Vergil’s Coffee

40 Plays in 40 Days

Project Summary: I plan to accomplish the ultimate renewal and experience for anyone who enjoys words: to see performances of all of William Shakespeare’s plays in one summer by actors who are amateurs in the park to professionals on an air-conditioned stage.

I’ll begin with the end to save you from reading the rest of this blog entry: My proposal for the 2009 Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity grant was accepted Saturday. This was my seventh proposal in as many years and I’m a bit happy (and, perhaps, relieved). The grant is all about “teacher renewal”: the idea that wouldn’t it be nice to give teachers in the state of Indiana the chance to do something really cool in the summer so when those same teachers get back into the classroom that fall, the students would be getting back a re-energized teacher?

We are renewed by what gives us happiness and even joy and every once in awhile–perhaps in once in a lifetime–we create an experience that is our ultimate “fantasy.” For the baseball fan, it is a tour of all the Major League stadiums in one summer; for the avid hiker it is to walk the Appalachian Trail; for the marathoner, it is to qualify for the Boston Marathon. And for me, an English teacher and one who spends his days in the classroom talking and reading and discussing the English language, it is to spend a summer with Shakespeare’s plays. The ultimate “rush” is to see all of his plays in one summer. It may mean little to the baseball fan or the hiker or the marathoner, but the concept is the same: to break from normal life and schedule and to over indulge in what pleases me the most: language in its finest form.

That’s the gist of the grant and I was feeling a bit like the Susan Lucci of Teacher Creativity grant writing. Seven years.

Shakespeare’s plays are the backbone to an education in the English speaking world and those plays are also a strong thread to what we teach in schools. Besides the King James Bible, Shakespeare’s plays are, in a sense, a major foundation for how we communicate as thinkers, writers and speakers in the United States. And the cool thing is that Shakespeare borrowed from other traditions and reframed older stories to fit into this language of his. And today we borrow from Shakespeare’s plays in our spoken and written phrases and in our entertainment in its many forms. To go and view and to participate as an audience member in his plays for a summer would return me again to the roots of that language which I use every day in my classroom.

I really liked all of my proposals and I took to heart the idea of what would really jazz me up. I felt as though the first two were good ideas but they were probably not well-thought through (what I mean: the details and the writing probably not that strong). I almost think the judges of these proposals thought “Okay. Nice idea, but really doesn’t sound exciting to me.” When I first heard about the grant, I thought it would be a great experience to train for and participate in the US Chess Open Championships in Pennsylvania. I really liked chess and I thought I would get a lot from the experience, but apparently I didn’t convey that very well. The next year, I proposed getting my private pilot’s license ( a wholly impractical accomplishment, because I had no intent or means to fly planes in the future. I just thought that the challenge of doing something out of my regular routine would be really cool). Apparently, I didn’t convey my desires very well on this proposal either.

But this is not a mere “totally cool trip” for an English major teacher. If you talk with the baseball fan, it’s not merely the stunt of going to every baseball stadium for the sake of just merely watching a baseball. For the hiker, it isn’t merely to say that one has merely walked the AT in a summer or two and “Here’s the pictures” to prove it. For the marathoner, it isn’t merely to run another 26.2 miles in a specified time so that one can merely run in Boston. For the amateur (literally, “the lovers”) of each of these pursuit, it is about awe and mystery and deep revival of one’s spirit.

It had been awhile since I’ve been home at this point in 2003, so the next proposal, I tried to think of a way of getting back to Northern California and do something that would rejuvenate my teacher batteries. Obvious answer: study and research Jack London in the Valley of the Moon area by Glen Ellen, California (just a valley over from where I grew up). I loved the quote from London: “All I wanted to do is to find a place to write” and that’s what I wrote I would do for that summer.

For me, to attend all of Shakespeare’s plays in one summer is in a sense a stunt: can I do it? It will force me out of my normal summer activity and into a movement around the Midwest for the occasion of play. But like the baseball fan, the hiker, the marathoner, this experience has a totally other layer of meaning to it, and that meaning lies within the awe and mystery of language on a stage. It is the thing I do each day in my classroom, where my classroom is the stage and language is the “thing.”

My next three follow a common theme: the inuksuk of the Inuit people in Nunavut, Canada. I’ve been drawn to theses structures for some time and thought it would be cool to go to Bafflin Island and #4: take pictures, run in a marathon in Arctic Canada, and write about the experience; #5: take pictures and build an inuksuk garden in our backyard; and, #6: take pictures and notes, travel around Northern Indiana to take pictures and notes, and then write a longer non-fiction article about the beauty of both landscapes. I felt really good about the last one and had a really kind letter of recommendation from the author Kristen Laine (a wonderful writer and a person whom I was looking forward to working with on the project). Apparently I couldn’t rouse the imagination of the judges, because I got another 3 rejection letters.

Each day as a teacher I engage in a play and in play; each person has their role and the stage is where, as essayist David Sedaris suggests, two or more people pause and look. I’m not suggesting that the roles and the script are stale; in fact, the roles and script are dynamic because we are human and when humans are put in a certain situation and certain conflicts arise, characters move the story line along and often we relearn lessons that have been repeated time and again. I am energized by being in the classroom; it is the reason I get up in the morning and get a giddy grin on my face because I realize that even though I have been teaching for about 15 years, the script will play out with my students and colleagues, allowing us to hit common themes that never seem to get old.

I kept the growing pile of rejection letters pinned to a cork board next to my teacher computer as a reminder of, well, sometimes I suck at stuff. What I mean is, it seems that one has to fail a lot to learn a lot. And I don’t say this to make a cute point of “keep on keeping on” pile of bullshit. I didn’t look at those letters and put my hand on my heart and swear “I know I can do better next time because I’m good enough, smart enough, and doggone, people like me.” Nope. The letters were a reality check: “you’re not that good, you know?”

So that is why I am requesting the Lilly Foundation to grant me the opportunity to do something that is truly one in a lifetime: to see all of William Shakespeare’s plays in a summer. Like most other people, I was introduced to Shakespeare through a class reading of Romeo and Julietas we trudged through the language and got occasional updates from Mr. Gier and the textbook on what was really happening. But, as I soon found out, Shakespeare ought to be heard, not just read, and so Mike Robert and Jeff Graves and Wendy Hanson would volunteer to assume Romeo, Mercutio, and Juliet, and I think I started to understand that the words make sense. Mr. Gier then showed us the film version and like most English teachers stepped in front of the “naked scene” which only perked our interest as adolescent boys. The next year we got Julius Caesar, then Macbeth.

So, I’m at Evan’s chess tournament Saturday and texting Lori every once in awhile to let her know how the day is going and around 1 p.m. we have the following text-exchange:

• Lori: What r u wearing
• Me: Nothing. How about you?
• Lori: Im in the parking lot come see what im wearing
• Me: Are you really here?
• Lori: Yes
• Me: Wow
• Lori: No get out here fathead
• Me: Okay

As an English major we were required to buy the Riverside Shakespeare, a tome that is the approximate size and weight as my 4^th Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (the big one). We were required to read and discuss a majority of the plays and I simply could not get enough of the history plays and the Henry series. Still to this day, one of my fondest academic memories was a paper I wrote titled “Parent/Child Relationships in Henry IV (parts 1 and 2).” I loved reading the text and exploring the genius of Shakespeare as he sets up the strained father-son relationship and seeing how these real characters had a dynamic quality to them. I well up now when I read how Hal, turned Henry V, implores God: “much more would I do” in seeking forgiveness for his sins and the sins of his father.

And I go outside in the snow and I don’t see her and she calls and I ask where she is and she says that she’s “by the doors” and that’s she’s getting “a bit” impatient, that the moment is turning into something that doesn’t make her happy. And it’s then I realize that she’s at Goshen High School (where these chess tournaments usually are played) and I tell her that we’re just down the street at Chandler Elementary and she sighs and says that there’s a train and she’ll be there in a moment. She gets there and I walk the block or so to see what’s she’s wearing.

For the past 14 years, I have chaperoned a departmental trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario and each fall I see this as a “recharging” of my emotional and spiritual batteries until Christmas. Each year we see mostly terrific versions of Shakespeare’s plays, and I never tire of being caught up in the language and action of words on stage.

And then it hits me as I’m walking to the car that I must have received my envelope from the Lilly Endowment Foundation. Mind you, I’m used to receiving this letter on the Saturday of the last weekend of February. I was wondering, though, why Lori would have driven the thing to me at the school on this snowy Saturday. Then again, perhaps, maybe it really did have something to do with what she was wearing.

My proposal is not without some logistical issues. In a 300-mile radius of my house, there are at least 22 Shakespearean Festivals or theaters that “specialize” in putting on at least one or two Shakespearean plays a season. Not all of these festivals or some of the smaller “in-the-park” summer repertory troupes have published or announced their plays for the 2009 season. To judge the feasibility of seeing all of Shakespeare’s plays, I looked at the 2008 playbills and found that even the more obscure of Shakespeare’s plays were performed. So, with well over half of his plays mapped out (it seems like the history plays provide the greatest challenge right now), I will set aside a separate trip to either San Francisco or New York City just in case the other theaters do not have the few plays that I need to fulfill my goal.

I opened the door and she said: “So, you want to see what I’m wearing?” And I said “Okay.” And she said, well, open my coat.

I want to qualify what has been said up until this point. I want to say that we’re “not those type of people” or some other blushing confession of our marital relationship, but I’ll skip that for now. All I can say is that Lori said that I should open her coat and I did and there was a beautifully shaped envelope: The Big Envelope. And it’s just like the college thing: small envelope: thanks, but no thanks; Big Envelope: You’re in.

Throughout the entire project, I will be recording my adventures through a blogwith my FlipVideo camera and my little eeePC computer. Last summer, I did something similar where I recorded a daily vlog (video blog) called “No Sock Summer” and I plan on continuing that idea with this project. I plan on posting short videos of where I am and of some of the people I run into at the plays (whether in an air-conditioned theater or on a lawn chair in the park). Also, I will blog about my responses to the play itself—about the characters and themes I experience during the play.

When I got back to the holding area for chess parents back in the school, I told Evan to which he asked “So, does that mean we can get a new iMac?” (Thanks Evan…though I probably would have asked the same question if I were in his shoes). I twittered the newsand read through my contract and written responsibilities of grant recipients. I also skimmed though the other recipients and under ELKHART saw my name and proposal and then Andrew Cowells from the junior high. Pretty cool. Before I put the whole thing away, I reread the most meaningful part of the Big Envelope: “Congratulations! It gives me great pleasure to inform you that your proposal…”

Seeing 40 plays in 40 days will be one of those once in a lifetime experiences, and it’s connection to my classroom has something to do with the plays themselves (as I teach both Hamlet and Julius Caesar in my classes). But more than the plays is the text we create when we talk about what we have seen or read and I think this is a more profound idea that will impact me as an educator. I ask my students to read and respond, and the learning seems to happen in that discussion or the essay or the project that is to show me they have learned or are learning. I will use the material I have written during this project as springboards to further discussion with my students about their “readings” of what we view and read in class. I think the more my students see me as a reader/writer/thinker/speaker, the more I am a part of the community I try to build within my classroom. I suppose then I become a part of the script that is being played out in the stage of my classroom.

We’ve been visiting a local church and the boys are really clueless. Both Colin and Evan have eaten breakfast, but as soon as they walk into the foyer, they are eying the food (“refreshments”) on the church-length folding table. Last week, the church had a special part in their service for those who wanted to renew their vows. Guess what was served after the service? And I’m a bit irritated at Evan and Colin because they simply can’t help themselves and is it worth withholding the white icing from my sons while everyone else was eating the wedding cake?

• My boys are good at celebrating with dessert-like food.

We’re also going through this battle of what to bring on trips (even if it’s just a 3-minute trip to this particular church). Evan manages his stuff pretty well and I think he’s bringing a 3-ring binder that houses all of his schematic drawings and lists for a video game he was working on with a friend. Colin, though, isn’t as sure, but he’s been going with the Garfield at the Movies book and he’s been copying down the Garfield movie title with the actual real film title (“Catablanca” and “Scarf-face” are “Casablanca” and “Scarface”). Front and back of a wide-ruled paper, Colin has two columned his compare and contrast of the movie titles…accurately.

• My boys are list makers and they get it from their mother.

It’s not that I have an aversion to lists: I’ve used them throughout my life and though there was a time when I only made mindmaps because I thought it was just plain cooler, I will list things as a temporary noting of “todo” and “brainstorm.” Lori, though, lives through lists and I think my sons are following in her 6 1/2 shoes.

One of my earliest lists I came across one of my earliest lists a couple of years ago. For some reason, I’ve always been the type to bring something to write in or on to whatever place I may be (I’m at piano lessons now, and I’m typing on my eeePC and using my composition book as a lap surface). So I must have purchased this little blue 4 by 6 spiral notebook for an upcoming week of camp at Hartstone in the summer of 1981.

• A box score that I made while watching the San Francisco Giants play the Houston Astros on television when we lived in an apartment on Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa. The stats abruptly end at the top of the 4^th when the Astros got 6 runs that inning.
• Me practicing my signature, several times as “Chris S. Judson” “Chris Judson” and “Christopher S. Judson”…my cursive was, well, not that great.
• Notes from a sermon or a talk at camp. (It’s interesting that one of the more valuable things I learned at camp was that you could learn something from anyone. And I have tried to maintain that thought in life…though I found it difficult one year when the old man talked about the “Holy of Holies”… Old Testament stuff that he really got jazzed about; we were looking forward to swimming in the Eel River later that afternoon).
• A “what to bring” list for the six-day, rustic-setting camp and it was pretty typical. Here’s the first column:
• Pants (jeans and one formal pair)
• Socks (3 pair)
• Shirts (4, including one formal pair)
• Shoes (2)
• Guitar
• Underwear (3 pairs)

(and it’s at this point I wonder also at the quantity of my underpants).

• Sometimes we have these conversations that “he gets that from you” or “he cries about things just like you do” may be intended as a jovial jab, but sometimes can be an attack on those attributes we dislike in our partner or in ourselves or even more, our parents.
• Sometimes lists have taken on a “one of those things” in a relationship some call the “honey-do” list (a phrase that makes me want to punch a panda in the gut). I admit: there’s been times that I’ve haven’t looked forward to a Saturday morning beginning with a list from Lori on things that she wants done by me. She’s gotten clever and now frames the process as a question: “So, what do you want to get accomplished today?” She’s subtle, isn’t she? But I think I’ve put aside the tension response “I don’t know, maybe watch TV” and have come to appreciate and honor the list. See, I think when a list is made, that list is an etching of things that come to mind that I might not recognize or see. I think I viewed the list as sort of an accounting for my inadequacies because I was just plain too stupid for either not noticing or because her intent was to nag me on stuff I really don’t want to do on my time.
• “My time” … funny little saying, isn’t it?
• As I was glancing through my composition today, I’ve noticed that Lori has made a list which appears to be knitting code: something about Size 8 needles and “Small Thee”  and “Yarn is double stranded” and then, because I’ve glanced at enough knitting pattern books, to know that the rest is the pattern for the … oh, I think it’s a “Small Tree” because there’s two other headings of “Med tree” and “Large Tree.” I’m a bit irritated because she’s written this in my composition book and didn’t bother to tear it out. (Now that I think of it, I remember that this was from a trip to Borders in the Fall because the knitting pattern list appear before a mindmap of my CV I was putting together for an application and a mindmap/list of my most recent Lilly Grant proposal (and the brainstorming via list on what I should do and the circled “40 plays in 40 days” title when I knew I had a good idea).
• As a teacher, I have a Lesson Planning book that really is a place to make lists of stuff I’d like students to do. Lately, I’ve been using it for making lists of things I want to do.
• The envelope is probably the most portable and most accessible planning tool. I am still amazed at how I’ll make lists and notes on the back of envelopes….perhaps this is the great way to stay green and I wonder if pretty-boy Leonardo DiCaprio will give up on his brain-killing florescent light bulbs that you can’t simply throw away…no, he should go on the Today Show or Oprah and tell us the marvels of using the back of envelopes for our writing of these temporary thoughts.
• Talking is fine, but there’s something about jotting down stuff as it hits you and for some reason, you can always find the back of an envelope.
• Evan’s playing music that has a lot of notes on it. He has to act up them, says his piano teacher. (I’m not sure what that means either).
• Colin’s watching Kung Fu Panda on the portable; he’s obsessed with chopsticks and China Buffet.
• There’s an idea out there that we should save all of our stuff in digital format so that we can never again lose that scrap of paper that has that important note or number on it. So we then go through the process of taking those quick notes and scraps of information, key them all into some program with the hope that somewhere down the road we’ll be able to re-access that information when it becomes necessary. Only thing: it usually doesn’t. For example, I’ve tried, on several occasions, to keep our checkbook register on a software program. I am diligent for that first month and I am happy to see how reconciling and balancing our checkbook is some much more easier on the computer. But then, I go a week or two or even a month and I have to have these marathon sessions to enter all the stuff from the check register into the computer.
• I’ve given up on the whole double-entry thing. Isn’t the idea to not repeat yourself? Why do the same thing and take more time for what?
• As if information in digital form is of more use; I think not.
• So who cares if you lose a number or a piece of information; what about all the information that is lost with a delete button? I
• I think I’ve come to terms with list making and there are times that I can almost hear, to the tune of “Matchmaker” (Fiddler on the Roof) “Listmaker, listmaker, make me a list…” in our house. We have people who make lists in our house and those lists are temporary and they serve a purpose. It reminds me of that part of the brain that is the processing center; its function appears to temporarily hold (about 17 seconds, some say) information and to either move it into a longer term holding tank or to just dump it because it doesn’t have much meaning.
• Lists are temporary and sometimes reflect temporary thinking that may or may not lead to some type of action. For me, next on the list is to cut this down from 1707 to under 1300 words.
• So long, and thanks for all the fish.
• Spellcheck.
• Post to blog via the eeePC.
• Insert Flickr pix into the post (tweak the stupid code for text wrap).
• Better ending.

(on having a former teacher asking me what’s been happening in my life since 1984 via Facebook)

Dear Mr. Noble,

And I start that way because what student has the gall to called their teacher by the first name? It just sounds and feels funny, so I’ll simply address you the same way I did in high school: Mr. Noble. (Besides, I think the students that called you by your first name were just being daring. To call your teacher “Dick” is both funny ha-ha and probably the result of some silly dare at the expense of your first name, perhaps).

I think the last time I saw you was at your house and I can’t remember for the life of me who was with me, but I remember it was probably after graduation and before a lot of us heading to the Midwest for college (or, in my case, post-high school education <g>). And I think your wife was there and your daughter (the one whom you proudly told us could say the Pythagorean Theorem by the age of 4). Wait, maybe it was Peter (who later said he had AIDS but I think is in Canada now) who was with me. Anyway, it was a nice visit and I think we made a lot of small talk and if I am correct, you even offered us iced tea and we accepted and sipped it (and why is it when we invite people into our homes do we give them tea or coffee or water? Maybe it’s a carry over from the olden days when traveling meant more).

From then, I sort of lost contact with you. I had heard a few reports of how you might have slightly ignored authority (creative teacher decision) and took some of your students to see Schindler’s List even if it was rated R (content over labels). I didn’t confirm the rumor, but I didn’t think it was that far out of your character. I don’t mean that in a negative sense; in fact, I think that’s one of the things I learned from you.

Remember when we were getting to Chapter 19 in Biology and you prompted us to say the “magic word” when a certain history teacher came in the room in the portable classroom you taught in? Yes, to the book, Chapter 19 was “Human Reproduction” but to our Biology class we gleeful answered your prompt “Class, what are we learning about today?” with a chorus “Sex!” This teacher-student exchange could be wrong on several levels: 1). You did it to possibly get a desired reaction from the unsuspected history teacher that walked in; 2). You were encouraging teenagers to say the word “sex” in public in the 1980s; and, possibly most damaging, 3). We were in a Christian school, weren’t we? And yet, there was so much more that I learned from your pedagogy than making someone a tad embarrassed and that was the power of being human and calling out sacred cows and celebrating things that make a lot of people uncomfortable. Sometimes the purpose of humor is to say the things that are unspoken in public so that we can simply get over ourselves.

And I’m not sure how he pulled this off, but I can say that Todd was a good “tally man” in Algebra II. Early in the semester you had made a mistake in a computation on the board and someone called you on it. Your response (and perhaps this is where the Christian school comes in) was that Jesus said that we need to forgive one another 70 times 7 (of which we all calculated to be 490). And we took it literally as most Christian folk take things in the Bible and Todd kept a running count of your mistakes, miscues and blunders (even if you corrected them immediately) until the end of the semester. When we reached 489 we decided as a class to have a celebration the following day and when you hit 490 the next day, we celebrated your mistakes with cake, ice cream, pop and other sweet stuff.

Probably what confused me the most about you was the Timothy group (I think that’s what you called them) where a few of us got a special invitation to meet as a group off campus to talk and have a look at the book of Timothy. It was a bit different of a group than I was used to and I really can’t remember any of the conversations or even topics that we discussed. I think I remember feeling like this was something special and that I was invited to be a part of it and I sometimes wonder why I was invited. For me, it was one of the few times that a teacher actually wanted to do non-school stuff outside of school. This wasn’t a school-sponsored club or even; it was something that you did for us and it was out of the ordinary.

Granted you did pick me up in Sebastopol every morning for a year or two. I would hop on the county bus at 6:20 a.m. in Monte Rio and get off by that corner where you would swing by in your … what kind of car was it? It had fins and was some shade of gold or silver or both. I think you also tried to explain why a manual transmission was better overall than an automatic one (it had three on the tree didn’t it?) And you are correct: I was a mooch for getting rides to places. I don’t think I every gave you gas money for the trip and perhaps you’d like to prorate your pay back in today’s gas prices, eh?

My oldest son, Evan, turned 11 Friday and he had two of his friends over for a slumber party thing.

Colin, the 7-year old, did his part in dressing up as a ninja/Darth Vader/bad guy from Meet the Robinsons. Lori is still a tad sore from last week’s running in the Cleveland Marathon…I got to help pace her to a new personal best of 4:44. (And, btw, this is the second year we’ve run a marathon on our anniversary and I wouldn’t exactly recommend that type of a weekend when you get a chance to get away from the kids). We’ve been married for 18 years, Lori and I, and we’ve been living in Goshen, Indiana for 12 years. She’s a SLP and works on private contract through the state with the 0-3 year old population. She’s the first person I met that really read a lot of books and had quick wit (though I’m proud to say that I beat her every time in Scrabble).

I am teacher, Mr. Noble, and though I choose English as my subject, some of the teacher persona comes from my observations in that portable classroom in that little school in Santa Rosa, California. I tried for a mathematics endorsement through college correspondence courses, but my heart wasn’t in it and I loved words more (though, I think they’re all symbols–math and English–and it’s all about language anyways, eh?). My students like appreciate respect me and have creative ways of showing it–and I think you know what I mean. Whereas somebody drew the numbers “666″ on the forehead of every one of your pictures in my 1984 yearbook, my students write “DDJD” on my board or on our class website or even on their Google Chat status indicator. I think one year, a student even made bracelets to hand out to the class with “DDJD” on it. I smiled. (Die Die Judson Die, btw).

In short: when you messaged me via Facebook: “I’m interested in you and your family and your work, etc, etc” I can tell you that I am happy, that I have a wonderful life with Lori and Evan and Colin (and sometimes LukeTheCat), that I am amusing myself in my work, that, and I think I got this from you, the classroom is not so much a place to learn about stuff for the future but a place where one can live a life. I think of you often: about a 4-year-old girl saying “The sum of the square of the legs equals the square of the hypotenuse” and a father smiling in approval, about Chapter 19, about 490, and about someone enjoying what they do and the people that watch him perform each day. And, about the improbability of impacting human lives and the randomness of words and how sometimes the whole business of life is a bit funny.

Thank you.

Peace,

Chris Judson

Class of 1984
(Geometry, Biology, Algebra II and Basic Auto Theory)