{"id":83056,"date":"2018-11-25T12:50:21","date_gmt":"2018-11-25T16:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=83056"},"modified":"2018-11-25T12:34:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-25T16:34:16","slug":"83056","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=83056","title":{"rendered":"By The Pricking of My Thumbs&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Macbeth Act 3-1 soliloquy 2010\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C7u76nUpZt8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><template data-arve_cachetime=\"2026-01-13T00:21:16-05:00\" data-arve_iframe_src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C7u76nUpZt8?feature=oembed\" data-arve_url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=C7u76nUpZt8\" data-author_name=\"Hannah\" data-author_url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@hbourcier\" data-height=\"281\" data-provider=\"youtube\" data-provider_name=\"YouTube\" data-provider_url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/\" data-thumbnail_height=\"360\" data-thumbnail_url=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/C7u76nUpZt8\/hqdefault.jpg\" data-thumbnail_width=\"480\" data-title=\"Macbeth Act 3-1 soliloquy 2010\" data-type=\"video\" data-version=\"1.0\" data-width=\"500\" class=\"arve-data\"><\/template><\/p>\n<p>November 22, 1963\u00a0 was a cold, rainy Friday. Nobody wanted to be outside in that slop. There was a blizzard underway on the East Coast.<\/p>\n<p>My father was the head of the Speech and Theater Department at the university where I was a freshman. His students were underway in the production of that infamous accursed play by William Shakespeare, about the Scottish king who is killed off by a usurper whose wife goes nuts and kills herself.<\/p>\n<p>He had hired a professional stage actor, Ramon Bieri from New York, to play the part of the usurper. He did this so that his students could have the experience of working with a pro real time and learning something from it. Now, we\u2019d call it mentoring.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a long-held traditional of a curse attached to this play. You can use the name of the main character on stage during production, but do it in an offhand way or outside the place of production, and something will happen to stop your production, maybe your opening night, among other things. Opening night was Friday, 11\/22\/63.\u00a0My father was not superstitious and ignored the tradition of the curse, not believing that anything would happen.<\/p>\n<p>And happen it did.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, Nov. 22, 1963, Pres. and Mrs. Kennedy were in Dallas, Texas. They were supposed to return to Washington, DC, for Thanksgiving, which was on Nov. 28, 1963. For some reason, Kennedy decided to not have the bulletproof shielding attached to the Lincoln convertible he and Gov. Connolly were riding in. If you are old enough to remember what happened, then you know what happened and how much it was like being smacked by a 2&#215;4.<\/p>\n<p>I was in history class, a little after 1PM. Dr. Wilson was expounding on something, pointing at each of us and asking questions. The door was closed, we were all nearly dozing off, when someone came running down the hallway, opened the door, and said \u201cThe President has been shot!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Huh? What? Confusion?? Yes, in spades.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Wilson was probably the only person in that room who had the presence of mind to ask immediately \u201cIf the President dies in office, who is next in line for the Presidency?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Inappropriate? No. It was meant to shake your out of your stupefaction.<\/p>\n<p>Someone finally said, \u201cThe Vice President.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then class was dismissed.<\/p>\n<p>As things came to light, I was convinced for the longest time that LBJ had something to do with it, because he was such a gladhanding sack of crap, but sometimes assassins simply work alone.<\/p>\n<p>Everything shut down. We all watched the funeral procession to Arlington Cemetery, with a black horse named Blackjack led by one of the Guard, with boots reversed in the stirrups. That symbolized a fallen leader.<\/p>\n<p>The play? Opening night was postponed until the Friday after Thanksgiving Day.<\/p>\n<p>The irony is that Duncan, the rightful King, was much more popular than his rival, who killed him and took his place.<\/p>\n<p>The video clip is from Patrick Stewart\u2019s TV production of that Scottish play. I believe the full length video is available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>November 22, 1963\u00a0 was a cold, rainy Friday. Nobody wanted to be outside in that slop. &hellip; <a title=\"By The Pricking of My Thumbs&#8230;.\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=83056\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">By The Pricking of My Thumbs&#8230;.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":653,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}