This summer I am please to be in a production of “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” I play Proteus. Come see a show if you have a chance. This post is about this past Monday’s performance. I thought it would be a cool post when I started it, and now I’m realizing that it’s an elaborate treatment to a rather unimpressive anecdote. Nevertheless, I hope some of you might find it amusing. If you want to see the pages bigger, you have to click on the Two Gentlemen title at the top of the post.
Monkey and Bird
Boy and Tiger
Dinner Table Yarns and Fables
This project had a tight deadline. I really like the idea of this book. The goal is to have historical stories that are interesting enough and short enough to read at the dinner table. The book is small in size. After fretting about the cover image, I was told basically, not to worry about it, because it will be very small. I’m not sure, but the whole book might have the cover dimensions of a mass market paperback. Still, I hope that John Adams and Bill Potter will write a number of them. To my understanding, that’s the plan. Mark Bauerlein wrote the forward to this one. He’s the author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). Long title, right? [Review from the LA Times if you're interested.] In his forward to Dinner Time Yarns and Fables he lists history scores that trumpet the failure of American education to transmit priorities from American History. Bauerlein writes “Anybody who thinks that the poor scores signify merely an academic matter doesn’t understand the importance of history in a free republic. For, one essential element in a vibrant democracy is precisely, the historical memory of citizens. Their remembrance of principles of representation and liberty, of great heroes and villains, and of crucial events and transitions sustains civic life.” So I guess the mission of this book is to provide an easy way for families to interact, and to imbed themselves in the soil of our history.
I got to illustrate the inside content. Below are a few of those.
Winston Churchill
Booker T Washington
Dolly Madison
Look for the book.
I’m a big Neil Postman Fan. He’s so dang quotable. So here’s a quote of his on a painting I did.