ljplicease | Jan. 30th, 2017

After the hubbub of last weekend we decided to take a little break and relax. Only kidding! Lena's parents came down for the weekend, and they brought her grandma. Lena had a choir concert on Saturday, where they broke attendance records for the choir and that along with cookie monster and the dancing the air was electric! A standing ovation (and not the kind where it is because you forgot to tell people to sit down)! At the reception Lena's father Misha bought a raffle ticket and won a nice basket of wine, cheese, crackers and chocolate. So when we got home we have a little improv wine, cheese, crackers and chocolate before going to sleeps.

The next day we had a play in the city to go see, so after lunch the parental units were on their way back to New Jersey as we took the train into the city. Nothing like last weekend, but there were a number of protestors on their way to the White House to protest the Muslim ban^[1]. Lena struck up a conversation with someone who clearly had a sign. “Are you going too?” they asked. Meekly I said we had a previous engagement. We will resist further, just not today.

Play was a production of As You Like It at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which takes us past the Supreme Court. As you know a Supreme Court is just like a regular court, only with sour cream. I had been reading that a judge had issued a stay on the possibly unconstitutional Muslim ban executive order. This felt like a victory, only it wasn't clear that the Homeland Security (DHS) was going to honor the stay. I am reminded of the time the Supreme Court ruled against Andrew Jackson's unconstitutional policies toward Native Americans, and the president is reported to have said “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made is decision; now let him enforce it!^[2]”

But I digress, and “The play's the thing wherein” we will catch the conscience of the king^[3]? More appropriately for this play “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”. I have never seen As You Like It so far as I can remember. I thought this production was wonderful though. They had integrated some modern music into the tale and I thought Rosalind was fantastic. Her relationship with Celia was authentic and alive! After some mistaken identify and some foolish comedy, everyone was married off to the correct partner. I hath not seen this play, but methinks that I hath?

Weeks ago, we had by mistake gotten tickets to see Dirty Dancing in the movie theater that very same night. When we realized that we had made the error of scheduling two entertainments for the same day, we decided that we would ‘see how we felt’ after the play and decide if we wanted to go. Lena was not excited about it. But she has wanted to see the film with me for a while, so I insisted that we go. It was not as terrible as I thought it might be. There was an interesting intersection of popular culture and class in there. There was also another plot element in the film that reminded us of the Supreme Court as we head back into the 50s and 60s from which this film was set. I can have hope and fear for the future at the same time.

let's call it what it is, shall we?
Okay, probably apocryphal, but it may as well be what he said, since that is how he acted.
Though we seem to live in a land where the King hath no conscience to catch!