When we got back from our trip and started digging through the mail and messages, I found an eagerly anticipated package from the University of Glasgow’s Special Collections. Ordered in June, it contained three CDs of scanned photographs, programs, and newspaper articles from two early Northanger Abbey stage plays. Both plays are very difficult to find, even in university libraries, and as several excellent NA stage plays have been published in the past few years, these two are unlikely to be performed.

One program was from Thea Holme’s play, a fairly straightforward interpretation, with some nice production notes about the book, characters, sets, and costumes. Which reminds me, some day I should post her costume suggestions to accompany the illustrations.

The most, and best, goodies were from two performances of Constance Cox’s play, an over-the-top approach to the novel, which is very funny despite its inaccuracies. | …continue reading What’s old is new again

We usually spend our time in Cache Valley enjoying having nothing to do, but this time we had a couple of appointments to keep. The original plan was to find a nice restaurant in downtown Salt Lake, preferably near the Radisson, and The Roof Restaurant adjacent to Temple Square seemed like the perfect choice. Perfection was short-lived, however, when the restaurant’s web site revealed that we would be paying $32 per person … for a buffet (snobbish shudder). We decided to stick with a classic favorite, Maddox. At Maddox we enjoyed a locally raised and grown meal, including their heavenly raspberry honey-buttered rolls and in-season sweet corn on the cob (swoon!) and our total bill came to just under what we would have paid for one person at The Roof.

Okay, now I’m hungry again.

We made it to Salt Lake City with just enough time for a short walk before the movie screening. Not quite enough time to wander through Temple Square, but the buildings looked lovely in the sunset. This evening’s screening was very sparsely attended, and at the end the screenplay competition winners were announced, as detailed in an earlier entry.

The rest of the holiday passed with something for everyone: Saturday the cousins had a great time playing mosquito-free at the community pool, Thing Two learned how to climb stairs (he can go down, too, but it’s not a pretty sight), and Sunday night I got food poisoning. Monday I’m assuming everyone amused themselves, and Tuesday we made the thirteen-hour drive (not sixteen this time, thank goodness!) back home.

We had intended to follow up the trip with a weekend on the coast, but The Gimlet had other ideas and that excursion has been postponed indefinitely.

I’m delighted to report that NR received an Honorable Mention in the 2006 Gloria Film Festival’s screenplay competition! From the original submissions in February, about half (33) were chosen as finalists in May, and out of those 33, only seven screenplays (four original, three adapted) were recognized Friday night with either Honorable Mentions or top honors.

The winning adapted screenplay is based on A Christmas Carol, and while my tastes are decidedly more Austenian, it is not too shabby to have to concede victory to Mr. Dickens … just this once.

The screenwriters were informed that several production companies have asked to see the winning screenplays, and I gladly gave permission to release my contact information, should NR catch anyone’s interest. We will also receive the judges’ comments and scoring, a very rare opportunity in these competitions, and I’m looking forward to that.

Many, many thanks to the Gloria Film Festival! It was a wonderful experience!

31 August ETA: *Girly squeal!* It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

The cousin Things were eager to celebrate the Gimlet’s impending birthday (even if he is a grownup, any excuse for a party works), so despite reaching our final destination at midnight, we made sure we were up bright and early for a chocolate cake breakfast.

After the party, we spent a rather frustrating morning working on the wireless problem, where we were able to get online just long enough to learn that yes, the big NA2 announcement I’d been waiting for had happened the previous day, and there was no way to update my web site. Around the same time, Thing One presented an arm swollen to nearly twice its size, a victim of the valley’s current mosquito plague. One would think that the smoke from the brush fires would keep the bugs away, but no.

Later that afternoon, we left the kids with their cousins and grandparents and drove to Salt Lake City for the Gloria Film Festival’s opening reception. It was a nice little group of filmmakers, most of whom had participated in the filmmaking challenge which would be showing later that evening. Fun to finally put some faces to names. I learned that the woman in charge of the screenplay competition, a big Jane Austen fan, had hoped to meet me, but illness prevented her attending the reception. Better luck Friday!

On our return drive, Sardine Canyon was dotted with little rings of fire. Earlier in the day, the entire hillside had been full of smoke (fortunately blowing away from the highway). Now the fires seemed to be burning themselves out.

Let’s take advantage of the temporarily functioning internet connection and report on the trip thus far.

BT2 (before Thing Two), Team Gimlet had the Seattle-Utah route down to a well-coordinated, thirteen-hour drive: we have favorite truck stops, favorite rest areas, and so on. But with a baby, everything takes … longer. Thing Two was a pretty good passenger, provided we made frequent stops. Thirteen hours became sixteen, and we rolled into Cache Valley just before midnight with a back seat occupied by a pair of zombie Things.

Highlights of the trip included a rare sighting of both Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainier, a rare enough occurence that we weren’t the only car pulling off at the Selah rest area for photos. We drove through the Snake River canyonlands around Twin Falls at sunset, which was gorgeous, but alas, there were no pullouts. And one advantage of this long, late drive was the vast canopy of stars over Sweetzer Summit, the likes of which we city folk rarely get to see. We were also lucky enough to see one perfect, brilliant shooting star.

Thing Two proudly entered the world of walkers this evening! His first steps were to his grandpa, and then he quickly realized what he had done and made other little expeditions around the house.

He’s acquired this skill just in time for our thirteen-hour car trip, proving you’re never too young to learn about irony.

My web site has outgrown its Comcast space, so I took the plunge and purchased a domain name and a web hosting service.

The web site had its beginnings last year when a Pemberley poster mentioned that a Brock-illustrated Northanger Abbey was available on eBay. I had picked one up at a used book store some time ago, and was curious about the going rate. Not only was this particular edition more than I paid, but it had only 12 illustrations, compared to the 24 I had. I replied to the post, mostly just to alert potential buyers that they wouldn’t be getting a complete set of illustrations. Others responded that various old editions of Austen novels had different numbers of illustrations, all taken from an original set of 24 per novel, and thus my edition, with a complete set, was extremely collectible. People hadn’t seen all the Brock illustrations, and I was getting tired of counting contractions and in need of a nesting project, so I made a little gallery. Our home ISP has some web space; I figured a couple of Pemberlians would take a look over the next several days, and that would be the end of it. | …continue reading Introducing Solitary Elegance

I just found out about a last-chance deadline for the LA Femme Film Festival, which is scheduled for October 5-8 in Beverly Hills, California. Most film festivals don’t include a screenplay competition, but LA Femme does; moreover, they accept adaptations and their submissions include a family-friendly category.

As per their web site, LA Femme “focuses on women filmmakers’ platforming their commercial films for the world wide audience. It is a Festival for those women who want to have an equal opportunity in commercial entertainment desiring to change, enhance, or become leaders in the industry as a Director, Writer, Producer or Director of Photography.”

Considering that NR is an adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, with a young woman lead, several supporting roles for women, and adapted by a woman (last I checked) this festival may be a good fit. Also, a nice thing about last-chance deadlines is they don’t leave much time for worrying; selections will be made the first week of September.

Sure would be nice to have a matched pair of those cute little “Official Selection of the Festival” laurel wreaths.

Editor’s Note: Thing One recently completed three weeks of orchestra camp, organized by the school district and held at Thing One’s middle school.

I play the cello; there were 2 other cellos, and 6 violins. On Thursday on week 3, there was a concert. The songs the orchestra played were Fiddlin’ to Boston, Rigadoon, New World Symphony Theme and Rockin’ Strings. On Fridays, we played games. In Friday #1, we played kickball, we played soccer ball on Friday #2 and field day on Friday #3, we had Field day. My favorite game was tug o’ war. The boys won best out of 3. (boys:2\3) and also on Friday 3, we had a pizza feed. I had one kind of each (pepperoni, cheese and meat) and Sprite (opposed to Coke). And we watched movies. First week, Robots, second week, Valiant and third week, The Gods Must be Crazy. Friday #3 was extended to 12:30 for the pizza feed. I liked the summer music program and it’s grades 4-8 so I can do it again. I really liked Field Day the best and Rockin’ Strings was the most fun to play.

Thing Two had his first birthday a little while ago, and we had a barbecue lunch to celebrate. The party was held on a hot, sunny weekend when most of the family would be able to attend. Despite the photo, Thing Two mostly had a great time — a little shy around the family members he didn’t know well, but he loved his presents and couldn’t quite believe he was being allowed to play with a piece of chocolate cake (a first birthday tradition from the other side of his family).