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Well, it looks like we're back to snow. It's not cold enough to stick to the roads, but I'm thinking we'll have fewer and fewer days in the 50s and more and more below freezing.
Last night I took the kids to the high school production of Beauty and the Beast. They knew a lot of kids in it. It was really good! They even had those guy wires or whatever they're called to lift the enchantress away in the prologue and to lift up the Beast during the transformation scene. The production quality was really good, too. I've mentioned the extremely excellent music programs here before, and yeah. The orchestral score is pretty much like the movie, meaning it isn't dumbed down for student players. They did an excellent job. (There were some other songs in the musical not in the film, so it wasn't JUST like the film.) The girl who played Belle was especially...NON dumb? Not that she is in the movie, but she's still recognizably Disneyesque in the movie. This girl brought a really good sense of you've-got-to-be-kidding-Gaston to the whole thing. Even my boys noticed. You could also tell that most if not all of the kids in this have spent significant years in dance class, ballet or ballroom or both. Just watching them move--whether graceful or buffoonish, you could see ballet steps in there and a balance and ease with their bodies that you just can't fabricate in six weeks' worth of rehearsals. My boys even enjoyed it, and since they are NOT into ANY kind of dancing, despite a ton of positive peer pressure in that direction, that's saying something!
I'm getting close to the end of one of the WIPs I've been working on this year. I'm at the last big push/trial leading up to the climax, actually. But I've got to work out some details first. I feel like I need to gather it all up inside me before writing the big ending. At the same time, I'm anxious to be writing it! I'll figure it out, though.
In the meantime, it's November 9. I've lived in Germany and I know that reunification wasn't (maybe still isn't) as simple as it looks from outside. But still. It gets me, every time: that memory of euphoric Germans scaling the wall that once held them captive. The effects it had on the Slavic world (including my own ancestral Czech homelands). I'm thinking I'm glad for freedom, wherever it springs up in the world.
Last night I took the kids to the high school production of Beauty and the Beast. They knew a lot of kids in it. It was really good! They even had those guy wires or whatever they're called to lift the enchantress away in the prologue and to lift up the Beast during the transformation scene. The production quality was really good, too. I've mentioned the extremely excellent music programs here before, and yeah. The orchestral score is pretty much like the movie, meaning it isn't dumbed down for student players. They did an excellent job. (There were some other songs in the musical not in the film, so it wasn't JUST like the film.) The girl who played Belle was especially...NON dumb? Not that she is in the movie, but she's still recognizably Disneyesque in the movie. This girl brought a really good sense of you've-got-to-be-kidding-Gaston to the whole thing. Even my boys noticed. You could also tell that most if not all of the kids in this have spent significant years in dance class, ballet or ballroom or both. Just watching them move--whether graceful or buffoonish, you could see ballet steps in there and a balance and ease with their bodies that you just can't fabricate in six weeks' worth of rehearsals. My boys even enjoyed it, and since they are NOT into ANY kind of dancing, despite a ton of positive peer pressure in that direction, that's saying something!
I'm getting close to the end of one of the WIPs I've been working on this year. I'm at the last big push/trial leading up to the climax, actually. But I've got to work out some details first. I feel like I need to gather it all up inside me before writing the big ending. At the same time, I'm anxious to be writing it! I'll figure it out, though.
In the meantime, it's November 9. I've lived in Germany and I know that reunification wasn't (maybe still isn't) as simple as it looks from outside. But still. It gets me, every time: that memory of euphoric Germans scaling the wall that once held them captive. The effects it had on the Slavic world (including my own ancestral Czech homelands). I'm thinking I'm glad for freedom, wherever it springs up in the world.
