HS Comments on the Fly

Yea! Branagh’s Hamlet is available on DVD! It’s about time! Okay, it doesn’t ship until August, but you can order it now!

I think Branagh’s Hamlet is the best. Hands down! It’s entertaining and actually enjoyable to watch. Branagh makes Shakespeare so much fun. I’m not kidding.

Hopefully, your English teacher in high school didn’t ruin Shakespeare for you and you are capable of enjoying Shakespeare’s stories. I managed to make it all the way from Kindergarten through 4 years of university without ever having a teacher or professor taint Shakespeare for me. That’s right — no Shakespeare in school for me — ever. I’d be appalled at the state of U.S. schools if I hadn’t purposely tried to focus on Greek and Latin Literature. Of course, I wasn’t the least bit interested in Shakespeare because I’d heard all the horror stories from others, so I’d not ventured beyond Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet, which my parents took me to at the drive in when I was young and sleepy.

Ignore Mel Gibson’s version of Hamlet; it’s abbreviated/abridged. Plus it’s dark and dreary. Branagh’s Hamlet is a production meant to engage and entertain the audience rather than be a dull high school reading by amateurs. Hamlet isn’t only palatable in Branagh’s hands, it becomes a feast. A four-hour long feast, btw — so get the popcorn and nachos ready before you sit down.

Playright, George Bernard Shaw turned this place into Heartbreak Homeschool for the past three days as we slogged our way through Heartbreak House. (Heartbreak House at Wikipedia and at Gutenberg)

Oh, the misery he caused us. True, we could’ve turned the show off at any time — and we often did — but we felt we must give it a fair shake by watching it all. We are slated to watch an acting company perform Heartbreak House soon; hence our watching now to familiarize ourselves with it. As a result, though, I’m re-thinking things.

It’s a play with a message. The message overpowers the entertainment value. Plus, I was expecting a comedy, but it just wasn’t all that funny. So part of the reason I didn’t like it was expectations. But it also seemed like there was just too much whining about the opposite sex and stuff. So, it just wasn’t as much fun as I was hoping for. (review)

The bright spot in the whole play was Sir John Gielgud, a true master. I first became familiar with him by name when he stole the show in Arthur. I know … shame on me for not knowing of him sooner. Watching him in Heartbreak House cemented my respect for his talent. I’m not sure why he’s so captivating, but he is.

Is it just me or does Britain turn out more good actors than the rest of the world? (Rickman, Branagh, Kitchen, Rush, Harris, etc.)

Seriously, skip reading Oliver Twist aloud to your kids. And don’t have them read it on their own unless they choose it themselves. So what if it’s a classic.

So what if Dickens is somebody that just *everyone* says you *must* read to be truly educated. So what if it was popular in the 1830s.

Have you read it? If you’re not interested, there’s really no point.

Just because a book (serialized in this case) was extremely popular nearly 200 years ago, doesn’t make it extremely popular today, nor worth your time.

Just because everyone read Dickens in 1900 doesn’t mean that we must read it today!

Don’t bore your children. Don’t waste your time. You are not depriving your children of an excellent education if they never read Oliver Twist.

Okay. Those are harsh words, aren’t they? Yes, a bit. But folks need to know that it’s okay to not read any Dickens. Ever. And the world won’t start wobbling if you “Skip Twist.”

Now, I do think that Oliver Twist is a good story. I read it aloud to my two teens a couple of years ago. If it could be rewritten, basically word for word (not abridged, mind you), then it might be a little easier to not tune it out. Our American language today isn’t quite like the English language of nearly 200 years ago. If modern words could be substituted for some of the archaic words like viands once in a while, the story would be a lot more accessible to the average person. In some cases, a phrase-by-phrase rewrite would be acceptable/necessary.

As I said, Oliver Twist is a good story. Additionally, Dickens is a talented writer. I thoroughly enjoyed his verbal swipes at the English poor laws in the first few chapters of the book. And how could you not just love poor, little Oliver Twist? He’s such a little sweetie. Nancy is a good person and easy to like. You can see that she can be rescued out of her situation and brought back into gentle society. Dickens has a way of making his characters come to life — all of them — sometimes revoltingly so. And the dampness and dirtiness he describes makes me want to burrow deeper into the blankets as I sit on the couch reading. I will not deny that Dickens is talented.

However, his stories are just not something that most folks of 2000+ are entertained by. And really, the first readers of Oliver Twist were reading to be entertained. They weren’t reading it for a school assignment. Folks loved Oliver Twist. Folks devoured each section as it was printed. Because it was so popular, people expected everyone to have read it. As the years went by, this persisted. People who were teens when it first came out, encouraged their children and grandchildren to read it, probably with such words as, “It’s a classic. You’ve got to read it. Everybody who’s anybody has read it.” This has persisted.

So, when someone tells you that your children must read Dickens to be well and truly educated, fleetingly squint your eyes as you remember my comments and then smile, thank them, and ask for more suggestions. But don’t feel bad if “Don’t Do Dickens.”

I think we should all define our own classics. Homeschool families can read books and declare their own classics. We can discern what is classic; we don’t need someone else to tell us what is or isn’t classic. There is no special list of books that one must read to be well read or truly educated.

Here’s our experience with Oliver Twist, in case you’re interested. One student basically enjoyed the book. The other student only enjoyed the parts about Oliver and basically tuned out the Sikes, Nancy, and Fagin parts. I enjoyed it on a certain level. It was good practice for my kids to listen to such a story. The vocabulary is reasonably challenging, and the syntax is challenging, too. Keeping track of all the characters is a small feat. If I had to do it all over again, I think I’d choose something else to read aloud.

One of our own family’s classics is A Long Way from Chicago by Peck. Another is My Family and Other Animals.

Don’t trust those classic reading lists — some titles might be good for your family, but many will not. Find what fits your family and declare your own classics!

More info from the RAQ section.

Scientists from Oxford University, the Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, and University College London are working on reading people’s intentions, and their results are 70% accurate.

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person’s brain and read their intentions before they act.

The research breaks controversial new ground in scientists’ ability to probe people’s minds and eavesdrop on their thoughts, and raises serious ethical issues over how brain-reading technology may be used in the future. Source

It’s eerily similar to Minority Report. I mean, they’ve already got one of those Perceptive-Pixel-type touch screens that they showed in Minority Report and now they’ve almost got pre-cogs in the form of brain scan software.

If brain-reading can be refined, it could quickly be adopted to assist interrogations of criminals and terrorists, and even usher in a “Minority Report” era … where judgments are handed down before the law is broken on the strength of an incriminating brain scan.

It’s an interesting article and mentions other quite helpful uses for this new technology.

Of course, Minority Report isn’t the only example of science fiction becoming science fact. This article discussing robots’ rights shows how I, Robot could soon become a part of our real world.

“If we make conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably should,” said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology….

Robots and machines are now classed as inanimate objects without rights or duties but if artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, the report argues, there may be calls for humans’ rights to be extended to them.

It is also logical that such rights are meted out with citizens’ duties, including voting, paying tax and compulsory military service.

Mr Christensen said: “Would it be acceptable to kick a robotic dog even though we shouldn’t kick a normal one? There will be people who can’t distinguish that so we need to have ethical rules to make sure we as humans interact with robots in an ethical manner so we do not move our boundaries of what is acceptable.”

The Horizon Scan report argues … “If granted full rights, states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time,” it says.

I think we’re going to be hearing “Orwellian” and “Brave New World” with increasing frequency as time goes on. However, it doesn’t look like my remaining student is all too interested in reading either book. I wonder if there’s some other good sci-fi that I could scare up to tempt her. I’m open to suggestions.

A colorful photo, eh? That’s the festival scene in the second half of The Winter’s Tale. The first half is terribly depressing. But as stories go, it’s a well-crafted one with a happy ending. I bet you’re wondering how I got such a close picture.
Well, it’s because I must sit right up front or all the birds and helicopters and cars and frisbee players, etc., etc., etc., will distract me and I won’t understand the play. It is Shakespeare, you know. He put his words together quite well, but I can’t listen with just half an ear.

My first memory of Shakespeare is the Zeffirelli version of Romeo and Juliet. I managed to sleep through most of it, waking up in time for the suicide at the end. Special. That was the sum total of my Shakespeare knowledge when I started homeschooling.

And in our homeschool we never did any Shakespeare until we could “watch” it because someone, years ago, like in the ‘94 or ‘95, wrote on a home-ed email list that Shakespeare was written to be acted out and watched, that the Bard never meant for his plays to be read. That made sense to me! So, Shakespeare was not a part of our homeschool curriculum.

Well, it was also because of that bad reputation that Shakespeare has earned over the years due to teachers making students read his stuff for English Literature class. I managed to avoid any teachers like that by always choosing Greek and Latin literature classes in high school and at university. Whew! I avoided any possibility of a chance encounter with boring, snoring Shakespeare like the plague. Or maybe the pox.

But one day, in desperation, when we were on a TV fast and I was starving, I picked up Much Ado About Nothing at the library to watch on video. The cover looked the prettiest of the eight video choices available. I guess that was about 7 or 8 years ago. Much to my surprise, Kenneth Branagh can make Shakespeare quite palatable. Having Michael Keaton, Denzel Washington, Emma Thompson, and Keanu Reeves as cast members also helps. (Now, Robert Sean Leonard and Kate Beckinsale are biggish stars, too.) So, I was all amazed that Shakespeare could be funny. You know, with those “How could I have been such an idiot all these years?” thoughts running through my mind.

So, I made it a point to get to a Shakespeare in the Park event after that. Our first was R&J — a good one for the kids to start with since most kids are already familiar with that. But familiarity or not, we loved it. It wasn’t so much the play as the players that made it good. Or maybe it’s the director who gives those actors their instructions that makes the play so good.

Anyway, so the other day we watched Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. I had avoided it because I thought I didn’t like Hamlet after watching the one with Mel Gibson playing Hamlet. My students didn’t mind that one, which we watched so that we could play The Play’s the Thing game, but it lacked something, I thought. I think Branagh just has the Midas touch when it comes to Shakespeare.

Anyway, Branagh’s Hamlet was really good, as in entertaining. We came into it a little after the beginning and so I was a little lost. I grabbed one of our Shakespeare comic books to catch me up on who was who. Then it was smooth sailing, and I worked on that quilt I mentioned a while back. (No, I never did find my sewing box. I gave up.)

Yeah, so now, what’s my point? I forget. I think I just wanted to share the picture since I ran across it earlier and thought it was so summery-looking. Or maybe it was something like, “I’m glad we homeschool so that we can do Shakespeare any way we want or even not at all.”

According to a review in Los Angeles City Beat, Thr3e is a “religious film.” I think it sounds rather untempting. It’s something about a seminary student, a secret, and a serial bomber. And let’s not forget the homeschooling parents who are trying to protect their children from the evil outside world.

I suspect I’ll watch it, though, no matter how dull it sounds because Justine Waddell and Marc Blucas are in it. They are interesting actors to watch — but in this case only on DVD. I guess it released last Friday, but I didn’t see one commercial for it on TV.

Marc Blucas is also in a movie not yet released called The Jane Austen Book Club. It sounds great! The book club gets together and then finds that their present relationships begin to resemble the relationships in Jane Austen’s novels.

Won’t that be a kick? Now, I’ve just gotta find out which Jane Austen novels so I can make sure we’ve read/watched them.

We gave up on Mila 18. I don’t get it. Twenty years ago I liked it and have fond memories of reading it. But blech. My daughter and I are both just not feeling it.

So we switched to Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving, who named the New York Knicks, btw. (proof, more proof, absolute proof)

Anyway, we’re still in the introduction, regrettably. Let’s hope we move past it soon as I’m getting a bit bogged down and so is the other reader. We’ve gone on to look up Irving in a few American literature textbooks that I store downstairs. They’ve given us a bit of background and told us that he was the first “American author.”

So far, Washington Irving, who actually did visit Andalusia, is traveling from Seville to Granada with a few fellows. He’s meeting people along the way and using a few Spanish words here and there that we’re trying to learn. He also uses a few English words that we’re not familiar with — some we look up if we’ve remembered to fetch a dictionary off a shelf before we get cozy in our respective cozy spots. We drink coffee-laced cocoa and snuggle under blankets, with the fire crackling in the background. We try to stump each other with questions from the text as we read along - it makes us pay attention and is fun for us (and is a sneaky form of review that I started many years ago). We also look up towns along the way in our respective atlases — many of them haven’t changed since … uh-oh … I think it was written in the early 1800s. I’ll check. The introduction states, “In the spring of 1829….”

We’re reading it because we’re supposed to be traveling to see the Alhambra in the next few years, once we’ve saved up something like 500,000 pennies. But that’s not exactly the point. Tales of the Alhambra is reputed to be “literature,” yet I can’t find any online study guide for the book. The Cliffs Notes web site doesn’t have it listed at all. I guess it’s not one of the popular literature books these days — not controversial or popular enough maybe.

I did find it on one homeschooling book list: PNEU. I’m not sure if it’s in The Well-Trained Mind. I just checked; it’s not — only Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. It’s not on the Sonlight list. It could be on other homeschooling lists, but I can’t keep up with all of them.

Here’s one excellent excerpt:

Such were our minor preparations for the journey, but above all we laid in an ample stock of good-humour, and a genuine disposition to be pleased; determining to travel in true contrabandista style; taking things as we found them, rough or smooth, and mingling with all classes and conditions in a kind of vagabond companionship. It is the true way to travel in Spain. With such disposition and determination, what a country is it for a traveller, where the most miserable inn is as full of adventure as an enchanted castle, and every meal is in itself an achievement! Let others repine at the lack of turnpike roads and sumptuous hotels, and all the elaborate comforts of a country cultivated and civilised into tameness and commonplace; but give me the rude mountain scramble; the roving, hap-hazard, wayfaring; the half wild, yet frank and hospitable manners, which impart such a true game-flavour to dear old romantic Spain!

Not just in traveling, but in everyday life, having a genuine disposition to be pleased, is the way to go. The whole excerpt is a great motto to travel (or live) by.