Consortium of Seven

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Funny how things change but don't change.  I wrote a performance piece I thought was a whimsical but not the least bit profound some 35 years ago. Audiences liked it at that was nice, but what startles me is that friends quote it still and tell me it gets them through tough times. After several such conversations lately, I updated it. I hope it helps you, too. PUSH ON THROUGH Oh there’s nothin’ to do but to push on through When you think you’re at the end of line. Course it’s easy enough to say this stuff when everything is going fine. When things go well and you’re feelin’ swell, Then you know you’re an Amazon. When life turns on a dime with no reason or rhyme. That’s when you think your strength is gone. Well it’s easy enough to say this stuff When everything is goin’ fine But there’s nothin’ to do but to push on through When you think you’re at the end of line. There’s a medical test that gives you no rest and a loved one is troubl...

Last week, I gave examples of books that were slow reads because the plot or characters filled me with dread or too much emotion to feel all at once. This week, I've got a short list of books I choose to read slowly because I wanted them to last or because the writing was dense or well-crafted and I wanted to savor the words of the page. Funny I would use the word "savor" and then start the list with a Stephen King book. In this time of pandemic, The Stand is on a lot of "must read" or must avoid" lists these days because the book is about a "super flu" which kills so many people that society collapses. I think King writes best about situations or experiences which touch him personally. I wonder if the rubella scare is a childhood memory for him. All I know is that he could see  how fearful an epidemic would be when others did not. In the same way that the television show "The Walking Dead" focuses on the goodies as ...

When I was about six years old I was laying in bed one morning at our house in Bloomington, California. I was still discovering the world around me. It was Easter morning and I was waiting patiently for the Easter Bunny to leave a basket filled with jelly beans on the porch out front. While I lay there thinking about life and my new dog Stinky, I spotted a tiny bird outside my window where a Bottle Brush Bush was growing. It was floating in mid-air and I was stunned and mesmerized by this tiny creature magically floating outside my window. It would be some years before I had a name for it, a hummingbird.  I never fail to transport back to my mattress on the floor in that little house and that window high up on the wall looking out on that bush framing that magical creatures magical flight. I’ve always thought of the hummingbird as my spirit animal. There is no other bird as beautiful as the hummingbird.  A Facebook friend who was a childhood neighbor wrote abou...

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TV theme: "77 Sunset Strip" Go to next C7 post

It’s hard to remember where exactly, but I’m almost certain I stole the idea from someone on MySpace of all places. It’s nothing new now (or then) of course, but it was a creative lifesaver. The idea was to post one photo per day for a year. Lots of people do different things as a “365” on various platforms now & a decade ago I didn’t feel able to make the time to be creative & didn’t particularly have the headspace for it either. It’s what they call “being in a bad place.” The blog provided a structure & was nothing to do with work, which everything else seemed to be then. Looking back at that time seems as if it was all darkness & claustrophobia, but looking back at the blog tells a different story. Doing the photoblog allowed a small, manageable level of creativity, could be done on the hoof & you had some nice pictures at the end of it. A good day was when something lucky turned up to snap or an image turned out better than expected, somethi...

Another week with a sudden, "Wha-happened?!" flip from Endless Week to Almost Over. However we got here, it's Friday again. This week saw a couple shows I've followed with great interest hit the end of their run - one for a season, the other, presumably, for the series.   Better Call Saul (AMC) ended its fifth season Monday night, having brought me another very well-received, over entirely too quickly, season of this mostly prequel series. Fans of the show continue to wonder what's going to have become of a key supporting character in this series -- someone who's dearer to the main character than any other living person, yet someone we never saw either in the later events in Breaking Bad , nor in the brief times we're spending in the present, well after the events of Breaking Bad .  This was the penultimate season for the show, and it's left me to wonder a couple things.    One, how much the production shut-downs for COVID-19 will mean...

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Inanna victorious with Venus and other allies “The world is made not of atoms, but of stories,” is a quote I once heard attributed to the writer and activist Muriel Rukeyser.   Whoever said it was right, I am sure. We connect with one another with our stories, we get through difficult times on stories.   I often marvel at the universality of ancient myths and their power, just as I do about the relevance of Shakespeare’s writing and understanding of human nature.   The great myths, with the ways they reveal great cosmological and theo/thealogical understanding, give us solid ground to stand on when the world is shifting all around us. So, here is a myth for these ever-shifting times. Inanna is a goddess who has survived from ancient Sumer and Her myth is a comfort to me. I hope it is for you, too. Over time, scholars and wise ones have come to see correspondences – the likenesses that connect deities, planets, parts of nature (as in Mother Nature and in ou...

To say a book is good, reviewers will often praise it with the comment "I couldn't put it down." But there have been a number of well-written books that I did put down; I could only read each a bit at a time.  These are tales that spook me, but not in the shock-horror or creeping-suspense. Instead, they touch a nerve with me personally. There's something about a character's experience which resonates with something I've lived through and felt. Here are a few examples of books I put down any number of times before finishing them. Mean girls. I don't really need to explain if you've read or even heard of this Margaret Atwood book. She goes deep with the feelings and her character portraits are well-drawn, so it's a good if tense read.  I've read Dracula all the way through maybe seven or eight times in my life, and every single time I had to set it aside for a bit before I could keep going. I definitely can't ...