Yeah, boring stuff, sort of.
Actually, not so much. First off, I found a new background for my “Villanelle” poem that I’m really happy with. My friend Caroline Cicero, who lives out in Malibu, caught a beautiful sunrise coming up over the Santa Monica mountains, and she gave me permission to use it with the poem. I finally made time to but the image and words together and get it on a webpage for uploading. So, this is the unveiling of the updated version. I’m so pleased with it because Caroline’s photo capture more the imagery I wanted that the previous version did (which had actually used a sunset picture).
Throughout the website, the basic header for the site has been updated, along with the navigation buttons being replaced by basic text links. The copyright information has been updated as well.
Now that the structure overhaul is completed, I can get back to adding material more regularly. I hope to add more poetry soon, as well as a new featured article (a Charles Williams paper I gave at Mythcon some time ago). Down the road, I plan on writing some articles specifically for the website.
Additionally, as I mentioned before, I’ll be adding my Zazzle store to the Gallery. I’ve been coloring some of my old Mythlore artwork for the fun of it, and intend to offer many of the pieces on blank notecards (at the very least). If you’d like to see the art on other items as well, do let me know! You can see some of the things I’ve done so far over on my LiveJournal.
UPDATE TO EVENTS MENTION – in the previous post, I mentioned the GLAWS event next month, featureing Harry Turtledove and Tim Powers. Unfortunately, Tim has had to bow out of the February Special Speaker Event. In his place, author Barbara Hambly will be joining Harry to talk about researching for your novel. As a former Jeopardy! researcher, I get to moderate and toss in my two cents worth of advice as well. It should be a fun afternoon for writers, and I hope you consider coming.
The opening show for the season was Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. It’s a challenging show for the audience, since the story is unfolded backwards from a disasterous scene where we see the final breaking of a long-standing friendship because of the utter commercialization of one of the main trio of characters, a song composer turned producer. Each following scene moves back in time, slowly revealing how he had been diverted from his original creative ideals. The final scene, where the three friends first meet and inspire each other is heartbreaking because we now know how and why it will fail. If only they had chosen differently! The company did a pretty good job of handling this complex storytelling.
For me personally, the show pushed some buttons, because one of my “pending” (that is, unfinished) writing projects has a similar theme: how creative individuals can go astray, lose their original inspiration. One difference though between this show and my play (titled The Wrecks of Glory) is that I believe that original inspiration can be regained and that loss and diminishment is not necessarily inevitable. I’m not sure that is what is intended in Merrily, but it could easily be taken that way. In any case, the show nudged me about my own project, and has stirred the pot on that bit of writing.
The second show is the Neil Simon comedy God’s Favorite. The simplest way of describing it would be the Book of Job presented as a modern sitcom. But it doesn’t take the core issue as ridiculous: that a man’s choice to stay committed to God in the face of all disasters is not easy nor ignoble. This production is very effective in presenting the emotional challenge of holding on – and Steve Gustafson as Simon’s Job, Joe Benjamin, does a fine job in conveying both the humor and pathos of his character. And it spoke to Real World matters for me: not just the challenges I am facing myself, but also the challenges that many of my friends – unemployed in this harsh economy – are dealing with. If you have to get messages from God, getting it in a satisfying piece of entertainment is a good thing.
So I snapped the pictures of the DeLorean, and then turned to head into the lobby.
In these early pages, the main character assembles a metal detector and tries it out at a special location. The story is set in 1940, when such contraptions were apparently still new.
I don’t expect quid pro quo on the sending of cards. I realize many people do not have the card-sending habit. I also used to be concerned about sending “religious” Christmas cards to my friends who either belonged to another faith or were non-believers. But when I decided to make my own cards, I gave this a lot of thought. I used to go find generic holiday cards to send to those folks. But it was an added expense. And I came to the conclusion that the sending of the cards was not about the recipients’ beliefs, it was about mine. This card-sending ritual was about why Christmas is important to me. It is my acknowledgement of all the people who have touched my life. It is about who I am. These people all know I am a Christian, and they accept that. So why should I imagine that they would be bothered by my Christmas cards?
