Memorial Day Weekend 2016

Memorial Day is the official start of summer so Marilyn and I decided to spend the weekend at Bear Lake.  We had so much fun!

We stayed at the KOA in Garden City and this was our cabin for the weekend.  Both Marilyn and I spent some quality time sitting on the front porch reading.  It was so relaxing!  On Saturday my Mom and Dad drove up and we rented a pontoon boat for the afternoon.  It was so much fun!  My Mom does not like boats and, initially, she didn't want to go with us but she let herself be coaxed on board.  Marilyn is terrified of water and doesn't know how to swim but she eventually drove the boat.  I'm telling you, it was so much fun being out on the water and the weather was absolutely perfect!

On Sunday Marilyn and I spent the day at the beach.  We drove to Bear Lake State Park in Idaho because it was a little bit out of the way so it wasn't very crowded.  We ended up at North Beach and we basically sat on the beach and read.  It was fabulous!

This was such a wonderful start to the summer!  

A Day at the Met

Whenever I am in a big city for a few days, I like to plan a visit to a museum because I find them to be endlessly fascinating.  In New York City there are so many to choose from!  I had been to the MoMA (although it merits a return visit) so I thought about the Guggenheim (it was closed) and the Natural History Museum but, in the end, I opted for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and it was incredible!  I started on the ground floor with a current exhibition called Manus x Machina (it runs through August 14) showing how the sewing machine has changed haute couture.  My favorite piece is a wedding gown designed by Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel which has a 20 foot train embroidered in gold.  It is quite spectacular.  I also loved the exhibition of J.M.W. Turner's Whaling Pictures (it runs through August 7) which includes one painting in the Met's permanent collection and three on loan from the Tate in London.  These four paintings were completed near the end of Turner's life and are very tumultuous, to say the least.  (I became a fan of Turner after seeing this movie).  Next, I wandered through an exhibition called Artistic Furniture of the Gilded Age.  It is fascinating but it closes soon (June 5).  Finally, I wandered through the permanent collections including Egyptian Art, Medieval Art, Greek and Roman Art, and the Art of Africa and Oceania (which has some dramatic exhibits).  I was there most of the day and still didn't see everything!  If you are a fan of art from around the world, I highly recommend a visit to this amazing museum (I also recommend the cafeteria in the basement!).  Go here for more information.

Summer Reading

Today is the last day of school!  Yippee!  One of the things I like best about summer vacation is lots of uninterrupted time for reading!  I already have a stack of books and I can't wait to get started.  Since I teach the classics from British literature during the school year, I decided to spend the summer reading contemporary British authors and I found a great list here.  I will be reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith, The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters, The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware, Little Bee by Chris Cleave, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell, and Me Before You by JoJo Moyes (I will probably start with Me Before You because I want to read it before the movie comes out next week) and I will review each book here every Friday.  You can join me and let me know what you think of each book in the comments.  Yay for summer reading!

Hamilton on Broadway

By the time I got in line in front of the Richard Rodgers Theatre, I had worked myself into quite a state.  After all, I had flown all the way across the country, paid the equivalent of the gross national product of a small country to sit in the balcony, and eagerly anticipated this moment for months.  Would I be disappointed?  Was this musical worth all of the hype?  The answer, my friends, is a resounding yes!  Hamilton is absolutely amazing, even better than I had imagined, and I think it is the best thing I have ever seen on the stage!  I have listened to the music going to and coming home from school for months so I basically had the lyrics to the entire show memorized.  The music was even better when I saw the costumes, the staging, and the choreography!  With the intimacy of the theatre it seemed as though the actors (the original cast from the Broadway recording!) sang their roles with much more emotion and passion and, believe me, I noticed every little nuance.  Some of my most favorite moments were when the crowd exploded into thunderous applause when Lin-Manuel Miranda made his first entrance on stage in the song "Alexander Hamilton," when Samuel Seabury (Thayne Jasperson) moves his soapbox forward to get away from Hamilton heckling him in "Farmer Refuted," when King George III (Rory O'Malley) struts out on the stage in high heels and waves his scepter at the audience during "You'll Be Back," when Lafayette (Daveed Diggs) jumps off of the table in "Guns and Ships,"  the choreography of the soldiers in "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)," when Hamilton imitates Jefferson (Daveed Diggs) in "Cabinet Battle #1," how the transition from Hamilton writing and then Washington (Christopher Jackson) delivering the Farewell Address is staged in "One Last Time," how the song "Hurricane" is staged to simulate an actual hurricane, when Jefferson struts around the stage (wearing a purple velvet frock coat) tossing pamphlets in the air during "The Reynolds Pamphlet," when Eliza (Phillipa Soo) actually burns letters in "Burn," when Eliza screams after Philip (Anthony Ramos) dies in "Stay Alive (Reprise)," when Eliza takes Hamilton's hand and he bows his head in "It's Quiet Uptown," when a member of the ensemble hands Burr (Leslie Odom, Jr.) a list of Hamilton's grievances one page at a time in "Your Obedient Servant," and the staging of the duel between Hamilton and Burr on the turntable in "The World Was Wide Enough."  I could go on and on!  So many of the performances gave me goosebumps, especially Christopher Jackson in "Right Hand Man" ("We are outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned. We've got to make an all out stand!"),  Leslie Odom, Jr. in "Wait For It" and "The World Was Wide Enough," and Renee Elise Goldsberry in "Satisfied."  I had a hard time taking my eyes off Lin-Manuel Miranda when he was on stage because he was such an imposing presence, much like, I suspect, Alexander Hamilton himself.  I walked out of the theatre with my mind buzzing with all I had seen and heard, wanting desperately to see it again!  It was definitely worth the outrageous price of admission and I would pay it again in a heartbeat.  I highly recommend this brilliant musical if you have the opportunity to see it.  In fact, I highly recommend that you make the opportunity to see it!

Note:  Hamilton was the highlight of my New York trip.  It may be the highlight of the year!

A Job Well Done

The school year is soon coming to a close and this is always a bittersweet time for me.  I have to say goodbye to my current student body officers and my heart is certainly heavy at the prospect.  I have worked with many different student groups over the years but I have never had a group more committed or more dedicated than this one.  They have worked countless hours to make Hunter High School a better place and they have accomplished more in one year than I thought was possible.  There are so many memories from this year that it is hard to narrow it down but I think my favorites are when they brought the Spirit Can out for the first time in an assembly (it was definitely a big hit with the students), when we crowned a special needs student as our Homecoming Queen, and when we presented a check for $4,500 to a little boy with cancer named Carson through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  Emily, Sam, Alex, Oriana, Cameron, Nesley, and Sam I am so proud of you and, even though I will miss you terribly, I am excited to see what this next chapter in your lives brings you!  I wish you much success in all of your future endeavors!