William Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2
I’m thinking a lot about Shakespeare these days because, in my other life, I have to give a presentation next month on life and living and love in Shakespeare’s time for a local theater company. I’m a big fan of Shakespeare, I always have been, comes from having a whackjob Southern mother with a degree in English literature–I won’t say I absorbed Shakespeare in my mother’s milk, I will say she was probably reading it when she should have been teaching me useful things like how to put on lipstick, but hey, that’s water under the rickety old bridge.
The thing I like about Shakespeare is he’s got something for everyone no matter what type of mood you are in–and tonight I’m feeling particularly depressed about the world we work in (as cultural heritage information professionals). You don’t need to know why, you just need to know, as a reader, that we bloggers are human (like you we hope) and are subject to the ups and downs. “I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine is a sad one.”
”Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” I’ve been working in museums since I was 20–my first stint at the Fine Arts Museum of the South In Mobile, Alabama–where I did everything from hand copy the blueprints to lecture on holography and lead a Pysanky workshop teaching Mobilians how to decorate Ukranian Easter eggs. I wrote a paragraph, which I just deleted, about what I’ve accomplished in a 27 year career in museums and then I thought…it doesn’t matter if other people know what I’ve accomplished, what matters is, as I said to a colleague last week, when I lay my head down on the pillows last night can I honestly say I made the right decision when a hard decision was required? This above all: to thine own self be true.
I’m heading off to Montreal for a meeting tomorrow. I’m looking forward to seeing colleagues, but more importantly, I’m looking forward to seeing friends. A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.
