Time to Fall Some Trees? Make Sure They’re Not Dozy

The seasoned logs in our stoves are blazing this week, with their cheerful flames holding the winter chill at bay.  Now it’s time to think about next year.  I’ve cut down some trees in the past, but it’s dangerous work and I’ve had some close calls.   I only use experienced arborists now to bring them down.  One called me up once to tell me he could come next day “to fall the trees” and I thought he must be one of those people who always mix words up.  I remember my mother, who was somewhat proper, correcting me when I was a kid: “it’s to FELL a tree,” and so it is–except when it isn’t. “To fall a tree” has been around for centuries, showing up in the Lewis and Clark journals, for example. Along with it we get a “falling axe, falling wedge” and a “faller” (lumberjack), used from New England to the Pacific Northwest.  ”Fall” also shows up in other tenses: “They have fallen two trees today” instead of standard English “they have felled.”   It seems logical to use “fall” instead of “fell” because we say “it’s going to fall, it has fallen,” but there is a reason why it’s “e” and not “a” in the meaning “to make something fall,” going back to a sound change at the time our linguistic ancestors were climbing into boats in Germany to take over Great Britain (the 6^th century).   This is the same change that gave us “man/men”—but let’s save the details for a later week.

            We didn’t have a wood stove where I grew up, but we did have a fireplace.  I went out to gather fallen branches for it once with my father and he told me not to take anything that was “dozy”—starting to rot.  It was the first and only time I ever heard that word used, but at one time it was found all over New England and in a 1960s survey still survived in Maine.  It goes back to Scandinavian words for sleep, and was also used as a verb: “he found the wood had dozed.”   In the South it showed up as “doty” and, like “dozy,” seems to be a word from older generations.  “Dozy/doty” competed with and were defeated by “punky” which comes from “punk wood” or just plain “punk” as in “I wanted seasoned hardwood and he sold me punk.”  Punk was important in the days before matches, used as tinder when people would strike a flint to get a spark. In the old Anderson tale “the Tinder Box” that box was filled with punk. Its origin is a mystery, but there is an even older meaning that shows up in Shakespeare: a prostitute.

My grandmother was at Cornell in 1920 and in a journal bemoaned the fact that her grades were “punk”—lousy.  It was still in use when my mother was at Cornell, 25 years later.  Makes you wonder when it eventually died out on campuses.  But of course “punk” isn’t dead.  The meaning “a young hoodlum” first showed up around 1900 and the music scene embraced it as a badge of honor in the 1970s to describe the latest iteration of rock– a great example of how meaning wanders: from woman of ill repute to worthless wood to worthless grades to worthless teenagers to proud music genre.

“Punky” wood lives on, “dozy” is dead….or is it?  Let us know. 

New Play: The Story of Daniel (3rd grade)

My grandchildren are now going through the grades and new plays are needed.  Here’s one for the Third Grade: The Story of Daniel

Plays for Children, Students, and Adults

This site is an archive of plays for schoolchildren, high school students, and adults.  It contains both translations and original plays,  as well as links to articles, books and blogs by Dale F. Coye.

Teachers looking for plays to perform with their classes from first grade through high school will find  age-appropriate comedies and dramas that were designed for Waldorf Schools in Princeton, NJ and at High Mowing School in New Hampshire.   The plays were tremendous hits in their original productions, and have subsequently been used by hundreds of teachers all over the world.

There are also plays for college students, community theatre groups, and professionals.

The Talisman by Nestroy

I’ve just added a sample  of my translation of Nestroy’s The Talisman (click on the name)  to this website.  This play is perhaps Nestroy’s most famous, and rightly so.  I have shifted the action to the Hudson Valley, inspired by Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker which takes place in Yonkers, and which was taken from Nestroy’s Einen Jux Will Er Sich Machen.   This is a one-act version, without the songs, and it plays extremely well, especially for high school actors.  It was performed by the freshman class at High Mowing School in Wilton, NH and is available to other directors by emailing me.

Nestroy, Schnitzler, Lessing

I’m writing this post to urge my readers to take a look at the translations of Nestroy, Schnitzler and Lessing that I’ve done on this site.  Lessing’s Nathan the Wise is not really a translation, but a reworking or this famous play, but it has been tremendously successful, and more accessible than the blank verse original.   I call my version Crusader, Muslim, and Jew, and its message is so important in this era when our three cultures are spiraling downward deeper into mutual mistrust and hatred.  My Nestroy and Schnitzler translations also have proven to be very popular wherever they’re performed.   Nestroy is a comic genius and deserves more attention in the English-speaking world.

New Book– Seven Sacraments for Everyone

So much anger in the world now.  So much hate and fear.   So much of it in the name of religion.  How will the we ever find the road to peace?  Seven Sacraments for Everyone is an attempt to overcome the differences that are driving us apart.  Influenced by the work of Karen Armstrong and Joseph Campbell, this book is an appeal to all sides to find common ground.  (Go to the website)

“Coye has written a superb book. No matter what your background is, or what you choose to believe–or not believe–regarding religion, spirituality, morals, happiness, or the meaning of our existence, “Seven Sacraments for Everyone” provides ideas that will help you navigate life in today’s complicated world.”–Amazon review

The Plays

Plays by Arthur Schnitzler

The Greatest Most Stupendous Show on Earth

Plays by Johann Nestroy (junior high school, high school, community theatre)

The Talisman

Richman, Poorman

The House of the Four Temperaments

The Sleepwalkers

Plays for college students

A Child’s Guide to American History

The Shepherd Proposal

Plays from The Waldorf School of Princeton for Grades 1 – 7

An Overview: Plays for Children

Purchasing Information

Comments from teachers whose classes have performed these plays

1st and 2nd Grade:  The Land of Sounds

3rd Grade:  The Story of Moses

                            The Story of Daniel

4th Grade:  Loki and Sif’s Golden Hair

5th Grade:  Perseus and Danae

6th Grade:  Crusader, Muslim, and Jew

7th grade:  Magellan

 Plays for high school students

            Antigone Too

Comments from teachers whose classes have performed these plays

We recently performed the 4th grade play.  It was a hit!  Many compliments were given by parents, teachers, and students alike.  An 8th grader told me, as she passed in the hall, “The 4th grade play was really good; it was the first play I actually listened to.”  I thought this was the penultimate of compliments!

Victoria, Washington Waldorf School

I want to thank you for your wonderful play, Crusader, Muslim and Jew, that my class just performed to great reviews.  The children were able to do so much of it themselves — all backdrops, props, costume changes, prompting, lighting, the program and on and on.  We enriched it with extra music including 2 cellos, a viola and 2 violins.  They opened the play with Mozart’s Veil of Destiny from The Magic Flute.  After the prologue we had the strings and the class singing The HaTikvah to set the mood for Nathan’s house in scene 1.  Whenever the Christian Brothers were due to enter, we first introduced them with a Sanctus sung by the class behind stage, giving the mood of chanting in a monastery.  The class really took up the themes of the play and the parents were impressed with the understanding expressed throughout.

Wendy, Class 6 Teacher, East Bay Waldorf School, CA 

.

Our class play — your play — Loki & Sif’s Golden Hair was an absolute hit with the children, their parents, family-friends, and everyone else (two third-grade classes, our 7th grade “buddy class”, and many staff members) who saw one of our three performances.  … it was just delightful and amazing how fabulous, funny, and well done the play was.  Everyone loved it raved about it.

       A few of the children said they were sad that it was all over and they wouldn’t be performing again — that shows you how much they enjoyed your play.  I will never forget it!

Sue, Birchtree Charter School, Alaska