Consortium of Seven: Year 4

After Tony Bennett died ten days ago, I wandered through the 2,500-odd posts I published between 2007 and 2022 at on my now-deleted blog, Echoes In The Wind , looking to see what I had ever written about the man. It wasn’t much. I highlighted a few of his tracks in several posts looking at a particular year or at covers of a particular song, but I never wrote much about the man himself. I think that Bennett was one of those artists who are so well-known, so huge, that it’s hard to write anything new. All we need to do is listen to the tunes. But I did find one piece from 2018 (I’ve cleaned up a few things and expanded a few others):   I ran an errand the other day for the Texas Gal, something so routine that I’ve forgotten what the errand was, but it brought me near the new home of Uff Da Records, St. Cloud’s only real record store. So I spent some time leaning over the CD tables.   Much of what I saw fell into two categories: Stuff I already had and stuff that didn’t inte...

sun·dry /ˈsəndrē/ noun plural noun :  sundries various items not important enough to be mentioned individually. "a drugstore selling magazines, newspapers, and sundries" I’m wrapping up the last part of my last week off school. It’s been very hot in St. Louis. They had a beautiful storm night before last which brought cooler temperatures and it is beautiful this morning. Since our arrival I’ve taken a few photos. Hope you enjoy a short tour of this beautiful city and its inhabitants.  Mike has this house for sale in Rolla, MO There are many beautiful steeples in St. Louis Built to last  Street scenes Where can you sit in peace? That green building was a millinery when I was a kid.  Entry to The Fortune Teller Bar This was called Favirite Bakery when I was a young, and my first husband worked there.  Hope that turtle is ok.  Plant sale at the Missouri Botanical Garden.  Coffee at Revocup, an Ethiopian coffee shop. Excellent. 

This week’s anniversary is a rather sad one: on this day in 1890, Vincent van Gogh died. We all know how that went down. In fact, we probably all know lots of facts about Vincent & his miserable demise. You probably know he was self-taught, that today we like to think he’d have been given better medical help. But let’s think about what he actually achieved & glorify that instead.  His accomplishments were not financial, having only sold one painting in his lifetime. You might have known this too. In this way he may be regarded as one of the Ultimate Artists, driven purely by the need to create with no material reward. & he was prolific with it, hardworking & making about 2100 works within ten years. During his short life, he suffered greatly of course & many people will have opinions about his works. I’d argue that there is something for everyone in his oeuvre. If like me, you like monochromatic images, you’ll find them in his creations. Obviously there are the ...

        Bits and pieces...       I chanced to see that while Comicon was in play out in San Diego last week, Amazon slipped a standalone origin story for Atom Eve onto their platform, placing it just after the first season finale for Invincible , the animated series based on Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman's superhero comic series. That was followed by the announcement that the start of season two of Invincible will be arriving November 3rd. Unfortunately, presumably with an eye on the content pipeline and another on the ongoing strike, that will just start the first half of the eight-episode season. So that fourth episode will land on the 24th, the day after Thanksgiving. Currently they haven't announced the date for when the second half of the season will begin, other than to announce it will be "in early 2024." Presumably they'll tell us by the 24th, so as to give the audience a new target date to fix on the horizon. Amazon decli...

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  Lot of traveling this week so I'm writing this earlier than usual.  Hope everyone is dealing with the summer/winter well.  Let's get to the thrift stores! ______________________________________ A pillow book has an unfortunate sexual connotation, but is just a collection of anecdotes and stories and poems, usually from the educated women of a courtly society.   This was a random pick-up at a 2nd And Charles here in Richmond, from who is apparently regarded as a great British YA author.  Also, I love that promotional sticker.  "A HUGE BOOK IN EVERY SENSE!" ______________________________________ James Gunn has been taking over the DC films universe lately and outside of dealing with detritus of the previous administration (sorry. Flash , bugger off) he's been ramping up for a new Superman movie.  He's noted a few Superman books that he is saying will be influencing his movie: Superman: Birthright All-Star Superman Su...