I got up Monday morning at about 7:00 and read a chapter in my Bible (I was in Isaiah at the time). Once I finished, I took a run into town to Dunkin’ Donuts to get a hot chocolate and sandwich. While there, I picked up a coffee for Nate and a tea for Rachel. I got back to camp just as breakfast was being served, and the students were wandering in to the kitchen. After breakfast, one of the students (Lauren) read a psalm, and then we got ready for the work day.

We got divided up into groups again. We sent three loads of students to a local Habitat for Humanity chapter. This Habitat did all the framing for houses inside a large warehouse. Once the walls are framed, they get sent out to the job site once the weather gets nice enough for construction. So, the three groups spent the day framing inside the warehouse.

I stayed back at Camp Carl with a group of eight students. We spent most of the day doing landscaping of one kind or another. We split our group in half, and half of the kids worked on raking rocks out of the grass along the gravel roads (so the lawnmowers would not hit the rocks), and the other half was spreading topsoil on a new embankment (with a few students helping to clean windows in the chapel along the way). The topsoil was still fairly wet, so we had some trouble in parts spreading it effectively. But, in the end, I think it looked pretty good.

Our topsoil group them moved on to a job of moving several piles of mulch. The much had been dumped near the office building of the camp, and was now in the way of some landscaping improvements. So, we spread the mulch out along the edge of the building using shovels and pitchforks (the pitchforks worked really well), and that carried us to lunch.

We had leftovers from the church dinner for lunch, and we got warm again (it was only about 32-33 degrees out). We took our time, but got back at it after about 45 minutes. We finished moving the mulch piles, and then we helped one of the camp workers, Chuck, spread out plastic along the ground so that weeds could not grow there. Chuck then jumped in the Bobcat (small tractor) and started dumping topsoil on the plastic, while we spread it around. By now, it had started raining/sleeting lightly, and so the topsoil started to behave like clay and caked on our boots and clumped together. The work was hard and it was cold and wet, but the kids took it in stride. I never heard any serious complaining (there was lots of joking around). Chuck was very precise in dumping his dirt – if you happened to be near where he wanted to dump, you had to get out of the way in a hurry. This made for a few close (but not too close) calls, and much merriment was made in fear of the Bobcat coming for you in the night. After we got the plastic about 3/4 covered, Chuck finally stopped work for the day – the topsoil was simply too wet to work with. So, we gathered up our tools and called it a day at about 3:15.

Since we only had one shower for the guys, and since I still had the key to the apartment, I went back to the apartment shower where I could take a really long and hot shower. I have back issues, and my back was really stiff, and the hot water helped to loosen it up. Once I was able to move fairly normally, I went back to the main building and chatted with a couple of students and typed up some notes.

The other group came back, and Craig and Nate told me that the kids had knocked out in one day what Habitat had thought would take most of the week. This is pretty typical for our trips – our kids always seem to get more done than is expected. It did mean that there was going to be some rearranging of groups for the next few days, and Craig and Nate started trying to figure out where else we could go to serve.

Craig had a grad school class that evening, so he headed off in my car for that after supper. We had a hang-out time for awhile, and then we had a time of worship. One of the girls, Kaity, asked us to pray for her mom; her mom was having fairly risky surgery for cancer that evening. We prayed, and then sang a few songs, and then Nate shared some thoughts out of Romans 12.  “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”

Nate touched on not thinking more highly of ourselves that we ought to, and he was talking about how we each have gifts to use and how that works like a body, but I can’t give more specifics. One, I did not take notes after the worship time (or for the rest of the trip, which was dumb since it has taken me so long to get to typing things up). Two, partway through Nate’s talk, Kaity got a text message that her mom’s surgery was not going well – there was a lot of bleeding. We all immediately stopped, and the girls gathered around Kaity and everyone prayed. That was right and appropriate, but it also ended Nate’s talk, so I cannot tell you more about his points. The good news is that Kaity’s mom came through the surgery okay, and the surgeons got 80% of the cancer. Her mom is supposed to go in for out-patient surgery for the other 20% this week.

Craig got back and was apprised of the situation. Kaity insisted she wanted to stay on the trip, so we took her at her word. Craig had also gotten the names of some ministries we might be able to help, and so he was going to contact them the next day to see if we could arrange a schedule.

Craig always points out how these trips create community, and how Christians are supposed to live in community. It was sobering but heartwarming to see a collection of different “cliques” of students become a community in support of Kaity. The students reached out in compassion to someone in need, and a small display of the love of Jesus resulted. CVCA’s students never cease to amaze me, and I am proud of them for their hearts and their service.

Craig made the decision on this trip that we would use Sunday as a day of rest. In past years, we used Sunday as the travel day – we would all leave after church services, usually about noon on Sunday, and use the afternoon and evening to get to our site and get set up. Since we were staying local this year, we could use Sunday as a day of rest and relaxation. I was a huge supporter of this – on last year’s trip we had a rough time with sickness, with several people getting quite ill. It was my hope that taking a day off would help people stay better rested and healthier (and that indeed was the case – we only had one case of a girl getting ill and going home on Sunday evening – everyone else stayed healthy). This was probably our healthiest year on the trips I have been on, and I think taking a day of rest was instrumental in this.

Nate and I started the day out on an errand run – we had to go to town (Ravenna in this case) to get bread for lunch. Since we were in town anyway, we stopped by Dunkin’ Donuts to pick up hot chocolate and a breakfast sandwich for me, and a coffee and sandwich for Nate (and a tea for Rachel). Not a bad deal for running an errand. As it turns out, that little run was very useful to me as I used it several more times during the trip to jump-start my mornings (I went there three out of five mornings).

We got back to camp and scouted out the chapel space. It was a nice facility, including having a built-in projector. The only problem was that we could not find the heat, and it was about 50 degrees in the room. This was a concern to me since I was supposed to play guitar for worship (on Palm Sunday ,no less). Now, I am an adequate guitar player as long as I know the songs. Sadly, most songs I know are from 15 years ago. Nonetheless, I prepared two songs that I thought would be okay – I did not have time to get more ready. I had found out on Friday afternoon that I might be needed to play, and so Sunday found me trying to warm my fingers up enough to play. The kids came in at about 10:00, and I played my two songs. Happily, I had lots of help vocally from some talented students, and I think the playing went well enough – not good, but considering how stiff my hands were it was okay. It had amazed me that you could go anywhere with a group of 25 students and not have a guitar player in the group, and it happily turned out that we had a good guitar player in the group who came forward after the speakers to play one more song and then played for worship times the rest of the week.

But back to the service for Palm Sunday. We had two of the adult chaperons speak. My boss, Jim Gaul, spoke briefly on the freedom and joy he feels at Easter. He mentioned how he was raised Catholic and had come to believe that he had to make sure his good deeds outweighed his bad deeds. When he finally heard a clear presentation of the Gospel, he realized he could not earn his way into heaven (by doing more good than bad), and he embraced the freedom (from guilt and sin) that God gives through the Good News. This freedom brings joy to the life of the believer, and Jim encouraged us to live in and experience that freedom and joy year-round.

Ami (“Dubbs”) then spoke about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. She talked about all the various signs that announced kingship to the Jewish people – the king (Messiah) was supposed to come from the Mount of Olives, people spread their cloaks for the king, runners/messengers were sent ahead of the king (the two disciples sent to get the colt), the king was supposed to come on a donkey colt, and was greeted by cheering crowds. All of these exciting things happened, but the crowd still turned on Jesus just a few days later. She used that as an illustration for our lives – if our Savior was not above hard times and suffering, then we should not be surprised when they come on us as well. Christianity is not a pain-free existence, but it offers joy. The crowd turned on Jesus because they were expecting the wrong kind of Messiah (king). They thought Jesus would lead them to victory over Rome, when he in fact led people to victory over sin if they would follow him. Dubbs warned us not to expect the wrong kind of Messiah – Jesus had pain and troubles, and we are not above our master, so we will have pain and troubles as well. But Jesus will supply the joy we need.

After the closing song (which I did not have to play), we had free time. I decided to use that time to go running. Usually I take Sundays off from running, but it had been several days since I had run, and it was a pretty day, and there were several guys going so it would be a social time. So, I went off with Jim and Nate and a student, Matt. We went trail running, which was very muddy and fairly slow, but fun and interesting (and supplied good bantering). We got back to the camp after about 4.5 miles, and Nate headed inside, but Matt, Jim and I put in two more miles on the trails. I felt good, and I was glad to get out running again.

  I got back and showered in the apartment. I then headed over to the chapel and set up my Wii (which I had brought along) so that kids could play if they wanted. I then went back to the apartment and napped for two hours. Nate woke me up and told me we were moving things into the main center (the college girls had left). I gathered my things and moved them, and found out that the male chaperons had given me the (one) private bedroom. I was touched and very happy. I operate much better on a good night’s sleep, and the private bedroom worked very well for me. Much later after the trip I found out that Dubbs had been sleeping on the floor in her room because of overcrowding. I wish I had known – she could have had my air mattress.

I spent a little time playing games (I won in a game of Blokus), and then I got ready for church. We were all going to Nate’s church for a fellowship dinner that his church combined with communion and a foot-washing service. I had never been to a foot-washing service before. We got to the church and headed into the basement, where the fellowship hall is. I got there a bit later than everyone else – I had stayed behind to make sure the girl that was ill met up with her father okay (which she did). We sang a few hymns (they were very nice), and then listened to some scriptures. The group was then divided into men and women, and we went to different rooms to wash each other’s feet. This involved sticking your feet in pleasantly warm water and having the person next to you scoop the water over your feet. It was novel to me, but it was okay. I got to wash the pastor’s feet – he was sitting next to me. After we washed our hands, we headed back to the hall and to an excellent meal. The meal was made up of various casseroles that were passed around. We ended the evening with communion. It was a very good service. I also got to see a couple of people who used to go to my church but whom I had not seen in about eight years. They had always been very kind to me, and I was happy to see them again.

After church, we headed over to Strickland’s Ice Cream. Strickland’s sells custard, which is a high-fat soft-serve ice cream. Craig was using trip money to buy everyone ice cream, so we all lined up. I got a turtle sundae, but I ordered a large (we were supposed to get smalls). I told Craig I don’t do small, and we agreed he would not take my ice cream money and I would not take his gas money (for the use of my car). Gas for ice cream always works in the Riordan economy.

After we had all had our yummy treats, we headed back to camp. We had a hang-out time where people talked and played games, and I used the time to type up notes. It was a great day of rest.

Saturday, April 4th was the start of spring break for me and Meredith. This year I was going to spend my break by going with about 30 CVCA students and chaperons on a service trip. Our service group at school (Diakonos) goes on a service trip every year during spring break, and this was my fourth year of tagging along.

I started the day fairly early by taking Mer to the Cleveland airport. She was going to fly down to Orlando to see her parents, and she was kind enough to book her tickets so they matched up with how long I was going to be gone (Saturday-Thursday evening). That would give us Friday-Monday (we had Easter Monday off) in order to have a mini-break together.

At about 8:15, I got back to CVCA, where the Diakonos group was meeting. Usually we go out of state (one year to Pennsylvania and two years to Michigan), but due to changes in state laws that made it difficult to go out of state, the decision was made to stay fairly local this year. As such, instead of using the first day to travel to the location, this year we were able to meet at CVCA, divide into several groups, and head off to various work sites right away. We split into three teams – one team went to a Habitat for Humanity work site to help out with spreading  gravel for a foundation. That work only took a few hours, so they then headed back to CVCA to do garbage clean-up around campus, which was very nice of them. The second team went to a homeless shelter/soup kitchen and spent the day serving food and cleaning around the shelter and kitchen. My group went to the church of one of the trip leaders (Nate’s church) to help them out with a community work day. Basically, the church was making itself available to do work for anyone who had need. The church was also serving a pancake breakfast, so the kids got a nice meal to start things off. On the job front, some of the projects had to be put on hold – it was a cold and overcast day (at least at the start), so the car-washing team had to give up on that idea. Our CVCA kids were mixed in with the local church members and sent off to various job sites of yard work and such. Nate and I were assigned to help an older woman clean out her gutters. Her house was only a block or so from the church, so we headed up there. It turns out her gutters were in very good shape. There were a few leaves and seed pods (the “helicopter” seeds) that had to be cleaned out, and I scraped out some roofing asphalt muck from around the downspouts. The lady was a widow, and super nice. I think she was lonely, and she spent a good deal of the time talking with Nate. She also insisted on paying us, so we gave her money over to the church to be used to buy food for people in need. All in all, cleaning her gutters only took a few minutes, but we talked with her for a fair amount, and headed back to the church after about an hour or so.

We then headed over to the big job site of the day – as they finished their first jobs, the church groups were all meeting at a local baseball field to clean it up and do some painting. At the park, we raked leaves, cleaned up trash, trimmed back brush, scraped and painted bleachers, and trimmed and mowed grass. There was a Little League practice going on, and the sun started to poke through the clouds, so the day was quite pleasant. I tried to keep busy by scraping and painting, but soon there were more hands than work, so I puttered with leaf and stick clean-up. Craig (the trip’s leader) has stressed that we should allow the kids to serve, and sometimes that means adults backing off work when there are more workers than jobs. That is wise too, in that I get tired faster than the kids do, so it “saves me” for future work days. It is still hard to admit that I can’t keep up with 17- and 18-year-olds, but that is the truth.

The church sent over some folks with a hot-dog-and-chips lunch, and we kept working until we had the place looking pretty decent. Nate had been mowing, but was asked to stop by a coach who was trying to run a practice, so we packed things up at about 2:00. We sent a few of the kids ahead with Nate’s wife (Rachel) to start getting the evening meal ready, and the rest of us went back to Nate’s church to do some clean-up around the church grounds. 

After we finished at the church, the kids piled into Nate’s van, and I got into my trusty hatchback, and we headed off to go to “the Tavern.” The Tavern is an old-fashioned-style tavern that a friend of Nate’s built. The Tavern has no heat except for a fireplace and a stove, it is lit by kerosene lanterns, and it is pretty darn cool. It has a small kitchen outbuilding where Rachel and the students were busy at work getting supper ready over a large kitchen fire. Rachel is an amazing cook, but I was impressed – it cannot be fun to try to get food ready for 30 people when you have to rely on fireplaces and woodstoves. She pulled it off nicely, though. She made a large cauldron of ham soup, and corn bread, and potatoes. We always eat well on these trips.

The students who had come with us roamed around the woods of the Tavern, and I took the time to call Dale and Carlene to make sure Mer had arrived safely. She had, and was in fact out with her father on a spa date to get a pedicure.

Nate and I then took my car over to where we would actually be staying for the week – Camp Carl. Camp Carl is a Christian camp run by the Chapel in Akron, and it is a huge camp with hundreds of acres of woods and trails. We went back there to touch base with the rest of the Diakonos team, and to then lead them back the short (but hard to find) distance to the Tavern. We all made it just fine, and the new arrivals were deeply impressed by the Tavern.

We spent a bit of time then until supper chatting and exploring. Supper was served, to great acclaim, and then we played games for about an hour while the clean-up crew took care of the supper things. Once everyone was back in the Tavern itself, we had a time of worship where we sang three song (two of which we did a cappella, which was very nice).

Craig then spoke for a short while on Romans 12:1-2:  “I beseech you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to prove by you what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God.”

Craig pointed out that Romans 12 has come after Paul has used 11 chapters to state the case of how sin has separated us from God and then how God’s great mercy brings us back to him. As such, everything we do should be motivated by the great mercy of God. The message of Romans 12 is to Christians (as opposed to everyone in the world), and it tells us how we should be and behave. We should not be molded (conformed) to the standards of the world. We should stick out and appear to be odd. God’s mercy demands all of us – there are no part-time Christians; there are no 10% Christians. It is an all-or-nothing proposition. There is no room to live in the world by the world’s standards and rules, and then “tack on” a little Christianity to make us feel better.

We then cleaned up the Tavern and headed back to Camp Carl at about 10:00. The main building of the camp was in use by a group of college girls for Saturday night only, so we were staying in the outlying cabins. When I got to the boys’ cabin, the bunks were mostly full, and the offer was made that Nate and I could stay in one of the camp’s apartments. I gladly accepted, and Nate and I headed over to the apartment. There was one bed, but since I had brought my air mattress, I let Nate have the bed. We were quickly in bed and asleep (although Nate talked in his sleep a little – I think it was about track, which he helps coach).

I discovered in getting ready for bed that I had a mild sunburn on my neck. Pasty white Maine boy managed to get a sunburn on a 40-degree day. That is impressive! I had a pretty good sleep, although I did have to get up during the night to turn up the heat. Otherwise, it was a quiet night, and a good day.

Tuesday was a mini date-day; Mer took me to Chick-fil-A. Our girls’ basketball team was having a fund raiser at the restaurant that night. We like Chick-fil-A, and then we would get to support one of our teams as well. It was a win-win.

It was fun – we were cheered into the parking lot by a group of students, and the restaurant was bursting with CVCA folks. It was a casual evening, and we ate some good food. It was a nice example of community.

Wednesday Mer and I headed out to the Hibernian Club to go dancing with the CVCA Ceili Club. We danced for about an hour, and we had a good time. The only down side was that two of the students got sick to their stomachs after swinging a lot in one particular dance (the Rakes of Mallow). They had eaten heavily in Amish country on a field trip that afternoon, and their stomachs did not respond well to the dancing. Even with that, they thought it was a fun evening. It really is great to dance to live music.

Okay, okay…so my blog has suffered mightily over the last month. I went away for 10 days in the first week of April, and I have not caught back up. I’ll try to rectify that over the next week or so.

Saturday (March 29th) was “my” day as far as date days went. We had a leisurely late breakfast at Yasoo (which is also the Hamburger Station for lunch and dinner – never been to another restaurant that changes its name during the day). I had the granola French toast, which was tasty, but it was odd to have crunchy French toast.

I tend to have rough ideas of what I want to do on “my” days, but sometimes I lack the specifics. This Saturday was a nice day, so I knew I wanted to go for a hike/walk. We went back home and I jumped on line and went to the Metro Parks website for our area, and I found a trail very close by called Hampton Hills. It was only about 4 miles away and it was rated as “one of the park district’s most demanding hikes.” That made the choice quite easy. It was off to Hampton Hills, to the Adam Run trail, about 3 miles long.

There were no leaves on the trees, and so the park still had a wintery look to it. There were also some sections of the trail that were still quite muddy. Despite that, it was a nice day and the trail was a windy, up-and-down trail that was quite to my liking. There were small ravines and staircases cut in the trail, and the leafless trees had a stark beauty that was very pleasant. We had a grand time tromping around.

For evening fun, I took Mer to Aladdin’s, a Mediterranean restaurant we both quite enjoy. One of Mer’s former students was back home on break and was working at Aladdin’s for some extra money. That gave us the excuse to go, and it was good to see Cara again (and good to eat at Aladdin’s again!).

Mer had a gift certificate to Blockbuster that had been given to her by a student, so we went there to get a movie. After some aimless wandering looking at the dearth of good movies, I found a movie called Priceless. It was a French (in French) movie about a man who falls in love with a girl who likes to be a kept woman. In order to be close to her, the man becomes a kept man of a rich, older woman. It was morally sketchy, but it still had its charms, and we both enjoyed it.

After the movie, we were talking about kept people, and made the observation that you rarely see anyone who is rich (athlete, actor, etc.) with anyone who is unattractive. To that, Mer replied, “I’d settle for someone average!” I really was not sure how to take that – we had a good laugh when Mer realized the object of her proclamation could easily be taken for me (as opposed to “I’d settle for [seeing someone famous with] someone [who’s just] average” ). It’s nice to see Mer can screw up linguistically once in a blue moon (to make up for my weekly faux pas).

Last Thursday we had the third Fools’ improv show of the year. I decided it was time to take a risk, and so I got permission to do the show in the chapel/auditorium. The chapel is a much bigger space that what I was used to in the library. The library can hold 80-90 people maximum, and we had been at that level for a few shows – I wanted to try a space that could hold more people. Another plus of the chapel is that it has a real stage. The Fools tend to hit the floor a fair amount in the course of shows, and having people on a stage means the audience can still see you even when you are on the ground. That was always a problem in the library. My biggest concern was sound – the Fools operate unmiked, and I was afraid that we would have trouble projecting in the bigger space.

Anyway, I was pleased with the results. After the show, I talked with about ten different people and they all said sound was no problem. The Fools did indeed hit the floor (in the very first scene, in fact), but everyone could still see them. The energy did not seem to suffer for being on a real stage either – I was afraid that being about 15 feet away from the audience and about 3 feet up on stage might make the audience-Fool connection be strained, but it seemed okay to me. Best of all, the place did not feel empty. The back wings of the chapel can be closed by retractable curtains, which makes a more intimate space that can still hold about 300 people. That could have felt very empty, but we had a new record attendance for a Fools’ show. One of my Fools counted the people while she was off stage, and she counted 102 people. That was very exciting.

Feedback from the show seemed largely positive. It was not just politeness – people told Meredith that it was a good show, and they volunteered the information the next day without being asked. I overheard a couple of people talking to each other about the show and they seemed to be happy with it. Mer thought it might have been our strongest show yet. I think it is safe to say we’ll be back in the chapel again for our last show of the year in May.

During the show, we had:

– A superhero called DanceMan who could not dance

– A man who had married a martian who used to have three heads and had been married to her cousin on Mars

– A dating game with Sean Connery, Jack Bauer from 24, and Jim Carrey

– An answering machine full of messages about all the leaves that were taking over the neighborhood

– A half-life game about learning to ski (including a very impressive 6-second version of the scene)

– A criminal who did not like the Godfather movies

– A taxi driver at Disneyworld who gets killed by a swordfish

– A scene about trying out different pick-up lines

– A musical chairs about a teen accidentally talking in code to a stranger, which led the FBI to investigate her home

– A genre rewind about breaking a vase that got rewound as a musical and a documentary

– A political debate about the merits of hiccups and of waffles

It was a very fun show. I’m looking forward to the next one! 

Last Wednesday was a rare mid-week treat for me and Mer. Ombusdsman was bachin’ it, so he wanted to go out for supper. So, we agreed to “do” Chinese and headed through the Valley to West Akron (actually Montrose) to go to the House of Hunan. Craig had eaten there before and proclaimed it to be quite good, and he was right.

The restaurant was about a third full, and so we got a table right away. We ordered and the food came very quickly (Mer was even still in the bathroom). Craig showed us up be eating with chop sticks in an easy manner. I ordered my Chinese staple, orange chicken (which I’m sure Jo will proclaim as the BEST chicken ever because it is ORANGE!!!). It was quite tasty, and it made Mer happy because it had snow peas and broccoli (she gets an odd satisfaction from seeing me eat vegetables).

We chatted about a bunch of things, including work of course. Since all three of us are at CVCA, it is a natural thing to discourse on. Any extended conversation with Craig tends to be very amusing, so it was a meal well spent – good food and relaxed atmosphere.

As good as Chinese food is, they do not do great (by Riordan standards) desserts, so we skipped dessert at the restaurant and instead made the trip to the Handel’s Ice Cream near our house. Mer and I swapped dessert preferences – she got the Blizzard-like “Hurricane” and I got a hot fudge sundae. Ombudsman got a raspberry-chocolate flavor which he expressed satisfaction over. After we had solved all the world’s problems by chatting in the car over ice cream, we dropped Craig at school so he could get his car, and we headed home. It was a nice way to cheat the week.

Last Sunday, Mer and I went to Weathervane Theater in the Valley to go see A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen. We were meeting several other teachers there – if there are spare tickets available (and it was likely on a Sunday matinee), then Weathervane will sell the tickets to teachers one half-hour before the show for 50% off. So, we happily picked up two tickets for $10.00 each.

Weathervane is a community playhouse, which means it uses community actors. In this particular play, the major bad guy was played by one of our CVCA colleagues (actually, he is the head of the Bible Department, which adds some fun irony when he plays bad guys). I have generally liked productions that I have seen at the theater, so I was looking forward to the outing.

Going into the play, I knew almost nothing about A Doll’s House; I knew it was vaguely about a wife who left her abusive husband. It turns out that is a very overly simple perspective of the play. The play was originally in Norwegian, and this was a relatively new translation by a playwright who did not speak Norwegian. He used several different literal translations of the play, and then updated the language and cut away extra characters that had smaller parts (like the maid and the children).

The play revolved around five characters: a husband and wife, her old school friend who is looking for work, a family friend who is a doctor dying of complications from his father’s venereal disease, and a man who works for a bank that the husband is now about to manage. As the play unfolds, it turns out the wife had borrowed money from the banker who is desperate to keep his job and tries to blackmail the wife. All the events of the play revolve around how this plays out, covering three acts and three different days over a few weeks.

The play was well acted. I liked the main character (the wife) very much. She had a desperate energy that propelled her through the play. The other actors were also very fine. Our colleague did a nice job of playing a threatening and desperate man (the banker).

The writing of the play is very nice. The plot unfolds in an unhurried way, and you do not get to see the true characters of the people involved until the third act. At that point, the two main characters are very complex. The husband who had seemed nice but overly patronizing suddenly reveals that he is a selfish and egotistical character with almost no regard for his wife when the crisis hits. The wife turns out to be stronger than we would have expected, but is equally selfish in her own way. When she explains to her husband that she is leaving him and the children until (in modern terms) she “finds herself,” it reads like a poorly written love-yourself book from the 60s and 70s. And yet you still can see why she does it. There is no one to really pull for and no one to really hate. I guess that is why Ibsen is seen as an important figure in the realist movement.

It was fun to get to see a play with three other teachers (and two other people with them), and I do enjoy seeing people I know act. It makes me feel like part of the “in” crowd. The play went almost three hours, but it did not feel like it. Sadly, Mer and I could not stay for the talk-back portion of the show since we had to get home (I had an evening meeting to get to). Still, it was a worthwhile outing.

Last Saturday was Mer’s date day, and she started off by sleeping in, which I was quite happy about. She then happily took me to breakfast at Friendly’s since we had a two-for-one coupon. Happily full, we made our way back home for a mellow and kitty-rich listening of Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me while we lounged in bed.

Once we were ready to face the day itself, we headed out and ran a few errands. Since one of the errands took us to downtown Akron, we used the excuse to swing by and check out the University of Akron’s Artspace. Artspace is a small gallery where the university displays various student work, and this collection was highlighting work by promising art students. I’m very proud to say that one of my former Fools and a friend of mine has two paintings being displayed (I’m proud even though I had absolutely nothing to do with anything artistic in her life!).

I liked Artspace. It was small, but it still held about 40 works. They were mostly paintings, but there were a few sculptures and some photographs. There were abstract and modern works and there were more traditional works, but I liked them very much. Obviously I was biased towards Michelle’s (my friend’s) work, which was a painting of her sister as a sort of dryad with her hair tangled in the branches of a tree, and a painting of a fallen native American surrounded by various animals (with just a touch of the fantastic about it). Above and beyond my bias though, there were some other works that were very good. There was a simple painting of a tree that was excellent – lots of black paint layered up to produce textures of the tree – well done. There was a thought-provoking painting of a woman sitting on the floor holding a small glass globe where inside was a woman holding what appeared to be a bloody knife. What struck me was the larger woman’s expression – it was kind of glazed over – almost bored. I also liked a paining of a winter scene where a woman was tied to the wrists of another man, and she was blindfolded. Mer was disturbed by the picture, as was I, but I liked the color and the rendering of the woman’s expression on her face (she was obviously scared). Mer and I both liked a whimsical painting of a bunch of fantastical monsters at play (with two licking ice cream). That was a fun piece. So, Artspace was a big hit! Oh – Mer and I were both able to identify Michelle’s work without reading the placard. That made us happy.

After Artspace, Mer took me to an early supper at the ubiquitous Olive Garden. We had a nice supper on our gift card, and even took home food for lunch on Sunday.

We went home and quickly got ready for the main event of Saturday. I had been happily given 12 free tickets to take some CVCA students (mostly members of the Irish Dance club) to go see Summit Choral Society’s “Parade of Irish Music” at the Akron Civic Theater. I love the Civic Theater. It is a wonderful 1920s theater that is pretty much garish in its over-the-top ornamentation of the entire space. For some reason it works. There is gold leaf and fancy woodwork and all sorts of classical statues everywhere, and I just love it. The best part of the theater’s decor is the ceiling – it is a sky, with lights as stars and clouds that really move across the sky. I have never come up with a good explanation of how the clouds work. What a wonderful theater.

We had good seats – our group was on the right-hand side of the theater, about 12-14 rows back. That put us over by the small but excellent band the Choral Society brought in. They had a keyboard, pipes, whistles, a hammer dulcimer, a bodhran (Irish drum), normal drums, guitar, and fiddle. The director said these musicians do not normally play together, but they had a great sound.

The Choral Society did a bunch of songs. The started with three pieces from the Irish church, and followed that with a drinking song (and probably said much about Ireland right there!). They sang dance songs and ballads, and even had a sing-along in the second half. They had a smaller group that performed several songs from Riverdance during the second half as well, including a song that we do not have on our CD of Riverdance (a song about freedom from poverty, where the lead was sung by a powerful tenor who was black – nicely done). It was great.

They also invited along a school of Irish dance, in full costume. I think that is what my students liked best. They were very good. They were mostly girls (there were two guys out of about 30 dancers), and they looked to range in age from about 4 to about 18. They did probably five different numbers or so, and even danced a Ceili (social) dance with some of the members of the Choral Society.

I am not always a shy person, and so I talked to the pipes player during intermission. He was very nice and took the time to show me his pipes. He was playing the Highland small pipes, which are played like the traditional Scottish bagpipes, but are smaller and are played with a bellows driven by the elbow (as opposed to breathing into a bag as one would with the traditional pipes). He also gave me the name of a man in Cuyahoga Falls who builds the very cool Irish bagpipes (the Uilleann pipes). I love talking with musicians.

The kids seemed to enjoy the evening, and they were very well behaved. It was, once again, a very fine day.

Last Saturday was “my” Saturday – a Saturday where I was in charge. Mer and had a leisurely morning; I blogged and Mer slept in, and then we listened to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me from bed. Recently, our public radio station moved Wait Wait from 1:00 back to 11:00, and so it makes it possible on very lazy mornings to listen from the comfort of a cat-laden bed.

After Wait Wait, Mer wanted to get her hair cut, and since it was a beautiful day I went running. I ran about 4.7 miles at a fairly slow pace. I was tired (it was my sixth day in a row for running), but I enjoyed the sun and I listened to part of Sense and Sensibility on my iPod (from the *free* website Lit2go, from the University of South Florida!).

After we both got back (and I showered), I took Mer to lunch at a local hole-in-the-wall, Hamburger Station. It is a small diner that mostly serves burgers and fries, and they are pretty cheap. The burgers are “sliders” – small hamburgers that are only 99 cents. I had two and a pretty good bunch of fries, while Mer got one burger and some chili cheese fries.

Since we had both recently had the ice cream bug, I took Mer to Handel’s ice cream for dessert. I really do love Handel’s – I think they have the best ice cream stand going (although Ben and Jerry’s is pretty fantastic in the store-bought variety). I bought a couple of Thin Mint Girl Scout Handel pops to take home, in addition to our eat-there ice cream. It was quite satisfying.

We went home and I took my usual weekend nap. That got me well rested for the evening’s main event. We got in the car and drove the 90 minutes to Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. We had two former students with roles in Grove City’s production of My Fair Lady, and the tickets were free, so we went to see it.

I really like My Fair Lady. I think it is an interesting and funny musical. I love the characters; Higgins is wonderfully rude, and Mr. Doolittle is just plain funny, and Eliza is a great character that you pull for. I enjoy the songs very much, and the dialogue is fun.

Grove City did a great job with this play. They had a huge cast (probably upwards of 40 students) and a full pit orchestra. The pit at Grove can be raised and lowered, so the orchestra was just slightly below the stage, which forced the sound up rather than out, which made the lyrics easier to hear. The stage crew had built a 3-foot-wide “U”-shaped thrust around the pit, which led to some breath-holding dance numbers where I was afraid the actors were going to fall. Off to one side was an impressive opera house facade and on the other was a pub facade. The great bulk of the main stage was taken by a three-level set, that was mostly used for the interior of Higgins’s house. It was a tremendous set.

My friend Kevin is a junior at Grove, and he got to play the old English bachelor, Colonel Pickering. He did a great job at it – he even grew a beard (which was colored grey); I have never seen Kevin unshaven, let alone hirsute. Mer’s former student Austin (a freshman) played a drunken friend of Mr. Doolittle. That looked to be a fun role – lots of revelry. The other actors were very fine, and the sound was excellent. It was a good time, and since Mer gave extra credit to students to go see it (since it is based on a Shaw play that she teaches), we got to see a number of CVCA students, and even a few alumni were at the show as well.

My Fair Lady is a long play, coming in at just under three hours. It was a tribute to the show that the evening did not drag at all, and I only got antsy just before intermission. It was worth the price of admission (and even the three hours of driving).