Beware the Ides of March

@postaday 75; #postaday2011

Yesterday was Pi Day, and my sister-in-law Sally sent us each a picture of a pie she made with a Pi symbol on it. I swear. Academics are wacky folks! LOL. My daughter Sophie also had a good time with Pi Day. She’s one of those kids, who after you think you’re being clever and say, ‘you know? 3.14?’ goes ahead and says, ‘No, MOM, it’s

3.1415926535897932384626433832795.’

OK, so she got me on that. But today is the Ides of March. I know she hasn’t had much Shakespeare, if any just yet.

Not too sure how many people throughout time had to worry about this particular date beyond Julius Caesar, who was stabbed 23 times by his “friends,” at the Theatre of Pompei. When I was 13 I was taught ALL the nuances of this play in an attic classroom at Holy Cross High School, taught by a crazy nun. I wasn’t alone. In fact, some of us who were freshmen in that class are friends today on Facebook. As much as I felt like a tortured teenager, victimized by a nut case in a habit, I obviously benefited from the exposure to the play Julius Caesar and also to sister’s lessons in Greek and Roman mythology. Classics laced with insanity. It was an interesting hour each day.

Shakespeare shoveled the poetry and prose, and he wrote for an audience that spanned from the groundlings who stood in the pit and loudly or physically expressed their displeasure if the show deserved it; to the nobles who paid for seats on stage. His plays are timeless and constantly in production, and the jokes about the battles between the sexes, the classes,  and family infighting never cease to amuse.

Julius Caesar, as you probably know, is based upon politics, the inner circles of the well connected, the temptation of betrayal, the seduction of power.

Times haven’t changed. I don’t know how many children and teenagers are exposed to the Classics, mythology, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, the Bronte Sisters, Mark Twain (unwashed). My girls devoured Harry Potter, and that’s not too shabby a series. But when I was growing up, the aforementioned stories were thrown at us without much of a warning as to what we were to expect. I never owned a Cliff Notes. Where’s the joy in that? But I did have some amazing teachers who knew how to inspire dreams within. Even the crazy ones were able to trigger a dream that might be worth writing about, even if the old Bard had already done so himself.

Somehow I must find a way to say today, “Et tu, Brute?”