All chicks in the nest

Annetine (Harvey's host in Norway), Rachael (his older twin daughter) and Fiona (scientist from Glasgow, Scotland. Norway was festive), full of celebrations for Constitution Day. It must have been cold there!

Dear family and friends,

Harvey phoned on his ride home from the airport to Connecticut and filled us in on his doings in Oslo, where he was very busy with a collaboration he is involved in. A paper is in process, and Merwin and I expect to be proof-readers, commentators. We are very proud of his important work.

Arthur called too, and though we said we would return the call in the evening, since we were busy when he called, somehow we never got to it. We'll call today. His month could be exciting—or not.

Lincoln won a prize in a costume contest, and Dave was helpful in his usual ways. We didn't talk to Rachael, but Merwin tracked her travel and learned when she landed. So all the chicks are now accounted for. We hope to talk to all the grandchildren too, this weekend. Ha! both of us actually have an aversion to phone calls, so though the talking itself is wonderful it is hard to get ourselves to make the calls.

The graduate student from Reno who is helping hamletworks.org phoned me yesterday evening. I am sure he will a hardworking asset to the project. For the moment, though, as a graduate student in an American university he is teaching a course for the first time in his experience, and of course the preparation and the classroom work, plus papers, will keep him very busy. So he plans to work for hamletworks.org only a couple of hours a day until the course is over. Whatever he does will be very helpful.

I am feeling pretty perky in spite of or because of the prednisone taper. The red spots on my arms are fading. I have to rest now and then, but I am not laid low for hours as I had been a few months ago. So I can look forward to taking long walks, riding my stationary bike, and even getting back to the JCC before too long, probably after I check in with the orthopedist on Monday. The pain is there, but I try to ignore it.

Eric sent a long review of an edition of Middleton that he wrote for the Shakespeare Quarterly with a colleague and friend, in the shape of a dialogue. Brilliant. Controversial. What annoys me about the editor of the edition, Gary Taylor, is that he claims for Middleton what is usually ascribed to Shakespeare—including Macbeth and Measure for Measure. True, there are probably some stanzas in each that could be Middleton's: Shakespeare often collaborated with others. But the plays as a whole, as most scholars think, are Shakespeare's. Taylor likes Middleton's politics better than Shakespeare's—the reason, he has stated, that he wanted to edit Middleton and claim for him what most ascribe to Shakespeare. Hey, if Middleton cannot stand on his own, without stealing from Shakespeare, Taylor undercuts his own argument for the value of all the plays that Middleton did write. Taylor's stance vis-a-vis Shakespeare seems to me similar to that of the groups that want the plays to be by someone other than Shakespeare: Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, whoever.

Ah, interesting arguments nonetheless: sharpens one's thinking.

Time for the long morning walk,
Until tomorrow,
Love,
Bernice