Consortium of Seven: Year 4

“Mony a mickle mak’s a muckle” is a strange & somewhat enigmatic phrase that constantly hovers around Scotland, waiting to be occasionally used & often baffling those that hear it. It’s always a surprise when someone comes out with it. Basically meaning that lots of little things put together make a big amount, it’s one of those particularly pointless proverbs that people use as a kind of silence filler, like “take care of the pennies & the pounds will take care of themselves.” What? More confusingly, apparently “mickle” used to mean “a lot” too but it was corrupted into what we have today. A version is used in England it seems, but we’re here today to look at Scottish artists. Notice I’m not saying “great Scottish artists,” nevertheless there is quite a diverse range of styles & talents. What’s worth remembering here is that Scotland remains relatively small. With a population of only around 5.5 million, you’d think it might be difficult to find one hundred. As with th...

Episode 30 of my onoging audio tale of modern suspense. Only ten more installments left! You have time to go back and listen to the previous episodes, which you'll find at the Facebook Page "Freedom Island modern suspense."    

          A rough week coming out of a sometimes, personally scary weekend.        Ideally this will be self-publishing Friday morning, with me rolling into a holiday weekend in the late afternoon. Next Monday's Presidents' Day, and the company I work for has it as one of its odd holidays. Yay us. I know these three-day weekends tend to feel as if they go even more quickly than the standard variety, but I'll be trying to enjoy and otherwise make the reasonable best of it. Trying to achieve that unicorn blend of rest, enjoyment, and accomplishment.       Despite, or perhaps at least in part because of, the way it's been both compartmentalized and formulaic, I've been continuing enjoy the week-to-week of HBO's The Last of Us . Last week they gave us the weekly dose a couple days early (at least over on HBO Max), presumably because Sunday night had one of the last, remaining, true mass-media events -- The Sup...

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  Today, we're looking at 1933's The Invisible Man , directed by James Whale and starring Claude Rains.  So let's watch the trailer. The first major production based on the H. G. Wells novel, this is fairly close to the plot of the novel as Griffin (Claude Rains), already invisible due to his experimentations, settles into a small village inn as he tries to reverse the procedure.  And man, Rains is really good as Griffin, who was obviously already a jerk before he made himself invisible, gets progressively worse and more arrogant as he gets confronted by people going, "Dude, you're weird and are you robbing us?"  "Did you kill that guy?"  "What's with the obviously fake nose and glasses?" So hell, let's talk about the supporting cast.  No wait, that's Gloira Stuart in Titanic .  Where she famously describes herself as a dish back in the day.  Well, let's be frank, she wasn't lying. Gloria Stuart...

 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYbavuReVF4 Review by Elleanore G. Vance As Jeeves might have said, I am quite fond of closing myself away with an "improving book", and The Bell Jar seemed to fit that ticket. After I watched a Ted-ed video on YouTube (link below), I knew I needed to at least make the attempt. I want to warn you straight away that if you srtuggle with your own mental health, and especially suicidal thoughts/tendencies/ ideation, please steer clear, or have someone you trust on stand-by for help when youbreach diffult parts. Our story begins with Esther in New York. She has won a scholarship and is spending the summer as an intern for a ladies magazine. Its all fun and games until she goes to a party where she is sexually assaulted. She leaves New York immediately. Once home, we follow Esther as she struggles with what I personally recognize as PTSD (including but not limited to): * inability to sleep *Depression *inabil...

As long term readers of my column know, In January of '21 I read Winter Tide By Ruthanna Emrys. Here is that review.   Well, Deep Roots is the sequel. While Deep Roots was also on my Read list last year, it was this year's read of it that I really felt the tembre of the tale. Aphra and Caleb Marsh are looking for distant relatives. Distant enough to have been missed when the 1922 raid on Innsmouth swept the entire community into internment camps. The siblins are trying to rebuild the Spawning grounds that they would not be the final generation to come into the sea. But a group of contractors have ready money and without residents to retake family homes, the hopes are dim, indeed. The siblings fear their homes and ancestral buildings will be bulldozed to be turned into neat little rows of ticky-tacky little boxes. It is with a feeling of foreboding that the entourage goes to New York City. Oh! Wait. Sorry. Wait. If you haven't read the books, you don't know who the e...

 Newest installment of my audio tale of modern suspense, with slideshow. There's a Facebook Page where you can find all the episodes. Search Facebook for "Freedom Island modern suspense."