Consortium of Seven

Two things happened this week that made me think about lessons I've learned the hard way. I ordered a questionable device to help stop colds, and a few friends told me I'd been had. Maybe, I have - it won't be the first time.  And another friend made a Facebook post about lessons from childhood, which made me remember a few... I've had hats and boots come home with me from the store, and later, regretting my purchases, I've returned them. But, sometimes I keep them. And never wear them. Accepting their reproach.... Go ahead, boot, SAY it. Furthermore, these hats and boots have not served as the talismans I'd hoped they'd be. They've never prevented further impulse buys. I expected more out of these two. Frozen orange juice concentrate eaten straight out of the can is not a substitute for a creamsicle. Especially eaten furtively under the bed after being told no.  Don't catch frogs (toads) and put them in a rain barrel overnight.

Yes, plural. There were a lot of them both in his works & in reality. Throughout his life he was blessed with a remarkable, often unruly abundance. In his art, it was everywhere.   Wherever hairs existed he’d include them. & I mean wherever. Egon's amazing head of hair Sometimes the hairs are an indicator of a broader mood or atmosphere – dark & aggressively applied through light & wispy to revealing weakness & vulnerability. When he makes a sketch, the hairs might be scribbly or a solid block of colour but what he has rendered looks exactly like hair. Eyebrows might be a pair of looped lines. They’re still eyebrows. It’s difficult to imagine him applying these lines. When faced with some of the incredibly bold, almost gestural drawings he created, I struggle to picture him thinking, “Oh wait. Needs more fluff,” & delicately scratch on a few tufts here - & frankly – there. If I’m thinking of Egon’s work, I’m thinking of the The

The Lighthouse (2019), screenplay by brothers Roger and Max Eggers, directed and produced by Roger. Starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. Black and white. 109 min.   A pair of wickers - lighthouse keepers - start their four week tour of duty on a tiny, craggy isle off the coast of New England circa 1890.   Dafoe plays the heavily-bearded, salty veteran, Thomas Wake, while Pattinson is the landlubber neophyte, Ephraim Winslow, who's not only new to this work but hasn't even been to sea before. The older man rides the younger hard in the endless cycle of drudgery required to keep the poorly-kept lighthouse and its living quarters in some semblance of order when it's fairly obvious that the others who've been on duty there weren't keeping it ship shape.  Tensions between the men grow in this gray environment, particularly the strewing frustration and resentment from young Winslow as he's left to do all of the most difficult and unpleasant ta

Mademoiselle Marie Souvestre, beloved mentor      When I began research for the script for Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, I knew the possibilities were overwhelming: the amount of material about her public life, the speculations about her private relationships, the facts as determined by the agenda of those who wrote about her.   I also knew that I had to rely on secondary resources because I could not afford to travel to do research. We produced the play on very slender shoestring tied into multiple knots. Not that traveling to the FDR Roosevelt Presidential Library at Hyde Park would have done me much good. That realization came later.      Early on, I decided to rely upon what Eleanor said and wrote about her own life. I wasn’t interested in becoming embroiled in conflicts about what to reveal based upon anyone’s guesswork. I wasn’t going to insist, for instance, that Eleanor Roosevelt was a lesbian. She wrote her autobiography and expanded upon it as time went on and wrote

[ Up till now, my Tuesday blog posts have been about the process of writing. Recently I got tired of blogging about that topic, a sign that you may be getting tired of reading about that topic. Since I love books and I also love movies, I've decided to spend some time blogging about books linked to film. ] It used to be that first there was a book, then there was a film version of the book. This is probably the most famous example, unfortunately.  A book didn't always become a movie immediately; sometimes it was a play in between. Back in the day, it was possible for THIS to happen:  a book became a play, then a movie, then a musical, then a movie again, then a book again, then a play again.  Gradually, as time passed, our culture added a television show   to this transformation process .   Please Don't Eat the Daisies , for example. 

My first vehicle, a 1965 Ford Econoline van. Christmas of 1971.  My first job in the summer of 1969, at age, fourteen was as a parking lot janitor at a fast food joint on 40th St., ten blocks south of my house on 50th St.; a straight shot down the alley at the end of my street. My Mom usually got up with me at 5 am and drove me, I would walk back home after. It really didn’t pay much, so when a new manager started demanding more work for the same pay I ignored her and she fired me. I didn’t need to be working at fourteen years old anyway and the school term would be starting soon. I was able to buy a few school clothes, so I counted it as a win.  Not the San Bernardino location where the entrance was on the corner, but a good representation from the same era. My second job which lasted from June of 1970 until about March of 1971, when I had to quit for my grades, was at a sit-down restaurant on 5th and G St’s. It skirted San Bernardino’s skid row with requisite down