oddments

a couple of weeks ago I found myself, through no action of my own, included in the email prayer circle of some right-wing US evangelicals, who were praying for a godly resolution to this most 'terrifying' of elections, as well as to an assortment of urinary and prostate complaints. it's only sympathy for the urinary complaints that has stopped me from responding in persona as the Jen Crawford they think I am, but it's nice to fantasise. what would you say?

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Reading Shakespeares on behalf of some high school students I'm tutoring at the moment - Measure for Measure (BOO!) and Richard III (YAY!). It's hard to teach the former - I can't find its depth, and so far can only stand outside it and try to point at its questions and answers and the gaps between these, as well as the gaps between then and now. Richard III, on the other hand, yanks you through its trains of thought, and despite being a history play seems to require so little social translation to make sense in the present. It's in danger of replacing King Lear as my favourite. I love the way it's opened up by the sheer number of its active characters, and the way it falls into weirdly stylised and repetitive mourning refrains that seem to shift its genre to another time & place altogether.

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Edit: Measure for Measure made a lot more sense and became a lot more entertaining when I remembered to activate the COMEDY chip in my brain.