Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

I took some measurements this morning.

Our bed is approximately 54 inches wide.

Our cat, stretched out to her fullest, can be 32 inches long from the tip of her front paw to the tip of her back paw (excluding tail).

Therefore, when lying parallel to the bottom of the bed, Boopsie can occupy nearly 60% of the available bed.

Guess how she likes to sleep? In a position about 18 inches from the foot of the bed.

Oh, and in the last month or so, she's started kicking when she's feeling crowded. Just stre-e-etch and thump down her leg on whichever object is in her way. Repeatedly.

I love our cat.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 PM

This evening at the library (yes, I stopped to pick up Bar Mitzvah Disco) I noticed and checked out Shakespeare 101.

Enh. Some nifty trivia, but nothing I need to own.

Still in its section on quotes about Shakespeare, this one just spoke to me:

“The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”  -- Robert Graves

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:45 PM

Over my vacation, I read three books (finished the first about two minutes after we parked at the airport, so I wouldn't have to shlep it along, and the last I finished after returning home). Here's what I thought.

1. Seize the daylight: the curious and contentious story of daylight saving time by David Prerau

An academic friend of mine recently came up with an idea for her PhD research, then lamented, "Who on earth would let me do that, let alone possibly pay me?"

I think we have to stop worrying that certain topics are too arcane for nonfiction books.

In 2005, publishers released not one, but two books on the history of Daylight Saving Time, both written by Boston-area residents.

The book I read was by a denizen of Chestnut Hill, who coauthored three major U.S. Government reports to Congress on the effects of daylight saving time and consulted with Congress for last year's DST extension.

[The other book, Spring forward: the annual madness of daylight saving, was written by a Tufts professor who lives in Cambridge. Given the title, I suspect he takes a more snarky or skeptical tone.]

I know some people feel very strongly about DST, but I'm not one of them. I'm relatively ambivalent. Several observations, though:

• A frequent crticism of DST (including my husband's) is that noon should be noon, and DST moves the clocks too far from a measurement that should have a basis in local observation. But as the author writes:

  Willett did not propose "to change from natural time to artificial time," as Winston Churchill told Parliament, "but only to substitute a convenient standard of artificial time."

  In a chapter on the history of "standard time" and time zones, Prerau points out that most localities don't recognize local noon as noon. [I believe he mentions that Boston is sixteen minutes or so behind the meridian used for Eastern time.]
   
• The original purpose of DST was to reduce the amount of "wasted" daylight that we sleep through, by shifting it to the evenings when more people are awake. Therefore it seems counterproductive when the DST change forces a majority of people to wakeup and get to work/school in the dark. Any proponents care to explain that?
   
• Recent research into teenagers' circadian rhythms demonstrate it's biologically difficult for teens to be alert in the early morning. Has anybody studied this in relation to DST or taken it into account in the recent debates over the impact of daylight saving?
   
• I've often heard the calls for extending DST through Halloween. I was more interested to read suggestions that DST be extended past election day in November, hoping more people would go out to vote if it was still daylight. I can sympathize with those goals much more than with Halloween and am rather disappointed that this summer's Energy Policy Act of 2005 only benefits Halloween and not national elections. [Then again, we already knew the current crowd in power is unsympathetic to get-out-the-vote efforts.]
   
• Locals who want one less reason to lament the imminent renaming of Filene's should know that Filene was an early advocate of DST.
   
• We just discovered that despite a February birthdate, Ian was born during DST (extended for the gas crisis). I wonder how that hour-long difference affected any horoscopes he's had drawn...

FWIW, this book was published in the UK under the title Saving the Daylight: Why We Put the Clocks Forward.
There's also a website for the book @ SeizeTheDaylight.com.

2. A Year in the life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro

Loved it; loved it; LOVED IT!

An in-depth look at the year 1599, with a focus on what Shakespeare was doing that year, and what other events were the talk of London during that period.

Despite the notion that Shakespeare wrote for all time, he was writing for an audience of a particular time and place. This book provides context for what was going on and explains a number of in-jokes and references that his audience would've gotten but are now obscure.

Extremely clear and well-done. I recommend it most highly.

PS: In a seemingly similar vein, last year I read but never found the time to review 1603: the death of Queen Elizabeth, the return of the Black Plague, the rise of Shakespeare, piracy, witchcraft, & the birth of the Stuart era. Don't bother. Incredibly incoherent. Despite the supposedly narrow focus, it jumped all over the place. If I didn't have as much existing knowledge in the period, it would've been even less comprehensible. I only forced myself to finish because I put enough effort into it that I wanted it to count on my Books Read list. The best thing I got from this book was this quote about how much King James loved animal sports (p. 65): “one of his first appointments was that of Royal Cock Master.” Heh.

But, seriously, that was the best thing about the book.

3. Thirteen and a day: the bar and bat mitzvah across America by Mark Oppenheimer

I've been meaning to read this book for a while.

• While my gut reaction was to recommend this, particularly to my mother-in-law (who has tutored BMitzvah students), something about the way the author wrote about practices outside the mainstream made me uncomfortable. Maybe I was projecting, but something in his descriptions of Renewal practices in particular made me want to hide this from members of the that movement.
   
• Hey, cool! moment: One chapter looks at Congregation Kol Ami in Tampa, where I became bat mitzvah. Since that's (partly) where I grew up, I never thought anything too remarkable about its practices, but apparently the shul has an unusually high level of congregant participation.
   
• Although the final chapter provides a hint of what he might say, I'm surprised nobody contacted the author when the $10 million Bat Mitzvah party war-profiteer David Brooks threw for his daughter made the news. I'd think this would be the perfect subject for a man who just wrote a book on b'nai mitzvot. Yet I can't find any such articles online. Hey, Mark! If you happen to read this, I'd be interested in any comments you may have on the topic. Anything you feel like sharing?
   
• And now I feel an urge to follow this up by finding a copy of Bar Mitzvah Disco. [See the website if you're unfamiliar with the concept.]

So, that's what I've been reading of late. Up next? Welll, I have four YA fics about Shakespeare rattling around in my bag, but who knows whether I proceed with them, with any of the other library books currently checked out, or move onto something else entirely. Who knows...

How are you?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:25 PM

Having now seen Pericles, in part because it's so rarely performed (I doubt we would've made such a mad dash for any of his more popular plays), it's gotten me thinking of which other plays I have yet to see.

Here's the alphabetical list of Shakespeare's plays that I have seen, on stage or screen:

I've been meaning to write this up in a more detailed form on my website, including notations on which production I've seen and when, with links to reviews where I wrote them. But I don't have that organized quite yet.

Meanwhile, here are those I haven't yet:

This does not count those I've read but not seen nor ones I've only seen in adaptation. And if I saw any Shakespeare plays as a small child that I can't recall, well I can't recall those.

I do regret that I hadn't gotten into Shakespeare just a little bit sooner, so I could've seen Troilus and Cressida (the Publick Theatre in 2004) or the Henry VI chronicles (Shakespeare & Co. in 2002).

Still, better late than never, and I am more than halfway through the canon.

And now I've got something to root for when the local companies release their summer schedules. Historically, those announcements tend to come out in late February or early March (check Bard in Boston for updates).

PS: Of Marlowe's 7 plays, I've only seen two: Derek Jarman's Edward II (on video) and a stage production of Dido. Again, I wish I got into this earlier, as there was a local production of Faustus a few years back, though it got mixed reviews. Which reminds me of the forthcoming Julliard student production of Edward II mid-February. Should find out more details and see if I can't lure Ian there for his birthday...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:32 PM

Ian brought his laptop along, and blogged about the weekend Saturday night, Sunday night, and Monday afternoon. He summed things up well enough that I don't feel like repeating what he wrote, even when my recollection or phrasing might be slightly different.

Seeing relatives was good, and something I have to do more often. I chose to live in Boston because I fell in love with the area, but none of my relatives^* live in the area. My family is in the Tampa Bay area of Florida and the Chicago/Milwaukee vicinity. Since my parents and nephew/godson are near Tampa, I generally see them at least once a year, but this was my first trip to Chicago in at least four years. Far too long.

In addition to visiting with family, we also saw a bit of the city and took in a show.

About 7pm Sunday, while doing online checkin with the airlines and waiting for our boarding passes to print, I noticed the Goodman Theatre was running a production of Shakespeare's Pericles -- one of his plays we had never seen, and one that's rarely performed. It was Sunday night and most theaters don't offer Sunday night shows, but we checked the theater's website and discovered they had a 7:30pm curtain. I sent Ian back up to the room to grab our jackets while I went down to the lobby to find out where the theater was.

A hasty dash ensued and we arrived at the stroke of showtime (by my watch). Huffing and puffing we made our way to the box office, where we managed to get two seats in Box 9 above the mezzanine. That close to showtime, we even got the tickets half-price, and had just enough time to catch our breath before the show started.

I think I'll write up my review in a separate post to avoid getting too bogged down here. [And why am I finding it easier to write about this play than the ones where I've gotten press tickets?]

For various reasons, we ended up having much of Monday to ourselves. So we went for a walk around the city. After several drives past the statue of Washington on Wacker Drive, I had to get a closer look to see who he was standing with. Turned out to be a tribute to religious tolerance, showing him arm-in-arm with Robert Morris and Hyam Salomon.

Then we headed over to Marshall Fields. We looked at the archives and architecture (in our ongoing Midwest v. Massachusetts debates, Ian was mollified to discover Field was originally a local boy) and hung around to have lunch at the Walnut Room.

Ian has often observed that good food is more filling than mediocre or bad food. I'll say. We weren't hungry again until breakfast this morning. Somewhat a shame, since I'd been hoping to grab a Chicago dog in the afternoon to tide us over before our flight, but I had no appetite left.

Unfortunately, the Chicago Public Library was closed for the MLK holiday. And maybe, if I'd looked at the visitor guides earlier, we might've noticed the Pompeii Exhibit at the Field Museum in time to go there.

But honestly, I have no regrets about what we did or didn't see during our time in Chicago.

In further good news, these trips are gradually convincing my husband that travel outside New England doesn't have to be TEH EV0L!!! and that there does exist other civilized places besides Boston where he might be able to live.

PS: Realized too late that I missed the submissionsdeadline for the She's Such a Geek anthology I discovered in November. D'oh!