Happy Solkwanzchanachuhmas!!!

Here's hoping you all have a happy and healthy Holiday Season!!! Just kick off your shoes and put your feet up near this photo, and you'll feel....well....a little pixilated maybe, but that's about it. Go hug somebody instead.....And per several requests, as we moved again this past summer into new digs here in Ithaca, I've included our mailing address here for cards and such.

Paul and Sonja
1517 1/2 Slaterville Rd.
Ithaca, NY 14850

All of our love and best wishes to all of our friends, across the country and in Europe!! Merry Christmas!!!!!

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Christmas Break.......

Well, for all of you (or both of you) who are still checking in on the blog periodically, just a quick note to let you know that we're both good and doing well!!

We are just about done with this semester, finishing up papers and grading as we speak. Both productions that Sonja and I participated in this fall were great fun to be a part of and very successful....Sonja assaying Lady Bracknell in The Importance Of Being Earnest, and chewing the pedagogical scenery as Holofernes in Loves Labour's Lost.....while I reprised The Rev. Canon Chasuble and Lord Boyet, respectively, in those same plays. It's been a good year so far, and I think we're both looking forward to this 5 week (albeit unpaid) break now. We'll be staying in Ithaca, and doing some house and dog sitting for a friend. And a big chunk of this time will be spent getting ready for our next projects at Cornell....Sonja playing a large role in a new script, an adaptation of a book called The Body Project, while I work on Hector in The History Boys.

And thanks to all who passed along their concern about our little guy, Mac, who had been under the weather (at somewhere between 15 and god, there isn't much weather he manages to get above these days). He has rallied yet again, we're thrilled to say, and Bea Lillie and Spenser are fine as well. All fur children healthy and accounted for!!

So hope this finds you all happy and well!! More before Christmas no doubt, and in the meantime, stay healthy and happy, and stay in touch!!!

Happy Re-Birth Day!!!!

Well, the semester moves along apace, but that's not really what this entry is all about.......

On Wednesday, October 3rd, it will be exactly one year since Sonja nearly died, not once but twice, at the Cayuga Medical Center here in Ithaca, NY. As such, October 3rd has been determined by the appropriate authorities (alright, me, her husband Paul) to be Sonja's Official Day Of Rebirth For The Remainder Of Her Days. Here ye, here ye, so decided!!

I doubt this is going to let any of us off the hook for her actual birthday, which conveniently enough is only nine days earlier on the 25th. But all things considered, when one has survived a series of events like this (see all previous entries), it takes on a new meaning I think to be able to declare that this one particular day is the one that needs to be celebrated. This one day is when the fight began, when survival became the only point, and when the future became something to be wrested back one day at a time.

So raise a glass sometime today, smile like you mean it at someone you love, and celebrate Sonja.....brand spanking new at the age of 1!!


P.S. -- Special thanks to the great Joe Decker for the use of the photo above...

School's In......

How did this happen??? Summer's over for us, and we're happily ensconced back up in Ithaca, in new digs that are a vast improvement over last year!! New address and a land line phone number are listed below. We're both in good health, and start teaching again this week. We've been in rehearsals for Importance Of Being Earnest for a couple of weeks now (Chasuble again for me, and Sonja as an unusually charming Lady Bracknell)....having a very good time!!

Hope everyone's summer was good and your happy and well. All our best to all of you, and more to come soon!!



-- Paul and Sonja
1517 1/2 Slaterville Road
Ithaca, NY 14850

607.277.2803

paulhebron@gmail.com
bertzen@gmail.com

Me and Robert Davi......

Yes, it's my birthday....virtual cake soon to be followed by the real thing!!

Sonja sends much love to everyone from Martha's Vineyard, and by mid July will be visiting her Mum in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Hope for the best. Then back here to Philadelphia for a brief stint before we return to the twisting of young minds in Ithaca.

Hope this finds you all happy and well, have a wonderful 4th of July, and love from us both!!!

-- Paul

School's Out!!

Well, we've finally finished the second semester at Cornell.....grades are in and classes and productions are done!! We were both fortunate in the calibre of students we worked with this spring in our respective classes, and we both survived a fairly awful production of As You Like It to close out our work on stage.

This past weekend we boarded Spenser the Cat with our dear friends Carolyn and Judy, threw the pups in the car and drove out to Martha's Vineyard to work at the brilliant dance colony run by old pal Wendy Taucher. It's only office work we're doing ("Hey there, Monkey Boy, fold those flyers faster!!!"). Those of you who've suffered the near shattering sight of me dancing on stage know why it would be obvious my that my only association with a dance studio would be licking stamps. I'm here through the 25th, then back to Ithaca to get us out of that apartment, before returning with all of the animals to Philly for the summer. Sonja will remain working for Wendy here in MV through to the latter part of July, taking Yoga each morning, and generally breathing in the salt air. Her health continues to be good....her cardiologist recently took her off of one of her medications entirely, and reduced two others. It's still a balancing act with her meds, but she seems to be handling them quite well, knock on wood.

And again thanks to all who continue to watch this space, as it were, for news and updates. I've been working on getting Sony to contribute more often (one more posting would automatically double her output); I've suggested that she take the time at some point to describe some of her "adventures" when she was still sun-downing and living with her drug induced dementia. Some of the stories of her views from "the inside" of that experience are (happily, now) pretty entertaining. We'll see.

More to come as the summer progresses!! Wishing you all cool winds, cold drinks, and good friends!! Love from us both!!!

-- Paul

Almost Spring!!

Apologies to all for having faded from these pages for several weeks. It turns out to be a very busy time under this program, teaching, in rehearsals, mentoring, and so on. It's also been difficult just finding sufficient time to avoid doing all the things that need to get done for the bigger picture....like TAXES!! Ahhh, there, that's out now....breathe, just breathe....

The good news to share is that we have been offered another season here at Cornell, and have decided to accept the offer. In addition to our usual teaching responsibilities, Sonja will be performing as Lady Bracknell in Ernest, and I will be doing Hector (the Griffiths role) in The History Boys, with casting for the rest of their season (Loves Labours Lost, 2 new plays, and Leonard Bernstein's Mass) to be decided later. That will start again 2nd week of August or thereabouts, and we spent much of the past couple of weeks securing digs for next year (housing goes fast here in Ithaca....with two universities the housing stock is largely insufficient for the demand, and so prices are awful and even the shabbiest of places are rented by mid spring), which we're very happy with....we found a larger space for less money with acres of backyard romping space for Bea Lillie (Mac doesn't do much romping anymore, I'm afraid, but he's hanging in there), an available 10 month lease, and the Holy Grail of apt. hunting, a washer/dryer!! Yippee!!!

We finish up this year by the first week of May, and as we had to pay our 10th month on this lease, will use the time to travel to Martha's Vineyard for a couple of weeks to work for our dear friend Wendy and visit with her, then put this household into storage for the summer and return to Philly by end of the month, beginning of June. No idea what the summer will look like at this point; some combination of unemployment, temp work and maybe something under the table (like dogwalking again) if we can find it. Cross that bridge when we get to it.

Otherwise all goes well here. We are currently struggling through the trenches of a (at this stage of things anyway) largely uninspired As You Like It, Sony doing Corin, the Old Shepard-ESS!!, and me in the guise of good old Duke Senior, again. The truth is that as we move further toward performance and out of rehearsal, what becomes increasingly apparent is just how indestructible this play really is, especially at this time of year...hard to do really well, but hard to completely screw it up. We'll end up somewhere in the middle I guess, and that's fine.

Sonja's health is good and holds steady. As mentioned in earlier posts, she is likely to be in A Fib. for the rest of her life, and that can be handled medicinally. Her strength improves in increments, but it does continue to improve...she's teaching again and in rehearsal and mentoring, a full schedule. She will probably always have to find ways to integrate naps into her schedule from now on, but hey, how bad is that really?! It's wonderful to see her working again, and the students adore her (a perspective I'm not unfamiliar with myself).

Thanks to all who've enquired after us on this ongoing journey....and thanks to all who've continued to use this blog as a way to stay in touch!! We'll update again sometime soon; meanwhile, stay well, take care, and as always, love from us both!!

-- Paul

P.S. -- A special thought goes out to all of the current MFA students at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, left in Limbo at this point while ASF and UA struggle over the future of that program. If your unfamiliar with this particular debacle and would like to know more, I've listed a couple of sites below for more information.

www.asfmfa.blogspot.com
www.ipetitiions.com/petitiion/asfmfa/