Irish Imagination and Iowa Stubborness

Another Music Man rehearsal. This time we learned Iowa Stubborn. Very fun!

Oh, there's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you
When we treat you, which we may not do at all.

I admit I was wondering whether they would change the "And we're so by God stubborn we can stand touching noses" part. They changed Zaneeta's "Ye Gods!" to "Ye Gads!" which is understandable, but "Ye Gods!" isn't as bad in a Christian children's performance as "by God..." They did change it - to "Gosh darn stubborn." Haha. I'm wondering what they'll do about Mayor Shinn though. "If I ever catch you touching my daughter again I'll by God horsewhip you till hell won't have it!" is a line I wouldn't want my brother to say, but it takes the fun out of it if it's only "I'll gosh darn horsewhip you."

We also did some extra audition preparation, and I tested my Irish accent for Mrs. Paroo on my cousin and sister.

Snobby moment of the day: In the car, my mother put on some alphabet music for my brother. It was very loud. I was trying to listen to my classical music.

"Can you please turn that down?" I asked, "I can't hear my Shostakovitch."
"Well, la di da," my mom teased.
But even better and more important than Shostakovitch was Brahm's Hungarian Dance... and George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue! Ah, I do love that song.

Awarded

My dear friend (and Fairy Tale Forum "auntie"), Lady Rose presented me with this award.



Thanks so much, auntie! :D

Now, for who I want to give this award to... that's hard. I want to award it to everyone who visits my blog, really. Every comment you leave here really makes my day. Q is my very most faithful commenter, and I don't return the favor on her blog half enough! Grace's comments are always very long and full of life and joy - it's infectious, really. ;) Alyosha's comments nearly always make me snigger, and make me see things in a more Phlegmatic-Melancholy light that's good for me when my brain is like it is now (drowning in hot cocoa). And I always love hearing from my dear sister (ok, adopted online sister, but we really are sisters in Christ!) Miss C.N.W. and my adopted "Mother," Elenatintil.

But I think who I'd really like to give this award to is Courtney, a girl I met through the blogging world, by idly looking through the profiles of Bloggers who listed Bella in their favorite movies. As soon as I saw the banner at the top of Courtney's blog that said, "As for my and my blog, they will serve the Lord" I kept reading. She's a kindred spirit and when she leaves a comment on my blog, it brightens my day. Not only does she comment on what I've written, but she usually asks further questions and I always feel she's interested in my thoughts. Thanks, Courtney!

And many thanks to the rest of you "super commenters!"

He's a Music Man!

Last night my sisters and I went to our first rehearsal for The Music Man! It's an all-kids cast (grades K-12) with 29 leads/soloists, all (or nearly all) double-cast. Since it's a workshop thing, the auditions haven't happened yet. "Audition Preparation Night" is tomorrow, and the first auditions are on Sept. 24th. My sisters and I - and my mother - are all excited about this. For my sisters, it's their first play, and for me it's my first musical and my first experience with choreographed dancing. That's going to be the hardest part, but it will be good for me.

In other news, I'm going to change the name of my blog to something else. Something longer, something nicer, something more "me." Probably something from Shakespeare, or literature. I'm open to suggestions! On a side note, I discovered that "Voices" is the title of a Catholic women's magazine! :)

School is going mostly well. I dislike Geometry, but we get along alright most days. My history book is great, English is challenging, and Biology is easy and sometimes interesting, but it just doesn't interest me personally.

I finally finished Henry IV and The Hidden Treasure of Glaston - I liked them, but it felt like I was reading them forever! ;) Now I'm working on Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton, and I'm reading Father Brown stories aloud to my sister. We both love them.

Scholarly Chatter

Today was my first day of 10th grade. And technically my last day of 9th, since I finally got everything uploaded today. I didn't actually start working until after lunch because I was so busy with cleaning out last year's binder, finding and labeling new binder tabs, and smelling my books. And opening them to hear the spines crack - what a lovely sound. All my books are so fresh and new that I even have fond feelings for my Geometry and Biology textbooks. I'm really excited about my history course. I'm using the book Christ the King, Lord of History, which I like very much so far. I'm planning to find at least one historical fiction book to go with each time period/country I study - so any suggestions would be very helpful (with time periods ranging from 2000 B.C. to about World War II, mostly set in Europe or the Middle East). :) My Religion course looks HARD. English looks very challenging, and I'm excited about that, but I'd be more excited if I were going to be studying another Shakespeare play this year. Well, next year I shall hopefully take Seton's Shakespeare elective. :)

Latin is... meh. Some days I love it, some days I hate it.

This looks like it's going to be a tough year - pray for me, please. That's one of the things I love most about Seton. They encourage starting the school-day off with prayer, prayer before each subject, prayer if you get stuck. This prayer by St. Thomas Aquinas was in the introduction to my Religion course, and I love it:



Creator of all things,
true source of light and wisdom,
origin of all being,
graciously let a ray of your light penetrate
the darkness of my understanding.

Take from me the double darkness
in which I have been born,
an obscurity of sin and ignorance.

Give me a keen understanding,
a retentive memory, and
the ability to grasp things
correctly and fundamentally.

Grant me the talent
of being exact in my explanations
and the ability to express myself
with thoroughness and charm.

Point out the beginning,
direct the progress,
and help in the completion.

I ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Onto My Blogroll and Into the Wild

I'm super excited about Elenatintil's latest film project, and the update blog for the movie can finally officially go on my blogroll.

The Shadow of the Bear: The Movie

I'm really really excited about it. I try to control myself a little bit on the internet, but I'm very really very really excited. ;)

I bought Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst (to say nothing of Manalive by G.K. Chesterton - a hearty "huzzah!") today, and I really liked it. I hope to write a review of it sometime this coming week, but I shall make no promises.

I just had a sort of realization about the play King Lear, which I have been discussing with Alyosha. I'll just write what I said to her:

"I think in the scene just before [Lear and Cordelia are] taken away [to prison] is the only time when God's name is used as God, and not gods and goddesses, which are called upon, spoken to, talk about, and prayed to many times throughout the play."

I could be wrong, but it seems an interesting fact, since Lear is saying to his daughter that they will "live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too," in prison, and then says, "And take upon’s the mystery of things, as if we were God’s spies" In other parts of the play that would be worded, "the spies of the gods." It might merely have to do with syllables and lines or something like that, but it's still interesting.

Speaking of Shakespeare: For my performance as "the person who comes out at the end to report that 'that guy' is coming," I am famous! There was a kid at one of our home-schooling group's Park Day (in another town) who was discussing "the Shakespeare festival." "Oh, where?" I asked. "[Town Name]" "I was in that!" And then he said, yeah, I was the person who comes out at the end, et cetera. "Did you also see You Can't Take It With You?" I asked, beginning to recognize him. "Yeah, I sat right next to you." Oh, yeah. He had this absolutely adorable little sister, and during an intermission she came up to him to ask him to open a bag of chips, and I asked if she was his sister. Life's funny. I saw their family three times on that weekend they were in town (You Can't Take It With You, my church, and Comedy of Errors) and never expected to see them again. Yes, life's funny and I'm "famous!" ;)

I think this is all I have to say. No, wait! My sister and brother have their first soccer games tomorrow! That's kind of exciting, because I actually want to see them. My sisters because she's really great. You should see her when she gets the opposing teams' legs all tangled up. And my brother's because he's four and none of the kids know the rules of soccer or have had any practice. How adorable. :D

A New Post

Ok, news in my life:

King Lear is my new favorite Shakespeare play. Did you know that at one point in the stage there are four dead bodies onstage all at once? Um... not that dead bodies are my reason for loving the play... hehe.

I'm reading Henry IV, Part One. Falstaff is funny and annoying.

My sister said I'm probably going to marry a beast. As in THE Beast. "I mean, you've got the books and everything, and there'll be this guy who wants to marry you but you'll freak him out with how much you read, and then you'll meet this Beast, and he'll like to read so you'll just ... marry him. And turn him into a human." She makes me laugh.

This is pretty hilarious:

The Man Who Speaks in Anagrams from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Read it here

My favorite part is "The Mating of the Wersh."

Oh, wait, and "Twelfth Thing"!

And...

'Be ot or bot ne ot, tath is the nestquoi.'

OH MY WORD!

P.S. When we went to see an Old Time Radio Show thing, they did some Monty Python, and among the scripts they read were the following:

The Arguement
Dennis Moore (They spelled lupines wrong, I think! *sigh*)
The Pet Shop

Crazy, eh?

I thought I would have something interesting to say here, but apparently not. So the title of this post sums it up very well, I think.