All Hail Macbeth!

"God's benison go with you, and with those

That would make good of bad, and friends of foes."

William Shakespeare

I've mentioned previously that we are listening to & reading Shakespeare's Macbeth and on the weekend we headed for the hills to be present at MariMudge Shakespeare's first ever performance of that very play.

 The Cast

L to R: Mr T - 15yrs; Mr. I - 15 yrs; Miss C - 7 yrs; Miss S - 13 yrs; Miss M - 8 yrs; Miss L - 14 yrs.



I was privileged to have a rare interview with two of the weird sisters, and I must say that casting the pair in this role was a stroke of genius. Who would have known that these two with their child-like demeanour and seeming innocence would have led Macbeth down the path he took?

 But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.

Macbeth: Act 1: Scene 3

Beware, Macbeth!

Not really, my nieces are very sweet!

The Royal Shakespeare Company production starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench is a sparse but good interpretation of Macbeth we watched a few years ago. The scene where Macduff's wife is murdered is one you might want to skip but apart from that nothing else comes to mind. Even so, it would be better appreciated by those of a high school age as it relies mostly on dialogue and there isn't much in the way of props. Both actors are wonderful and the weird sisters not as creepy as those found in other versions of Macbeth.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth: Act 5: Scene 5

The Gael  - this piece is mostly known by its inclusion in the film, The Last of the Mohicans, but it was written by a Scot, Dougie Maclean (The Gael = The Scot or Scotsman). It's a stirring piece of music so I can understand why they pinched it. Here it is so you can feel the Scottish atmosphere of  Macbeth...

Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!

Lady Macbeth: Act 5: Scene 1 

Although Shakespeare based his play on fact - Macbeth did rule Scotland in the eleventh century - he  changed some historical and chronological details. The book Macbeth and Son by Jackie French is an interesting version of the character of Macbeth which takes a very different view to that of Shakespeare. It uses a modern setting and interweaves the time period of Macbeth's Scotland into the narrative. One of my daughters really enjoyed this book, when she was around 13 years (?) of age:

There is an account of Macbeth in H.E. Marshall's Scotland's Story

 

Madame How & Lady Why - Chapter 6: The True Fairy Tale

Chauvet Cave, France

You like to draw: but why you like it neither you nor any man can tell. It is one of the mysteries of human nature; and that poor savage clothed in skins, dirty it may be, and more ignorant than you (happily) can conceive, when he sat in the cave scratching on ivory the figures of the animals he hunted, was proving thereby that he had the same wonderful and mysterious human nature as you; that he was the kinsman of every painter and sculptor who ever felt it a delight and duty to copy the beautiful works of God.

Madame How & Lady Why

See the Study Guide by Katie Barr at Ambleside Online for helpful commentary on this chapter. Old earth references will be found on some of the sites below.

Pg. 106-107: French cave paintings and rock archive - lots of photos.

The map below is in a pdf format here and may be printed.

Pg 107: The Lena River where Woolly Rhino carcasses were found. No commentary, just beautiful scenery:




Historical references to the Woolly Rhino

Scholarly article with some interesting information on the Woolly Rhino find in Siberia if you'd like to delve into this a bit more.

 Extract from Ice age fauna of northern Spain - Mauricio Antón.jpg.

Pg. 109: The Irish elk - not actually Irish nor elk but a gigantic deer, Megaloceros giganteus. See here and here.

Pg 108 - The Ice Age




Pg 114: Middens - what they are & what they tell us.

Middens provide an insight into earlier occupation of sites. This one, at the NW edge of Traigh na Beirigh, Great Britain, indicates shellfish in the diet.

Pg 116 - Kingsley talks about 'Neanderthal man' in a very derogatary fashion - that he was 'like an ape' & 'would have eaten you if he could.' This article shows how the view of Neanderthal man has changed in recent times.

Over the past several years, the scientific community has witnessed (not always to its liking, I might add) a serious “redefining” of the Neanderthal people. Some anthropologists of the past depicted them as culturally stagnant, if not outright stupid, individuals. In 1996, however, researchers were forced to reevaluate their long-held views on Neanderthals...

I found this video of the Lacaux caves which were discovered in France in 1940, well after Kingsley's time - but it's in French! However, it doesn't look too difficult & I'm going to go through it with Moozle and see how she goes translating it, or the gist of it at least.





Update: Chauvet Cave, France - in English! Thanks to Zoe for the suggestion.

Non-Fiction Living Books for World War II: We Die Alone by David Howarth

About seven years ago I happened upon an audio version of this book in the library when I was looking for something to listen to as an incentive to get a mega load of ironing done. I enjoyed the story enough to buy the book and it was a great addition to our collection of non-fiction books for World War II.

This is an amazingly true story of bravery, faithfulness, courage and survival against literally all odds that took place during the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II.

In March, 1943, twelve men, expatriate Nowegian commandos, set sail from the Shetland Islands to the north coast of Norway with two objectives: to train the locals in the skills of sabotage and later to attack and destroy a large German military airfield.

By an unlucky chance their plans are ruined; they are betrayed and forced to abandon their boat when they are met by a German warship as they approach land. One of the group is killed in the attempt to reach the shore, ten are captured and later executed, and one man, twenty-six year old Jan Baalsrud, escapes. This book is his story.

'If Jan had stopped to think, everything would have seemed hopeless. He was alone, in uniform, on a small bare island, hunted by about fifty Germans. He left a deep track, as he waded through the snow, which anyone could follow. He was wet through and had one bare foot, which was wounded, and it was freezing hard. The island was separated from the mainland by two sounds, each several miles wide, which were patrolled by the enemy, and all his money and papers had been blown up in the boat.'

Jan escapes from the island by swimming across the sound. Exhausted and finally unconscious, he is swept ashore where he is found by some children and is taken into their home and cared for. From there he is later rowed to the mainland with the intent of making an attempt to reach Sweden on skis, a distance of sixty miles, but is caught in an avalanche.......concussed, wandering four days and nights in the mountains, snow blinded, frost bitten and gangrene infected, delirious and almost dead, Jan gives up hope, but a group of isolated arctic villagers are determined to save him.

The author first heard the skeleton of this story during the war but it wasn't until ten years later that he had the opportunity to visit the far north of Norway to find out what had really happened and to piece all the individual recollections and events together to form a true account. He has seen nearly all the places mentioned, met almost all the people and has given a detailed, absorbing account.

All through the story there are shining acts of charity shown to Jans by his fellow Norwegians, incredible coincidences and feats of bravery.

At one stage Jan completely loses hope and would have committed suicide but he was physically incapable of the act:

It was absurd really. He felt he had made a fool of himself. He had struggles so long to preserve his own life that now he had not enough strength in his fingers to kill himself. If he had not felt ashamed, he would have laughed.

An outstanding story and a great choice for a boy! My children read the book when they were about 13 years of age and as I was writing this, I had two of my boys remark that they thought this book was great. Courage, resilience, Arctic conditions, wolves - all the right ingredients & all the better because it actually happened.

I originally posted this about two years ago but updated it with some more detail.

A 10 Year Old's Nature Notebook & maybe a rare find...

We've been going through our weekly Insect Study which happens most weeks regardless of whatever else we do or find in the nature department. This has been our special focus for a while and generally takes the form of me reading aloud from First Studies in Insect Life in Australasia by William Gillies (an old black & white book, ca 1920) while Benj & Moozle draw in their nature notebooks.

We've progressed from beetles to scale wing insects, and I've been reading from this lovely book below by Australian naturalist Densey Clyne, alongside Gillies' book, as it has wonderful photography.

 

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,
The time, when, in our childish plays,
My sister Emmeline and I
Together chased the butterfly!
A very hunter did I rush
Upon the prey:--with leaps and spring
I followed on from brake to bush;
But she, God love her, feared to brush
The dust from off its wings.

William Wordsworth

What Bug is That? A guide to Australian insect families.

An interesting aspect of studying insects & other creepy crawlies: Medical entomology. Check out the tick section. They are scientifically classified as Acarina,  have eight legs so are not actually insects (which I didn't realise before) and belong to the same Order as mites. Early this year our cat had a Paralysis tick and we found him under a bush in the garden. We coaxed him out and noticed his back legs were partially paralysed so it was off to the vet for some antiserum. One of the boys tries to do a regular tick search - problematic at times if the cat's in one of his feral moods - to make sure we catch anything before it burrows in & starts trouble.

Like mother, like daughter...one of my notebook pages...

Moozle's notebook page...




Moozle has been 'experimenting' with making perfume & dyes with flowers from the garden. Estee Lauder & Lush started their beauty products in the kitchen...

Hibbertia (Guinea flower)

Maybe a rare find, Epacris purpurascens (Port Jackson Heath) flowering in late July

Trustee From the Toolroom by Nevil Shute...don't judge a book by its title

Nevil Shute was an engineer by background and Trustee From the Toolroom sounded to me like something related to that field - not my cup of tea. But I was wrong and I'm grateful to Eric Schonblom, the author of the Constance Savery Website, who recommended it to me knowing that I'd read and enjoyed some other books by this author.
Well, the main character, Keith Steward, does work in a toolroom, and has a model engineering workshop in his home and writes weekly articles for the "Miniature Mechanic," but the book is really about a very ordinary man who suddenly finds himself endowed with a trust - his ten year old niece -  and in his determination to be faithful to that trust, is plunged into exceptional circumstances.


 ...he wore a greasy old raincoat and an equally greasy old soft hat; he had a shabby muffler round his throat. He was pale with lack of sun and exercise, and running a bit to fat. He looked, as he sat in the trolley bus taking him to Ealing Broadway, like any one of thousands of men to be seen in buses in any industrial district, and he was.


From his ugly house in the west of London which he and his wife were still paying off, with very little money and no knowledge of the world outside of England, he finds his way to the other side of the world in the search of his niece's inheritance. Along the way he encounters people who have relished and benefitted from his engineering articles and discovers that his small acts of kindness and devotion to his work over the years have opened doors in the most unlikely places.


Keith Stewart had never had a shower in the whole of his life. he had seen them in shop windows and had read about them, but one had never come his way.

He would have to have some money in his pocket, and they used dollars here, it seemed. He had never cashed a traveller's cheque before...

Keith sat at the helm, terrified. he had never sailed a ship of any sort before. Now he was in sole control of this rushing, heaving monster which towered above him in a mass of brown sails and rope whose very function was a mystery to him.

Nevil Shute usually manages to insert quite a bit of technical information into his novels, especially about aircraft, and he does so in this book also, but his knack for weaving a compelling story around the technicalities makes them palatable. Even to someone like me who still can't work out how to set our electric alarm clock.



Linking up with Booknificent Thursdays

Weekly Wrap-Up...I wish!

Handiwork/Manual Skills

Last Saturday we started renovating our laundry after discovering a hot water leak below the concrete slab (why anyone would run water pipes underneath a slab is a mystery to me). We were eventually going to re-do this room - but not right now.

The idea was that we'd re-run the pipes & join them up with the new pipes we'd put in when we did the kitchen a few years ago. This would mean I still could use the washing machine. Well, that didn't happen because while jack-hammering the tiles off the wall, a pipe was punctured, spraying cold water everywhere.

So there was no water on Saturday.
That night Zana, my 22 yr old and I escaped from the scene of domestic disaster to see Shakespeare Abridged with four friends, something we'd arranged a few weeks before & thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We arrived home late that night to find everything cleaned up & the water reconnected to most of the house.

On Sunday night we discovered our water cylinder wasn't heating.
No hot water for 4 days.
It was cold showers for everyone. I boiled the kettle and had a bath in about 2 cm of warm water at one stage - it is still winter here.

No washing machine until the laundry pipes are complete so we had a few trips around to various family members to use theirs.
I was hoping this would be all wrapped up by tonight...

Nougat contemplating where the pipe is going...

This was all after hours work but today my husband took the day of work to cut the brickwork for the pipes so Nougat (apprentice plumber) could do that on his day off.

* Benj finished Algebra 2 at the end of last week & has had this week maths free, except when he helped his younger sister with working out how to find the area of some shapes.

* His free reading included finishing up C.S. Lewis's Cosmic/Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra & That Hideous Strength and Ten Fingers for God by Dorothy Clarke Wilson.

* Moozle's free reading has been mostly re-reading this series of biographies written by Janet & Geoff Benge and published by YWAM. Cameron Townsend, George Muller & Harriet Tubman were three that she enjoyed most:

I saw this post last week and shared it with a group I belong to & thought I'd post it here also. It's something most of us know but it's always good to be reminded of the importance of taking your children outside. Here's Why!

This was written in November 2014 but I only saw it this week. The Ethics of Egg Freezing

...just because we can use technology to do an end run around nature does not mean that we are necessarily wise in doing so. 

I've finished reading: The Spartan by Caroline Dale Snedeker & Trustee From the Toolroom by Nevil Shute.

Artist Study

The Fighting Temeraire by Joseph Mallord Turner, 1839

The Fighting Temeraire was voted as Britain's favourite painting in a poll conducted by the BBC in 2005. The story behind the painting is here.
Khan Academy also has some very interesting commentary about this painting.

Linking up with Weekly Wrap-up