Consortium of Seven

In the mist of all the other chaos of life these days, I know a few women who are caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s Disease or other kinds of dementia. My mother had dementia and I was her principal caregiver. One of the gifts of such a profound experience is that I can pass along what I learned to others who are in the same rocky boat. It was hard and it was rich with discoveries and some hilarious stories I love to tell. So here are a few things I learned, just in case they are helpful. The early stages of dementia are hard to recognize, so we’ll begin there. In any case, there are a few hints that apply for the caregiver no matter what stage the disease: Hint #1: Reality checks are good.  For I while I wondered if my mother’s behavior was just odd or if it was me or if it was something serious, or all of the above. My mother knew her memory wasn’t working well, but she didn’t understand that she was unable to work the TV remote because it had become too complicated for...

In previous posts for this blog series on Edna Ferber's work, we've touched on a childhood full of moves from one place to another, and on her late-in-life work for Hollywood.  In between those two phases of Ferber's life: New York City. How'd she get there? From age of twelve onward, young Edna was involved in the arts and theater community of Appleton, Wisconsin. Might sound like nowhere to you and me, but compared to the previous stop in Iowa, Appleton was a bustling metropolis full of life and people. Edna wrote, directed, and acted in plays and wrote for school and community newspapers.  As many talented young unmarried women did in Ferber's era, she found work as a city newspaper reporter, first in Appleton and then in Milwaukee. She also did political reporting for the United Press Association during her journalism career. But Ferber was forced to turn her hand to a quieter line of work -- fiction writing -- during a bout of ill health.  Working from home, Fe...

  [Note: Today's post originally appeared on January 22 2020. During the months of September and October, the Consortium is using Mondays to re-visit some of our best work.]        Putting my Eleanor together, my mom's  knitting contribution         in my lap   Photo by Cynthia Rumbaugh First the disclaimer: This happened in 1985. I’ve forgotten some things, embroidered others, and probably made myself appear to be a better person than I am. But here is a story of community and feminist theater and more of my time with Eleanor Roosevelt.      We were two weeks out from opening when a friend wrote to tell me that she’d seen the publicity for a woman who was touring a show about ER and had been for a while. I sat with the letter in my hands and everything around me became very quiet. I knew I couldn’t continue. I was intruding on someone else’s territory. In tears I called Jane Winslow, who was serving the tro...

Since I write so often about missing the north, I felt I should comment on what is good and wonderful around me, here in Southwest Florida.  A list of good things about Florida: 1. Food. Even the Winn Dixie has tables of harvested tamarind and plantains, papaya, mango. Every grocery store has a locally produced in Florida aisle. Watermelons are plentiful and people here tend to really love the fresh fruits available year round. Florida produces a lot of strawberries and honey. When I shop at the CSA store, I can choose from several exotic honeys, my favorite being mangrove honey. Moringa is harvested locally and the CSA sells it by the jar for a reasonable price. 2. The scents in the air. Where I live, there are lots of the melaleuca trees which have a pungent medicinal smell, rosier than eucalyptus but different from the tea tree oil you can buy. It's often in the background and certain weather conditions make it especially noticeable. I am noticing as I age that my nose isn't...

As was the way of the Scottish Colourists, Francis Cadell’s (1883-1937) work was strongly shaped by the French artists of his day. Not only were the French painters considered new, exciting & somewhat unconventional, their ideas & style were not universally appreciated. & in this instance, by “universally” I mean in Scotland. That said, Cadell remained here & his subjects were avowedly Scottish, despite his aesthetic influences. On the one hand, he was known for portraying grand & stylish Edinburgh interiors, on the other, he painted seascapes on the island of Iona.  In times of hardship, art is often mistakenly seen as a luxury. Although he didn’t make much of a living as a painter, Cadell’s family was well-off & he was able to maintain a reasonable lifestyle. Now this post isn’t about Cadell himself so if you want to get some sense of the man, I recommend a look at his wiki entry for the story of his being left-handed. What a chancer. One of Cadell’s key w...

    This Saturday, September 26th, the final season of Michael Shur's charming, existential, fantasy comedy, The Good Place , finally lands at Netflix . All four seasons, 53 episodes, in one spot, without commercials.    I hope any who haven't seen it will have the opportunity to move through it without spoilers. The notion of it ending up in syndication, where the uninitiated will be randomly exposed to single episodes, is a sad one. It's the only solidly, essentially episodic comedy I can think of. With that in mind, I'm just going to run a season one promo here... and even then, I'd suggest just watching the show without set-up. As best I recall, I mainly put it on my DVR schedule initially mostly on the strength of knowing two of the leads were Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, and the advance word from critics was positive. I mainly only knew Bell from her appearances, as herself, on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson , where the two obviously hit...

 Howdy folks!     My apologies for the lateness of today’s entry but I was having having computer and other issues.  But to start with, enjoy these plush pumpkins I found today.  Aren't they adorable? Second in this week's bounty, a nice box set of the Hunger Games paperbacks.   I already had them in various editions, but I'm a sucker for a matched set of things.  And besides, it may be a time for a reread on these; I haven't touched them since the last movie came out and that's almost five years ago now.  (There is apparently a prequel novel out now but hey, I think I'm good when it comes to that. I've been watching the new Star Trek: Lower Decks show on CBS All Access (very funny and not just relying on Trek in-jokes), and I realized that I simply do not own this, the best Trek movie.  So this was a welcome find today so I can relive my childhood of watching Shatner and Montalban snarl at each other for 90+ minutes.  This is rea...

  Ebony in the Esperanza (Esperanza means hope.) My mom knew what to do when things were hard. I had a complicated relationship with my mother, as we all do. And as my children do with me, no doubt. And I still hear my mother’s voice in my head, as often happens long after mothers have moved on to the Other World. As much as I resisted her advice when she was here on the earthly plane and I was younger, I listen more eagerly now. Desperate times desperate measures, perhaps. Or perhaps because she was right. Go figure. My mother, whose name was Grace learned how to cope the hard way and she learned from her mother and sister.  Here is what they passed along to me. I hope it helps you today, one way or another. 1.       It will all be different in the morning. Maybe what you need is rest. Take a break and the answer will come to you. Or, as I sometimes say, “I need to be put down for a nap.”  Like little kids, we need to rest when it’s all just too much. 2. ...