Post Thanksgiving but still lots to be thankful for

Dear friends and family,

It has taken me a few days to recover from our Thanksgiving jaunt, but it was well worth it. Since then, I sent a completed draft of my essay to Laury, and her comments inspired me to look afresh at a few spots. This morning she came over, and we read the changes I had made and did a little tinkering. Except for a couple of incomplete footnotes it is done!

Now I can turn more fully to hamletworks.org, as I mentioned in my last blog. Jesús, a dear friend whom I met at the Folger Library when he was working on his PhD, has completed a wonderful new text based on my Enfolded Hamlet, a modernized Enfolded version. This is on our site provisionally while Jesús and Jeffery, our web master, consider any adjustments that are needed. I am thrilled by this development for a couple of reasons: in a way, Jesús’s work is an amplification and refinement of my own, which is in the spelling style of 1600: His is completely modernized. This will help users, who rarely have old spellings in mind when searching, to find the words they are looking for. We have so many riches on the site; part of our responsibility is to broadcast what we have to the world.

It‘s frustrating sometimes: The most important journal in Shakespeare studies, the Shakespeare Quarterly, in the last issue, had an article about web sites for the plays. The author did not include our site. Why? Eric, one of the 4 main editors of our site, is on the editorial board of SQ: did he not notice this piece? Could he not have urged the writer to look at our site and consider including it? Since the board's deliberations are top secret, I will never know how it worked out that hamletworks.org was neglected. I have an urge to write to the author—to do what? to accomplish what? There is a politics in citation. If Harold Bloom's name had been on our site's masthead, I can bet that it would have had a prominent place in the SQ article. I have sometimes wanted to write an essay on "The Politics of Footnoting," but that leads me to an area of my thought, the bitter part, that I would like to avoid. It does me no good.

We do the best we can: When we are permanently connected to the MIT site, I think we will get better publicity.

In the meantime, working on the site is a great pleasure. I cannot get to the library, but I have many books on my shelves that I can use. My dear friend Kathryn gives me her copies of TLS, and it often has material on Hamlet that I can capture for the site. As coordinator (for now), I have lots of people to write to, to encourage them to compete the work for us they have promised.

Plenty to do to make myself useful—and make me joyful in the work.

Today I took my car to our gas station to get the new sticker and the oil change it has not had because I have driven it so seldom. Tomorrow I will venture a little further to my dentist, and then further as strength allows.

Sophie came for a lovely visit yesterday, and we talked about our work—she's in Victorian and modern, so I pressed a few relevant books upon her. I don't need them; she may find them useful. Today she sent Brendan, her husband, here to deliver spinach pillows, as she calls them. It seems to be an easy to make version of the spinach pie I think I started her on. I had two for lunch and they were scrumptious! Thanks, Sophie!

One of the new features I am dealing with is my inability to eat much because the huge spleen encroaches on everything within, now especially my stomach, though lungs are also affected. My stomach can not hold the humongous amounts I used to eat. I try 4-5 smaller meals a day, because the drop in weight is worrisome. It's only a few pounds, but when I know I have eaten a lot by normal standards, the downward trend seems to be relentless and uncontrollable. I know this is all just another side to the end game, but since eating is one of my very great pleasures I wish that I didn't have to go through this phase. Hey, we have our eyes open for drug trials and we hope.

Lots of love to you all,
Bernice