Excellent Monday

The Rasmussen Family
Eric is one of four editors working on the New Variorum Hamlet and hamletworks.org. Merwin and I have visited the Rasmussens in Reno, Nevada, Orinda, California, and
London, England. This is their 2009 photo, with Tristan, Vicky, Arden and Eric.

Dear family and friends,

Very good news today: I have a PhD student from Reno who is going to work on pages in Hamletworks.org that need repair. It will be a challenge working at long distance, but I hope it works out. So with Becky working for me here, and this young man working for me from there, I should be able to accomplish a lot this summer (and I hope into the fall).

We heard from Harvey and got a whole bunch of photos from Oslo. I will see if I can grab a few to post here tomorrow. All is well; Harvey is working with his collaborators, but there is also time for fun, and certainly Rachael has lots of opportunities for R&R.

I didn't leave the house yesterday. That's a shame because I am supposed to at least walk around the block a few times, and it was a nice day too. I did at least ride the stationery bike for 45 minutes. Mostly, though, I was caught up in the work. For fun I am posting a dog's version of "To be or not to be" on the website. I tried but failed to get it to post, and turned it over to our redoubtable web master. An email exchange with the author of the soliloquy led to a necessary change in The Enfolded text at the top of the pages for 3067: Thus {didst} thou. I would not have noticed this if Larry had not called my attention to an emendation he remembered, a change to "diest," which only makes sense as deriving from the F1 version. Forgive the technicalities! But I think it is quite wonderful how so many things feeds into the work.

Merwin read my Measure for Measure review, and found about 10 typos. My eye just skipped over them. Laury spoke to Harry and then phoned me: he is definitely interested in her book, for which I will write one essay, already drafted in part. But that will be after we finish our edition.

The name of the flowering shrub in front of the windows popped into my mind suddenly for no reason at all after many days of looking at it and not being able to come up with the name: Mountain Laurel, a lovely plant indeed. There is no doubt that my memory is becoming a problem, especially at the word level. So I am more than eager to complete my scholarly work as much as possible, as soon as possible, before it goes altogether and I drift into present-ism.

We got a letter from Barry and Jessica who were in the Galapagos, one of many stops on their world-wide tour since their marriage. They will be on Long Island next week, and I hope to see them. Barry (an actor, dramaturg, and director, mainly at Ashland, OR) and I talk Hamlet. The lucky thing is that the lovely Jessica's father, Jack, lives a couple of miles from us: otherwise, who knows when we would meet! Barry and I became friends after he discovered my Three-Text Hamlet, and he fell in love with it. We have been talking Hamlet ever since.

Off to the bike now! Love to all,
Bernice