Libby Broadbent's Blog, page 4

Mermaid’s Tears is back!

We’re back!

After a brief hiatus, our merry troupe of thespians is on track to perform “Mermaid’s Tears” at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool on February 5, 6 and 7th, 2016.

I’m hoping to blog about our progress over the next month, as we approach showtime, so we can share our process with you. Putting on a play is always an adventure… we are all volunteers working around family and jobs and distractions and children and emergencies and colds and weariness and a multitudes of demands… but this play seems to be particularly fraught with challenges because of the nature of the puppets and the set, and the struggle of creating a performance from an original script. Usually, when we do a play, the playwright knew what they were doing when they created the play…

This, is not that.

We’re fixing the bugs as we go. Because Libby don’t know how to write plays! ;)

When we postponed our performance in November (read about that here) we knew it would be difficult to maintain our momentum, especially through the Christmas season, and into winter. Schedules change, time constraints appear, real life intrudes. As a result, unfortunately, our lovely mermaid Lily is unable to continue playing with us. As we pondered what to do about the mermaid… she is kinda important to the plot… we decided to re-create her as a puppet. We love Kate Dexter, who has stepped in be a puppeteer for the new mermaid! This was not part of the original plan, and has precipitated a flurry of mache and fabric and scales and fins over the last few weeks. I’m trying to record this process, since I didn’t do much of that in the building of the original puppets and I’ve been asked several times, usually in the grocery store, how these creatures are put together. The amazingly magnificent Lynn Sponagle, (who I affectionately call Sponzie), is building the tail. (I also call her Sponzarella, the Queen of Tail) She is the seamstress, I am the mache-stress, and between the two of us we hope to create something sparkly! (Call Sponzie if you want good tail!)

Here is a time-lapse video of the final maché of the head. I’ll follow up with images of the tail and all the rest over the next few weeks. The music on the video is an original song written for the play by Jessica Jurgenliemk.

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And please have a safe and fabulous New Year!

(BTW, this is my 100th post on this blog! Getting it in just under the wire before 2016!)

The night before voting…

A quick post this morning, as we head to school with heavy hearts. A big day for Nova Scotia teachers!

                                   Good luck today, all my teacher friends!

 

 

Yea or Nay? That is the question

I feel very nervous. I feel like I’ve just passed a note to a friend, right under the teacher’s nose, and I’m gonna get my knuckles rapped. I’m going to get in trouble for daring to speak when it probably isn’t my turn, and I didn’t raise my hand, and I might be wrong, and I know I’ve misspelled something.

Today, I’m kind of nervous because… well… because I’ve written a soliloquy.

In iambic pentameter (mostly).

Syllabically identical to the original.

Yes… I am a rebel.

This week, the teaching world has been abuzz with debate about our upcoming vote for our contract. Many of us feel bullied, many of us feel oppressed, many of us wonder why we’re even bothering to hold a vote when the result seems a forgone conclusion. Many of us feel exactly like other public servants who are facing similar negotiations with the same sense of being bullied, oppressed, and bewildered (What a fun word, negotiations. The implication of mutual satisfaction is so quaint.)

Yet again, it feels like we’re being told we aren’t good enough, we aren’t working hard enough, and we don’t know what we’re doing. Financial issues aside… several of the items that were on the table have been removed, (but maybe they’ll come back if the table is shifted slightly closer to the door and three crows speak the alphabet backwards at dawn and if we vote NAY…) seem to imply that a solution to our educational woes is having teachers and students spend more time at school. Especially teachers. We should, apparently, never leave the building and thank goodness that there’s an app, or ten, to continually link us to our students so we can respond to their queries at 9pm on a Sunday night… because thrusting a device in every wee hand is surely the answer to our literacy and numeracy concerns… never mind our issues with social skills, empathy, bullying, cell phone addiction…

I digress.

OBVIOUSLY all we need is a new snow day policy and these problems will get better.

So.

I wrote a soliloquy.

I recently attended a speaking competition with a group of lovely young women from local schools. One very clever girl spoke eloquently about our addiction to technology. She said (I am paraphrasing here) that if Robert Frost would have had a cell phone he wouldn’t have written The Road Not Taken because he would have been distracted by a quiz on Buzzfeed to determine what his Spirit Animal may be. I love that young woman and want to feed her chocolate and literature and give her a feather quill to write with. She has inspired me to write this soliloquy, because if we have a Shakespeare in our classrooms we may never find him if he’s hiding behind an ipad. We are up in arms about our contract, rightly so, but we have bigger issues throbbing on our doorstep.

I fear we are replacing our children’s natural drive to learn and question and seek answers with the click of a button and an educational standard which allows them to hand in their assignments… whenever they want. We are removing their accountability, responsibility, and sense of accomplishment. We are crippling them for the rigor of University and the demands of the work force. Because, um, we still do expect our students to get jobs eventually, don’t we? Isn’t that still, kinda, like… a thing?

I am nervous in posting this because I am not usually one to stir the pot. I hesitate to offend, and quite frankly, I’m afraid of getting trouble.

But I think we’re already there.

In trouble.

The issues of our contract debate are real and important, but I fear we may be missing a concern that is much more vital. Policies are failing our students, and our contract… yea or nay… will not address that problem. As teachers dress in pink on Tuesday in protest over a disappointing contract, I will choose to wear… red? Maybe blue.

I have a limited wardrobe of protest clothes.

I choose to call Tuesday’s vote our Contract of Blame, because it seems to me that the issues being waved in the air are pointing fingers at the failure of teachers, without questioning the failure of policy. And that deserves some dialogue.

Thank goodness there is Shakespeare, to soothe my jangled soul. Needless to say, these opinions are my own, and I don’t think one can get fired for having opinions…

 

Yea or Nay – That is the Question

A re-imagining of Hamlet’s Quandary

To vote for Yea or Nay – that is the question:

Whether ‘tis preferable to acquiesce

To the slings and arrows of bully tactics,

Or to stand in a sea of uncertainty

And by opposing end them. Vote Nay – or Yea –

Which one? And by voting Nay is to say

We risk the heavy hand of legislation

That denial is heir to. ‘Tis a quandary

Which opposing, shames us. To Yea, to Nay —

To vote — perchance to grieve: ay, there’s the rub,

For in that vote lies fear of what may come.

Our teachers are not schooling’s fatal flaw,

Policy is. And with respect,

We aren’t the calamity of school life.

For we could bear the whips and scorns of those

Who say more time in school is the solution.

Our contract, Yea or Nay, won’t fix what’s wrong.

   ( Students can hand in their work… whenever?

   Students can attend their classes… or not?

   An ipad in every hand… are you kidding me? )

What insolence to suggest: the real

Issues might merit some investigation.

Ask us what we really want? Let. Us. TEACH.

Kids need consequence. Somehow we must bear

Poor policies that thwart our weary lives.

To grunt and sweat under a mantle of

Impotent political correctness,

The undiscovered reasoning: from whose brain

Did these policies spring? It puzzles the will,

And makes us look like failures when we have

No recourse to encourage kids to learn.

Thus policy does make monkeys of us all,

And thus the native eagerness of children

Is sicklied o’er with excuses galore,

And learning of great meaning and import is

Negated by a contract of blame: no more snow days,

That’ll fix what’s wrong… but there’s an app for that…

— Soft you now,

O fair pedagogy – It’s those damn teachers,

And I fear we are outnumbered…

 

 

 

 

 

The Brothers Evans… again.

I posted this video in January, but I’m reposting today because, well, it’s Wednesday. Wednesday feels like a good day for a story, and since this one is both a video of the story and now, the text of the story, it can appeal to both the reader and the viewer!

Here is the video:

And here is the original post, explaining the origins and the wordiness of the video, just click the image:

And here is the text, for those who like to read along, although you’ll have a hard time reading and enjoying Robert LaDuke’s beautiful images at the same time.

Thanks for indulging me. Happy Hump Day!

The Brothers Evans

                           A Wee Tale of Love and Heartbreak, by Libby Broadbent

Based on the artwork of Robert LaDuke

They both loved her, Miss Theodora MacKenzie of Schenectady, New York, for how could they not? When Everett became mutely confounded by the lush foliage of her russet hair, Ezekiel would elucidate the marvels of her aqua eyes. Should Everett mention, in passing, at the breakfast table, that Miss Theodora’s skin rivalled the rich buttermilk their mother served them with their biscuits, then Ezekiel would, naturally, parry with a muttered analogy between chocolate drops and the freckles which blessed that very buttermilk skin, making passing allusion to their daring descent down the deep declivity of the breasts in question, whereupon Everett would be obliged to rise thunderously to his feet and demand propriety when in discussion of the woman he was going to marry. He would invariably break a plate in his ascension.

Ezekiel would hurl his napkin to the table, declaring his own intentions for the hand of the freckled maid. A tea cup was often a fatality of this expressive gesture.

Everett would sputter and stammer, as was his way when agitated, his face creeping red and blotchy, his eyes watering as his passionate heart palpitated. He had been known to crush a juice glass in one large fist when in such high temper.

Ezekiel would recite poetry, as was his way when agitated, much to the annoyance of their mother, the Widow Evans, who despised both poetry and passion and would just like to see one of her sons marry the woman before all the crockery in the house was broken.

“I loved her first: but afterwards her love, Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song, As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.” Ezekiel felt no qualms at altering whatever poem happened to come to him, to suit his needs, as he knew full-well that his brother could barely read the delivery sheets for his rounds, never mind be familiar with the greater lyricism of the bards.

“I… you… she…” Everett flexed his shoulders, his massive arms straining at the fabric of the shirt which his beloved had once mentioned as being a lovely shade of blue which matched his eyes. Although the boys had shared their mother’s womb, the Widow Evans had often suggested, being a tiny waif of a woman barely sturdy enough to withstand a strong wind, that Everett had consumed the lion’s share of the meagre nourishment her gestating body could provide, while Ezekiel had absorbed the wisdom of the ages from the scraps his twin left him. Ezekiel was the brains, Everett the brawn, and together they made a fine man. Miss Theodora MacKenzie was tearing them apart.

“Quit your blubbering, both of you, and go deliver the bread.” Mother would calmly interrupt their testosterone infused gallantry, deftly picking up shards of crockery with her dishtowel. “And neither of you even bother arguing over who delivers the best bread. Bread is bread. Girls is girls. Only one of you can have her, so you’d best just flip a coin and get it over with.”I loved you first: but afterwards your love “””’’’fsdmfldsmfkdlsnsdklngksdl    Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.

“Phillips’ bread is soft and delicious,” Everett would mutter under his breath. Everett had been delivering Phillips Bread, in his green and orange truck, for almost ten years. Ezekiel had delivered Amalie Bread and Rolls, in his black and yellow truck, for exactly the same length of time.

“Amalie Bread and Rolls are as soft as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills,” Ezekiel was about to pontificate further on the texture and color of his far superior product but his words were abruptly startled out of his chest by the meat of Everett’s fist being laid rather forcefully between his shoulder blades. Everett often had a physical reaction to Ezekiel’s poetry.

“Philips’ is better,” Everett stomped past his brother, grabbed his white delivery jacket off the coat rack and rammed his Philip’s Bread cap on his large head. His hair bristled around the brim like exclamation points frightened out of his scalp.

Ezekiel followed rather more slowly, gently encouraging air to return to his lungs. The twin brothers, one large and one small, climbed aboard their respective bread delivery trucks, parked side by side in uneasy collusion in their mother’s driveway.

“Out of the night that covers me/ Black as the Pit from pole to pole/ I thank whatever gods may be/ For my unconquerable soul,” wheezed Ezekiel, brushing a speck of dirt off the dash of his Amalie Bread and Rolls delivery truck. Ezekiel shook his head at the folly of whatever God it was that had contrived their fate; sharing the same womb, loving the same woman, and delivering the same product. He only wished there could be more poems about bread.

***

Miss Theodora MacKenzie was not, as might be supposed, a winsome or delicate member of the fairer sex. She stood almost as tall as her dual suitors and could look both in the eye with only the merest tilt of her freckled chin. Her hair, as has been suggested, was a wild and untamable mane of auburn splendor which she invariably hijacked into submission with a twist of twine twirled tightly at the base of her sturdy neck. Her hands were large, her shoulders broad, her breasts mighty stalwart peaks that had caused poor Ezekiel, on more than one occasion, to moan “Were there, below, a spot of holy ground/ Where from distress a refuge might be found/ And solitude prepare the soul for heaven/ Sure, nature’s God that spot to man had given… between Theodora’s bosoms.”

Everett, silently clamping his hand tightly around his brother’s wrist, on more than one occasion, and hurling him over the settee, was inclined to agree.

Yet, despite the young Miss Theodora’s undeniable physical lustiness, there lingered in her heart a vigor of an entirely different ilk. Theodora’s heart yearned for independence. For success on her own terms. For adventure, and freedom, and emancipation from the shackles of womanhood her unfortunate possession of a womb had her tethered to. Miss Theodora MacKenzie wanted to be a farmer. Not, notably, a farmer’s wife. Nor a Bread and Rolls delivery man’s wife either, for that matter. But Theodora was not insensitive to the missiles of testosteronic affection being hurled her way by the twin brothers, just as she was not insensitive to the desires that burned in her own loins when she watched Everett casually toss fifty pound crates of bread with one well-muscled hand, or when she cracked open her window on a sultry July evening to the dulcet tones of Ezekiel reciting sonnets below her casements, causing the fervent heart encased beneath her magnificent breasts to beat with the wanton pleasures of youth. Oh, she wanted them both, did young Miss MacKenzie; one for the brawn, the other for the brain… the problem arose in the choosing, and then in the ridding, for she had no intention of keeping either man. The dependence and oppression of marriage ran counter to her dream of becoming a Liberated Lady Farmer, and she had no intention of squandering her ambitions for a muscled bicep or a cleverly worded haiku, no matter how heated her blood became at the thought of either.

It is not to be known what it was that lead her to it. Was it the complexity of youthful folly? The restrictive snugness of her undergarments limiting oxygen to the decision-making lobe of her feisty brain? The innocent desire to spare both men the despair that her neglect would most surely have caused? Whatever the reasoning, young Theodora MacKenzie began a vigorous, albeit ill-advised, seduction of both of the Brothers Evans with no intent to wed, no intent to woo, no intent, indeed, to mislead but merely to cool the overheated conjunction of her thighs in as merry a way as possible whilst she continued to dream of acres and fertilizer and husbandry… in the most agricultural sense of the word. She dreamed, mostly, of cows.

***

Everett bought her a horse. This, after a particularly rousing afternoon spent in her company when she called him her “swaggering cowboy” and made most complimentary comments about the size of his… belt buckle.

Ezekiel, not to be outdone, purchased for her a truckload of pumpkins. This, after a most salubrious afternoon in her company when she called him “a silly pumpkin head” after an ardent poetical recitation wherein, after each phrase, he kissed a hammer-like toe on her sturdy foot:

“T’was brillig (kiss) and the slithy toves (kiss) didst gyre and gimbal in the wabe (kiss)”

When she suggested, with dewy breathlessness, that he could gyre and gimbal in her wabe, his poetic efforts had stuttered into more guttural utterances of bliss.

Everett, dimly aware that his brother seemed uncharacteristically ebullient during dinner as his poetic ejaculations drifted so far from the classics as to include a seemingly endless recitation of an Aerosmith ballad;

“Don’t wanna close my eyes I don’t wanna fall asleep ‘Cause I’d miss you, baby And I don’t wanna miss a thing…”

… in response, Everett bought his lady love a tractor with which he squashed several of the hundreds of pumpkins she seemed to have scattered over her yard.

Ezekiel, then, bought her a house, which he delivered on the back of a flatbed truck. On a plaque he had affixed to the kitchen wall, just above the countertop where she thanked him most enthusiastically for his gift, he had inscribed, in curling cursive wound through with leaves and blossoming flowers: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference”, implying perhaps, as he suggested between panted breaths as she bestowed her appreciation upon his narrow frame, that he was the road she was meant to take. She took him… but made no promise regarding other roads she might traverse.

Everett bought a plane.

“Mum. I bought ‘er a plane,” he said, in a rare moment of verbosity. “’T’is a fast plane.”

The mother of the twins, Widow Evans, as we have come to call her, sighed. It was a sigh that threatened to undo the tenuous connection between her ribs and her spine, being, as she was, a mere waif of a woman, subject to extreme disruptions of the spirit caused by the conflict between her two sons. How she longed for unbroken crockery, and unbroken peace in her home.

“Girls is girls, Ev. Find one you don’t have to buy a plane for.”

It was sound advice, as mothers’ advice often is, and it went unheeded, as mothers’ advice often does, and Widow Evans sighed, as mothers often do, as her burly son roared off in the squat airship with which he hoped to win the hand of the freckled maid.

“I should write her a poem,” wheezed Ezekiel, entering the room to the fading roar of his brother’s flight to romance. “I’ve never written my own before. I believe it I should be worthy of… well… worthy of the name of Bard. Whaddayou think, Mother? Will she marry me if I am… Bard Ezekiel?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, sweet son, but I believe young Miss is looking for Hard Ezekiel, not Bard, and having done with that I believe she may be done wi’ you.” Widow Evans had been around the block a time or two, if you know what I mean. She was no stranger to the heat that burned bright in Miss Theodora MacKenzie’s loins, although her own fire had been quenched many a long year before, and had been replaced, most satisfactorily, by an appreciation of fine china. She missed the Mister Evans more than she dare say, but she had her eye on a set of Wedgewood which simply wouldn’t withstand the ardour of her sons’ infatuation. She needs must do something to stop the madness.

***

For her part, Miss Theodora MacKenzie was satisfied. Several times satisfied, in fact, yet there ached in her heart a yearning for freedom, for emancipation, for liberation from the restrictions imposed on her by her own libidinous soul. The horse was nice, the pumpkins round, the house cosy and the plane… well… it was a plane… but she still yearned for something more. Her quandary over the Brothers Evans deepened as she explored every crack and crevasse of that fraternal crucible and she found it ever harder to decide… which one? But not which one to keep, rather, which one to discard first?

She determined, in the obstreperousness of her whimsy, to engage her lovers in a series of trials which would serve the dual purpose of entertaining her and simplifying her choice of which man to make redundant first. Do not think, gentle reader, that our heroine was completely lacking in social graces, empathy, kindness and morality. Quite the contrary, Miss Theodora MacKenzie congratulated herself on her altruistic approach to man-handling with the entirely reasonable reasoning that both men had had the milk for free, therefore it would be unkind to expect only one to buy the cow.

As it turned out, it was the Widow Evans who bought the cow.

***

Theodora’s first challenge was to encourage the Evans Brothers to race, in race cars, across the barren salt flats in pursuit of her favor. It ended in a tie.

The second was a marathon between car and plane, over bridges and valleys and mountain ranges. Again, the brothers proved each other’s equal within a hair’s breadth of each other.

The third was a battle with a bullet where Theodora donned her most snug, most revealing, most enticing bathing costume and, raising her rifle to her capacious shoulder, shot a single bullet down a straight thoroughfare, past the house Ezekiel bought her, past the pumpkins of Everett, creating a fright and stampede from the horse Ezekiel had gifted her with, and landing, with a chilling twang, in the tail wing of the plane which Everett had used to woo her passionately into his massive arms… but neither man was able to race the bullet, as the trial demanded, due to the intoxicating distraction of the bathing costume. Theodora called it a draw. It was, after all, a very fetching bathing costume.

Throughout all of the trials and tribulations of Theodora’s undertakings there followed a steady shattering of pottery in the kitchen of the Widow Evans. Everett’s door slamming, Ezekiel’s exuberant remonstrance regarding his brother’s alleged predilection for cheating, Everett’s insistence that Ezekiel’s face would look better crushed beneath one of their mothers’ china platters… all culminated, in an apocalypse of earthenware destruction, to Widow Evans’ decision to intervene.

“Theodora MacKenzie,” the venerable Widow hissed outside the door to the house her erstwhile and amorous son had bequeathed to the strumpet in question. “Come out here this instant, before I go in there and drag ye out by her damnable tresses… or, as Ezekiel is wont to say “O fleecy hair, falling in curls to the shoulders! O black locks! O perfume laden with nonchalance!”

(Let it be known that while Ezekiel’s predilection for poetry was not appreciated in his household, it was, perhaps, genetic.)

“I’ll nonchalance ye, all right, ye wee hussy,” Widow Evans muttered under her breath as the cinnamon cascade of curls in question came into view.

“Widow Evans,” Theodora simpered.

“I’ve bought ye a cow. Leave my boys alone.”

Indeed, in the yard there stood a cow chewing its cud in blessed bovine ignorance of all matters of the heart, the hearth, and the hussy.

“A cow?” Theodora blinked.

“A cow.”

“How did you know I needed a cow?”

“Because you don’t need either of my sons.”

“No,” Theodora agreed. She smiled the smile of innocence and youth and concupiscence. “But they are smashing good fun!” For Mother Evans it was as if an entire shelf of porcelain came crashing down at her feet.

Mother Evans reached out one cadaverous arm, the thinness of which caused Theodora to glance around for a hearse or an undertaker or at the very least a doctor should the suddenness of the gesture and the diminutiveness of the perpetrator result in tragedy. Mother Evans reached out her tiny arm and struck Theodora a shocking blow on the cheekbone, snapping our young heroine’s head back and causing her to stagger against the doorframe.

(Let it be known that while Everett’s great strength and musculature were not always appreciated in his household, they were, perhaps, genetic.)

“Boys is boys. Cows is cows,” Mother Evans intoned. “Leave me boys and me crockery in peace.”

And so it came to pass, due to a tremulous fear instilled by a waif of a woman whose looks were deceiving and whose bite was at least as bad as her bark, that the young Theodora MacKenzie embraced her new life as a Liberated Lady Farmer, disregarding the attentions of young men near and far in favor of the pleasures of buying her own cows and having the milk for free. The Brothers Evans, meanwhile, were baffled by the sudden cessation of the affections of their mutual inamorata.

“I understand,” Ezekiel whimpered to his mother, “…why she would stray from the Pre-Cambrian pummelling offered by my brother, but what could have possessed her to reject me?”

“It’s a mystery,” agreed his mother, massaging her right hand.

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.” Ezekiel moaned.

“Ok,” agreed his mother, cradling a teapot in her withered lap.

Everett slammed the door. The teapot shivered.

“She dump you?” he asked his brother.

“Indeed. I am bereft. ‘She walks in beauty like the night…’ ”

Everett clamped his large hand on his brother’s thin shoulder with such force that Ezekiel’s teeth clinked together like delicate china teacups. Their mother shivered.

“Me too.”

The two boys stood in momentary and fleeting commiseration, Everett pondering random acts of violence, Ezekiel rhapsodizing his loss in silent recitation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, while the Widow Evans quietly replaced the teapot on the shelf, smiled, and began polishing her newest collection of Wedgewood fine china.

The End

References

Aerosmith, “Don’t Want To Miss a Thing”. AtoZLyrics.com, A to Z Lyrics, January, 2015
Baudelaire, Charles. “La Chevelure”. (1857) Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal, Supervert, January, 2015
Lord Byron. “She Walks in Beauty”. The Poetry Foundation, The Poetry Foundation, January , 2015
LaDuke, Robert. Robert LaDuke, Daily Paintworks, January 2015
Carroll, Lewis. “Jabberwocky”. The Poetry Foundation, The Poetry Foundation, January , 2015
Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken”. The Poetry Foundation, The Poetry Foundation, January , 2015
Henley, William Ernest. “Invictus”. The Poetry Foundation, The Poetry Foundation, January , 2015
Neruda, Pablo. “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines”, Poemhunter.com, Poem Hunter, January, 2015
Rossetti, Christina. “I loved you first, but afterwards your love.” The Poetry Foundation, The Poetry Foundation, January , 2015
Wordsworth, William. “Daffodils”, The Poetry Foundation, The Poetry Foundation, January , 2015
Wordsworth, William. “Taken during a pedestrian tour around the Alps”. Bartleby.com, Steven H. van Leeuwen, January, 2015

 

Christina Rossetti, I Loved you First

William Wordsworth, Daffodils

William Ernest Henley, Invictus

William Wordsworth, Taken during a pedestrian tour around the Alps

Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

Aerosmith, I don’t want to miss a thing.

Robert Frost, The Road Less Travelled

Charles Baudelaire, La Chevelure

Pablo Neruda, Tonight I can Write the Saddest Lines

Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty

The apocalypse is nigh…

About three weeks ago, I put up a tent in my classroom.

Not to hide in, although the thought was tempting. And not to zip wayward teens into to prevent them from running with scissors, another major temptation. No, this tent was my attempt to bring the Apocalypse into my students’ lives.

Why, you may ask?

Desperation, man. Sheer desperation.

The Apocalypse Tent is a result of facing an apocalypse in my career over a year ago. I called it a “pedagocalypse” this week when I presented my ideas to a group of fellow pedagogues as part of the NSTU Provincial Conference Day. My pedagocalypse infected me in the form of unengaged students… kid who would rather read text messages than novels, kids who would rather tell me they “have a life” than do homework, kids who would rather fail than complete the most basic of assignments.

Teaching isn’t easy. Snow days notwithstanding, it’s a stressful, soul-wrenching, all-consuming career and we wear our students like Hannibal Lecter wore Clarisse… wait, did he make those gross skin suits, or was it that other guy? I watched that movie through laced fingers. I have no idea what I’m talking about. Just… teaching is hard. Trust me.

The idea behind the Apocalypse Tent is to plonk my students into the setting of the novels I hope they read. This year, I have put aside my old trusted friends … The Crucible, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Kite Runner… in favor of Apocalyptic Fiction such as The Age of Miracles, Station Eleven and Hugh Howey’s Wool.

Why?

Because of the Walking Dead, man.

And World War Z, The Maze Runner, The Hunger Games and even Wall-E.

Don’t get me going about Wall-E. It gets ugly.

Apocalyptic fiction is everywhere, disturbing and dark as it is, but if that’s what’s flickering under their covers at night then I want to be the flashlight to illuminate it with them. We teach tough content all the time in the English classroom. Try to tell me Hamlet isn’t heavy. Go ahead. Have you read The Kite Runner? What about Speak? As English teachers we have the privilege and the challenge of deconstructing tough content for our students with every novel we teach, and the End of the World is no different.

The Apocalypse Tent

The Apocalypse Tent is installation art that models a Survival Encampment from the Apocalypse. There’s a map showing the invasion, there’s a dissected zombie hand, there’s a journal of The Book of Days, there’s a communication device, there’s a dead zombie girl… most of the artefacts in the tent are taken directly from the novels the kids are reading. We did some theatrical activities, we did some monologues, we pondered the meaning of Authority and Obligation and Dependence.

Did it go over well?

Meh.

The custodians seemed miffed.

My darling Liam, from Art Club, insisted on adding a pee-jar with the rationale that since the world was crawling with zombies, no one would dare to go pee outside. A practical lad.

My English students were, for the most part… uncomfortable. It seems they want to enter a class, sit in a desk and be told what to do. I can do that. Read this story, answer these questions, find these definitions, and you learn… what exactly?

Squat on the floor of a hot smelly tent with zombie sounds emanating from beneath the flaps and write a monologue telling me what your character is feeling. Use quotes from the novel. Wear a costume. Make it real.

I dunno.

I, obviously, don’t have a life…

But I took this tent, and these ideas, and my incredible nervous terror to the ATENS Conference on Friday and I presented to lovely teachers who smiled and nodded when I spoke of my fears for my career, and my fears for the literacy of our kids, and my fears for getting it right in the face of a twenty year old curriculum and all these shiny new “Millenial” children.

Presenting for the Association of English Teachers of Nova Scotia

I used a puppet. Apocalypse Annie. I like her a lot.

It’s super cool to be able to hide behind a mask and speak in a really lousy south shore Nova Scotia British accent with a hint of Pakistani that slides around from one nationality to the next while a crowd of people sit on the floor and laugh. It was great!

I am trying to get over my Pedagocalypse… I have twelve more years to go, people. I can’t throw in the towel just yet, so I’ve decided to throw in the zombies instead. Just to see what happens.

I am asking my students to consider three main Essential Questions with their novels:

When is it acceptable, even essential, to question Authority?
What are your social obligations, especially in times of extreme unrest?
What are the consequences of dependence?

I ask myself these questions as well. Am I the authority in my classroom, when they can google any question, anytime, and get a response before I can even find my glasses to read what they are waving at me on their tiny, tiny phones? I lose my glasses ten times a day. Their phones seem to rule their universe. Authority has changed, respect has changed, kids have changed. I have to change along with them.

I have a social obligation to meet my students where they are, and work from their interests to build literacy. Where are you, kids of 2015? I am asking, I am searching… maybe I’ll have to google the answer.

And I have to let go of my dependence on my traditional ways of teaching that included such classics as the “Chapter Questions” and the “Vocabulary Building Activity”. Sigh. I will miss you, Vocab friend, perhaps we will meet again…in Teacher Hell, where the lunch bell is always late and the photocopier is always broken and there are always ten less pairs of scissors than kids…

I’ve taken the Tent down now… apparently it was a fire hazard… but the lessons continue. The uncomfortableness of being asked to participate, and to think, will continue. But maybe, if the Apocalypse does come, my students will understand the zombie’s point of view, and their motivation, and their Essential Questions…

Or at least they can google the answers.

On their tiny phones.

While me and Annie (Annie and I, duh) hide in the tent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The show must go on!

The show must go on… just… later.

That classic phrase was coined in Shakespearean times when the Globe theatre in London was producing Hamlet, and King Lear and Romeo and Juliet in a round theater with an open roof; no rainchecks, no electricity, and no motorized vehicles that could thunder down the road in the dark going 100 km/h. There were no “kilometers” back in Shakespeare’s day. The biggest threat to a theatrical performance was a little rain and … oh, maybe the Black Plague or some minor inconvenience like that, but, like, whatev’…

It is with great sorrow and great joy that the Winds of Change is postponing the opening of Mermaid’s Tears. Sorrow because we are excited and determined and can’t wait to entertain the masses… and great joy because two of our main cast players are merely maimed, when it could have been so much worse. We’ll take a broken sternum and a nasty bruising any day, over the alternative!

Grant and Sarah Webber… old and young grandfather on the stage… were in a car accident on Thanksgiving weekend. Perhaps you heard about it? Perhaps you, or some of your family members passed by the ambulances and fire trucks at the scene, just outside Italy Cross last weekend. Two of my children, on their way home for turkey and stuffing and wine, arrived from Halifax saying: “Huge accident just outside Bob and the Boys. Scary!”

We had no idea it was our fellow thespians. We ate turkey. We walked on the beach. We drank too much wine and shared silly family stories. The next day I checked facebook… Wow! Our friends. In a crash. Broken bits and collision and holy cow!

Grant and Jordyn… Grandfather and Esme

“Not Constipated Webber!” Abbie cried. Grant was Constable Webber when Abbie was a kid, and, well… in our world Constable rhymes with…

There was no question from the director of the show, Susan Lane, or from any of the cast and crew… we would not even consider replacing our friends with new players to fulfill their roles so we could open on time. It was unthinkable!

Sarah and her alter-ego, Young Grandfather

Creating a play is a bonding experience… we work together almost every day, we laugh and groan and roll our eyes and wonder what on earth made us decide to take up theatre as a hobby… and we become a tiny family for a short period of time. Grant and Sarah are part of the soul of our little play, and we will wait for them to be well.

The plan so far is to pick up rehearsals in the New Year and work toward an opening in February. We’ll let you all know when we have the dates confirmed, with many thanks to Chris Ball at the Astor for accommodating us. Thank you so much to those of you who have been asking when you could buy tickets, and showing your support in a variety of ways.

The show WILL go on.

And it will go on with our friends intact, upright, strong and alive.

And that’s all that matters.

 

It takes a village.

                            Mermaid’s Tears will be presented at the Astor Theatre                      in Liverpool, NS on November 5, 6, 7 & 8, 2015

It takes a village to raise a child. Likewise, building a puppet play.

Well, maybe not a whole village, but definitely a small crowd of creative brains armed with sewing needles, chunks of foam, sparkly organza and super bright lights. And imaginations.

Really big imaginations.

When I decided to write a puppet play, I leapt into it like I do most things. Without thinking. Without experience. Without foresight. When I decided to build the puppets, I did it like I do most things. Glue gun in hand. Elbow-deep in maché. Not a pattern or a plan or a clue in sight.

I researched. I made a prototype. I pretended to know what I was doing.

Clarence, the prototype puppet.

If anyone asked how the puppets were coming along, I smiled calmly, winked, tapped my finger on my nose and generally behaved as if puppet building were second nature to me. Right up there with the designing of suspension bridges and operating an echocardiogram. I am firm believer in “fake it ‘til you make it”, although for me that usually translates into “fake it until they figure out you don’t have a fucking clue, then run and hide.” It’s hard to hide when a merry crew of thespians are depending on your elusive puppet making skills to reveal themselves in the form of fully functional puppets.

For a play.

That real people are going to watch.

Enter: Sarah.

And Lyn, and Sue and Susan. And Cameron and Ashley and Richaard. And Beth and Lily and Grant and Jordyn and Leslie and Jackie…

Sarah Webber is brilliant. She’s small and quiet and subtle, just working away, peacefully tinkering with the puppet mechanisms of her Young Grandfather puppet until she figured out a way to connect the heavy puppet head to the head harness much more securely than my original design. My design had the wires sewn to the front of the harness, with little bunchy-up lumps of metal and thread that drilled into our foreheads, threatening to lobotomize us before we got through scene one. Sarah fixed it. Now, the wires are anchored down the length of the harness, without lumps and without pain. Then, again in her confident quiet way, she secured the head harness to the shoulder straps, so it is one unified package, giving much more support and mobility than before. We now have puppets that comfortably connect to our heads and shoulders, without squeezing our eyes out our eardrums.

Sarah also realized that the puppet upper arms weren’t bulky enough. They kept collapsing whenever we moved our arms, like birds’ wings folding out of sight. The result was a shattering of the illusion. A puppet play is all about illusion. The audience has to forget that there are puppeteers on the stage; they have to be immersed in the story and the movements of the puppets if they are to accept the illusion…disappearing humeri are a definite buzz-kill in the illusion department. We stuffed Sarah’s arms, we stuffed my Old Mother arms. We built up the Young Boy’s biceps and shoulders. Oh, hello illusion, how nice to see you again!

Everything we’re doing right now… tweaking the script, building the set, designing the lighting, translating the words on the page into magic on the stage… is a hugely creative group effort. No one is working alone. No one is any more or less important than the person beside them. It’s a beautiful thing when many minds collaborate for a common goal. Especially when the goal is illusion and magic and story-telling.

We have a month until opening night. We still aren’t fully costumed, we don’t have an ocean, we’re redesigning the mermaid, we’re wondering how to make shadow puppets… but we’re doing it together. So now, if you ask us how the puppets are coming along, we will all wink and smile and tap our noses like we know what we’re doing.

We totally do. Know what we’re doing.

Wink, wink.

Are we there yet…?

I’m up at five. Every day. Including weekends.

This is a choice. I could sleep ‘til six and still get to school on time, but lying in bed fretting about my day is way less productive than getting up and gettin’ at ‘er. Fretting is the school teacher’s resting state.

School has been in for a month now, and I know their names, and I’m starting to know who’s dating who, and who’s breaking up with who, who has a selfie addiction (not kidding, its real!) and who should never be given a hot glue gun ever again. I know who I can tease, and who I can’t. Who might need a pat on the shoulder and who needs a kick in the ass. But I don’t really know them yet, the eighty students who slouch or skip or saunter through my door every day. They surprise me every day. They make me laugh every day, and sometimes they make me cry.

They call me Miss Lib. LBro. Bitch.

I have a lovely International student who calls me Miss Brubub, or Brobrub, or Brububub.

Teens are complex creatures. Ask any parent if they’ve figured out their own teenager yet and then multiply that mystification by eighty. Throw in a bevy of cell phones and mental health concerns and identity crises and learning challenges and anxiety issues and you have a normal, busy, somewhat-functional-on-a-good-day high school classroom. And they change every day. Like hyper-active chameleons. And I love them, in the weird love-hate relationship that defines so much in high school. In an effort to teach all of these wee creatures, we’re being encouraged to embrace a “new” imperative called, impressively, Universal Design for Learning.

UDL.

Utterly Divine Lessons.

How pompous it sounds. As if we, as educators, can wave our magic pedagogical wands and through some phenomenal spell-casting weave instruction that embraces every single kid with every single learning style and every single strength into one dynamic lesson for all… every day… for twenty-five kids at a time… and still have enough mental energy left over to figure out the new rules for our Communal Learning Time and how to migrate our email to gnspes and how to upload files to showbie and match the outcomes to our intentions to their proficiencies to our growth plan to our acid reflux medication…

I think it used to be called Assessment for Learning. Before that it was maybe Multiple Intelligences, before that: How to Use your Slate.  Educators have been steadily working toward the magic bean ever since the first caveman taught his kid how to light a fire. UDL isn’t new. It’s just a reminder that we haven’t quite made it yet. That’s what makes it hard on the pedagogical soul… this constant reminder that no matter how hard we work, how many hours and initiatives we swallow, no matter how much we love our kids, no matter how many times we ask “are we there yet?” the answer always seems to be…

Nope.

I guess that’s the difference between being a teacher and being a parent. I’m a parent. Times four. That’s a whole lot of Parent, if To Parent can be a verb. I didn’t always get it right with my kids… I let them down, I failed, I missed important moments of parenting, but they are all lovely, successful, wildly inappropriate young adults now who, miraculously, love me. But they’ve grown up and moved on. My parenting time is different now.  I don’t get to go back and do it over, do it better. With teaching, it’s never over. Year after year, sixteen year old after sixteen year old, we are given the chance to do it again, try to get it right, fix what didn’t work the year before, strive for the Universal Design that will meet their needs.

Are we there yet?

Education is changing. New homework policies, new codes of conduct, new expectations in and out of the classroom… OK. I can dig it. I’m up at 5. I gots time fer dis.

“Miss Lib, I think I got hot glue on my face. It really hurts.”

“You, young man, will never use a hot glue gun in class ever again.”

The magic of UDL at work.

Back to school, be like…

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… realizing that your few purchases of clothing for your Fashionable Teacher Wardrobe, of which you were wildly proud, are woefully inadequate. The five wool sweaters you bought at Frenchy’s just don’t cut it thanks to Global Warming. Likewise the cute fur-lined slipper boots. And the brand new sweater-blanket. But, since all you own are flip-flops or fur-lined slipper boots, you are forced to wear flip-flops with every outfit. Even with that one nice dress that makes you look like Angelina Jolie. Twenty years and twenty pounds from now. That Angelina.

Counting the days to wearing the sweater blanket.

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… realizing that your determination to ignore the siren call of Tim Horton’s as you drive past the drive-through every morning at 6:45 may be misguided. Sure, spending $20 a week on coffee is extravagant. Sure, Tim Horton’s coffee tears through your digestive system like a teen driver skipping class. Sure, you haven’t had Tim Horton’s coffee all summer, and lived to tell the tale.

But.

Coffee… goooood.

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… getting home at 4pm on a Friday afternoon and lying on the floor in the hallway because that’s where you were when you stopped moving, midway between your intention to throw in some laundry, walk the dogs, make supper, vacuum and empty the compost… and your intention to prepare your lessons for Monday… before you got too tired…

But there’s the floor.

Ahhh… sweet floor, how I have longed to lie on you, since recess. On Monday. And here we are, together again.

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… sitting at supper while your food goes cold and your Love’s eyes glaze over because you are telling him about Jeffery and Shannon and John and Lydia, and how you just know tomorrow’s lesson is going to Blow Their Minds, and how the new policies aren’t helping anyone, and how you ran out of glue sticks and it was mayhem, and how the entire hallway smelled of fish but there were no fish to be seen, and…

And the lesson doesn’t Blow Their Minds, but its ok, because you can discuss that with your Love later, and who wants to eat a hot supper anyway?

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… making energy balls of oatmeal and peanut butter and chia seeds faithfully on Sunday night for the first two weeks, and then, at recess on Monday of the third week, wishing someone would magically appear in your classroom, bearing energy balls. And maybe a Tim Horton’s coffee. Because there’s nothing wrong with TWO Timmie’s a day.

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… losing your giant desk calendar on which you lovingly wrote your plans and meetings, in multi colored pens the week before school started. Losing it under the essays, photocopies, lists, forms, books, pens, folders and, mysteriously, a perfectly folded paper airplane you don’t remember confiscating.

Bye-bye giant calendar. See you in June.

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… blinking in surprise as you realize, once again, how incredibly boring you are. No one can make an individual feel more boring than a bored teen. I’m boring myself, just thinking about how bored they look. You forget that, every summer. At the end of summer, you enter the school, confident that you are, like, the most exciting teacher ever, because, like, you have rubrics. And new multi-colored pens. And a giant desk calendar. And a nice dress that makes you look like a sixty-year old, fat Angelina Jolie. You’re not. You’re boring.

Just sayin’.

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… saying yes to all the things you swore you would say no to.

… leaving all of your coffee travel mugs at school after the first three days. Enter: Timmies.

… trying, and failing, to retrain yourself to use PowerTeacher, and feeling stupid because you can’t remember your password from last year. Staff email? Same. Tienet? Samesies.

… pondering, at 3am, when you woke up from a weird teacher-dream and can’t get back to sleep, why so many of the kids in the grade ten year are named Garrett and Logan and Austin, and whether or not Austin will be emotionally crippled if you keep calling him Logan, and vice versa, but dammit, they keep switching chairs and how are you supposed to remember?

… realizing, yet again, that the photocopier is the most important machine in your world, ten minutes before class, when you NEED 30 copies, and it jams… like Satan himself is in the gears…

Being a teacher in the early weeks of September means…

… worrying about That Kid. Times ten. Because they are hungry, sad, lonely, tired, bored, beautiful, smelly, dirty, clean, worried, intense, scary, thoughtful, clever, rude, foul, hilarious… That Kid.

They are all… That Kid.

And that’s why we do it.

Happy Back to School, teaching brethren!

…

Puppets and mermaids and seagulls, oh my!

I’m embarking on a somewhat terrifying adventure as a Thespian. But it’s more complicated than that… as a Thespian-Playwrite. Actually, as a Thespian-Playwrite-Puppet-Maker. Well, to be perfectly clear… as a Thespian-Playwrite-Puppet-Maker-Puppeteer. Hence the terror. It’s a “Jack of all Trades, Master of None” kind of thing. In public. Glue gun in hand.

And I am not alone. We are a merry band of thespians, all willing to parade about dressed in funny costumes, strutting and fretting and being silly. Being in a Winds of Change production is a weird compulsion that demands time and physical strain and supportive families:

Me: I’m going to hang out with my thespian friends, baby.

My Love: Um… OK. Are they all… lesbians?

Me: Thespians darling, thespians.

I’ve written a wee play about a fisherman, and a lonely girl, and a horrible mother, and a mermaid… it’s a maritime fable, although I’m not sure I’m allowed to call it that since it’s a blurring of fable and fantasy and fairy tale, on the shores of the sea, with a dory and seagulls. There’s probably a moral to the story, but I guess the audience will have to determine what it is since it’s like everything I write… spew it out and wait and see what happens!

That’s also where the terror comes from. Waiting to see what happens.

Throwing creative works out into the world is like raising a feral child you found under your pillow. You nurture the poor creature as best you can until one day you leave the window open and it launches itself out into blue, fingernails untrimmed, hair unwashed, dressed in rags you sewed with all your broken needles and leftover fabric… and you watch, bemused, as it cavorts in public. Everyone knows it belongs to you, and your only hope is that people will be kind enough to excuse it when it poops in the corner of the shopping mall. Your greatest hope is that one person, just one would be fine, is willing to take it home and feed it a bowl of soup and give it a warm place to sleep.

Our hope with this play is that it gains entry in the Liverpool International Theatre Festival, held here in jolly ol’ L’pool at our glorious Astor Theatre, in May, 2016.  There is an intense application process, and then the waiting to see if we are successful, and if we are, then there will be the excitement and fear of performing with amazing troupes from across the globe. The feral child will run amok!

For now… we are creating puppets, we are rehearsing, we are building set and props, we are wondering how the mermaid will be able to navigate the stage without tangling her tail in the waves. We are trying to survive the muggy heat of September, rehearsing in the new Old Town Hall…

I hope to blog about our progress, and our process over the next few weeks as we approach our first performances on November 5, 6, 7 and 8th, 2015. Here is the cast list… if you see any of us at the grocery store, please be kind and tell us to break a leg, or a tail fin…

Director: Susan Lane

Producer: Beth Woodford-Collins

Set/Tech: Cameron Dexter

Set/Props: Nick Moase, Jade Whynot

Costumes: Lynn Sponagle, Lyn Oakley, Sue Beaumont

Morna: Ashley Goodwin MacDonald

Young Boy: Leslie Clarke

Young Grandfather: Sarah Webber

 Mother: Libby Broadbent

 Old Grandfather: Grant Webber

 Esme: Jordyn Duffney

 Mermaid: Lily Lane

Advance Article: http://www.novanewsnow.com/News/Local/2015-04-10/article-4107124/Mermaid%26rsquo%3Bs-Tears-%26ndash%3B-Queens-County-novelist-writes-first-play/1

Another article:  http://www.novanewsnow.com/Community/2015-07-13/article-4212543/Cast-selected-for-Liverpool-play-the-Mermaids-Tears/1