As usual, click on a photo to enlarge it, then back arrow to return to blog. Merwin took these photos the other day of a kestrel (a raptor) that sat for at least a half hour in our viburnum bush. It looks well puffed up, a sign that it is keeping warm with air insulation or that it has made a meal from the many birds that visit our feeders. About a foot high, it could turn its head almost completely around. Merwin is getting really good at these photos, taken through our kitchen window. The gnarly branches of the bush that Dave planted are as interesting to me as the flower-laden stage.
Dear Friends and Family,
Since some who read the blog have already assumed I am undertaking the Macbeth project (writing a chapter on its performance history for a book on the play, due next June), I may as well say that they knew me better than I know myself. I thought I was still mulling it over. Just yesterday I sent in my agreement to write the chapter, with Laury as my co-writer, and received an enthusistic response from the editors. I am psyched by the possibilities., and I fully intend to work on hamletworks.org as well.
Other (but related) Shakespeare news: in a response to my email to Arin Arbus, the Artistic Director of Theater for a New Audience, she wrote that (1) she liked my review of her Measure for Measure (phew!, I wasn't sure how she would take it) and (2) she would help me with her Macbeth that is in rehearsal now and will open next month. I see her production as, possibly, the centerpiece of our chapter. Cheek by Jowl is also doing a Macbeth next month at BAM, and I will try to include that one as well.
I also will make an effort to see any theater productions that TOFT ("Theater on Film and Tape") has captured. That's the collection filmmed and archived by the Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library. Unfortunately, they do not have the money to film every production, but they should have some Macbeths, perhaps the one with Patrick Stewart (Stuart?).
Yesterday, I also got an email from the Shakespeare Quarterly, a 3000 word doc, that the proof sheets for "Hamlet at Sea" will be coming my way in a couple of weeks—with a description all the attendant back-and-forth that I will have with the editors. Exciting.
I am feeling energized by all these projects, but my stamina is limited. Yesterday, after Sonia left, I was so wiped out by our exercises, walk etc, that instead of going out with Merwin as I thought I would, I took a long nap, actually falling asleep. Part of the problem is all the antihistamines I take to curb the itching (though it never stops entirely); they are soporific. Now, with the laptop on my lap, I am squirming with itches all over, some of which I cannot reach—not that scratching helps any.
The best news came this morning—that Dr. M and Amy want to see us again to determine if my bloods and general condition qualify me for a drug test. I worry because my bloods are not very good at all, way out of whack. Why can't these drug trials include some outliers among the cohort? Why can't they test the drug on the worst cases? I suppose they worry that someone like me may make their drug look bad. My other hope is that the Comfort drug, for which I did not qualify during the test, will be approved rapidly by the feds and be available to all by the end of this year.
More soon,
Love to all,
Bernice
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