Reviews, Essays, & others
at Troynovant;
listing of Contributor: Vera Howe Franson
  

To keep these sequences handier, from the main Contributors A-Z index we've separated out the extended Franson family and some other stalwarts.

Where the entry is for a review, the creator of the reviewed work — writer, editor, director, lead actor — is named in the right-hand column. For alternate sequences, see Book reviews by Author, or Book reviews by Title, our Recent updates, or others listed in the General Contents; below is by Contributor and Title.
  

A favorite maxim of the lovingly brilliant, prudently daring Vera Howe Franson:
  
  With your shield or on it!

Plutarch
"Sayings of Spartan Women"
Moralia
  

  
[Before Macbeth's castle in Dunsinane, Scotland.]

Macbeth:

                Thou losest labour.
As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.

Macduff:

                Despair thy charm,
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripped.

William Shakespeare
Macbeth, 5.10.8-16

  
As I was birthed Caesarian style when still a rare and risky operation, the above exchange from Macbeth always seemed personally apropos.

When I was very young, my mother would read to me Carl Barks' Disney Ducks comic books. I would perch on the side of the big armchair, looking over her shoulder at the stories; every now and then I'd ask her what word she was speaking. Largely thanks to this, I could read before I began kindergarten.

My wonderful mother frequently read or recited poetry to me: many of these poems remain among my favorites. When I was a teenager she took me to see Shakespeare plays at San Diego's Old Globe Theater. Her own earlier reading of all the plays later inspired me to read them all myself — with great lifetime enjoyment, as you may see at Troynovant. She shared her interests in English literature, history, classical music, astronomy, gardening, the history of mathematics. A star imaginatively brilliant, warm without bounds. — RWF