Ruby Lane Doll Talk: New Acquisitions to The Grovian Doll Museum

The Nanny and Mr. Sheffield, Niles and C.C., Hermia and Lysander, Pyramus and Thisbe

A Midsummer Night's dream is a mirror for couples and their foibles; Pym certainly was familiar with it, and The Bard allegedly was writing Romeo and Juliet at the same time, throwing in yet another comparison.  I toss out the idea that in Fran Drescher's sitcom The Nanny, she and Mr. Sheffield are a Hermia/Lysander combination [with shades of Theseus and Hyppolita], while Niles and C.C. are the Pyramus and Thisbe couple that adds comic relief.  The children are the Greek Chorus.

Mr. Sheffield is handsome as Lysander, but like Theseus, he takes himself a little too seriously.  Remember Theseus saying he doesn't believe in old Greek Fables, yet he is one. Fran is like an Amazon because she engages in along struggle with C.C. over Max Sheffield.  's

C.C. plays Thisbe to Niles' Pyramus because while she may seem more like Lady Macbeth, she is still a little girl with a crush, a little socially inept, and not quite knowing who her true love is. 

Pym would love the entire sitcom; it goes beyond Cinderella in celebrating unsuitable attachments. There are Shakespearean and Jane Eyre allusions throughout The Nanny; they even stage a hiliarious production of Romeo and Juliet. Broadway actors, real ones, also play bit parts in the show.

Truly, the play is still the thing.

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An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: In Memoriam; St. Joan of Arc: Yesterday marks the 588th year since the martyrdom of Joan, the Maid of Orleans.  Little is known of her early life, but much is surmised.  ...

Why We Need Dolls In Our Lives - Ruby Lane Blog

Why We Need Dolls In Our Lives - Ruby Lane Blog: Why We Need Dolls In Our Lives:  No culture has been without dolls. In some societies, the doll figures that remain seem to be more idol or ritual figures, but the same cultures refer to dolls as children’s toys.  They might be very simple compared to their idols or decorative figures, maybe a decorated twig... Read more »

What is writing?

What is writing?

 

Now that I’ve forsaken all else to write fulltime, I’ve actually had time to think about what I’m doing. 

 

In some ways, you are a writer, or you are not. You also have to love books and reading. You have to want to possess books, too.  You need to hold them, look at them.

 

Your biography becomes the sum of the volumes arranged on your book shelves.

 

You need to write down your ideas or they’re gone.  You learn to write on anything handy.  I wrote the first draft of this post in the blank pages located in the back of Larry McMurtry’s Books. My dissertation director wrote on envelope and scraps of paper.  These she arranged carefully and stored in larger envelopes, labeled and dated.  I did the same thing with PostIt notes, some inadvertently left in books I libraries all over the country.  I secretly hope someone will see them and add their own PostIts to the dialog.

 

Writing preserves one’s sanity.  Our characters are the voices I our heads; Playwrights, novelists, short story writers, poets, and lyricists have to entrap their characters on paper, or go mad.

 

If writing is madness, then I’ve been so all my life.  I’ve written and made up stories since I was a toddler, but in college, it hit me. I was a writer.  I to go beyond carefully crated papers, done in Spanish and English for grades.

 

It was in college that I started to love research too, and compiling bibliographies. Yet, there were books and stories beyond the assignments. If followed them, as I would tell my students to do later, and I amassed a large personal library, encouraged by my mother, who ever threw away book.

 

I soon wrote in different genres, exploring different authors, types of writing, just a I played different kinds of music on the piano. 

 

Then, I came to love the tools of writing: paper, notebooks, pens, pencils, all kids of writing supplies, even writing technology. I don’t see my self stopping.

 

We either write for craft, proofreading ads or writing for work, or for art, as  writers who want to be read, but whose goal is to write, not to publish for big money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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