The Soap Opera Dallas Wheatley

The Soap Opera was created by Dallas Wheatley. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts, or tell your friends and family about it! Spreading the word makes all the difference.
Many thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the music. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The tracks used in this episode are "Ripples", "Folk Round", and "Finding Movement".




Performers



Shade Oyemakinwa




The Street Musicians
By Andrew Lang
Performed by Shade Oyemakinwa
Hello! This is Shade Oyemakinwa and I’m so excited to be sharing “The Street Musicians” with you. You might know this story by another name, “The Musicians of Bremen” or “Town Musicians of Bremen”. I adore this story. One of my most beloved tellings of it, is “The Muppet Musicians of Bremen”. It was a tv special hosted by Kermit the Frog and it is delightful. As is the original tale. It’s a simple story with main characters who just want to live their lives, maybe start a band, and they outsmart some robbers with a bit of cunning and hilarious luck.
And now, “The Street Musicians”.




A man once possessed a donkey which had served him faithfully for many years, but at last the poor beast grew old and feeble, and every day his work became more of a burden. As he was no longer of any use, his master made up his mind to shoot him; but when the donkey learnt the fate that was in store for him, he determined not to die, but to run away to the nearest town and there to become a street musician.
When he had trotted along for some distance he came upon a greyhound lying on the road, and panting for dear life. ‘Well, brother,’ said the donkey, ‘what’s the matter with you? You look rather tired.’
‘So I am,’ replied the dog, ‘but because I am getting old and am growing weaker every day, and cannot go out hunting any longer, my master wanted to poison me; and, as life is still sweet, I have taken leave of him. But how I am to earn my own livelihood I haven’t a notion.’
‘Well,’ said the donkey, ‘I am on my way to the nearest big town, where I mean to become a street musician. Why don’t you take up music as a profession and come along with me? I’ll play the flute and you can play the kettle-drum.’
The greyhound was quite pleased at the idea, and the two set off together. When they had gone a short distance they met a cat with a face as long as three rainy days. ‘Now, what has happened to upset your happiness, friend puss?’ inquired the donkey.
‘It’s impossible to look cheerful when one feels depressed,’ answered the cat. ‘I am well up in years now, and have lost most of my teeth; consequently I prefer sitting in front of the fire to catching mice, and so my old mistress wanted to drown me. I have no wish to die yet, so I ran away from her; but good advice is expensive, and I don’t know where I am to go to, or what I am to do.’
‘Come to the nearest big town with us,’ said the donkey, ‘and try your fortune as a street musician. I know what sweet music you make at night, so you are sure to be a success.’
The cat was delighted with the donkey’s proposal, and they all continued their journey together. In a short time they came to the courtyard of an inn, where they found a rooster crowing lustily. ‘What in the world is the matter with you?’ asked the donkey. ‘The noise you are making is enough to break the drums of our ears.’
‘I am only prophesying good weather,’ said the rooster; ‘for to-morrow is a feast day, and just because it is a holiday and a number of people are expected at the inn, the landlady has given orders for my neck to be wrung to-night, so that I may be made into soup for to-morrow’s dinner.’
‘I’ll tell you what, redcap,’ said the donkey; ‘you had much better come with us to the nearest town. You have got a good voice, and you could join a street band we

The Soap Opera was created by Dallas Wheatley. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts, or tell your friends and family about it! Spreading the word makes all the difference.
Many thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the music. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The tracks used in this episode are "Ripples", "Snowdrop", "Silver Flame", and "Finding Movement".




Performers



Eleanor Grey

Vin Ernst





Dica
By Sappho
Performed by Eleanor Grey
With flowers fair adorn thy lustrous hair,
Dica, amidst thy locks sweet blossoms twine,
With thy soft hands, for so a maiden stands
Accepted of the gods, whose eyes divine
Are turned away from her—though fair as May
She waits, but round whose locks no flowers shine.




Prophesy
By Sappho
Performed by Eleanor Grey
Methinks hereafter in some later spring
Echo will bear to men the songs we sing.




Dead Shalt Thou Lie
By Sappho
Performed by Eleanor Grey
When thou fallest in death, dead shalt thou lie, nor shall thy memory
Henceforth ever again be heard then or in days to be,
Since no flowers upon earth ever were thine, plucked from Pieria's spring,
Unknown also 'mid hell's shadowy throng thou shalt go wandering.




Invocation
By Sappho
Performed by Eleanor Grey
Come, Venus, come
Hither with thy golden cup,
Where nectar-floated flowerets swim.
Fill, fill the goblet up;
These laughing lips shall kiss the brim,—
Come, Venus, come!




Hymn to Aphrodite
By Sappho
Performed by Eleanor Grey
Daughter of Zeus and Immortal,
Aphrodite, serene
Weaver of spells, at thy portal
Hear me and slay not, O Queen!
As in the past, hither to me
From thy far palace of gold,
Drawn by the doves that o'erflew me,
Come, as thou earnest of old.
Swiftly thy flock bore thee hither,
Smiling, as turned I to thee,
Spoke thou across the blue weather,
"Sappho, why callest thou me?"
"Sappho, what Beauty disdains thee,
Sappho, who wrongest thine heart,
Sappho, what evil now pains thee,
Whence sped the dart?
"Flies from thee, soon she shall follow,
Turns from thee, soon she shall love,
Seeking thee swift as the swallow,
Ingrate though now she may prove."
Come, once again to release me,
Join with my fire thy fire,
Freed from the torments that seize me,
Give me, O Queen! my desire!




A Haunted House
By Virginia Woolfe
Performed by Vin Ernst
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here tool" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."
But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it,' one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling--what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room . . ."

The Soap Opera was created by Dallas Wheatley. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts, or tell your friends and family about it! Spreading the word makes all the difference.
Many thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the music. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The tracks used in this episode are "Ripples", "Kalimba Relaxation Music", "Brandenburg No4-1 BWV1049", and "Finding Movement".




Performers



Eleanor Grey

Shade Oyemakinwa





April
By Sara Teasdale
Performed by Eleanor Grey
The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.
Yet the back-yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree
I could not be so sure of spring
Save that it sings in me.




I Have Loved Hours At Sea
By Sara Teasdale
Performed by Eleanor Grey
I have loved hours at sea, gray cities,
The fragile secret of a flower,
Music, the making of a poem
That gave me heaven for an hour;
First stars above a snowy hill,
Voices of people kindly and wise,
And the great look of love, long hidden,
Found at last in meeting eyes.
I have loved much and been loved deeply,
Oh when my spirit's fire burns low,
Leave me the darkness and the stillness,
I shall be tired and glad to go.




Hello! This is Shade Oyemakinwa with a couple of poems from Christina Rossetti. To start is “No, Thank You, John”. “No, Thank You, John” is a poem about a person who is unequivocally and unambiguously uninterested. They are uninterested in John romantically, this is a known fact, and they are quite comfortable saying so.
It is so funny and the voice is so modern and familiar, that learning that Rosetti influenced some very influential writers is not really a surprise to me.
No, Thank You, John
By Christina Rosetti
Performed by Shade Oyemakinwa
I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me, day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
With always "do" and "pray"?
You know I never loved you, John;
No fault of mine made me your toast:
Why will you haunt me with a face as wan
As shows an hour-old ghost?
I dare say Meg or Moll would take
Pity upon you, if you'd ask:
And pray don't remain single for my sake
Who can't perform that task.
I have no heart?—Perhaps I have not;
But then you're mad to take offence
That I don't give you what I have not got:
Use your common sense.
Let bygones be bygones:
Don't call me false, who owed not to be true:
I'd rather answer "No" to fifty Johns
Than answer "Yes" to you.
Let's mar our pleasant days no more,
Song-birds of passage, days of youth:
Catch at to-day, forget the days before:
I'll wink at your untruth.
Let us strike hands as hearty friends;
No more, no less: and friendship's good:
Only don't keep in view ulterior ends,
And points not understood
In open treaty. Rise above
Quibbles and shuffling off and on:
Here's friendship for you if you like; but love,—
No, thank you, John.




Now, “The Queen of Hearts” is about someone who is exasperated with their card mate’s ability to always gain the queen of hearts when they play. In the name of academic transparency, I’ll tell you that there are those who suppose that the the queen of hearts is an allegory for winning a person’s love and the poem itself is a metaphor for a person who is frustrated with their inability to find love compared to their friend’s ability to fall into it. Well I’m here to tell you that those people are boring. And that those people are cowards. We’re playing cards and either Flora’s cheating or the cards are magical!
All right. Let’s step down from this little soap box and read some more poetry by Christina Rossetti!
The Queen of Hearts
By Christina Rosetti
Performed by Shade Oyemakinwa
How comes it, Flora, that,

The Soap Opera was created by Dallas Wheatley. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts, or tell your friends and family about it! Spreading the word makes all the difference.
Many thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the music (Licensed under Creative Commons 4.0). The tracks used in this episode are "Ripples", "Overheat", "River Flute", and "Finding Movement".




Performers



DJ Sylvis

Tal Minear





Thought and Space
By Ray Bradbury
Performed by DJ Sylvis
Space—thy boundaries are
Time and time alone.
No earth-born rocket,
seedling skyward sown,
Will ever reach your cold,
infinite end,
This power is not Man's to
build or send.
Great deities laugh down,
venting their mirth,
At struggling bipeds on
a cloud-wrapped Earth,
Chained solid on a war-swept,
waning globe,
For FATE, who witnesses,
to pry and probe.
BUT LIST! One weapon have
I stronger yet!
Prepare Infinity! And
Gods regret!
Thought, quick as light,
shall pierce the veil,
To reach the lost beginnings
Holy Grail.
Across the sullen void on
soundless trail,
Where new spawned suns and
chilling planets wail,
One thought shall travel
midst the gods' playthings,
Past cindered globes where
choking flame still sings.
No wall of force yet have ye
firmly wrought,
That chains the supreme
strength of purest thought.
Unleashed, without a body's
slacking hold,
Thought leaves the ancient
Earth behind to mold.
And when the galaxies have
heeded DEATH,
And welcomed lastly SPACE'S
poisoned breath,
Still shall thought travel
as an arrow flown.
SPACE—thy boundaries are
TIME——AND TIME ALONE!




Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost
Performed by Tal Minear
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.




Birches
By Robert Frost
Performed by Tal Minear
When I see birches bend left to right
Across the line of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust –
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for so long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows –
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above th

The Soap Opera was created by Dallas Wheatley. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts, or tell your friends and family about it! Spreading the word makes all the difference.


If you have any questions about soap, tools, or ingredients, you can contact me on Patreon, on Twitter @ShireSuds, on Instagram @ShireSuds, or you can email me at shiresuds@gmail.com!


Many thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the music (Licensed under Creative Commons 4.0). The tracks used in this episode are "Ripples", “White Lotus”, and "Finding Movement".


If you want to challenge your soapmaking skills some more, I recommend checking out Humblebee and Me, a wonderful website with tons of science-based soap, skincare, and makeup recipes!


If you want to purchase any of the soap I made for this show, you can find it at shiresuds.com. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Soap Opera! Happy Sudsing!


This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

The Soap Opera was created by Dallas Wheatley. If you liked what you heard, please rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts, or tell your friends and family about it! Spreading the word makes all the difference.


If you have any questions about soap, tools, or ingredients, you can contact me on Patreon, on Twitter @ShireSuds, on Instagram @ShireSuds, or you can email me at shiresuds@gmail.com!


Many thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the music (Licensed under Creative Commons 4.0). The tracks used in this episode are "Ripples", “White Lotus”, and "Finding Movement".


If you want to challenge your soapmaking skills some more, I recommend checking out Humblebee and Me, a wonderful website with tons of science-based soap, skincare, and makeup recipes!


If you want to purchase any of the soap I made for this show, you can find it at shiresuds.com. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Soap Opera! Happy Sudsing!




The Recipe

SOAP CALCULATOR
http://soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp


IMPERIAL WEIGHT



17.64 oz Olive oil

2.22 oz Lye

4.5+ oz Water

Coffee grounds



METRIC WEIGHT



500 g Olive oil

63 g Lye

125-150 g Water

Coffee grounds





INSTRUCTIONS


1) Assemble all your tools. Make sure you have plenty of space to work!


2) Measure out all your ingredients -- use the glass container for the water and the large bowl or pot for the oil.


3) Add the water to a glass container. Don’t use too much water, or your soap will take much longer to harden!


4) Gently heat the oils in the microwave or on the stove until they have melted. Don’t let it get too hot!


5) While wearing the mask and gloves, slowly add the lye into the water, mixing it up while you do so. It will get very hot, so be careful!


6) When both the oils and the lye have reached room temperature, mix them together.


7) Using the immersion blender on the lowest speed, gently pulse the blender until the soap has reached “trace” stage. As the soap thickens, increase the speed of the blender. Stop before it gets too thick to pour into molds.


8) Pour your coffee grounds into the soap batter and mix with a spatula or your blender.


9) Carefully pour the soap into your mold, using the rubber spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl.


10) Set the molds to cure in a cool, stable location.


HOW TO IDENTIFY TRACE STAGE
“Trace” is the term for when you drag a spatula across a liquid material and it leaves a valley behind. A “thin” trace happens when the valley disappears quickly. A “thick” trace happens when the valley disappears slowly, or not at all. A thin trace can be found in most cream sauces, thicker soups, and products like buttermilk and heavy cream. A thick trace can be found in sour cream and whipped cream.


This podcast is powered by Pinecast.