And it really doesn't matter if we're under our desks with our hands over our heads or not, does it?
No, said Mrs. Baker. It doesn't really matter.
So, why are we practicing?
She thought for a minute. Because it gives comfort, she said. People like to think that if they're prepared then nothing bad can really happen. And perhaps we practice because we feel as if there's nothing else we can do because sometimes it feels as if life is governed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
At the happy ending of the Tempest, Prospero brings the kind back togeter with his son, and finds Miranda's true love and punishes the bad duke and frees Ariel and becomes a duke himself again. Everyone - except Caliban - is happy, and everyone is forgiven, and everyone is fine, and they all sail away on calm seas. Happy endings.
That's how it is in Shakespeare.
But Shakespeare was wrong.
Sometimes there isn't a Prospero to make everything fine again.
And sometimes the quality of mercy is strained.
A comedy isn't about being funny," said Mrs. Baker.
"We talked about this before."
"A comedy is about character who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all. That's how I know."
"Suppose you can't see it?"
"That's the daring part," said Mrs. Baker.
...and she ran out of the diesel combustion and right to me and we held each other and we were not empty at all.
"Holling," she said. "I was so afraid I wouldn't find you."
"I was standing right here, Heather." I said. "I'll always be standing right here.
I think he became a man who brought peace and wisdom to hi world, because he knew about war and folly. I think that he loved greatly, because he had seen what lost love is. And I think he came to know, too, that he was loved greatly." She looked at the strawberry in her hands. "But I thought you didn't want me to tell you your future.
Gary D. SchmidtThat night, [Black Dog] lay beside Henry, and he stroked her sharp shoulder blades and scratched behind her ears. He did this late into the night as he listened to the low and terrible moans that swept through the hallways of the house and that were not from the lonely wind but from his lonely mother, who had lost her oldest child and would never have him back again.
Gary D. SchmidtTalk is only silence that ain't workin' well.
Gary D. SchmidtA southwest blow on ye and blister you all o'er!'
'The red plague rid you!'
'Toads, beetles, bats, light on you!'
'As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed with raven's feather from unwholesome fen drop on you.'
'Strange stuff'
'Thou jesting monkey thou'
'Apes with foreheads villainous low'
'Pied ninny'
'Blind mole...'
-The Caliban Curses
Tags: shakespeare curses the-tempest
Whatever it means to be a friend, taking a black eye for someone has to be in it.
Gary D. SchmidtTags: friendship
OKAY. So I was going to the library every Saturday. So what? So what? It's not like I was reading books or anything.
Gary D. SchmidtTags: funny
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