saturday afternoon at leisure

Hamlet, of All Things

So last year, Child's fifth grade reading class did a turn at Shakespeare (I have no idea how I missed this), so imagine my surprise when Child came up yesterday to tell me that he wanted to make Hamlet 3. I blinked.

(I knew their English curriculum was interesting and varied, but I didn't know they hit Hamlet and Twelfth Night. I feel I have failed as a parent, because I could have been using Shakespeare for ammunition all this time and I haven't. I've lost at least seven months of random literary references when he misbehaves. This is not fun.)

Anyway, they apparently acted out parts of it, which is, bar none, the best way ever to get anyone to read the plays and enjoy them, and Child summarized the play pretty thoroughly up until mentioning the kingdom of Detroit.

Me: Denmark.

Child: I knew that sounded wrong.

I feel better.

Random Reading

Anyway, today I read Child and Niece an article on women's suffrage--the Tennessee vote that gave the US the thirty-sixth vote to add the Nineteenth Amendment. Child has theoretically been aware of the concept of people having no right to vote at certain periods Before Now, but he was still utterly shocked, and the idea that at least two female relatives he knows who have since passed away were born before that right was recognized. Personally, I find it weird as well.

So spent part of my afternoon buying my niece's birthday gift and reading Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens. It's a fairly fast and interesting overview read, at least to me, but I will say the structure drove me nuts with the tendency to stop at the critical moment--a judge ordering the women held in Virginia at the Occoquan Workhouse to be brought to DC--then wanders off to something far less interesting. So lots of stopping and jumping around and going back, as I am not patient and also dreading the next account of force-feeding or any description of any people eating worm infested soup or raw pork.

( random bits )