Consortium of Seven: Year 2

It might be a European thing but when I think of Hallowe’en, my mind doesn’t go to the bland toothlessness of pumpkins or even witches – unless they’re Tam O’Shanter’s.  No, I think of forests, rituals & evenings that go dark early & suddenly. I think of wet soil recently turned over & mushrooms you shouldn’t eat.  In Scotland, we always had the tradition of Guising, not Trick or Treating. It amounts to the same activity, but even the suggestion of acting as something you are not, disguising yourself - particularly in homemade masks & costumes - suggested a more sinister prospect. Today Hallowe’en is not dealt with widely in Scottish schools on religious grounds although this was not always the case. Growing up, I recall my disappointment at missing a Hallowe’en party at primary school (the only one I recall) due to illness & being brought a bag of sickly sweets from a classmate afterwards. I clearly remember the lantern’s eyes flickering in the corner of m...

        Overly elaborate schemes of vengeance - and, occasionally, of instruction - have appealed to me for most of my life. Some of it's a cathartic path, I'm sure, though in many cases that's weak as the victims have been chosen on a madman's whim. Most of it is glorying in the details, the intricacies and eccentricities.     Quick side-note: It had slipped my mind that the Rube Golberg reference might fall flat with some readers. Rube was an American author, cartoonist, engineer, inventor and sculptor, who is primarily remembered for outlandishly complicated devices. It's a default reference when mentioning any elaborately-prepared action, and so I'm using it rather broadly here.        Whether Vincent Price was drawn to such things, or such projects were drawn to him because he  sold the roles so well, I cannot say, though I suspect it was both. Within three years in the early 1970s he starred in three films that q...

 Happy Thursday, everyone, and I'm hoping that you're having a pleasant week.  The US general election is ongoing (I voted a week ago) and if you are in the US I hope you already have or are getting ready to vote by Tuesday.  This is an important one  (even more than usual) and it's so important we all vote.  Now on to the random crap I found this week! Published just over a century ago, in 1919, this is the charming sequel to the wonderful Parnassus On Wheels , wherein Roger Mifflin was running a bookstore in a horse-drawn cart.  I'm an absolute sucker for bookstore novels and these are excellent examples with a good affection for the material and a lovely wit.  It's also a fun look at early-20th-century Brooklyn, with an added bonus of a darn good mystery. ________________________________________ Like last week, this two items are from an author who is apparently extremely well-regarded but of whom I have almost zero knowledge and definitely I've nev...

  In these wild and crazy times, I want information – as much as I can get. Information is power, which sometimes means the power to cope and other times maybe just the power to stay watchful.  Despite my skepticism, I have long realized that the movement of the planets affects the general climate, the zeitgeist, the way things tend to go. After all, if the movement of a butterfly can set off currents of air that have an effect across the globe, why would the constellation of planets affect the flows in the cosmos. (One part of chaos theory explains that the unpredictable nature of weather is caused by small changes that lead to larger events.   https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/ocean-circulation-and-butterfly-effect/print/ ) So, I turn to astrology to explain trends, get a glimpse of why people do the wacky things they do, and more. And I always watch for Mercury retrograde, when mechanical and electronic devices tend to fail or go awry, travel is disrupted (a...

Recently I've resumed work on a history-based project. Much of that involves immersing myself in American culture, high and low, of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The film "Francis," about a talking mule,  and its sequels, were huge as America moved from the Forties to the Fifties.  There were seven (yes, 7!) movies -- six starring Donald O'Connor, one with Mickey Rooney -- in the Universal franchise. In addition to the movies, Francis was all over pop culture. Just to begin with, t here were two different records by Chill Wills, the actor who voiced the famous animal:                                "A Mule Is A Fool" played on a vintage record player:                  "Francis the Talking Mule" on the Capitol Records label. In the late 1940s, old-time radio was fading but still happening, and Francis could be heard over big floor model receivers and table...