Scorching School Daze

Benedict & Beatrice, 2011

School started last Monday with little fanfare at SHS. We are still a construction zone -- no kitchen for the cafeteria, no auditorium, ripped-up walls. and few water fountains and restrooms ... What a beginning to a new school year! The old lady of brick and mortar is getting a facelift, but we're in the middle. In fact, the Thursday & Friday when I moved my classroom and organized it, there was no AC -- and it was 105* in the room! The room also had no ceiling; you looked upwards and saw the 86-yr-old joists and beams that support the roof. In the workroom opposite mine, we found windows looking onto nothing -- they had been sealed years before. The journalism teacher braved the heat to take photos; we joked that they were windows for the mysterious "fourth floor," a legend in the school ... SHS has its own urban legends of ghosts and goblins.

A hurricane on the East Coast and the heat in the Southwest -- I don't want to wish storms on the Gulf, but I wish we could get something besides heat and more heat.

David Tennant & Catherine Tate re-united in Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. I hope there's a cast recording, since that's the only way I'll experience their Benedict & Beatrice sparring. I loved the movie version directed by Kenneth Branaugh and for the longer time thought that he and Emma Thompson's performances couldn't be topped ... Well, the current stage versions may prove me wrong. I worked costumes & front of house when the Dallas Theatre Center did the play in the 70s -- we costumed it as warriors returning from the Texas war of independence in 1835. (Remember the Alamo!) Google and check out the gallery; Tate's Beatrice wears overalls in the early scenes, and Tennant wears a Navy uniform. It's a fun play; for those of you who aren't familiar with the plot, think Romeo & Juliet in a comic universe: no matter how bad things seem to get, the universe works to unite the lovers, despite their avowed dislike for one another. "Our hands against our hearts," as Benedict says. It all works to the good.

Let's hope the same goes for the 2011-2 school year.