Thursday, December 09, 1999
'Nutcracker' mom does fancy steps
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Merciful heavens, we're going to have to give Mary Thacker a medal. Or buy her a cab company.
Thacker, see, has four kids, and every one is in Nutcracker: 5-year-old George is a mouse; 8-year-old Clifton and 9-year-old Sloan are party kids; and 12-year-old Mary Evan is a sailor.
“Those are all my children, and it's all I can handle. This house is out of control because we're always running,” Thacker says on a break from running her Chevy Suburban (a k a Ballet Shuttle) between Turpin Hills and downtown.
Lots of runs. Because the kids have different ability levels, different roles and different rehearsal and class times. That means, two, three, sometimes four runs a day. Especially since she sometimes makes dinner and runs it down.
“Sometimes, I like them to eat real food instead of fast food.”
Right. So how'd it happen, this all-Ballet family?
“My oldest started classes — I think she was 8 but the years blend together — and the others just followed. Neither my husband (Jim) nor I dance, but we love the art form, and the kids inherited that. They've been going all their lives.
“It's busy now, but not as busy as summer when they had swimming and diving in the morning and ballet camp in the afternoon. Back then, I was doing 100 miles a day, easily.”
Oh yeah, between the four kids, they also do karate, soccer, piano, voice, jazz dance and competitive swimming.
Mother Mary, meanwhile, drives a lot. Nutcracker runs Dec. 17-26.
SCOTCH TALK: And this for Beyond the Highland Mist (Dell; $5.99) fans waiting for Part II.
It's here. It's To Tame a Highland Warrior (Dell; $5.99) by Karen Marie Moning, the Walnut Hills resident who does novels about medieval Scotland.
Novels, we might add, that Dell liked enough for a three-book deal. The first, about a 1990s woman who time-travels to medieval Scotland, appeared in March 1999.
The second landed last week. Warrior is a tale with some repeat characters, but mostly it's about one Gavrael McIllioch, a fierce warrior doomed to a “dark fate.” He falls for the “ravishing” Jillian St. Clair (“the only woman who can tame the beast within him”) but can't act on it.
Figure out the genre yet?
Right: A historical romance, but slavishly accurate. Moning has “been researching medieval Scotland for eight years, buying every book I could on the country, myths, culture, even the plumbing.”
Uh, that plumbing stuff might be too much information.
Knip's Eye View appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
