April is Poetry Month

Poetry
by
Charles Bukowski


it
takes
a lot
of
desperation
dissatisfaction
and
disillusion
to write
a few
good
poems.

it's not
for
everybody
either
to
write
it
or
even to
read
it.

Connecting - with EVERYONE!

Married to a Crowd

I absolutely love these connections!!

Sound familiar??

"If those people would just go back where they came from, we wouldn't have any problems here."

That melancholy observation was made on a sunny September afternoon in 1946 by the late Mayor Ben F. Stapleton. He voiced it in answer to the question:

"How will Denver solve the tremendous problems created by all these newcomers?"

...Hundreds of thousands of servicemen had been stationed in or near Denver during World War II. The city's natural charm and the warm hospitality of its citizens made Denver the No. 1 'soldiers' town' in the country. To many GI's, who had sampled the city's friendliness during their brief hitches in Denver, returning to the Mile High City became an obsession.

Who is online?? Who blogs??

Generations Online

G.I. generation (73+)
4.0%
Silent generation (64-72)
7.0%
Older boomers (55-63)
13.0%
Younger boomers (45-54)
22.0%
Gen X (33-44)
23.0%
Gen Y (18-32)
30.0%

The web is still largely populated by younger generations as over half of those online are between the ages of 18 and 44 years old. But these days, larger percentages of older generations are going online and they are doing more activities while there.

Jenny Shank writes that "Blogs are great vehicles for unedited self-expression, as are newsy Christmas letters, and even self-published nonfiction books on overly specific topics, such as the mating habits of Red-winged Blackbirds in Northern Colorado, about which I know a little."

Speaking of Shakespeare and thinking of Grandchildren

I treasure this little note that my granddaughter

wrote when we were en route to Seguin

from Denver one year (spending the night at a motel).

Grandchildren are the VERY BEST!

Regarding Shakespeare, my eight-year-old granddaughter in Denver is memorizing some Shakespeare in preparation for an upcoming audition. If she is in this year's Shakespeare production, it will be her third year. I think her first year (age six) she was a tree or a bush or a flower (non speaking - but believe she sang a little ditty). I love it!!

The Denver Public Schools Shakespeare Festival is an annual event celebrating its twenty-fifth year. It is the oldest and largest Shakespeare Festival in the country. The day-long Festival is held in downtown Denver and provides the forum for students to perform sonnets and scenes from the works of Shakespeare as well as demonstrate dance and vocal and instrumental music of Shakespeare's time. The Festival begins with a parade to the performance venues and continues with performances throughout the day on multiple stages. The Challenge Bowl this year will cover the life and times of Shakespeare and Richard III.

Good and Evil - A Morality Play

My ignorance of Shakespeare and his poetry and plays is IMMENSE.
Thus, I am always especially interested in what those who
DO know his works tell me.
Jolly Ann Ellis, writer-teacher-poet,
gave an excellent talk about Shakespeare's
King Lear to the Shakespeare Study Club.

In Brief

In Britain, King Lear, in old age, chooses to retire and divide up Britain between his three daughters. However, he declares that they must first be wed before being given the land. He asks his daughters the extent of their love for him. The two oldest, Goneril and Regan, both flatter him with praise and are rewarded generously with land and marriage to the Duke of Albany and the Duke of Cornwall, respectively. Lear's youngest and most beloved daughter, Cordelia, refuses to flatter her father, going only so far as to say that she loves him as much as a daughter should. Lear, unjustly enraged, gives her no land.

There is more!

I remember reading Jane Smiley's novel A Thousand Acres (which I loved) and then seeing the movie. Of course, ignorant as I was (am!), it took awhile before I realized I was reading of a patriarch/king with three daughters who were dependent upon their father's beneficience (or his withholding of same) with a King Lear theme. I thought Smiley's book was very well written and I enjoyed reading it.

Smiley is the not the first to adapt a Shakespeare play and in a way, it is amazing that, knowing so little about the man himself, his influence is so widespread centuries after he lived.

Ah - the Bard!

When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.
--King lear, Act IV, scene vi