Entr'Acte: Names

When we began brainstorming this blog, and were penning our introductions, one of us outlines how she is tall and blonde and jolly, and the other mentions how she is tiny and dark and bitter as all hell.  Both of us being Shakespeare Geeks, we immediately went here, to A Midsummer Night’s Dream (III.ii.208-12):

So we grew together,

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition,

Two lovely berries molded on one stem;

So, with two seeming bodies but one heart.

Replace “heart” with “brain,” and you may have an idea what you’re in for.  Hermia liked being “little” and "fierce" so much, she took the name.  Naomi liked her punny name too much to become Helena, even for the sake of parallelism.  She apologizes to everyone's OCD. 

Prologue- Naomi de Plume

Greetings & Salutations, Gentle Readers!

You can call me Naomi de Plume (cue flourish of a feather boa).  I enjoy the life of the mind, and this will not be a blog where you learn how to DO things, like cook.  Or craft.  Or knit.  Because, as much as I adore all those things, I am not the Barefoot Contessa.  Or Martha Stewart.  Or Alice Starmore.  I am Me, and I love books & geekiness best of all.   

So a bit about me: Norwegian genes have made me tall and blonde and curvy, and I like to see that moment when people underestimate me because of my looks… then I open my mouth.   I love the theatre, and soccer, and bad movies, and 80’s hair bands, and wine, and dogs, and fairy tales, and punnistry.  All of these things will appear in future posts: consider yourself warned. 

I have an advanced degree in Shakespeare from Very Distinguished University, and now work as an administrator at Very Small College.  I like my job and my students, but I miss the intellectual rigor of teaching Literature-with-a-capital-L at Very Distinguished University.  So you, Gentle Readers, are my new laboratory.  In a sense, I think blogging is a bit of a narcissistic enterprise, but then again, so is lecturing a classroom.  I always preferred an intellectual free-for-all to a well-structured lecture.  So I would reach heights of intellectual ecstasy hitherto unknown if only you will promise to engage with this blog, rather than passively read it.  (Perhaps, Naomi darling, you should GET readers before you start telling them what to DO.  Just a thought.)

Hermia and I became friends through Very Small College, and it’s been non-stop shenanigans since then.  We don’t have enough time in person to talk about all the books we like, let alone the films and music and speculative fiction and Peter Pan and cocktails and French fries and the general fascination with the abomination that is Life (extra points if you can place that reference).  So now we blog about it.  Because we are too damn amusing to keep ourselves to ourselves.