Weekend update

1) Haven't gotten much done this weekend. The main productive thing I've done is some work in the yard. There's a fair amount of autumnal clean-up work to do, and I've busted more sod in the front yard. The goal, still, is to plant a bee-friendly garden out front, although at this point I'm using up a lot of the new bed space transplanting things that have been overgrown by sprawling plants in other parts of the garden.

2) I've been reading the introduction to my copy of The Tempest, which is an Oxford University Press edition. Great stuff, and it's helping me understand the play better. "Cannibalism, Utopia, and free love reappear throughout the century as defining elements of New-World societies." Shades of Stranger in a Strange Land!

3) The University of Oregon football team beat USC 47-20 yesterday. I can't even begin to express what a huge game that was. I've been a University of Oregon fan since I was a kid, so I've been watching the Duckies lose to the Trojans for four decades. I've seen them win a few too, but I've never before seen them completely trounce the Trojans, who amongst other things have been the Pac-10 champions for seven straight years and national champions twice in that same period.

4) It's been a beautiful, sunny weekend, so I think it's time to swing by the Sunday Market for tacos and then find a place to read more of the intro to The Tempest.

Bride of Ariel

French was followed in 1934, both at the Old Vic and at Sadler's Wells, by Elsa Lanchester, playing a very art-deco and decidedly feminine Ariel in a silver tunic, wings, and a cape, and wearing lipstick and mascara. James Agate praised her extravagantly for the lightness and radiance she brought to the part, compared her (perversely, surely) to Nijinsky's Faun, and claimed that 'until Miss Elsa Lanchester the part of Ariel has never been acted'.

-- Stephen Orgel, Introduction to The Tempest, Oxford University Press, 1987

Ariel as Tinkerbell? Makes me wish, possibly obscurely, that Julie Taymor was using Tilda Swinton as Ariel in her movie adaptation. And yes, that's also Charles Laughton as Prospero.