Just heard it pointed out on the Penn Jillette radio show that “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is iambic pentameter.  Neat.  He kept calling it “perfect” iambic pentameter, because his co-host kept trying to pitch a 10-syllable sentence as iambic pentameter as well.  He kept saying that he was doing the whole thing with the emphasis on the syllables.  That’d be the iambic part :).

Ok, no fair putting the rest of us to shame.  Hot on the heels of my post yesterday about donations for Shakespeare’s crumbling church we have the story of the anonymous person who donated $1 million to the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival.    They’re going to use the interest alone, $40k/yr,  to handle their operating costs.  Nice.  

I am just painfully late on the whole “Shakespeare’s church is crumbling” story, and for that I apologize.  I’ve seen it, many times, but circumstances haven’t allowed me to give it the attention it deserves.  Quite honestly if I stop to think about it, it makes me sad.  It’s not like Shakespeare is buried in the Sistine Chapel or Westminster Abbey or something.  This is just a little church that happens to be a big part of history, and it’s falling apart. This USA Today story finally got my attention because it has a plan for doing something and not just saying “Oh woe are we, we need about a zillion dollars or the poor building is going to collapse around poor Shakespeare’s bones.”  Apparently the Friends of Shakespeare’s Churchthey’re trying out the slogan “adopt a gargoyle”.  I’m disappointed that the story does not explain what exactly that means.  Do I get a picture of my gargoyle?  A plaque with my name on it?  Something? Anybody have more information on the story?  Places to send money, and so on?  The Friends link above takes you to the central organization that’s doing all the money raising.  

Link for ShakespeareTeacher.com because I like the domain and hope to hear good things from him.  It doesn’t appear to be a blog devoted to Shakespeare, though, so it should be interesting to see how much relevant content we get.  

[ADMIN : Highly insanely crazy busy these days, so sorry for the lag.  Trying to get back into the swing of things with a bunch of short, linky posts so people know I’m not dead.] CreditSlips.com has a creative article up about Shakespeare on Bankruptcy.  I like the quote, “Every law professor believes that every other subject is a subset of his own. I agree: there is a bankruptcy angle to everything.”  Although I think it’s true for more than just law professors!