back to our place at about 10:00. I am very much looking forward to visiting Columbus again.

Last week was Senior Trip for CVCA’s seniors. Every year, the seniors go on a four-day retreat to celebrate; it is a CVCA-sponsored event, and it has about one chaperon for every six or seven students. Since Mer is a teacher of seniors, she has gone along on the trip for six years now.

This year, the trip moved to Maumee Bay State Park, which is just outside of Toledo, about two hours away. Maumee Bay is right on Lake Erie, which is pretty cool, and close enough to Toledo to take advantage of some of the things Toledo has to offer. The park has really great facilities – the lodge is huge, and has a pool, whirlpools, racquetball courts, tennis courts, and more. The school booked most of the park’s cabins. When I say cabin, do not think small and dingy. These cabins were fantastic – they were bright and airy, they had gas fireplaces (which were heavily used since it was in the 50s for much of the trip), lofts, and screened-in porches, and some even had whirlpool tubs. This is not roughing it, by any means.

The seniors left on Monday, and came back Thursday afternoon (except for some who went to Cedar Point and then came back in the evening). I had told Mer I would take Wednesday off and join her and the seniors. I’m very close to the kids in this class, especially the girls in Mer’s cabin. So, I very much wanted to spend some time with the class. As a surprise, I popped out early and went over Tuesday evening, getting to the park around 6:00. I had booked a room for two nights in the main lodge, and I checked in and found out what cabin Mer was in. I made my way over there, walking in a light mist. It turns out her cabin was three quarters of a mile away, and Mer was not back yet from supervising (but not playing) paintball. I said hi to the girls, who gave me a fresh brownie, and then I went and checked out the park’s boardwalk that was nearby. The boardwalk is about two miles long, and winds through a swampy forest. Since it was sort of raining, I had the place to myself, except for the deer. There were deer everywhere, and while timid, they did not panic with me around. I walked a little ways down the boardwalk, but then I heard the engine of a bus, so I figured Mer was probably back. I walked back over to the cabin, and Mer was home, and was happy to see me. I got to go in and visit with Mer and the other girls while they had supper (I had eaten on the way over to the park).

Mer, ever the teacher, roped me into walking with her back to the lodge to get the car, and then delivering a few senior English binders that some of the seniors had not picked up. Ahhh, the romance of state parks.

Since I had the car, after we delivered the binders, I took off with Mer. I had seen a sign for an ice cream stand on the way to the park, and I wanted to check it out. We found it, and caught them just before they were getting ready to close early. I felt bad about that, but they were very nice to us. They had good ice cream and huge servings, and we picked up some ice cream to take back with us to give to the girls. The ice cream place was actually a parlor, and very cozy inside. I liked it and I’m glad we found it.

We dropped off the ice cream and picked up the girls and drove over to the lodge. Every evening someone spoke to the seniors, and this evening it was the physics teacher, Jon Bucciarelli. I would have liked to hear what he had to say, but I was very tired, so I said goodnight to everyone and I went to my room and went to bed.

I slept in late Wednesday morning, and got up around 8:00. I then went running on the paved trails and roads of the park, getting in a good five-mile run. It was fun to run next to the lake, and it was interesting to run somewhere completely new to me. After I showered and dressed, I headed back over to Mer’s cabin, where the girls were serving breakfast to their “brother” cabin. They had a ton of food, so I got to have some breakfast too.

After breakfast, the girls had to go take part in the various cabin team competitions that are a part of senior trip tradition. Mer was in charge of running the Trivial Pursuit competition, which she is very fond of. I excused myself and went back to the boardwalk to explore the entire thing. I really enjoyed the walk, and I found a two-story observation tower where I could look over a cattail swamp all the way to the lake. I again saw a lot of deer, and this time there were a fair number of people out. It was not sunny, but it was not raining, so I think people wanted to stretch their legs. I still had good sections of the walk to myself, and I took a ton of pictures.

I went back to the lodge and got to observe Mer running the trivia section. Not surprisingly, she is good at it and it ran efficiently. After a few minutes, I went and bought a snack, which I ate in my room. I rejoined Mer as she was wrapping up her game, and we waited for the bus to take people to the Toledo Zoo. The bus was quite full, so Mer and I drove, following the bus. I’m glad I did not lose the bus, because it was a serpentine route we took, and some of it was in pretty depressed areas of Toledo.

The zoo itself was small but fun. We got there late enough that most people decided to stay at the zoo all afternoon – the original plan had been to also head over to the art museum, but that plan got reduced to one van of eight people. Mer and I were happily joined by our friend and colleague, Liz Wides. Liz is also an English teacher, and she looks and acts very sweet, but has a wonderfully mischievous sense of humor. Liz decided that every time she saw an animal statue, she needed an action shot with it. I think we got about eight photos like that.

The zoo is small enough to be seen in a few hours. We did not see it all, but we took in most. The zoo has an excellent cadre of big cats – white lions, tigers, snow leopards, and cheetahs. We also took in the sloth bears, the aviary, the primates, and the polar bears. The weather cooperated, and we enjoyed ourselves. I was most impressed with the cheetahs and the snow leopards. They are beautiful creatures.

We headed back to the lodge, where I grabbed an hour-long nap while Mer went back to her cabin to get ready for the senior trip banquet. While not strictly a formal event, most people get somewhat dressed up, and the girls usually take time to do their hair. I met Mer in the ballroom, and we sat with Mer’s cabin. The food was very good, and dessert was cannoli, which I like and which I thought was a bold choice.

The cabin competition awards were given out (frisbees, kites, posters, and candy bars), and then we heard the evening’s talk, which was given by a Bible teacher, David Myers. I like David – he is smart and skeptical without slipping into full-blown cynicism. That means he finds lots of things amusing, which I am rather fond of. Anyway, David took the opportunity of the meal to talk about several Biblical meals. He pointed to where Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew, and showed what a failure that was for Esau. He then looked at Daniel, who refused to eat food that would have violated his Jewish faith. This was a good contrast with Esau, and showed how to stand up for your own beliefs. David then looked at the Last Supper, where our hope rests, and he ended with looking at the wedding feast in heaven from the book of Revelation. From the text, he pointed out that not everyone was at the feast, and we needed to keep looking to the Last Supper for our hope to be at the last feast. It was a well-done talk.

The dinner ended with Senior Share. Senior Share is another tradition, where students can stand up and thank people or exhort their fellow classmates. This year, there was a lot of thanking of the teachers in a general (not-called-by-name) sort of way, but after the dinner some shy girls found Mer to tell her how much they appreciate her. That was really great. The senior class was also encouraging to male students who were struggling with emotions, which is pretty mature for eighteen-year-olds. This was a pretty special class, and I will certainly miss them.

I was feeling pretty alert after the dinner let out at 10:00. I had to be at work the next morning, and my original plan had been to sleep at the park and drive back at 4:30 a.m. I decided to sleep in my own bed, and so I checked out. The receptionist was very kind and only charged me for one night in the lodge. That impressed me very much.

I gave Mer a ride back to her cabin, said goodbye, and headed home. It was an uneventful drive home, and I got back about midnight. It was worth the travel to have such a good time.

Last Saturday was Mer’s day, and the day itself was puttery and made up of errands. But, in the evening, Mer took me to Solon (northeast of where we live), to the Solon Center for the Arts. The Center has been around for years, but has focused on children. This year, after two years of fundraising and grant-writing, they added adult plays and music. The are doing one musical, one opera, and a Christmas play. The opening act of the season was one of my favorite musicals, Kiss Me, Kate.

We met up with one of Mer’s friends from high school, Marie. She was the one who had let Mer know about the production. We got there early for a pre-show talk. Mer and I like pre-show talks because we like to hear what the director was thinking for the production. We found out about the two-year process, and he let us know that there were multiple professional opera singers in the company (at least three). I’m not sure how they scored three or more opera singers for a three-night-only run in a small local theater, but they did.

The theater is on the second floor of the Center. The stage is at the front, and the entire space is fairly small. The theater could probably seat not more than 150, and the stage was probably only about thirty feet wide. There was a twelve-piece orchestra at the back of the stage, and the director had indicated that the space made for some issues. He hates scene changes, so most scene changes involved closing shutters in front of the orchestra and rotating two small towers on either side of the stage. The changes let you know that you were either on stage for the staging of The Taming of the Shrew, or you were backstage with the actors. It worked well.

The music was fun, as always. The singers were very talented, especially the leads. They were a tad too quiet from time to time for unmiked singers, but that was rare. On the whole, you could hear quite well. When Kate sang her well-known solo “I hate men,” she came off the stage and found various men to sing to. I was one of them; she gave me a jaunty little wave, which I returned, and then sang about how she hated me. It was fun, and a little intimidating to look a powerful singer in the eyes when she is about a foot away.

The entire play went off very well. It is such a great musical, and the actors poured a lot of energy into it. There were still (what felt to be) big dance numbers, even with a small stage and only seventeen actors – they made clever use of the space.

After the play, we went downstairs for a reception. We had thought there might be a few cookies, but there was quite a spread – breads, fruits, cookies, bars, sodas, wine, and more, and all of it was free. I talked briefly with the director again to tell him how well he had done, and Mer, Marie, and I all munched on some good food. It was “Wunderbar.”

Friday was CVCA’s Junior-Senior Banquet, more commonly referred to as prom. We don’t dance at our prom because of the historical mistrust of dancing at the school, but we do treat it as a formal occasion and eat very well, there is entertainment of some sort, and the evening finishes with the showing of the Senior Video, which is mostly baby pictures of seniors coupled with their senior photos.

Prom was held at the Cuyahoga Falls Sheraton with a theme of “Masquerade.” The Sheraton has great views of some of the smaller falls and the rapids of the Cuyahoga River and is a very pretty setting. They have a large reception area where photos were taken, and they have a banquet room big enough to seat everyone. Generally, pictures and people-watching fill the first hour or so, and that was fun. Mer and I both like to critique the girls’ dresses, and they did very well this year. There were almost no eyebrow-raising dresses, either for bad look or for immodesty, and there were lots of very classy dresses. I think that CVCA having a dress code for prom helps the young ladies look super classy; the dress code helps them avoid the temptation of skimpy dresses, and so they end up looking very elegant.

After the promenade part of prom, we retired to the ballroom for supper. Supper was buffet-style, where you got your own food (as opposed to table service). The food was excellent, and the seniors had requested that dessert was to be CVCA-supplied chocolate chip cookies. Mer and I were both able to get two of those (there were spares at the end of the evening).

After supper, the entertainment of the evening started. The man was introduced as a comedian, and made a balloon-animal motorcycle for the teacher/emcee of the evening. I was not sure how well he was going to be received, but that was just his warm-up. He was a nationally-known ventriloquist, and he demonstrated his art with two different puppets. He was amazing – his lips really never moved, and he took time to work demonstrations into his early act so we would know how ventriloquism worked, To end his act, he called up four seniors and made them into life-sized puppets by tapping them on the shoulders to make them “talk.” He made the two guys have high voices and the two girls have low voices, and he was really funny. That was probably my personal favorite prom entertainment in the seven or so proms that I have gone to.

The senior video ended the evening, and people always get a kick out of seeing what the handsome young people looked like when they were small. It is a fine way to wrap up a formal evening. The evening does continue in an informal way at after-party, which is a party thrown by CVCA parents each year where there are games and food and really good prizes. It is an attempt to keep the evening positive, and after-party goes on into the wee hours.

Mer and I like to at least make an appearance at after-party, which this year was at the Tallmadge Recreation Center. The Center has basketball courts, an indoor soccer field, a track, and a large common area where the food was located. There were a couple of DJs who were playing music for the kids, including a few line dances and “YMCA.” There was a really good wandering magician who did card and coin tricks; I never did see how he did what he did, and I was trying to look in the opposite direction of any misdirections or big gestures. Mer and I ate some more food, and we took some more photos, and got a kick out of watching the students having a good time. We finally called it a night after a couple of hours, and we got home at about 2:00 am. I can’t tell you the last time we were out so late – that is a good sign of how much we enjoy this group of students (and the chaperons who were there as well – after-party brings out a fun crowd).

Last Tuesday, Mer and I stayed after school to see the Graphic Arts Show. The Graphic Arts Show displays the designs of CVCA’s graphic arts classes, and added in the portfolios of the J-term photography classes. They also have really good food. I had missed a couple of years of the show, and I was amazed at how popular it had become – there were a ton of people all over the CVCA library. The food was outstanding – cookies, cake, and cupcakes that had miniature reproductions of some student work stuck in the tops as decorations. The student work was really good. There were some really great photos, and the design students did a lot of creative work with CD cases, stamps, playing with word art and fonts, and self-portraits “drawn” out of words that also described the students. It was a very impressive display of talent.

Later in the evening, Mer went to the year-end CVCA band concert. I had to run some errands, but I joined her just before the high school band performed (I missed the junior high band). The band played four pieces that were a lot of fun, and very impressive. Then, the seniors each got to get up and direct a two-to-three-minute piece of their choice. We got to hear the themes from Jaws and Indiana Jones and Superman, “Eleanor Rigby,” the theme to Frosty the Snowman, and several pop songs, as well as others. I am very impressed with our musical talent at CVCA, and many of the students I am closest to are in the band, so it was a good way to support the kids.

On Wednesday, Mer and I went to a balloon-launching ceremony for my former student Mark. Mark died about a year ago of cancer, and last Wednesday was his twenty-first birthday. His family organized a group balloon launch at Mark’s graveside. It was a pretty day, and there were probably about twenty people in attendance, including two of my current students, as well as several former students. It was good to remember Mark.

After the launch, Mer and I headed up to Macedonia, and we grabbed supper at Chik-fil-A, and we even got to eat outside, which is a special little joy of Meredith’s. After supper, we headed over to the local theater, where we met up with Dubbs. We were there to see Thor, the new movie about the Marvel superhero interpretation of the mythological god of thunder. The theater is a modern one, with surround sound and stadium seating, and there were only about ten of us in the theater (it was 6:30 on a Wednesday, and I think the few people who wanted to see Thor at that time probably wanted to see it in 3D).

Dubbs and I were both very excited to get to see previews for the upcoming X-Men and upcoming Captain America movies. They both look pretty good. Thor was a fun movie. The movie focused a good amount of time on the characters and their relationships, which are important for a good film. Too often, movie makers just want to shoot superhero movies as endless fights, and those movies are pretty bad. Thor does have some excellent action sequences in it, but a large middle section of the movie is much quieter and deals with Thor and the people around him. It also has many moments of funny things going on, and good superhero movies don’t take themselves overly seriously. So, all things considered, Thor was a good time (and the actor playing Thor is one of the most buff men I have ever seen – egad!). Thor is an entertaining film, and I recommend it to those who like action films or superhero movies.

Last Saturday was “my” day. I had a very clever plan. The Marvel superhero movie Thor was in its opening weekend, and so I thought I would take Mer to see a movie. She would think it was Thor, and I would surprise her utterly by going to see a documentary on big cats called African Cats. Magnificent plan. The only problem was that Mer had never heard of Thor as a superhero, but only as the Norse god of thunder. Thus, she had no idea that I would have any real desire to see that film. Ah, well.

African Cats was cute. It focused on a pride of lions and on a mother cheetah and her five cubs. It was produced by Disney, and so had a lot of personification provided by the narrator, Samuel Jackson. Still, the narration was more entertaining than distracting, and the photography was amazing. What beautiful creatures cheetahs are. We both enjoyed the film very much.

Later in the evening, we headed to Akron, back to the music club Musica. Even though I keep swearing off Musica, our friends’ band, Bethesda, was having a CD release party for their new EP CD. Since we are very fond of Eric and Shanna, we went back to Musica to hear the group.

Mer and I were delighted in that we actually got two of the very limited number of seats in the place, and these right next to the stage. Being that close and off to the side made for slightly more musical distortion since we were behind the speakers, but it was still fun to be that close to the stage. Bethesda was headlining the show, and their were two bands on before them The first band had really good harmonies from the three vocalists, but it was the second band that really shone. They had a cello player, a double-bass player, a guitar and ukulele player, and a drummer who had some unusual drums along with the standard drum kit. They were excellent musicians, especially the bass player, who also took a turn on uke and on guitar. They had a lot of energy, and were a lot of fun.

Bethesda did a great job. You could tell they were excited for the CD release, and they clearly had a ball on stage. They interspersed the songs with several clips that told the fictional stories reflected in the songs, and that was well done. They sound was mixed well, which was a nice thing, and they had a great evening. The house was very full, and had a lot of young people in it to be enthusiastic. Since Eric teaches at CVCA, there were about six or seven of us CVCA folks there as well, including Dubbs, who found us about halfway through Bethesda’s set. Keep an ear out for Bethesda – I really think they have the sound that could get them on college and alternate radio stations across the whole country.

Last Thursday was the last Fools show for the year and, more sadly, the last show for my TWELVE seniors. I love this group. We had fourteen Fools in all, and in that group of twelve seniors, I had one four-year Fool, three three-year Fools, four two-year Fools, and four one-year Fools. It was a very tight group, and had lots of energy. They also were willing to try almost anything, so I was able to introduce five new games for this show, several of which were full of very physical comedy. I am proud of the group.

It was a long show – eighteen games that took an hour and forty-five minutes. I let the Fools pick two games they want to be in, and this show there was very little overlap, so we had a lot more games than normal (twelve games for a show is pretty typical). We had a slight disadvantage of performing between the two weekends when the musical was playing. Because of scheduling, this could not be helped. For my purposes, it presented a problem in that the stage extension we normally use to get close to the audience had been taken down for the pit orchestra, and the instrument stands were in that space. So, we were further away from the audience than normal, which means you have to have more energy to keep people engaged. In that respect, things went fine – the show was pretty high-energy. There were some occasional lags, but overall things went well.

The games went well also. I had lectured the Fools very sternly that I did not want to hear the word “no” in the show. “No” in improv generally undermines the comedy, and makes scenes much weaker. I was very pleased that I never heard “no” all night long, and I even saw a few times where the Fool in question would think for a second and then plow ahead with some sort of “yes.” It was a good time.

We had a very good audience – lots of college-aged kids were back, and they were enthusiastic. We probably had around a hundred people in attendance, and they laughed a lot. They also were pretty quick with suggestions – we are getting enough repeat customers that they come up with fun ideas.

I was also happy with the last Fools-only game of the evening (we end all shows with a game that the audience can join in on). It is a Fools tradition that I pretend to throw a party for the seniors, and all my seniors have strange quirks or personality traits. This year, it meant a party for twelve, and the game is supposed to be for three or four. In order to keep things straight, I had a junior throw the names and quirks up on a screen for the audience to see, and I think that helped. Some of the guests at my party were a pirate, a man who thought he was James Bond, the Queen, a girl who was scared of party food, a guy who loved rabbits, and a woman who thought she was a potato. It was a fun skit, and I got nine of the twelve with no help. The scared-of-party-food and the potato both threw me for a bit of a loop, but we got off stage fairly quickly.

I will miss this group of Fools. Because the program has grown, it seems very unlikely that I will have any more three-year Fools, let alone a four-year Fool. I am very proud of the work they put in, and the product was much fun to be a part of.

Sorry I’ve gotten behind on the ol’ blog, but I have been sick much of the last week, so I slept a lot.

On Wednesday, April 27th, Mer and I got to go to CVCA’s spring musical, My Fair Lady. I am a big fan of the movie version of the play, so I was very much looking forward to the production. As I have mentioned before, it also adds to the fun that Mer and I know so many of the people on stage.

We took Aunt Mary to dinner and the show as a birthday present for her. We met at the local restaurant Rockne’s, where we had a very good dinner, but Mer and I were disappointed to discover that they had eliminated their normal desserts for these very small served-in-a-shot-glass cakes and mousse. We skipped them – they were not worth the time or money for such a tiny little thing.

Before the show, Mer and I filled out “StarGrams” – you can write a message to a member of the cast or crew, and for 50 cents, it gets delivered backstage; the money gets used as a fundraiser for a missions trip to the Dominican Republic. Between me and Meredith, we filled out forty StarGrams while Aunt Mary read a book. We have a lot of students involved in the theater.

The play itself was excellent. The pit orchestra of about twelve students and a couple of adults got things going with the overture. The music was very good – there were one or two tiny mistakes, but over the course of a 2.5-hour musical (excluding intermission), that was amazing. I certainly could not have done it. The set was well done, and made up mostly of a den/library for Henry Higgins’ home and an exterior set for London. There were some other minor sets along the way as well, but the basic sets alternated between the two.

The cast of the musical was huge – there had to be thirty students involved, and there were a couple of times where they were almost all on stage (and our stage is not very big). The leads did very well, especially with staying in character with accents. It was a great show, and I enjoyed it very much.

On Friday of that week (the 29th), we headed over to Actors’ Summit theater. Mer had “won” four tickets at the CVCA auction to see the last show of the season, plus we had our normal subscriber seats. So, we had six tickets in all. We decided to use the extra tickets to invite our close family and family friends, so we invited Aunt Mary, “Aunt” Zovie, and Ray and Sara George. We though they would enjoy the evening because the show was a musical revue of Rodgers and Hammerstein music in a production called Some Enchanted Evening.

Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote some of the greatest musicals of the 40s and 50s, such as Oklahoma!, State Fair, and The Sound of Music. Needless to say, the music is pretty catchy. The musical revue was quite refreshing in that there was no attempt to make a loose story out of the music – it was just one song into another for about ninety minutes. The music was organized in a clever way so that a sappy love song might be followed by a cynical love song. The singers also acted out what was going on in the song, so there were a number of funny moments (especially in songs like “I  Cain’t Say No”). The music was all provided by a very excellent piano player, and the evening included four different actor-singers, two men and two women.

This revue was by far my favorite of the six or so that I have seen at Actors’ Summit. The music was fun and well done, and the music told its own short stories without the need to try to piece together some plot to tie them into a play. It worked really well. Everyone seemed to enjoy the music, and it was great getting to hang out with friends and family.