Jojo, Son of the Whoville Mayor

We're Who's here, We are Whos here,
Smaller than the eye can see...

I'm the mayor of Who. Why, I've just been elected.
And upright behavior is thus forth expected.
We just had a talk with your teachers today
And they didn't have one single good thing to say!
You invented new Thinks which defy all description!
You gave Miss O'Dooley a nervous conniption!
Your Thinks were so wild they disrupted your classes
And made Mrs. Mackel-Who drop her new glasses!
...We don't mean to scold you. We love you, oh yes, dear.
But couldn't you try thinking just a bit less, dear?
...Now take your bath and go to bed.
And think some normal Thinks instead!

This might be a pool like I've read of in books,
Connected to one of those underground brooks
An underground river that starts here and flows
Right under this bathtub and then--who knows?
It's possible! Anything's possible!

Alone in the universe...

Dear Mom and Dad,
I'm thinking of you,
And wishing we all were in Solla Sollew.

Follow your hunch, follow it,
Follow your hunch, follow it,
Follow your hunch, follow it...HOME!
Anything's possible!!

***

JoJo, think of something!!

Now just for a moment, young JoJo looked grim,
The fate of the Whos rested squarely on him!
But then came a Think, a peculiar new word.
The kind of a word no one ever had heard!

YOPP!!!!

Horton: Do you hear what I hear? Do you see what I mean?
They made themselves heard though they still can't be seen!

...Their troubles were ended,
They hailed his great YOPP!
And JoJo was honored
As "Thinker Non-Stop!"

(all text from Seussical, the Musical)

Wickersham Brother

(Yeah!)
There's a rustle in the bushes...
There's a tremble in the trees...
Hear it like a whisper,
Smell it on the summer breeze (Mmm-hmm-mmm)
Something big is coming nearer
Something big is coming through...

Got some monkey business, that's what we intend to do!

Well it's bigger than a breadbox,
Hey, it's wider than a whale,
Peanut butter breath
And scared to death from head to tail.

To Horton: "So you're still talkin' to dust? Oh, that's hot!
A dust speck that's all full of Whos who are not!
There aren't any Whos, why I don't hear a sound...

Come on!
We gotta monkey, monkey around!"

Then it's off for a quick costume change, and a cameo appearance (as Tweet McFirth, in a snakeskin suit) as Mayie LaBird explains how she ended up on a nest with an egg:

I was down in Fort Worth, just a girl on the wing,
When I met Tweet McFirth--0h, could that night owl sing!
We spend three weeks of bliss, then the usual segue,
He flew off to San Juan, leaving me with this egg.
Now I'm bored and I'm cranky and tired, sitting day after day.
Who knew so much work was required? I'd much rather play!
I need a vacation, I'm due for some rest--
Hey Horton, would you maybe like to sit on my nest?

All our shows end with acknowledgements of the directors, light and sound crews, and finally, the glory goes to God!

Sour Kangaroo

Seussical is over...far too quickly! I wish we had another weekend of shows--this cast was phenomenal! Our patrons were blown away. Not one would have guessed that most of these kids had never done any musical theater before!

Blondechick17 (her birthday was on Sunday, the last day of shows) had fun playing a challenging role for her, the sassy, soul-singing Sour Kangaroo with an attitude!

"HUMPF!" humpfed a voice. 'Twas a sour kangaroo.

And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "Humpf!" too.

"Why, that speck is as small as the head of a pin.

A person on that?...Why, there never has been!"

"I think you're a fool!" laughed the sour kangaroo.
And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "Me, too!"
"You're the biggest blame fool in the Jungle of Nool!"
(from Horton Hears a Who)

"R-E-S-P-E-C-K!
Oh, please take that speck away!"

Curtain call!

"I do not like green eggs and ham,
I do not like them Sam-I-Am!"

She did her own makeup and the Lil' Roo's too, and crimped her long hair every time. Lil' Roo's mom did the "ears" (made from their hair) on both. The directors asked for a purple accent to go in their hair, and I was thrilled to find those sunglasses with the disco ball "earrings" at a Halloween store; they just had diva written all over them and added a lot, I thought, to unify the two of them and put them "over the top" as characters!

Theater Update

Well, we are all on the other side of illness now, it seems--everyone is back to school, back to work, back to rehearsals and classes.

It hit me last Monday that there was only one week until dress rehearsals for Seussical begin! Before I got sick, I had purchased (at Goodwill) an old suitcase on wheels to use as our theater group's new makeup kit, and I had purchased basic Walmart-type supplies and containers to organize it. I had borrowed some specialty makeup from another chapter of our group, but still needed to order the rest.

So Monday morning found me poring over websites and my notes, comparing prices, shipping and handling costs, and availability of items like glow-in-the-dark hairspray and colored eyelashes in five particular shades. But finally my orders were placed, and I could rest assured that everything would be here in time for the first dress rehearsal.

I could turn my attention to other things, like...Showcase!

Tuesday night was the last night of our ten-week session of theater classes, and to celebrate and demonstrate all that the students had learned, we held a "Showcase" of performances from each class. Since this was our very first session, we had all new teachers, all new students, all new families. I was in charge and I didn't know how it would go.

But it went very well indeed! The kids did a great job, the parents were enthusiastic, the attendance maxed out the sanctuary where we held it, and our fundraiser at Culver's (a hamburger and ice cream joint) afterwards was well-attended. I am so grateful to my fabulous teachers, the parents, the kids...and the Lord!

I haven't said much about my job this fall because...well, you know...I'm an employee now and want to be very careful. But it's been so rewarding to see this "new thing" take wings and get off the ground. I keep thinking of how God is able to create ex nihilo: "out of nothing." Where there had been nothing but our family, we ended up with 75 students involved in classes, representing 50+ families! And the teachers that God sent us, "out of nowhere," so to speak, were all really solid. They knew their stuff and how to teach it, and they handled the kids beautifully with the right combination of fun and high expectations of their behavior and performance. They made my job easy!

And now those families are about to REALLY get to know each other this week during dress/tech rehearsals and performances of Seussical!! We have 3 dress rehearsals and 8 shows in the next 7 days. I am a little nervous about the makeup coming together, but it always does, and that's what dress rehearsal are for. My kids, at least, are prepared, excited and confident, and the whole cast is ready and eager for next week. We are praying for continued health for the cast and their families, and for more audience members to fill our seats!

See you on the other side....

H1N1 Here

H1N1 has hit our roost....

When Bantam10 got sick over a week ago, we figured he probably had what the friend he'd been with had, and we didn't think much about it, until Bantam4 came home from trick-or-treating with friends with a glazed look and a high fever.

Papa Rooster whisked him off to the emergency room, since it was a Saturday night, thinking that if it was H1N1, he needed to get on Tamiflu right away, given his medical history of pneumonia at 5 weeks of age. He hasn't had any respiratory problems for two years, praise God!--but we know he has some scarring of his lungs that could mean he'd get pneumonia again, especially from a virus like the H1N1.

At the ER in Kenosha, they said they weren't even testing everyone who came in anymore, because 100 percent of the cases of flu they were seeing were H1N1. They did test B4, however, and started him on the Tamiflu right away.

Blondechick was the next to fall, with a cough and headache beginning on Sunday, and a fever on Monday, and then B14 woke up on Tuesday morning with a cough and a headache, but no other symptoms. I let him go to school, but instructed him to call me if he got worse, and later on, he did go to the school nurse, who said he couldn't go home, since he didn't have a fever.

But it was that day that we got the call--B4 officially had H1N1. So that meant the others probably did too, and as we looked back, we realized that Papa Rooster must have had it too, even before B10 got sick--right after he returned from a business trip. He'd had laryngitis with it too, and hadn't been able to preach for two Sundays! His vocal chords still aren't back to normal.

Blondechick went back to school after her fever was gone, but B14 was hit harder and missed Wed-Fri., and they all stayed home from theater rehearsals this weekend. I heard that H1N1 is sweeping through our small cast--and Seussical opens in less than 2 weeks! At least our kids will be completely over it by then--the silver lining in this cloud.

I'm the most recent one to develop symptoms--the cough and headache began on Thursday, then on Friday I had a very slight fever and felt much worse. As it happens, I am right now in the category of people with underlying health concerns (potentially--they are doing testing), so my doctor prescribed the Tamiflu for me right away. It really cut B4's symptoms down to almost nothing, so I am hoping my bout with this will be just as mild!

Now we are just hoping that B18 and Chicklet7 get it quick and get it over with--though we know this is nothing to take lightly. We are grieving with friends from church--the husband's father just died of complications of H1N1. He was in perfect health, and only in his 50's. I am praying hard for the one pregnant woman at our church who has H1N1 in her family right now, as well as our friend Barbara, who finished up treatment for cancer a couple months ago, so her immune system is still recovering from the barrage of chemo and radiation. She is completely cancer-free at this point, though--such an answer to prayer!!!

How are my readers faring? I gather from Facebook that H1N1 is everywhere right now. Have your families had it yet?