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.

A power song idea is from the iPod Nano+Nike mash up whereby you select a song that you play during your workout or run when you need a little musical “pick me up.”

I don’t have an iPod Nano+Nike thing, but I do have a Shuffle and I’m looking for some suggestions on what song to use for this weekend’s Sunburst Marathon in South Bend, IN (“from the College Hall of Fame to the 50-yard line at Notre Dame”).

Last weekend’s marathon was easy because Lori and I ran in the Cleveland Rock n Roll Marathon and I can’t tell you how many times I listened to the Presidents of the US sing “Cleveland Rocks” (good song to get from iTunes Store ).

Here’s some suggestions so far from Twitter friends:

Any other suggestions?

And this is not a rant against not getting the Lilly Endowment for not granting my proposal “Writing a blank canvas: Arctic Canada and Northern Indiana” (There is little distracting about the landscapes of Nunavut, Canada and Northern Indiana. But in writing about place, I plan on crafting an non-fiction essay about the vast beauty of each in a longer article for publication).

Is that not a cool proposal? Well, apparently it didn’t make the cut, but I’m still living without having the summer Lilly grant experience. And I just a call from a teacher in my building who also applied for the Lilly Teacher Creativity grant and well laughed about not getting the “good” letter of acceptance. Sigh.

So, for fun, I thought I might recount the last six years of grant proposals:

2008: Writing a blank canvas: Write an article about Nunavat and Indiana landscapes

2007: Building an Inuksuk garden (visit Nunavat and then recreate the experience in my backyard).

2006: Running in Nunavat: See inuksuk and run a marathon in Nunavut.

2005: Jack London: Visit Glen Ellen, CA and write short stories.

2004: Get a private pilot’s license.

2003: Study and complete in the National Chess Championships in PA.

I’ve been hanging around the idea of going to Nunavut for the past 3 years and I have a feeling that once people see the promotions for the 2010 Winter Olympics, everyone will want to know more about Inuksuk. But, perhaps, I need to let that idea go for next year.

And, to the winners of the 2008 Lilly Teacher Creativity Grant: congratulations and enjoy the experience. I hear that it is a wonderful boost to your teaching.

Times of being a kid are great.

We’re back from the 9th annual family gathering of the Bickels (Lois’ parents and Lois’ brother, his wife [Jinger] and their son), the Certalics (Jinger’s parents) and us on Thanksgiving weekend in Schaumburg, IL (home of the Woodfield Mall<= really big).

And, for the last 9 years, we had all read the same book and had a book talk (this year: A Thousand Splendid Sunsets [Hosseini of The Kite Runner]). At the suggestion by Lois, we each created a list of “Things we loved” that didn’t include the usual things like family or country or belief-like items. I scribbled mine on the back of notes from a little talk that I gave the editors of the Student Publications class and found more room on the hotel’s small notepad paper. It was interesting to hear each person’s list and was in general a pretty cool to do.

Try it sometime…or now–as a response to this post–it’s fun. It’s not so much in making this list, but sharing it with someone else who has made the list too.

So, here’s mine:

The Things I love:

• Venti Bold lots of room for cream with four packets of Sugar in the Raw from Starbucks at 7:07 a.m. before school.
• New England Clam Chowder with sour dough bread at The Tides restaurant in Bodega Bay, California.
• The Mac OS X OS with its Unix core underneath and the bling bling of the UI on our eMac.
• That each Bickel has a bottle of nasal spray on their night stand.
• Celtic Women, Riverdance, and “Danny Boy.”
• Most BBC comedies.
• Netflixing with Lois.
• Colin’s red hair and Evan’s hitting the floor.
• Making Ken and Doris coffee.
• The first bass note in a song.
• The pictures of Lois and me at the Japanese Tea Gardens (Golden Gate Park) in 1989 and 2001.
• The beginning, middle and end of a marathon.
• My 2007 Grand Rapids Marathon shirt.
• NPR (“Wait, wait…Don’t Tell me,” “This American Life,” and “Speaking of Faith”).
• Troubleshooting a website’s code and the moment when it works as it ought to.
• Writing in a black marble composition book.
• The Golden Gate Bridge on a bright foggy day.
• My running shoes.
• My Timberland shoes.
• A 1988 Ford Festiva.
• Building inuksuk on the Lake Michigan shore in Milwaukee, WI.
• The flatness of the Midwest.
• When Lois calls me a jackass.

Here’s a report from last weekend’s Lakefront Marathon (Milwaukee, WI), the smaller marathon from the weekend with less press. I decided to use my older camera phone to record the sights and sounds of the race. For the sights, I used my Flickr account and for the sounds, I used my existing Twitter account with Dave Winer’s mashup, Twittergrams (the upshot is that you can record a 30-second message and people who are following your Twitter account have a link that they can follow and hear your audio message). [Note: time stamps are EDT and we were in CDT, so subtract an hour for reality].

Saturday, 6 October 2007

(BayView Farmers Market: Baby Jessica)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/29esqz 08:34 AM October 06, 2007 from TwitterGram

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/3dcrtd 01:32 PM October 06, 2007 from TwitterGram

Some pix from this morning in Milwaukee (Bayview): http://tinyurl.com/2s22n8; time for lunch and packet pickup. 01:43 PM October 06, 2007 from web

(Milwaukee: MSOE field house)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/2v4kw8 03:17 PM October 06, 2007 from TwitterGram

Sunday, 7 October 2007 (Before the race)

Today, Lois and I are running in the Lakefront Marathon (WI); we’re headed to the bus pickup and I’ll be twittering (t-gram) from the race. 07:00 AM October 07, 2007 from web

Have a great day folk…it’s gonna be a warm one…drink lots of fluids. 07:01 AM October 07, 2007 from web

Being transported to Grafton, WI

On bus with chatty people runners. 07:48 AM October 07, 2007 from txt

15 minutes before race time

Mile 0: Start of race (Grafton High School, Grafton, WI)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/26d4go 09:02 AM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 3 (High point…maybe)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/34coe8 09:33 AM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 4 (Losing Lois and Accordions)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/2wg3wc 09:46 AM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 10 (Ambulance)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/2uwys4 10:58 AM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 15 (Fox Pointe and finishing)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/yrcfdt 12:06 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 17 (Crowd support)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/2xk2nz 12:21 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 18 (White Fish Bay, now all downhill)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/ywpgg7 12:41 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 19 (What not to eat)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/2oeos5 12:52 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 20 (Flickr pix)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/2ghh2b 01:07 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 23 (What not to eat, part 2; Meeting the Lake)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/28tzrd 01:48 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 24 (Jack)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/ysf6zt 02:04 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Mile 26.2 (Finish line)

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/3xutt6 02:23 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

Post-race commentary

Phoned-in TG from Lakefront Marathon weekend http://tinyurl.com/2k4twa 02:40 PM October 07, 2007 from TwitterGram

My initial goal for this running season was a 3:30 time; I figured I should give it a whirl and try harder at improving my time…just to try it. Then, around the time of the Elkhart Co. 4-H fair 5K, I decided that my pace was fast enough to try to qualify for Boston: 3:20. I changed training schedules, trained more often and more miles and Lake City was a strong race.

I missed the qualifying time, but ran a 3:25 (12th overall out of 57 registered runners, 9th Male finisher) and was happy with how prepared I felt. I was on track for the first 13.1 mile loop (we ran the course twice) with a time of 1:38, but my second time, I dropped 9 mins. behind. My previous PR was 3:47 and it’s fun to reflect back to my first marathon in 2002 with a finishing time of 4:27 (here’s the result page; I’m in 569th place).

I wrote about my progress up through the 2005 season in a previous post , and if I remember right, last season I was trying for a two marathon year, but ending up doing 3:

• 2006 Sunburst: 3:47* (PR; Previous PR was 3:56, Sunburst 2004)
• 2006 Lake City: 3:53 (leg cramped up at Mile 17)
• 2006 Columbus (I ran with Lois as her running buddy).

This season so far hasn’t been entirely groovy:

• 2007 April Louisville: 4:02 <=crashed hard at Mile 14
• 2007 June Sunburst: 4:01 <= relaxed and “enjoyed” the course
• 2007 Sept. Lake City: 3:25 <= a bit nippy, but legs felt great throughout the course.

The Hanson training schedule has been more demanding, but I would agree with the many others when I say that you don’t have to run over 16 miles in your training schedule to be prepared (at least in the beginner/intermediate level). Lois and I are running Lakefront the first weekend in October and my sister, Stephany, just got her tickets to fly out for her nephew’s birthday and run in Grand Rapids. (I might try another qualifying run there if the training holds up).

I wasn’t exactly planning on five marathons this year, but I’m 40 now, and why not. I still want one of those Segways, but until then, running marathons still amuses me.

This morning’s tempo run (7:40 pace) of 5-miles was nice (+66f; 92% humidity; listened to Bruce Hornsby, the “Everybody Dance” track from Paul M. and Train).

As I look back on the last 3 months of blogging (or at least on this site) I can see a mish-mash of stuff and things that I find amusing for that day. Sometimes the thought of hashing out a cohesive 3 or so paragraphs slips my mind and I find that my tumblr account has been much more active than this WordPress account. (I’m not going into all of the psychology of that right now, as many other folk have put a lot of type into the internet tubes on writing blogs vs. mini-blogging and the like). What I’m wondering from people is how do they manage two Twittering people on one computer.

We have an ol’ eMac 700 that’s not going to be replaced just yet (because it still does the stuff I need it to do) and because both Lois and I Twitter (and have different “friends,”) I went with two Twitter clients so that both of us can view our social life at any time (the computer is in a central place). Because I follow more people, I have the Twitteriffic program which is slick and so usable; for Lois, I set up tweetr (an AIR app that is maturing well and I just like the idea of using AIR as it seems to be on the edge of some really cool content).

I realize that we could sign out and sign in on Twitterrific, but that just takes too much time and frankly would be a little annoying. (Plus, both apps have their distinct sounds when a new tweet is received: And like Pavlov’s dog we run to the computer <g>).

This way seems workable for us, and though a bit resource heavy on the little ol’ eMac 700, we can continue our social lives in 140 characters or less.

(Hey, my whole html toolbar shows up in Safari…cool)<= Spoke too soon…shows up, not fully functional
Anyway, the new teacher portfolio scoring took less than half the time we had planned for, so I got to come home Tuesday. (BTW, this is a worthwhile process: the portfolio, the mentoring, and the scoring…I will post about this later, but for some reason, some people think it’s “just another hoop we have to jump through”…I’d like to go on record and argue that assessment…later).
This morning was my first tempo run (a run at marathon pace) and I was planning on a conservative time of 8:00 miles and my first mile today was 7:35 and then I figured I might as well see how the rest of the run went. For the 5 mile run, my average mile was 7:40 and I felt comfortable and could breathe easily…which makes me wonder about my plans of qualifying for Boston next year: why not this year?
So the journey begins and I will continue to trace my progress here. I’ve been keeping track of some of my training over at Buckeye, but I can’t seem to figure out how to have my training log show up in my sidebar (that’s another project, I suppose).  

When I stepped out for the 3-miler this morning, I was wondering if it was foggy enough for a school delay. But, my mind quickly ran to poetry and the various faces of poetry that I was going to lead my classes through today. These poems, though, tend to be fairly accessible to people and a tad less formatting and lots more whimsical.

Another thing that I remembered is that I’m still running in the Sunburst (Hall of Fame to Notre Dame) the first Saturday in June. My calf feels fine–a bit tight at the beginning of the run–so I should be able to reach the finish line. From there it’s summer re-training and Lake City Marathon in mid-September and then I run with Lois at the Lakefront Marathon (WI) at the beginning of October. I’m still tossing the idea around about Grand Rapids, but possibly that will fall by the wayside like last year.

I’ve finished making my phone calls to teacher on my list, informing them of the delay. I end with Carl Sandburg and that most anthologized, “Fog”:

THE fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches 5
and then moves on.