The NAMING of the Shrew........

I have here, the cast list for THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.


Petruchio~ Matthew McW


Katherina (Kate)~Maddelyn


Bianca~Bethany
Biondello~Bethany
Sir Christopher Sly~Bethany


Lucentio~Kyle
Nathaniel~KyleBartholomew~Kyle
Huntsman 1~Kyle
Servingman 2~Kyle


Joseph~Daniel
Baptista Minola~Daniel
Grumio~Daniel
Vincentio~Daniel


Hortensio~Gavin
Philip~Gavin
Huntsman 2~Gavin
Servingman 3~Gavin
A Haberdasher~Gavin
Traveling Players~Gavin


Tranio~Sierra
Nicholas~Sierra
Servingman 4~Sierra


Gremio~Sarah
Alehouse Hostess~Sarah
Servingman 1~Sarah
A Tailor~Sarah


A Lord~Chari
A Pedant~Chari
Curtis~Chari
Peter~Chari
A Widow~Chari

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We will meet this Monday, and two weeks later, as Sarah will be out of town on the 12th. We were thinking of having a "movie night" on the 12th...if anyone is interested. We may even try to get the play read before the 11th......if it works out. As it is......who knows if the snow will mess us up for tomorrow night.

The line-up for the next plays:

Twelfth Night
Romeo & Juliet
As You Like It
Richard III
A Comedy of Errors

Once school is out at the college.....I may be interested in just reading each play through to the end......if everyone else wants to do that....instead of splitting up the play in two nights.

I have Sierra bringing snacks for April 5th.......Bethany, can you do April 19th?

That's it, for now!

EASTER BLESSINGS!!!

Chari

PS: There will be NO Shakespeare on April 26th....we will be out of town for a couple of days.

Double, double toil and trouble......

.........Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

The cast list for Macbeth is as follows............

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

MALCOLM~Kyle

MACBETH~Daniel

LADY MACBETH~Sarah

MACDUFF~Gavin
SEYTON~Gavin
AN OLD MAN~Gavin

DUNCAN~Sierra S
ANGUS~Sierra S
WITCH 2~Sierra S
APPARITION 3~Sierra S

BANQUO~Maddelyn
MENTETH~Maddelyn
WITCH 1~Maddelyn
MURDERER 2~Maddelyn
APPARITION 2~Maddelyn

LENNOX~Bethany
DONALBAIN~Bethany
WITCH 3~Bethany
FLEANCE~Bethany
MURDERER 3~Bethany

ROSS~Matthew McW
A SCOTTISH DOCTOR~ Matthew McW
YOUNG SEYWARD~Matthew McW

A PORTER~Chari
HECATE~Chari
SEYWARD~Chari
SON OF MACDUFF~Chari
APPARITION 1~Chari

A GENTLE WOMAN~Sierra B
WIFE OF MACDUFF~Sierra B
CATHNESS~Sierra B
MURDERER 1~Sierra B
AN ENGLISH DOCTOR~Sierra B


Various other players......ToBeDecidedOnTheSpot

See you tomorrow!

Lenten Blessings,

Chari

PS Taming of the Shrew will follow MacBeth...........and NO Shakespeare Club on April 12th....and possibly on April 26th.......though we may be able to meet on the 27th.

the "Dream" Cast for.......

..........a Midsummer Night!

In the middle of WINTER!! :)

For our Shakespeare Club....starting on Monday......

Anne should be here for the second reading......we will "deal" with that when we come to it...... :)

The Gals.......

Helena ~Sierra
Hermia~Bethany
Titania~Sarah
Hippolyta~Maddelyn

The Fellas......

Demetrius~Matthew
Theseus~Daniel
Lysander~Kyle
Puck~Gavin
Nick Bottom~Chari
Oberon~Maddelyn
Peter Quince~Kyle
Francis Flute~Matthew
Egeus~Gavin
Philostrate~Chari
Snug~Daniel
Tom Snout~Bethany
Robin Starveling~Sarah
Peaseblossum~Bethany
Conweb~Sierra
Math~Daniel
Mustardseed~Chari

See ya then!!!

Blessings,

Chari

Our Wee Maestro!

Tonight, finally, Malachy was able to put his own composition to paper.

**********************************

He has been playing his own composition for months.......begging someone to help him write it down.

Tonight, Sarah was sitting at the piano, working on a piece, when Malachy (age 8 years) approached her. In his hand was the music composition book I had finally unearthed from Matthew's things.

After helping him for a bit, he says to her:

"Thank you SO much!! I have been needing to get this written down. You know, Sarah........I have to start sometime. I mean, Beethoven started when he was eight. Of course, I will not be completely like Beethoven ........or like August Rush." :)

Not quite sure where he got the "Beethoven was eight" info..........but he sure brings a smile to our faces with frequency! Gotta love that kid!

I guess I should create a video of him playing his piece, eh?

Maybe tomorrow......

Lenten Blessings,

Chari

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears....

"Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up........."

It is here, the cast list for JULIUS CAESAR......

This was the most difficult play to cast thus far, as the character list is immense. And, the number of lines for most characters, is small.

I think I did a pretty good job in spite of the difficulty.......some of you have quite a few characters of which to keep track. I want you to write the name of your characters on a small notecard to keep track of while we read. I will need to do the same. :)

JULIUS CAESAR
cast list....Jan 2010

Marcus Brutus~Matthew McW

Cassius~Gavin

Marcus Antony~Maddelyn

Julius Caesar~Kyle
Publius~Kyle

A Soothsayer~Kyle
Claudius~Kyle
Flavius~Kyle
A carpenter ~Kyle

Casca~Daniel
Titinius~Daniel
Cato the Younger~Daniel
Dardanius~Daniel
A cobbler~Daniel

Portia~Bethany
Trebonius~Bethany
Marullus~Bethany
Cinna~Bethany

Calpurnia~Sierra
M. Aemilius Lepidus~Sierra
Metellus Cimber ~Sierra
Lucilius~Sierra
Clitus~Sierra
Pindarus~Sierra
Flavius~Sierra

Octavius Caesar~Sarah
Ligarius~Sarah
Cinna the Poet~Sarah
Messala~Sarah
Volumnius~Sarah
Varro~Sarah

Cicero~Chari
Popilius Lena~Chari
Decius Brutus~Chari
Artemidorus~Chari
Strato~Chari
Lucius~Chari
Poet~Chari

Other soldiers, senators, plebeians
and attendants~Chari, Sarah or Sierra


You can find more than you ever wanted to know about Julius Caesar, the play, here. There will be spoilers, just in case you want to be surprised while we read.

And, a character map can be found here. This is actually quite useful though it does not show all of the characters.


This play is about the same length of the other plays we have read so far and I expect it to take about two Monday evenings. After these two days, we will take two Monday evenings off to enjoy Garrett's basketball games. You may join us if you like.....

When we finish Julius Caesar, we will decide what to do next. Be sure to collect your books if you are going to purchase them.

The Taming of the Shrew
MacBeth
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Twelfth Night........coming up!

Blessings,

Chari

Looking at LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST......

Hey, Shakespeare Club! Here is the cast list for our next play:

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST

cast

Princess of France~Sierra

Rosaline~Sarah

Maria~Maddelyn

Katherine~Bethany

Jaquenetta~Anne

Berowne (Biron)~Daniel

King Ferdinand of Navarre~Matthew

Boyet~Kyle

Holofernes~Chari

Don Adriano de Armado~Gavin

Nathaniel~Samuel

Costard~Maddelyn

Mote (Moth)~Anne, then Bethany

Longaville~Bethany, then Chari

Dumaine~Anne

Dull~Chari

Marcade~Samuel

A Forester~Bethany

Anne will be joining us for the first evening......

See you on Monday night!

Chari

We have THE TEMPEST at Hearts' Haven!

Our Shakespeare Club will be meeting on Monday, December 7th.........6:40ish pm

We will be reading...........

THE TEMPEST........

And, the casting is as follows:

Prospero-Daniel

Ariel-Gavin

Caliban-Maddelyn

Gonzalo-Matthew Mc

Miranda-Bethany

Ferdinand-Kyle

Antonio-Sarah

Stephano-Sierra

Sebastian-Chari

Alonso-Sierra

Trinculo-Sarah

Iris-Samuel

Ceres-Kyle

Juno-Garrett

Adrian-Samuel

Francisco-Garrett

And, we will follow this with Love's Labour Lost and, I am thinking, The Taming of the Shrew........start looking for your next book!

Anyone interested in watching some movies of the Shakespeare plays we read???

Advent Blessings,

Chari

Much Ado About Nothing!

Our Shakespeare Club will, God willing, especially barring any illness in our cast, begin on November 16th, at 6:30 pm, at Hearts' Haven.

I DO wish all of you could join us......perhaps we will read through a play when you come to visit?

In the meantime, the cast for our first play,

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

is as follows:

Beatrice-Maddelyn

Leonato-Gavin

Claudio-Matthew Mc

Don Pedro-Kyle

Benedick-Daniel

Hero-Sierra

Dogberry-Samuel

Friar Francis-Samuel

Don John-Garrett

Verges-Garrett

Borachio-Sarah

Margaret-Sarah

Messenger-Sarah

Ursula-Bethany

Antonio-Bethany

A Watchman-Bethany

Conrade-Chari

Narrator-Chari

Balthasar-Chari

A Sexton-Malachy

A boy-Malachy

If for some unexpected reason, anyone else joins us, I will give them my parts, or any of the doubled-up parts.

So, look over your parts if you have time, maybe mark your lines.....whatver works for you.

We are looking forward to this opportunity of reading through the play with all of you......it will be quite fun & interesting.

And, to those of you poor college students who have gone away from us.......we would love to try to read through a play or two this summer.......we DO miss you and wish you could be a part of our little group.

See you next week!

Blessings,

Chari

Haven Heartbeats

Kids say the darndest things............





Maddelyn just came in and said: Malachy is kind of funny.





I ask why......





....she says.....





.....that he said.........

You have rootbeer eyes.

Is that cute or what???

Well, she does! :)

Maddelyn, 13, and her newest cousin, Jaylen Reeves, born on September 14, 2008.

Now showing............the kids open their show today! Pray for them!

Have a beautiful day!

Love, Chari

Poetry Proud

We have some exciting news in our family!

Matthew, 17 years, recently competed in a Poetry Out Loud competition at our charter school. You may not have heard of this program. It is new and I think this is only the third year for the national level. Poetry Out Loud is a wonderful national program where approximately 200,000 high school students from across the country pick poems from the list of about 400 poems at the above website, and then recite them in a public forum. They cannot act out the poem, just recite it. It is part of the National Endowment for the Arts. At the school level competition the students must recite only one poem, but have a second poem memorized in case it is needed for a tie. The winners of school contests, 1st & 2nd place, then go up to the county level to compete against other schools.

At the county level, the students must recite two poems, and have a third poem in case of a tie. The winner of the county match heads to the state competition. Expenses for travel and hotel are covered by the California Arts Council. The winner of state wins $200 and an all-expenses-paid trip to DC to compete in the National Finals. Their school also receives $500 to purchase poetry books. The second place winner wins $100 and $200 goes to their school for poetry books. The National Finals winner receives a $20,000 scholarship, and second place wins $10,000. There is also another $20,000 in scholarships for others as well. Very generous, they are.

The National Poetry Out Loud competition, held in April, in Washington, DC requires three poems to be recited. They have a great judging system in that they use points for the characteristics they judge and then the winners are determined by who has the highest score. When there are two or three poems, one must always be less than 25 lines and one must be pre-20th century.

So back to Matthew……

….he won first place at the school competition! He recited the poem We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar. A week and a half later, Matthew competed at the county level, against four other schools, 9 other competitors. He recited the first poem and added a second poem: The Bells of San Blas by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Both poems are posted below. I love how Catholic The Bells of San Blas is.

Matthew won the county competition!

He goes to state now! Isn’t that exciting! He will represent homeschoolers and an awesome charter school. He competes on Friday, March 14th in Sacramento in the Secretary of State’s auditorium. Please come to watch if you can. It is free and open to the public. There should be 20 competitors from all over the state, one from each participating county.

His prize was a copy of one of our favorite poetry anthologies: The Best Loved Poems of the American People He is thrilled to have a copy to call his own!

Our family is so proud of him. He did very well. Please pray he does his very best when he gets to state. Someone has to win…..since the DC trip includes two parents…..you know I am game to go…traveler that I am. :)

******

Read these poems slowly and savor them.......

~~~~~~~~~~~~

We Wear the Mask

By Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Bells of San Blas

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore,—
Nothing more to master or man.

But to me, a dreamer of dreams,
To whom what is and what seems
Are often one and the same,—
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
And are something more than a name.

For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old;
One sound to all, yet each
Lends a meaning to their speech,
And the meaning is manifold.

They are a voice of the Past,
Of an age that is fading fast,
Of a power austere and grand;
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o'er this western world,
And the Priest was lord of the land.

The chapel that once looked down
On the little seaport town
Has crumbled into the dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
And are green with mould and rust.

"Is, then, the old faith dead,"
They say, "and in its stead
Is some new faith proclaimed,
That we are forced to remain
Naked to sun and rain,
Unsheltered and ashamed?

"Once in our tower aloof
We rang over wall and roof
Our warnings and our complaints;
And round about us there
The white doves filled the air,
Like the white souls of the saints.

"The saints! Ah, have they grown
Forgetful of their own?
Are they asleep, or dead,
That open to the sky
Their ruined Missions lie,
No longer tenanted?

"Oh, bring us back once more
The vanished days of yore,
When the world with faith was filled;
Bring back the fervid zeal,
The hearts of fire and steel,
The hands that believe and build.

"Then from our tower again
We will send over land and main
Our voices of command,
Like exiled kings who return
To their thrones, and the people learn
That the Priest is lord of the land!"

O Bells of San Blas, in vain
Ye call back the Past again!
The Past is deaf to your prayer;
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We will go down to Sacramento the night before. The contest begins at 11am and lasts till 5pm. It may be a long day for the two youngest boys! They did well at the first competition, but it was only 1.5 hours. Afterward, we will be heading to San Francisco to visit our dear friends for a few days. We are very excited to go to San Fran…..I guess it has been a couple of years since we have been there. We will have to find fun things to do.


Well, that’s our exciting news! Please pray, for Matthew to do his best, and for our travels.

God bless all of you!

~C~

Hey, Haven Family Performers......

......now that Beauty & the Beast is over, what are you gonna do?????

lllllll

WE ARE GOING TO DISNEYLAND!!!

Haven Kids celebrating 50 yrs with Disneyland in 2006........Malachy less than cooperative.

Haven kids with my dad, Georgie-Pop. What a sweet guy to treat! The "C" for California Adventure Park, the night of our arrival in September 2006.

lllll

Yes, it sounds like a commercial, but it is the truth. When my dad took everybody last year, he kept saying how much fun he had..............and, that he wants to do it again. So, here we are!


I had to chuckle when my friend Alice left a comment on my last blog entry, saying:

It is official. You have had the most phenomenal summer ever.

It got me thinking......hmmm......when does summer really end? September 2oth (or is it the 21st?).......so, that means, I still have more to do, to have an even more phenomenal summer.

Alice, I must add a long Disneyland weekend to the deal, plus a week in San Diego, hanging out at the beach with some of our dearest friends, while visiting relatives.

And......

I must also add:

Some of the Haven kids with some of Robynn's kids, at the Getty in 2005.

A visit to the J. Paul Getty Museum http://www.getty.edu/museum/ with dear friends. This museum is free, wonderful and absolutely beautiful! We just love this museum. It has become a tradition for us, of visiting it on the way to Disneyland. Our dear friend Robynn in Lancaster has always joined us. This year we have invited a few others. The Getty is also only 6 miles down the freeway from:

Johnny's Pastrami!!! Where my family is on their 4th generation of eating here! There is NO place in the world where the pastrami gets this good, trust me, I have tried! And, their pickles are pretty special, too. Just add some french fries and rootbeer, and you have it covered! The sandwiches are $9.95 these days, but at least feed two kids.............oh! I am drooling now! Can't wait! And, this year, I am buying an extra sandwich to eat in my hotel room at Disneyland, so the experience will last longer. :)

Last year at Disneyland felt like a family reunion. I am hoping for the same this year. My dad of course, the cool guy treating. My cousin Julie came last year, and is planning to come this year, too. Hopefully with one of her kids. My Aunt Nancy also......with my cousin Cindy's three kids. My sister Teresa & her family and family friends, the Synders, will be attending this second year. Sadly Robynn cannot join us this year. Last year, Erica from San Diego came up and spent an hour with us in the cement picnic area just outside of Disneyland entrance. That was special! Others are invited, we will just have to see who shows up.

On the way home from San Diego, we plan a stopover in Lancaster at Robynn's and hopefully will see a performance of Cheaper by the Dozen in which her son plays the 5th son in the family. This possibility is exciting for us, as we have never seen this play live.

And lastly, we are planning a layover in Northern Nevada, home of most of my family: my parents and siblings, a few cousins.

So, see Alice, my phenomenal summer is so not over, yet!

I think school will really start in, uh, October. Until then, it is "travel school" for us, yet again.

Blessings,

~C~