A great story teller

My mother had a terrible time getting me to read. I remember those terrible little readers from the fifties with cheesy little pictures of chubby children with blond curls and long eye lashes. I don't know why we owned so many of them but I was always dreading having o read out of the next one. There were long hours of me sounding out words so slowly that they lost all meaning in the sentence but it didn't matter cause the sentences were so dull. I always felt cheated when I finally got all the words right and we went over them again to put the sentence together and all we got was "Sally plays with her doll." I've always been such a slow learner.

But I've always loved books, just not reading them. Mom and Dana read to me. We got through quite a pile of children's literature before I could read anything like that for myself. Some of those books came and went without much notice and some I have reread dozens of times. One unforgettable story was about a cat who belonged to a Wizard. Ever since the Wizard gave the cat the gift of speech there was nothing the cat wanted more than to be a human. When the Wizard finally granted his wish a crazy and hilarious adventure followed. The book was The Cat Who Wished to be a Man by Lloyd Alexander.

Several years later Lloyd Alexander's stories (with some help from Redwall) were the irresistible sirens that made me a reader forever. I was about twelve. I got The Book of Three on tape read by the author and got hooked. But those little cassette tapes (such a thing of the past now) were easily corrupted and about half way through the story the voice stared echoing and fading in and out and as hard as I tried there came a point where I couldn't understand him anymore. So I had to get the book out and actually read it. Then there were the other four books in the Prydain Chronicles and the dozens of other miscellaneous books about everything from unemployed violinists to recently displaced bean counters. The Gowgan and the Boy, The Iron Ring, The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian, The Arcadians, Time Cat, Gypsy Riska... the list goes on. The characters had real voices and faces and funny little quirks. Admittedly, there were character types that got reused in almost every book, and there were plot twists that I cam to expect in each story. But every book began with a sentence or two that made it impossible to leave the book at the library. There were messages about honor and sacrifice and love and humility and the value of life. One of them is almost singlehandedly responsible for getting me re-interested in history and introducing me to Longfellow ( if in a rather backward way) There was one trilogy that I didn't like because the questions it asked about war and violence bothered me. He didn't seem to have very good answers. But maybe that was the point. There are not good answers about somethings. It was probably just a little too big for me. I will have to read it again someday. I finished every one of them with the conviction that it was the best one he'd ever written... and then I'd open the next one.... I have not read all of them because my new found love of stories soon took me to other corners of the library but the ones I did read stayed with me. He was a huge part of my life!



I found out today that Lloyd Alexander died last summer!

And no one told me!!! Today is his birthday. That kind of freaks me out; I found out he's dead on his birthday. It totally ruined my day.

I would finish a Lloyd Alexander book and read the inside jacket panel about how Mr. Alexander lived with his wife and his cats on Drexel Hill Pennsylvania. I wanted to go there and meet him. Since that seemed highly unlikely I would say a prayer for him or offer mass for him in hopes that I would get to meet him in heaven. I don't know anything about his faith or lack there of, but I was determined. Now I guess I have to work on getting there myself.≈

nonsense and other matters

I think I have lots of important things to be doing right now. But I can't remember what they are. That's probably a bad thing. Mondays are terrible partially because they loom ominously at the end of your lovely weekends but also because you get to the end of them (or at least I have) and school doesn't seem so bad. Every thing's due at the end of the week and it feels like there is plenty of time.

Do you ever have one of those days when you just want to hang out at home and wear a toga? Today I would like to wear a dress from thirteenth century Italy. I think it would be very convenient to have full skirts with petty coats so I could stay warm and still look somewhat nice in cold weather.

I talked to a boy today who was looking at a beautiful mosaic of a scene from the Gospels and was completely ignorant of it's meaning. "Why is Jesus about to make out with that other guy?"
Me: "You know what that is, don't you?"
Blank look.
Me: "Seriously, you don't know?"
Him: "We're not really very religious... at all."
Me: "Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss."
He looked at me as if I had just told him that there was life on the moon.
Me: "It's just kind of a famous moment!"
I guess I knew there were people out there who had no idea who Jesus is or what He did. Kind of sad. My teacher (same class) obviously spends a lot of time studying early Christian art but when she starts talking about the symbolism in Christian art she is clearly out of her depth. She keeps talking about the way light is used and all she can say is "Light came to symbolize God's wisdom, or something like that." I realize she is not there to give us a lecture on symbolism but that seems so incomplete. Our text book seems to think that most images on stained glass windows are there to encourage common people to donate money to the Church. *Sigh* And they think I'm sheltered.

A person's a person, no matter how small.

Act Two (being the scenes directly following Act One)

Horton sits on the egg for fifty one weeks. He is pulled from town to town and draws a crowd of thrill seekers cause he is so laughable. How humiliating. One day, who should come looking for a laugh but a flashy bird named Mayzie with a fabulous tail. It takes Mayzie a little while to remember who Horton is and why he is so happy to see her. Horton offers the egg back to her. He has made his promise good and now he would like to go home. Mayzie makes a few lame excuses and then tells Horton that, since it has made him such a big hit in show biz, he can keep the egg. Gee, she feels great about herself. She gave something that was hers away to help make someone else happy and successful. Her shallowness never ceases to amaze me. She makes a hasty exit leaving Horton with the egg for good. Horton is technically free to get rid of the egg now, if he wanted to. He's not baby sitting, egg sitting, anymore. But he sees the egg as abandoned and unwanted and helpless, just like himself, so he keeps it. He sings over it about a place where he can find belonging. Solla Sollew is a far away place where people are kind and there is no war or cruel winters. It's the place that Horton and Jojo go in their mind when they are thinking all alone. They have been looking for it all their lives. Sometimes Horton thinks he's almost there but it's always just out of reach. When they finally find it they will be home and they will stay there forever. Unlimited desire for perfect Home.

Back to the Whos. When the clover was dropped and lost, Whoville was wrecked as if an earth quake had struck. In military school, General Shmitt has been training the boys to fight. There is a war on Who against the people who put their butter on the wrong side of the bread. On Christmas eve, on the field of battle, Jojo takes a stand against the General. He refuses to fight, gives up his sword and his uniform hat and walks away... right through a mine field. There is an explosion and General Shmit has to break the news to Jojo's parents as they are trying to celebrate Christmas without their son.
The Cat takes us back to the scene of the tragedy to see if we need really fear the worst.
I guess I'll tell you a bit about this song since it's one I can put up here for you to hear. All through the show, Jojo uses his imagination to make the world more colorful for himself. When he stands up to General Shmitt it is the first time he uses that brilliant mind of his to do something that means something. Then when he is escaping over the mine field the Cat (a symbol of his imagination) comes with a group of creeping figures called hunches. His imagination is running the wrong way with him. He's scaring himself into helplessness. In the middle of the song he shouts at the Cat to go away. He doesn't want to think any more. It always gets him into trouble. Then the cat gives him a new 'think'. The Cat thinks a glimmer of light for Jojo. The hunches are all in Jojo's head and he starts to control them in stead of letting them confuse him. He uses that great mind of his to find his way home. At the end of the song Jojo makes it home and the music swells to end triumphantly with Jojo's two songs; The theme from Alone in the Universe ("I have wings and I can fly...") and then the chorus of hunches sing 'anything's possible!' It's one of my favorite moments in the show. Jojo and his imagination are undervalued because the other Whos don't see a practical use for it. In his song Anything's Possible, Jojo (with the help of the Cat) makes a huge mess of his house cause he let his 'thinks' carry him away. Later he feels alone in the universe because no one else wants to share his 'thinks' with him. When he uses his 'thinks' to find his way home, the other Whos can finally value and share his gift. Both Alone in the Universe and Anything's Possible are resolved and completed by the end of 'Have'in a Hunch"

I bet you forgot about Gertrude McFuzz.
Well, that's okay, I mean, everyone does.
But Gertrude did something that not any bird could do.
So this is the tale of Miss Gertrude Part two.

Gertrude shows up in the show again at the foot of Horton's tree in the middle of the night. Her tail is gone. Horton is kind of surprised to see her. Why should she even be there. He asks how she found him. When Gertrude says it's a long story, I don't think Horton realized what he was asking for.
Gertrude launches into the tale of her tail. She realized that the tail was more about her own vanity then helping Horton and so she had it plucked out. It was a painful operation but it was worth it cause now she could save the man she loved. She went through a horrible fantastic journey to get to him sacrificing every form of comfort and security all for Horton. She tells Horton, in great detail, all the things she did for him. The song keeps growing and growing. The words are a crazy tongue twister. She pretty much pours her heart out for him. Always repeating and reminding him that it was 'for you' "All for you!"

"Now here I am, the worse for ware, and here you are. I'm here, your there.
And maybe NOW you'll now I care for you!"

Completely out of breath she adds quietly.

"Oh yeah, and Horton, one more thing. It took me seven weeks, but I found your clover too."

That is the happiest moment ever for Horton. What a great feeling to have his Whos back and know that they are safe. "Gerturde, I've never noticed before, but you're amazing" Way to pass on the joy! Gertrude is floating.

Their joy is short lived however. The Sour Kangaroo and the Wickersham Brothers show up and put Horton under citizens arrest. They take him to trail and testify against him. He is charged with 'talking to a spec, disturbing the peace and loitering on an egg." Yurtle the Turtle quickly finds Horton guilty and sentences him to be locked up in the Nool asylum for the criminally insane. The clover is doomed to be boiled in oil. Horton doesn't care what happens to him but he cannot see Who destroyed. As the Wickersham brothers try to pry the clover out of his hand... trunk.... he makes one last attempt to prove that the Whos exist. He calls to the Whos and asks them to shout, all together shout and make themselves heard. Horton can't help them but if they shout loudly enough they can save themselves and Horton too. They must shout over the gleeful singing of the Nool Citizens with their tinny voices that only Horton could hear to begin with. It's a pretty noisy song. The Whos are shouting "We are here, we are here!" The Nool Citizens are chanting "Boil it, boil it!" and Horton breaking in desperately to encourage them. Then the cat friezes everyone for a moment. The Whos look to Jojo, the thinker. "Think of something!" The Cat narrates:

"Now just for a moment, young Jojo looked Grim
The fate of the Whos rested squarely on him.
And then came a think, a peculiar new word
no one ever had hear."

Then everyone is singing and chanting and yelling again and over it all, the small voice of Jojo carries

YOP!

The citizens of Nool gasp, they hear! Horton's not crazy, the Whos really are persons no matter how small, Jojo is a hero and a great thinker. The Sour Kangaroo promise to help protect the spec. And the Young Kangaroo in her pouch said "Me Too!"

Just as Jojo is about to 'think' a perfect ending for this story the egg begins to hatch. Or maybe that was the ending he thought of. In any case it hatches and out comes an 'elephant bird'. Horton has that sinking feeling that you get when you are handed the most wonderful gift that you have ever recieved and you know that it won't fit, it's not going to work, you are somehow unworthy, or unable to enjoy it.

"Oh Gertrude what'll I do? I'm slow and I'm fat. All I know is the earth. He'll need much more than that!"

Then Gertrude gets to sing his song for him so he knows, beyond a doubt, that he can count on her and he'll never never be alone in the universe again.

Gertrude sings: "I have wings and I can fly.
You teach him earth and I will teach him sky."
Horton: "Just call my name,"
Both: "And I'll see you through"
Horton: "One small voice in the universe"
Gertrude: "One true friend in the universe"
Both: "Who believes in You!"

Then the cat ends it all by putting it all back into his hat. And, after one of my favorite curtain call songs of all time, leaves that hat, the symbol of imagination and creativity, in the hands of the boy from the beginning of the show. What will the boy do with it?

"Their adventures were over,
The sky became... pink.
And then guess what happened?
Well, what do you Think..."

One true friend in the universe

Zita is using a lot of will power cause she is about to rant about something for several pages but it could be several dozen pages so count yourself lucky, and if you need a break you can always read the rest an other day.

If you could give a child a message, an idea you wanted them to keep and believe in all their lives, what would it be? How would you tell this child so that the message would stick forever? Put it in a story. Make it rhyme. Set it to music. It will stick. Just ask the advertising industry. I think I've said that before. Oh yeah, the other way to make something stick is repetition. Stories stick, rhymes stick, music sticks. They all stick especially well in children. What would you tell the child? I would like to tell a child to be who God wants him to be. Be truly himself. I would like to tell a child to pay attention to the world around him; notice things and never lose his imagination or wonder at God's creation. I would like to tell a child to stand up for what's important, defend the weak, especially people; people are important. You know where this is going don't you? There is a musical that has a great story, rhymes all the way through and is about 75% music. AND hidden in this rhyming musical story, is a message about being yourself, using your imagination, standing up for what's right, defending the weak and valuing people.
What's good for a child is good for an adult. An adult might walk away from this show with the same messages as a child, but on a deeper level. That is, if the adult pays attention and is humble enough to be taught a lesson by an elephant, a bird, a little boy and a cat.... in a hat.

At the opening of this show there is bare stage in the middle of which sits a solitary hat. You know the one: it's tall and has red and white stripes. A boy walks on and starts to imagine things about the hat. He imagines the Cat and suddenly the Cat appears. Throughout the show, this boy and the cat imagine things and they come into being. It all comes out of that marvelous hat. The stage quickly fills with color and characters and music.
I'm really bad at summarizing plots. I am hoping you have all read Dr. Seuss books. They pretty much mixed all the best stories together and put them to music.

Project playlist has it's limits and so if you want to hear the Seusical music (which I've had here before) you have to scroll all the way down, hit pause on the regular player, then scroll all the way up and hit play on this little player
here--->

That's all they have at Radio Blog so that kind of gives you a taste. I wish I could find a few of my favorites. As much as I love the Cat, I really prefer everyone else's songs.

There are basically three stories interweaving in Seussical The Musical.
The main one, around which all the others hang is about Horton the elephant. There are two parts to Horton's story; first of all Horton hears the voices of people too tiny to see. He promises to protect a tiny planet called Who that looks like a spec of dust. No one believes that there is anyone living on it but him.

The second plot is about the boy who lives on the small planet of Who that Horton is protecting. His name is Jojo and he has an over active imagination. He has too many "thinks." His parents and the whole community think of this as a serious problem and they send him off to military school to keep him from 'thinking.'

Thirdly, there is a bird named Gertrude who is irresistibly attracted to Horton's big heart. She thinks she's too plain to be noticed and spends much of the show trying to impress him by changing her appearance.

And of course, there is the cat. He shows up in each story and guides it along, making things more complicated or saving the day by turns.

Horton is the heart and soul of this show. His faithfulness and determination and most of all his humility make him very reachable as a hero. There are things that Horton believes in and these are so important to him that he is willing to face the scorn and ridicule of his peers and go through all sorts of terrible things. How many of us would do that? His belief in the sanctity of life is so strong that nothing will deter him from protecting these small people that called for his help. Over and over he sings quietly, in his simple way 'a person's a person, no matter how small." That settles it for Horton. Let them all laugh. He has promised to protect a tiny planet full of people only he can hear. Nothing will shake his resolve and his faith.
Horton's pretty solid, but that doesn't mean it's not hard for him. He hits a low point in the show after he has been guarding the Whos for some time. The other citizens of the Jungle of Nool and their mockery are starting to get to him. He has to find something to get him through it. He observes that the other jungle animals lack a gift of hearing and noticing. It makes him even more lonely to know that no one else notices all the wonderful things he can see and hear. But this gift is also his comfort; he has wings that can raise him up and out of reach of the base nastiness of his neighbors.
As Horton is singing about this bittersweet loneliness, on the tiny planet of Who, Jojo is also singing. Jojo is at Military school where he'll "sweat and shiver and eat raw liver" in an attempt to make him like every other Who boy; practical, neat, clean and, ultimately, unimaginative.

"Nobody knows that I have wings, yes, I can fly
around the moon and far beyond the sky.
And someday soon I know there you'll be...
One small voice in the universe,
One true friend in the universe
Who believes in me."

In real life, God sometimes puts people in your life that feel like family (in a good way) after you've known them for a matter of moments. It's one of those miracles that happen two or three times in a lifetime and make you feel that perhaps the world is not such a bad place. In a musical, that sort of miracle happens when two characters, who haven't met, are singing the same song in two different places. It's a pretty good way of describing it actually: Suddenly you hear someone singing the harmony to your song. Horton hears Jojo singing and they become friends between the second verse and the final refrain. The song is called Alone in the Universe and it's one of my favorites. I love friendship duets.

Meanwhile in an other part of the jungle... well, next door actually, Gertrude McFuzz is frustrated cause she's been singing along with Horton for weeks and he hasn't noticed. She is attracted to Horton's compassion and determination and wants to help and support him but their neighbors keep drowning her out. She not very loud, in fact she kind of shy and plain. She is a bird with only one feather in her tail. Her friend Mayzie has a flashy fabulous tail and everyone notices her. So Gertrude, at Mayzie's advice, goes to a doctor and demands special pills to make her tail grow. Does this sound familiar? How many women do this sort of thing. Somehow we think that we are not good enough just the way God made us. We change the way we look or dress or act. We think that these superficial things will keep us from being wall flowers. We all want to be noticed or somehow affirmed. Gertrude obviously doesn't want the kind of attention that Mayzie gets but she thinks that's the only way. So she gets herself a big colorful tail.
Does Horton Notice? He's got too many other things on his mind to care about birds with giant tails.

Some of Horton's neighbors, a trio of monkeys called the Wickersham brothers, steal the clover on which the planet Who is resting. They lead Horton on a desperate chase across the jungle. The clover gets dropped in a field full of clovers where, they are sure, Horton will never be able to find it. Horton is crushed but he just takes a deep breath and starts picking clover, one at a time and searching for his Whos.

Also determined, Gertrude follows with her tail to get Horton's attention. All her parading brings no results at all. Horton is too busy listening to one clover and then an other. He's not real interested in big tails anyway. He's an elephant after all. Gertrude keeps taking pills, her tail doesn't even fit on the stage anymore, but Horton won't notice her.

As Horton is out in the field someone else is feeling hopeless; Mayzie. She's bored. Now, for a children's show, this is a bit borderline: Mayzie is stuck on a nest cause he boy friend left her with an egg. Yeah. *cough* Remember Mayzie is the most popular bird in the Jungle of Nool because she is fabulous and beautiful and shows off her big colorful tail. Now, look where all that attention has gotten her. She has no idea what love is. Sacrifice is the language of love andMayzie doesn't speak it. She is just looking for the next thrill, the next joyride. Her last joyride leaves her on a nest with an egg that is demanding her care and attention. It demands sacrifice. It demands love. All she wants to do it get out of it. PoorMayzie will never experience the lasting joy that comes from giving yourself to someone, for real. She whines to Horton about how unfair life is. He sympathizes. She asks him to take care of the egg for a while so she can have a short vacation.
She'll be right back.
Really.
Horton is so sweet, he knows what it's like to have a responsibility that seems too heavy. Horton's self esteem is really lot at this point. He feels like a failure because he lots the Whos. He needs to prove, to himself if no one else, that he is dependable and capable of defending the weak like he promised. He agrees to take care of one more helpless little person. It is obvious to us that Mayzie isn't going to come back any time soon but Horton keeps hopping in her. He promised to take care of the egg and even if she doesn't keep faith with him, it doesn't matter; "an elephant's faithful, 100%". Why would he do that? He has no special love for Mayzie. Why would he sacrifice for her like that? It's that hope and conviction in him that keeps hims sitting on the egg for months. He may realize that Mayzie is not coming back, or he may not, it doesn't matter. The egg needs him now. Helpless people need to be protected and as far as Horton is concerned, the egg is also a person.

The main problem is that sitting on the egg keeps him from searching for the Whos. When rain and storms come Horton is terribly torn between searching for and protecting the Whos, thereby letting the egg frieze or staying with the egg and hopping the Whos will be alright. He ends up sitting miserably on the egg and worrying.

An elephant sitting on an egg is so ridiculous that when some hunters come through the jungle they decide to capture Horton and sell him to a circus. Horton calls desperately for help and Gertrude hears him and comes to his aid. Unfortunately her tail is so long and heavy that she can't really... fly.... at all. Just when he needed her most and he would have been sure to notice her, Gertrude utterly fail him. All because she had tried to get his by superficiality. What good is a big beautiful tail if you can't help the person you love when he needs you?
It's too late, Horton is taken far across the ocean, egg nest and tree.

End Act One

Oh, look at that; I have a blog

Too bad I'm starting school again on Thursday.

Merry Christmas!! I can still say that cause it's not over till the sixth and then there are still a bunch of extra Christmas-ish feasts.
And Happy New Year!! May 2008 be filled with blessings and graces.
I don't really want to babble on about what I did this year, mostly cause my feet are cold from sledding, so I think I will go to bed now.

Four beat pattern

My schola friend Teresa took her conducting final this semester. She conducted a Palastrina Mass for us and it was lovely. We were all so proud of her. I think she will be a really great conductor. She wants to teach middle school choir. This makes me thing she is a very brave woman. Anyway, she let me take pictures of her hands while she conducted for my art project. I did one page for each beat in a four beat conducting pattern. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. My teacher spent most of the semester telling me not to be so careful so I was proud that I got these done in about ten minutes a page.
Down Beat


Beat Two

Beat Three Beat Four or the Up Beat

Hands up

I'm done! Schools out till the new year! After a careful inventory check, I have determined that I survived pretty well. I still have all my limbs and senses and so on. My shoulders and back protest that back packs are an instrument of torture and my girls club probably feels a bit neglected but beyond that I think I'm okay.

So, my last project for my drawing class was to pick an object and draw it fifty times. The idea was to get us to stretch and scramble for new ways to present an object. I don't think it worked for me cause I chose an object with SO many variations that I didn't ever have to think very hard to come up with more composition ideas. I chose to draw hands. Several people in my class looked at my like I was crazy when I told them. That kind of made me feel all egotistical and like I was bold and talented. Ah, self deception! Anyway, some of them really turned out nice so I thought I'd post a few here over the break.

Also, Jessie bought me an easel! I was drawing at her house one day and the next day when I walked in she asked me if I could stop by the art supply store tomorrow and take a look at the easel she had on hold there for me. Then she handed me a check. I was a little bit speechless. I ended up buying a different one than the one she picked out but it was just a really odd feeling. I would never buy myself something like that. I walked out of the store with this thing under my arm and I then I realized I was walking out of an art store with an easel that was now mine and that I had an easel and ... well... words fail.... It's the little things...
So, obviously, the hand above is the front of Jessie's thank you note. She has a little paper weight that looks something like that and she let me draw it.