The Mom Weekly Volume 89: April 22, 2025
You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.
Shakespeare and Family (From the Vault, 1982)
Shakespeare’s birthday is tomorrow. April 23 is the 461st anniversary of his birth.
I came across the letter I’m going to share some time ago when I was going through my photo library. (See the “Action Item” for today!)
It made me think about how much we have explored Shakespeare over the years. But it’s not just because I was an English major—now you can see that it is a generational thing…
We’ve seen many Shakespeare plays, from here to England, and studied even more. One of my favorite homeschooling memories is working through How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare and memorizing all the passages that we did.
I know a bank
where the wild thyme grows
Where oxlips
And the nodding violet grows …
Or Rosalind from As You Like It?
“For I must tell you friendly in your ear,
Sell when you can;
you are not for all markets.”
And who could forget the St. Crispin’s Day speech from (as we called it) “Henry the Vee?
Even though we did memorize all those passages, I can only really call to mind bits and pieces of them. But I imagine if I worked on them again, it would be easier to memorize them again.
Anyway, this letter was written to me by my father, your grandfather. The “New Mayfield” he refers to is this. (Sadly, it closed in 1985 and has not been opened since).
This letter is absolutely “on brand” for my dad, and for his love of classic things. I am 90 percent certain he also recited this to me at some point, because I can actually hear his voice saying the lines, and smiling at the same time.
(Note also: he refers to stopping at a local restaurant for their famed “cookie monster,” so of course you know from whom we all inherited our sweet tooth).
He passed on his love of literature to me, and I am pretty sure that I’ve passed it onto you kids. I sincerely hope that you pass it on to your children. It’s a treasure and inheritance, far greater than any material thing.
Remember how much I love you,
Mom
Sunday Eve October 24, 1982
This afternoon Catherine went to the St. Mary’s football game at 3 p.m. Then after a quick supper I took her to the 5:30 p.m. movie at New Mayfield—Laurence Olivier in “King Henry V.” Not one of his (Shakespeare’s) better plays, but a good movie. It was about 8 p.m. and our car somehow wandered over to Norton’s so we were forced to stop and have a cookie monster.
Catherine asked me if there were any familiar quotations from Hamlet because we didn’t really hear any tonight, but she was struck by the familiar phrases in Romeo and Juliet. Well anyhow, among the many famous passages in Hamlet, of course, is Polonius’ advice to his son Laertes as he is about to leave to accompany Hamlet to school (in England?) Every father should, of course, pass on this advice to his son—or daughter—as they leave for school, so here it is, (over)
“…Give thy thoughts no tongue,
nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar;
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them until thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may be aware of thee.
Give every many thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy,
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
and it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Love,
Dad
Interesting/Notable:
An update from the Holy Land–The Catholic Traveler
Seeing this article about The Catholic Traveler resuming tours in the Holy Land made me want to go there even more, and soon, when it is not very crowded!
An Action Item: Go Through Your Photos from Today
I first heard this hack/tip years ago, and I cannot remember the source. But I do it from time to time, and it’s a fun exercise.
Here’s what you do: open your Photos app on your laptop. In the search bar in the upper right corner, search for a day. Let’s say, April 3. This will bring up photos that have the words “April 3” in them, but also all the photos that have been taken through the years on April 3. Select “All Items,” and go through them.
Usually, I find that a large portion of my photos are of dogs, Spot specifically. (Really!) But for April 3, I can see my album has 64 items, including several HILARIOUS 2016 videos of child 2 and child 3 lip-syncing to Owl City songs. It’s worth it just for that. You can usually find find a few, or even a dozen or more, of blurry or “similar” photos that you can delete.
That’s it! I promise it’s a fun experiment, a good way to (slightly) clean up your photos, and a fun trip down memory lane.