A few weeks ago, our friend and fellow English teacher Ellen made the mistake of mentioning that she was teaching the modern play Rosecrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,by Tom Stoppard. Until a few years ago, Meredith taught the same play and had me read it. I found in the play lots of evidence of thought inspired by the philosophical implications of the branch of physics called quantum mechanics. I even developed a forty-minute lecture on the thesis, and had given it in Mer’s classes for three years before she stopped teaching the play (to add new material to her classes, not because of my lecture). Well, once I found out that Ellen was teaching the play, I immediatly and graciously invited myself out to her school in Michigan to give the lecture. I would get to share my talk, and Mer could even get ongoing education credit for visiting another teacher’s classroom. Ellen actually agreed to let me talk in her class, so we made a weekend of the trip.

We left Ohio last Friday (the 11th), and we stayed with Ellen all weekend, with visiting her classes last Monday. Mer and I got to Hillsdale, where Ellen lives and teaches, but we were there at about 8:00, and we knew that Ellen was away watching the Hillsdale basketball team in the playoffs. Since we had not eaten, we went to a local restaurant, Johnny T’s, and had a leisurely supper. Ellen was home by the time we got there, a little after 9:00.

Saturday, I actually went running on Hillsdale’s walking trail. It goes by a very pretty lake that I had not known was in the town, and it was a nice run (although very windy on the way back). Before we left Ohio, I had set out Mer’s bag o’ grading on the rocking chair by the door, which we both promptly forgot. Mer had a ton of grading and reading to do, so to be helpful, I went out in the vast metropolis that is Hillsdale to try to find her a copy of The Kite Runner, which she was about to teach and needed to finish reading. I found and unsuccessfully tried a used book store in town, although I walked out with three other books. My favorite part of the used book store – as part of the organization of the store, in the travel section, they had a section called “cold countries.” After the used book store, I actually tried WalMart, setting foot in one for the first time in my life. Happily I did not have to patronize the store since I was not interested in vampire books. Near WalMart was a Blockbuster store that was going out of business. I popped in to see if they had anything interesting, and about an hour later walked out with seven or eight movies, mostly literature-based films, including the film version of The Kite Runner. I am afraid by this time I had taken way longer than Mer had expected me to be gone, so I tried to call her, but could not get any signal. So, I drove back to Hillsdale proper and pulled over and called her as soon as the phone started working. I then tried two last stores in town to see if they had the book, with no luck.

Once back at Ellen’s, we ate lunch, and then Mer and I napped. When we woke up, Ellen had procured a copy of The Kite Runner from the library, so Mer was able to finish her book over the course of the weekend. We spent the rest of Saturday puttering and eating and being mellow.

Sunday, we went to Ellen’s new church, which is a Presbyterian church that recently started meeting in Hillsdale. It was a good service, with a very solid sermon on the suffering Jesus felt as he prayed in the garden the night before he was crucified. After church, we had lunch, and I took yet another nap. Mer and I also ventured out to the lake to see it, but the wind was very cold, so we did not stay long. In the evening, we went to the next town over to The Saucy Dog barbecue restaurant, which was very good.

Monday, we followed Ellen to the school – she had to be there at 8:00, but did not start teaching until 9:25, so we got to the school at about 9:15. We got to see Ellen teach a very good and interesting class on sonnets, including a couple of George Herbert sonnets that I had not seen before that were excellent. Ellen then had a class on Dante’s Paradiso, which was also very good. Mer went along with Ellen to her Latin class, but I stayed in the lounge and read, since I have no background in Latin at all.

Then, in the afternoon, I got to give my talk on Rosecrantz and quantum mechanics. The students were very well behaved, and I thought things went very well. The basic gist of the lecture is that quantum mechanics influenced postmodern thought, and that postmodern thought shows up in droves in Rosencrantz. So, things that are important in quantum mechanics, like location of objects, movement of objects, objects being governed by probability, objects “popping up” in strange locations, objects existing in two modes at the same time, and so on, all show up in various forms in Rosecrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The students asked some very good questions at the end of the lecture, and Ellen was very excited about the ideas. She rebuked her students for not showing more enthusiasm, which led to a student replying with the great quotation “Just because we aren’t yelling doesn’t mean we aren’t interested.” It was a good time.

Mer and I left pretty directly after that class, and we got home at around 5:30, which left Mer with plenty of time to jump into her grading. We lecture people don’t do grading.