Consortium of Seven

   Arriving on Netflix January 23rd was the ten-episode adaptation of Steve Niles and Damien Worm's October Faction .      The series centers on the Allen family, who we learn have been in the monster-hunting business as members of the covert Presidio organization for several generations.     Fred ( J.C. MacKenzie ) and Deloris ( Tamara Taylor ) Allen, an interracial couple, have been field agents for years. They've raised their fraternal twins, the introverted, artistic Viv (Aurora Burghart) and the extroverted Geoff (Gabriel Darku), in a variety of places around the globe, all under the cover profession of being risk assessors for an insurance firm. A sufficiently dull cover identity to keep their kids (and probably most people they meet -- who wants to talk up an insurance agent?) from wanting to find out more about it. The parents have hidden their true profession from their kids, even going the extra step of raising them ...

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Born with the teeth to play her Photo by Cynthia Rumbaugh There is that advice that goes, “Follow your bliss and synchronicities will happen.” And “Do what you love, and the money will follow.”   I’m not convinced about the money thing, but synchronicity is real, and it happened with “my” Eleanor. Previously:   Dear Mrs. Roosevelt opened by the skin of her teeth, audiences were happy, and the drama in the company surrounding the production could be put to rest. Speaking of teeth, I’d always hated mine. It was family advice down generations not to smile in photographs because our crooked teeth would show. Now they were an asset and over the years I must have said, “…born with the teeth to do this role” a gazillion times in interviews. After those first two performances at the summer arts festival in Bloomington, Indiana I thought I’d let the production rest for a year or more. My sons deserved my undivided attention and I had a new and demanding job now that...

This video offers an excellent introduction. Okay, we're fooling. The  Congributor bios  page on this blog has short profiles for each of us. (Well, one of us hasn't done theirs yet but that'll happen soon.)

Last week my spouse and I were watching a documentary about the 1904 St. Louis Fair, and I said, "Oh no!" about halfway through the film.  I'd just had an awful realization about a short story I'd written a few years ago.  I'd done my research in the pre-Google version of the internet and unfortunately I'd done flawed research. In my bit of historical fiction, what should have been the Ferris Wheel from the 1904 had accidentally been swapped out for the Ferris Wheel from the 1893 Columbian Exposition (known informally as the Chicago World's Fair). Here's the 1904 wheel. And here's the 1893 wheel.  The two look a lot alike, don't they? That's because they are in fact the same wheel. When the Chicago fair concluded, the Ferris Wheel was taken apart and set up somewhere else for a while, then disassembled again and sent off in pieces by rail. It traveled three hundred miles to the site of the St. Louis Fair. In ...

As I was listening to a song while working out at the gym the other day I found myself suddenly back in 1966, in seventh grade, sitting in my assigned seat in the cafeteria at Arrowview Junior High School, where I attended seventh grade. We were only allowed to get up once during lunch to return our heavy metal lunch tray to the lunch lady. We were then required to return to our seat without stopping to talk to anyone. These strict rules were the result of an uptick in violence on the campus that included something called chain fights. I was new to the Westside and had never observed one, thankfully, but that did not diminish my fear of such an idea; that I might stumble into one just around a corner on my way to class. All of those memories came rushing into my head as I listened to the Buckinghams song, Kind of a Drag, while cycling at the gym in 2020, fifty-three years later; my sixty-five-year-old self suddenly twelve again. The school administration had the good sense ...

Cypress knees agree with me Hindu bathing beauties should have red-tinged toes  and fingers delight will stain things red The cypress knees agree with me congregated in brown water red brown water where I stand agree with me that baby at breast is the final destination of want and need Cypress knees bend to listen hear man's secrets running underground watch the shadows pass over the water agree with me that bird in flight is the pinnacle pinnacle of man's desire above above above Agrees with me that torchlight while not the truest is the most human and likely to prevail Cypress knees congregate in low places keep their records dark and wet A cavalcade of memory in the lowlands Cypress knees agree with me  tears of man bring hope Bald cypress trees can live 600 years. They are among the oldest tree species in the world, dating back to the Jurrasic period. Noah's ark was made of cypress wood.  It is associated with mourning, truth...

Besides appearing in the movie "Se7en" (Don't look in that box!), the magic number seven has come up over and over, in myriad cultures. For instance, here's a nice ska instrumental called "Lucky 7." Steven Spielberg once launched a television series, also called "Lucky Seven," which vanished from our home screens soon afterward.  Then there's the lemon-lime soda 7-Up. A musical commercial for it was popular in the early 80's: The ad's catchy jingle made this "Repo Man" scene memorable. At one time, we bought Seven-Up from corner markets, as chain stores like Red & White took the place of locally-owned Mom and Pop storefronts.  Then came modern convenience stores. In the Midwest, it began with Seven-Eleven. These close-to-home marts stayed open till -- gasp -- eleven o'clock at night  -- and they opened at seven a.m. so you didn't have to stand blearily waiting for your Mr. Cof...