Stellar matters: "light seeking light doth light of light beguile"

There's much afoot these days, but little interesting; therefore this space will be commensurately uninteresting for the duration. I just thought I'd like to get a head-start: one less thing to worry about working/not-working on the other end. So not so much time for the stuff we like: καιρος πολεμου και καιρος ειρηνης, but I promise καιρος πολεμου will be back.

("A time for war and a time for peace," by the way. Eventually I'll figure out how to make the putative erudition less obtrusive. πολεμου, polemou, cognate with polemic.)

Saw a play the other day: Love's Labour's Lost at the local Shakespeare festival, Bard on the Beach. They've got an idyllic setting with professional production and a few actors who can be relied upon to turn in a good performance. Even when I can't manage to get to the opera I still see more than one play there each summer: a very agreeable custom.

I had planned actually to see all four offered this year but it seems, alas, that I won't be seeing As You Like It after all, since it's sold out for the balance of the season and I don't have tickets. It was to be the first I was to see this year; that got postponed unavoidably at the last moment; then I was to see it with a different party and hence cancelled with the first; then organisation broke down with the Party the Second; meanwhile I arranged to see the remaining play on the schedule with Party the Third, having determined to see Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead with Party the First; now I even have tickets for Hamlet with Party the First but no tickets with Party the Second because it's sold out. In other words, if I weren't telling this story chronologically, Party the Second would not be Party the Second.

Part of Party the Third

Since Party the First is so proactive you might wonder how Party the Third even got their foot in the door. The answer is that Party the First was not interested in seeing this particular play. Apparently it's a somewhat vulgar comedy, inferior in this regard even say to Merry Wives of Windsor. On the other hand, this one doesn't have a clown prancing around masquerading as John Falstaff, as Harold Bloom suggests happened in that one. Speaking of Harold Bloom, he has many fine things to say about Love's Labour's Lost, specifically about the splendour of the language, which is why I wanted to see it anyway. For myself I thoroughly enjoyed the evening, modulo one gag I could have done without. Berowne-in-the-tree is a fantastic scene, a mechanism emulated well by writers of the present age's better farces. I had to clear that up, by the way, so that Party the Third realises they're not the third-string guests.

A third part of our Party

Speaking of Party the Third, I should stop speaking of them in circumlocution, but I don't know if they want to get introduced to the public on this page. I have one or two pictures but I know they strongly value their privacy. This, Party the Third, is the reason why one member of our party of four doesn't appear here even by implication except now; you two can file a complaint. That's my brother, right, and "Mom and a Bonsai" up there. If part of the background looks very strange, that's because the photos got touched up a little. They were too dark originally, for shame of me. I'll know better next time.

(I've gone batty, by the way, trying to get those pictures and captions to look one-quarter-decent on the page. Someone give me a hint. The "preview" function here apparently doesn't support some things it should.)

Things to do today. Devise an optimal internal structure for packed boxes and pack them according to this scheme. Construct an appropriate header for the page. Find something to eat. Compute the co-ordinate ring of the affine plane minus a point. (Find out how to write in blackboard-bold font.)