mercurien:

anyway remember how act 1 of hamlet is set “in that season wherein our saviour’s birth is celebrated”? we have textual proof that the first act takes place around christmas time and still no modern-day production will give me the meeting of the danish court reimagined as an awkward family christmas dinner. imagine claudius making his speech while carving a turkey and wearing an embarrassing paper crown. imagine hamlet glaring at everyone from across a plate of sprouts. imagine hamlet doing o that this too too solid flesh would melt (yeah hamlet i know that post-christmas lunch feel) in a black snowman jumper. in scene 4 when hamlet’s saying the king keeps wassail and the swaggering upspring reels claudius is dad-dancing to shakin’ stevens in the background. 

(via mdmshakespeare)

Shakespeare plays as screencaps from The Good Place

mdmshakespeare:

offdisplay:

shakespearesiphone:

As You Like It

Comedy of Errors

Cymbeline

Hamlet

Julius Caesar

King Lear

Macbeth

Measure for Measure

The Merchant of Venice

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Much Ado About Nothing

Othello

Pericles

Richard II

Richard III

Romeo and Juliet

The Taming of the Shrew

The Tempest

Troilus and Cressida

Twelfth Night

The Winter’s Tale

@mdmshakespeare

😂😂❤️

(via mdmshakespeare)

Edmonton Gothic

jeyradan:

(Inspired by copperbadge and flatlanddan, I gave in and wrote this.)

The town sprawls farther and farther out, eating away at the edges of the prairie. Or is the prairie eating away at the town? You aren’t sure. You try not to go out there. You’re never quite sure where the hungry edges of the tallgrass start.

The streets make sense, you explain. It’s a grid system. Neat rows of numbers marching north and south, east and west. You don’t mention the streets that have names, but no numbers. You don’t mention the streets that have neither.

You walk home from the rink late at night, skates slung over your shoulder and knocking together at your hip. The streetlights cast their yellow-pink glow over the sidewalk; you hurry from one dimly lit outpost to the next and try not to see what’s in between the lights.

They say there are fish in the North Saskatchewan, huge sturgeons that live in the rusted-out carcasses of sunken trains where the sunlight doesn’t reach. No one has ever caught one, the grizzled fisherman on the bank tells you, relief in his eyes, and fear. His float bobs on the surface of the water.

There’s an unshaven man lying against the brick wall of the old library downtown. He’s always there, though every day he wears a different face. You pretend not to see a half-empty bottle, a lighter, blood. You want no part of his arcane rituals.

When the LRT leaves Grandin Station, you look at the person sitting across from you, or down at your feet. You hold your breath from Grandin to University, then take in great gulps of air as the train pulls into the station. Everyone knows you don’t look at the river while you cross.

You’ve heard that Telus Field is built on an ancient First Nations burial ground. Maybe that’s why baseball teams never stay there for long. The city says there’s nothing there, and you assume the trucks that leave are carrying only earth.

Parents worry over whether to send their children to public school or Catholic school. Which one has better resources, they ask? Which one has smaller class sizes? No one gives voice to the real questions. This land has old gods of its own. Which one will anger them less?

The city is surrounded. RV dealerships, farmhouses, grain silos, the airport, and beyond it, grass that reaches past your knees and ripples in the wind. You wonder what’s out there. You wonder if the city is a fortress or a prison. You wonder if it’s dangerous to question it. You wonder if anyone who leaves ever comes back.

The sky is white. The ground is white. The snow piles up as far as the eye can see. The sun will be back in the spring, you tell each other. It sounds like an invocation. You say it every day, just in case. You don’t know what would happen if you ever missed a day.

Gravel crusts over the snow at the side of the road. More snow falls. More gravel. More snow. More gravel. It’s May, and the snow is still there, under the gravel. If it ever melted, you might see what was trapped underneath. You add more gravel.

You lie in the grass, listening to the summer hum of lawnmowers and mosquitoes and the shouts of children in the wading pool at the park. At this distance, it’s hard to tell the difference between shouting and screaming. Six children went missing in Parkallen last year, but the green shack opened up again this year, like it always does. Like it always will, as long as there are children.

The oil rigs bob their heads slowly up and down, casting long, looming shadows in the golden afternoon sun. You glance away, then back. You wonder if they’re in the same place they were a moment ago. The prairie stretches endlessly, and there’s no way to be sure.

This just sounds like Edmonton and I love it.

(via risingandshining)

fragments-of-sappho:

ladynorbert:

thepsychicclam:

athenadark:

la-knight:

bettieleetwo:

geekinlibrariansclothing:

touchofgrey37:

deathcomes4u:

gunthatshootsennui:

validcriticism:

divinedorothy:

sim0nbaz:

foxsan:

shuttersmiley:

sourcedumal:

jackthebard:

Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl.
There are only fake geek boys.
Science fiction was invented by a woman.

Specifically a teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.

Isaac Asimov.

yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point

If you want to push it back even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole - oft credited as one of the first scifi novels

Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms) was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide “Isaac Asimov” reblogs and stick it

even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could have even cited Poe or Jonathan Swift has a case but Asimov?

PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelly as the mother of modern science fiction you didn’t even do a frickin google search For Shame

And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.

Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:

Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.

Even Isaac Asimov ain’t having none of your shit, not even posthumously.

You know what else was invented by women? Masked vigilantes, the precursor to the modern superhero. Baroness Emma Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905. The character would later inspire better known masked vigilantes such as Zorro and Batman.

Got that?

Originally posted by newyorkbellco

Stick that in your international pipe and smoke it

I have literally been telling people this for over a year.

the first extended prose piece - ie a novel, was not, as many male scholars will shout, Don Quixote (1605) but The Tale of Genji (1008) written by a woman

The first autobiography ever written in English is also attributed to a woman, The Book of Margery Kempe (1430s).

The day may come when I find this post and do not reblog it, but it is not this day.

Women invented language while men were hunting. I mean…

(via mdmshakespeare)

meltinggoldanddippingthingsinit:

occamstireiron:

a-singular-canadian:

aw-but-i-didnt-get-you-anything:

Twitter made the Jewish lady that posted this delete it for “threatening violence.”

Her followers spent the rest of the day tweeting this. Trolls couldn’t keep up.

Coming from someone who studies the Holocaust and the history surrounding it, It is important to remember that Nazis were human, not monsters.

It’s important because if we dehumanize them we create a level of separation between us and them. It’s important because if we create that level of removal, we start ignoring the subtle signs of antisemitism because “Oh, well they’re just a normal human, not a monster, i’m sure it’ll be alright.” It’s important because when we create that level of removal, they come back in waves. It’s important because when you create that level of separation, you get the problems that we have now.

There is a very simple set of brain equations involved when we dehumanize the enemy, and it goes something like this:

“Nazis are monsters”
“I would not be friends with a monster”

The CORRECT conclusion is
“I cannot be friends with Nazis”

BUT PEOPLE KEEP BELIEVING THE COROLLARY
“None of my friends are Nazis”
“…even that one guy who keeps posting ‘ironic’ Pepe memes, who never really grew out of his 4Chan /pol/ phase, and who keeps trying to have really intense conversations with me about ‘globalists’. But he’s my friend! I’ve known him forever! He doesn’t REALLY believe any of that stuff. He’s just kind of an asshole, and we love him anyway.”

This is a very bad corollary. It is an extraordinarily dangerous corollary. When we sincerely believe that we would not be friends with bad people, we ignore the signs that our friends are bad people.

(Friendly note: you can replace “Nazi” above with “sexual predator” or “racist” or “abuser”. Same hat, pretty much. There are very real reasons not to dehumanize the enemy, and they have nothing to do with the enemy’s right to humanity, and everything to do with the enemy’s ability to sneak past our lines wearing a nice-person mask.)

I’m reblogging this to my main blog because it is extremely fucking important.

(via strangenewclassrooms)

mdmshakespeare:

abcoconut:

teacherofthethoughtfullest:

dwendog:

artedish:

middleschoolchamps:

Okay, friends

Probably preaching to the choir here, but bear with me.

Kid I tutor is in an APUSH class at a prestigious private school in the Cities, has self-diagnosed with dyslexia (his mom refuses to get him tested), and tells me he’s struggling to write.

He wrote his first paper this week, and it’s pretty good in its own right, definitely not as bad as he thinks it is. I ask him about his fear of handing in his paper this week, and he tells me that his teachers have told him they expect college level work.

Me: Did they show you what college level work looks like?

Him: No.

Me: Do they allow re-writes?

Him: No.

Me: Do they teach writing in class?

Him: No.

Me: So they expect you to walk into class as a fifteen year old writing at a college level even though they have never given you an example of what they’re looking for, and they won’t let you re-write it so you can never fix your mistakes.

Him: …Yep.

Why 👏 are 👏we 👏demanding 👏that 👏students 👏walk 👏into 👏our 👏classes 👏with 👏the 👏knowledge 👏we’re 👏supposed 👏to 👏teach 👏them👏

Why 👏do 👏we 👏refuse 👏to 👏give 👏students 👏an 👏opportunity👏 to 👏learn 👏through 👏corrections 👏and 👏revisions👏

Why👏 are 👏we👏 pushing 👏away 👏teaching 👏moments 👏with 👏both 👏hands 👏when 👏we 👏are 👏literal 👏teachers 👏

Nothing to add except:

This is where the Core isn’t getting it right. The fundamental skills are not being taught in favor of “rigor” and “critical thinking” and “high expectations.” It builds up and builds up until you find these kids in high school missing the fundamental skills they need.

The thing that I spent the most time teaching when I tutored year 11 and 12 English was essay writing. Most schools don’t teach it to years 7-10 (fucked if I know why, because it would easily fit into the curriculum), and then expect that the kids will magically learn how to write an essay over the 6 week holidays between years 10 and 11. The VAST majority of assessments at senior level are essays, and teachers will tell you what content to put in a paragraph, but never really teach paragraph structure, and assume that someone’s taught you about writing an introduction and conclusion (who? Not them the 3 times they had you prior to year 11. Not the other teachers in the department that they’re part of. A fairy who puts the content in your dreams, perhaps? I’ve never worked this out), and structuring your essay so that there are links between your arguments. It drove me batty, and my kids HATED spending week after week planning essays and writing them, until they submitted their first assessment task and got a much higher mark than they’d ever been given before.

👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼 this.

I’m lucky that I get to keep my middle school students for two years, because wow, does it take kids a long time to learn how to connect their thoughts coherently in a single paragraph.

When I get my students in 7th grade, they know that a five paragraph essay needs an introductory paragraph, three “fact” paragraphs and a conclusion. And every single kid comes to me writing the same .. well, junk. Intros that read like super bad speeches “My paper is about..” and conclusions that make me tear my hair out “In this essay I talked about..” Oh my god I just read it. Your paper is like a page an a half long. You don’t need to repeat this. And body paragraphs that are so jumbled, it’s like reading a listicle on buzzfeed.

So, when I tell my 7th grade students that for their first big research project that they have two weeks to complete that I only want ONE paragraph that’s exactly five sentences long from them, they look super confused. 

And then I teach them how to write a coherent paragraph. And yes, it’s seriously formulaic, but you have to start somewhere. So I start with this particular model. I’m super strict about what I want. I demand a quote. I demand that quote is introduced smoothly. I make sure the sentence following the quote explains the quote. And the sentence following that one goes into even further detail. And the whole paragraph starts with a concise, relevant topic sentence. Then they wrap up the whole thing with a concluding phrase and a sentence that doesn’t repeat a damn thing yet avoids introducing new facts.

And the first time they do this, I sit side by side and help every single student write every single sentence.

And the second time they do it, they do it as a group, from a piece of literature. And the third time they do it, I help them with a little less (usually they’ve figured out how to write the first sentence by now). And the fourth time, I might still help them select a quote, but slow release and all that. By the fifth time, if I see they’re becoming more familiar with the process, I’ll have them write two paragraphs that actually connect. These are still just body paragraphs.

In the second year, I’ll teach them about the thesis sentence, and make sure that all their topic sentences directly relate back to their thesis sentence. Same process follows. Help them write the first, group work on the second, look at model sentences for a while, write a few for practice without a connected essay, etc. Eventually, we’ll get to writing introductory paragraphs and conclusions. I always, always do those last. 

If I could make just one, desperate plea of elementary teachers: Please stop letting/telling your students to start their expository writing by beginning with the introductory paragraph. Start with the body paragraphs! Get those looking good THEN once the student has a firm understanding of their research, go back and make that catchy intro. Treat the intro and conclusion like putting glitter on a project when you’re finished. If you start with the glitter and then try to draw over it, it just gets in the way.

But yeah. Two years of painstaking, word by word, line by line build up so that they have the ability to write connected arguments in any subject area.

I give them an 11 sentence paragraph template, show them samples, make them write the essay (I don’t specifically teach structure because they tune me out anyway), and then give them a chance to revise (which I don’t tell them about until after submission because many of them would submit crap and wait for me to revise it). It’s worked wonders.

We have to show them what we want and focus on the process rather than the grade.

(via mdmshakespeare)