Auld Lang Syne and Stuff

2011 was a good year. The Shakespeare Club exceeded all expectations.

More little kids now know about William Shakespeare than a year ago.

More children have unearthed their own possibilities through acting out the plots of Shakespeare's plays.


I will sleep well, likely dropping off before midnight as usual, and will be ready for 2012.


I wish you the same: Great sleeps, better dreams and open hearts to all that 2012 has to offer.

Happy New Year!

Celebration

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago,
And etched on vacant places
Are half-forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish,
And loves we used to know.

~Ella Wheeler Wilcox

On Hanukkah, the first dark night,
Light yourself a candle bright.
I'll you, if you will me invite
To dance within that gentle light.

~Nicholas Gordon

For somehow, not only at Christmas, but all the long year through, The joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you.

~John Greenleaf Whittier

The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

~James Baldwin

I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.

~Charles Dickens

Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.

~Kenyan proverb

Wishing you happy holidays and a creative 2012!

~Mel Ryane

Aloft

It may happen as you bend your tall self to tie a shoe
A Danish castle; a ghost appears

When you idle your BMW, glance to the left
Verona arush with wild boys and flashing swords

Address the Board, catch the eye of a partner
And you're on a Scottish heath abrim with ambition

A breeze brushes your cheek, lifts the lace veil
At a wedding in an Athenian forest

Press your elegant feet into sand and
Let your heart zip you to an island called Ilyria...

That shipwreck

That time, that place when we crashed on shore
Our vessel broken
Our fears afire
And courage rose with outstretched hands
Voices whooped aloud and full of stanzas

One day, when you need it most, it will happen upon you
The time you leapt
Took a breath; took a chance
And skimmed on wings of poetry

When you are old, when you are afraid, when you are alone
Remember this
A castle in Denmark, a heath in Scotland, a dusty Italian street,
a mossy glen...
a beach in Ilyria
Where power, love and revenge reigned
And you were triumphant....


Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The Shakespeare Club Wishes You:

A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

New Year's Day is every man's birthday.

—Charles Lamb

New Year's Day...now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

—Mark Twain

I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.

—Anaïs Nin

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

—Oscar Wilde

From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining.

—Leonard Bernstein

first photo from A Parisian New Year

An Elizabethan Christmas

At Christmas I no more desire a rose,
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows;
But like of each thing that in season grows.

—William Shakespeare

Heap on the wood!
The wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our Christmas merry still.

—Sir Walter Scott

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago,
And etched on vacant places
Are half-forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish,
And loves we used to know.

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Love came down at Christmas;
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Stars and angels gave the sign.

—Christina Rossetti

In Thanksgiving

To you, who take leaps, because I ask;

Use words bigger than your shoes and reach for the sun.

To you, who share your stories, so large, the Greeks

Would drown in the drama of them

And risk acts of trust to each other, to language, to exposure —

To you, who gamble and gambol

I bow before you,

Enriched and delighted because of you.

To you, I say, go forward —

Gamble and gambol into that sun

Let no one take away what you know, no, know — about yourselves.

Clothed in the courage of soldiers

Your armor, the brave coats of daring

Go forward.

To you, on bended knee, I say

I am grateful to have known you.