Intake & Output
I’ve got a lot of things on my mind, as always. None of them vital, all of them pressing.
- Let’s all get together and apply pressure on Linda Oblack to take her “Goings on at My Place” and her “Today on My Morning Walk…” bits and put them where they belong — on their own interwebs address, something like this one. If you think The Pencil is a global communications colossus, wait’ll you see the following that dame is gonna have when she goes full-out blog with her brilliant, insightful, whimsical, and indispensable daily observations. Lemme put it frankly: If you don’t love Linda Oblack you’re incapable of feeling the emotion.
- I’ve just discovered the coolest science show on television. Called Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey, it’s a BBC2 production, now on Netflix, and it’s revolutionary. Why? ‘Cause it’s hosted by two women, the physicist Dr. Helen Czerski and wildlife/science geek Kate Humble. The latter also describes herself as a “naturist,” (I’ll explain in a bit * ). Anyway, the two talk about the very simple — yet amazingly complex in its implications and effects — orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Our climate, our animal populations and migrations, even our civilizations are profoundly effected by the vagaries of our little world’s yearly trip around our star. And the best thing about the programme (oh, those Brits!) is, it’s two women doing the talking, location shooting, experimentation, et cetera. Huzzah for females in the hard sciences! May there be scads more as we inch further into the 21st Century.
- Both The Loved One and I have sisters weathering the big blow in Florida this weekend. I spoke with my sis, Charlotte, last night. She had a houseful — two of her kids, a grandkid, and all their respective mates — were hunkering down in her Boca Raton crib, which C. described as dark as a tomb thanks to the storm shutters blocking all outside light. I spoke w/ her at about 6pm; she said the storm was due to hit at about 8:40. Now I won’t hear from her until her power goes back on sometime in the future. TLO’s sis Deanna and her squeeze are battening down the hatches just outside Cape Canaveral, which is getting slammed this AM as I type. If the worst that happens is they lose some tiles from their roofs, we’ll all be lucky. BTW: Czerski & Humble’s Orbit has a lot of dope on how our elliptical path through space actually makes hurricanes happen, thanks to the Coriolis Effect.
- The Loved One and I enjoyed a delicious Lou Malnati’s pizza — cheese and sausage, of course — yesterday eve, thanks to the modern wonders of air-freight delivery and the home freezer. Loyal Pencillista, The Lake County Republican, AKA David Paglis, sent us a couple of LM pies via UPS back when I was starting chemoradiation therapy in February. TLO dug the bejesus out of the deep-dish and I was not nauseated — a great step forward considering the very idea of tomato sauce and cheese hitting my cisplatin-damaged maw actually made me want to retch a mere few months ago. Yay for me. And thanks, you old GOP-er.
- My beloved Cubs begin their march toward destiny this PM as they welcome the San Francisco Giants to heaven on Earth — Wrigley Field — for Game One of the 2016 National League Division Series. TLO & I will be staking out a front row bar seat at Nick’s English Hut for the 9pm (8 CDT) first pitch. Sorry, Teresa Swift et al, but you Bay denizens had better keep a big supply of Kleenex™ on hand for all the weeping y’all are gonna be doing over the next week.
- * “Naturist” is a more continental appellation for nudist. The term, though, implies far more than the shedding of clothes. Humble, a proud naturist, said in a Daily Telegraph article (no link, sorry), that walking around her English countryside farm bare as the day she was born is the perfect way to “get close to nature.” She adds, “Everyone should try it.” The comments under the Telegraph piece were evenly split between men and woman; the dudes, natch, made all manner of cracks about how she was more than welcome to traipse around their backyards any time she wished and the females tended toward self-deprecation, as in this example: “No thanks, as a community service I will keep my clothes on — mainly to avoid people suffering from Post Traumatic Stress from the shock!”
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Pluggin’
Check out Betsy Stirratt‘s “Space and Volume” exhibit at Nashville (IN)’s Red Arrow Gallery. The opening reception is tomorrow night from 6-9pm.
Abject II
Oil on Panel
2014, Betsy Stirratt
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Betsy will join me in the WFHB studios Monday afternoon for the taping of next week’s Big Talk feature on the Daily Local News.
And speaking of Big Talk, here’s the link to yesterday’s show, with my guests playwrights Dr. Gladys DeVane and Liz Watford-Mitchell and director Danielle Bruce. The three will stage the historical, multi-media presentation, “Resilience: Indiana’s Untold Story,” a pastiche of recollections of the black experience in the Hoosier State. The play runs Oct. 14-16 at the John Waldron Arts Center. Get your ducats at the Buskirk-Chumley Box Office — just don’t go to the BCT the night of the show, savvy?
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Publish Or Perish
Set the alarm for 7am tomorrow. Otherwise you might miss my pal Shayne Laughter‘s big piece on WFIU’s Café Indiana program. Café honcho Yael Ksander is giving the entire half-hour cultural arts show over to Laughter who looks at the scary world of book publishing from the author’s POV.
Laughter
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Laughter herself wrote Yu: A Ross Lamos Mystery.
Shayne’ll delve into both the traditional and self-publishing routes with a special glance at Bloomington’s own AuthorHouse (now owned by Penguin Random House), a noted pay-for-play outfit. Her guests will include the scribes Annette Oppenlander, Claire Arbogast, Kalynn Huffman Brower, and Terry Pinaud.
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