Moon Versus Fireworks [PHOTO GALLERY]

04. July 2012 · 4 comments · Categories: Photos

Our friend Wendy invited us to her place last night for a party followed by a rooftop viewing of the fireworks Milwaukee puts on in honor of the Fourth of July along Lake Michigan.

The moon was full and glorious and cast its light on the still water. Most of the chairs on the roof were pointed away from it toward Veterans Park, where the hour-long fireworks display took place just off the coast. Several boats surrounded the area; the people on half of them would have had to completely turn around to even notice the moon. A few of us up on the roof pressed against the railing to take pictures of it. But when the fireworks began, our attention shifted south.

I started taking pictures, not sure how they would turn out. At some point early on I realized that I could get the moon and the fireworks in the same shot, every shot, the moon sitting quietly, consistently on the left, burning its gaze on to the lake, while the fireworks, on the right, vacillated among frenetic, grand, gyrating, ear-shattering, choreographed to thrill. Like a little kid running around yelling, “Look at me, look at me, look at me!”

All the while the moon kept whispering, Hey. I’m right over here. 

I’m still here.

I’m still here.

Sidewalk Series, Pt. 1 [PHOTO GALLERY]

30. June 2012 · 5 comments · Categories: Photos

My brothers and I walked to the elementary school we attended as kids, just four blocks up the cinder path from our house. All our friends from our development went there too.

My mother would wait until we got down the driveway and on to the street, and then open the door and holler, “Stand up straight when you walk!”

She was talking to me. I’d jerk my head up, thrust my shoulders back and hips forward, but I could only hold it so long before it all went slack and I went back to staring at the ground, bent forward, looking as if I were in a hurry to get somewhere.

It’s a habit I’ve had all my life, and I’m trying to break myself of it as we speak, especially after seeing recent pictures of myself on stage at a music gig, thinking I’m all statuesque, but hunched over as if I’m trying to protect myself.

The habit has come in handy, however. Eight years ago when John and I married, I moved downtown with him. We walked everywhere. Used the bus sometimes. Used our cars seldom. We got rid of one. I walked to school, to meetings, to work, see friends, get my hair cut, all with my head down, looking at the sidewalk. I found money down there. Jewelry. An angry note. Works of art. Profound messages. Slices of American cheese.

And I thought, you just don’t see this everywhere. And that American cheese would make a great framed piece. Finally, a year ago, I started taking pictures of what I found on the city sidewalks. Which practice became easier after I got my iPhone.

What you see here is the beginning of the culmination of an idea I’ve had all these eight years. While I am walking straighter these days, when I’m out on the streets I just can’t help myself. Sorry, Mom.

This and other Sidewalk Series galleries can also be found at the Photos tab above. My Lake Michigan from Our Place galleries are there too.

Miss Gluntz

21. June 2012 · 8 comments · Categories: Stories

Miss Gluntz, thank you. And I’m sorry.

You were my first-grade teacher, and while at this point in my life I don’t remember a whole lot about first grade anymore, I do remember being a happy schoolgirl, in large part because of you. You had pretty eyes and a beautiful smile. You were supermodel tall, and so was your hair. You were probably younger than any of us could have ever imagined. I loved you so.

Cut to four years later. I was in fifth grade and so immersed in my own little world, I didn’t know you’d left school. I’m guessing you did because you got married and maybe wanted to start a family of your own. I was in Mr. Burnett’s homeroom and had just been voted Red Cross representative, in charge of shaking down classmates for donations to the American Red Cross and rewarding them with little red pins in the shape of a cross and feather. I sat in the corner of the classroom, next to the chalkboard and windows.

I don’t know what we were doing when there was a knock at our classroom door. But when Mr. Burnett opened it and you stepped through, all seven-feet-tall of you – that’s the way it looked to us fifth-graders – you were still beautiful, and you were wearing different clothes from the ones you wore when you were our first-grade teacher. Fancier. Your hair was a little longer, maybe curlier, and you wore makeup.

I have to say I didn’t recognize you right off.

You spoke. Probably made a little small talk at first with Mr. Burnett. Some of us squirmed in our seats.

Then you said, “I was wondering if Cynthia Mihaloew is here. She was in my first-grade class. I wanted to stop by and see how she’s doing now.”

You smiled like a movie star. We all stared back like deaf-mutes. Bill Boyer turned around and looked at me. I sat there, quiet as a rock, arms glued to my sides.

Mr. Burnett must have told me to raise my hand, because I remember there being a general shuffle in the room and more kids turning to look at me. I raised my hand the bare minimum. We made eye contact and you said, “There you are.”

Then you said: “You were such a special little girl. I loved being your teacher. I know you’re going to grow up to be something really special some day.”

At least that’s the way my ten-year-old little pea-brain remembers it.

Did I say thank you? No. Did I so much as nod curtly? No. Did I do anything at all? No.

It was the ultimate diss. You said a few more words, I don’t know what, and then you left. I felt totally embarrassed for being called out like that.

“Turn back around,” I said to Bill Boyer.

Cut to I don’t know how many years later. Maybe it was the first weekend I came home from college, when I suddenly realized that my parents weren’t such idiots after all. Maybe it was my first job out of college, which made me wish I had appreciated college a little more. Maybe it was the first divorce. Maybe the second.

Suffice it to say, I grew up, made mistakes, made more mistakes, then grew up some more. In the middle of all this I remembered you coming to my fifth-grade class and saying those really very precious things. You took time to seek me out, drive to the school, get permission to come into our room, and say what you did. And you didn’t have to do any of it.

But you did. And I just want to say to you:  Thank you so very much. You are precious to me too, and have been for years. I’m sorry I was such a ten-year-old punk. I sold myself short, even back then. But I’m happy now. Doing well at work and at life, and hope to do even better. Wherever you are, thank you for what you said that day. It means more to me than I can say.

I hope you’ve had a good life too.

 

Miss Gluntz’s first name is Janet. Cynthia is my given (and legal) first name. Mihaloew is my daddy’s last name.

UPDATE, 12/22/12: Since being in touch with Miss Gluntz’s family, I must correct my error and let you know that Miss Gluntz’s first name is Patricia. I think I may have confused it with Eddie and Nancy’s mama next door, whose first name really was Janet. 

A night at Sybaris Pool Suites

15. June 2012 · 8 comments · Categories: Stories

I don’t know journalist Molly Snyder personally, but we’re Facebook friends. A few weeks ago when she posted on her timeline that she was writing a review of Sybaris Pool Suites for OnMilwaukee.com, it caught my attention. Because I stayed there once.

Sybaris Pool Suites bills itself as a “paradise” where couples can go for getaway nights, weekends, lunch hours, whatever. The whole idea is for couples to “ignite feelings, rekindle romance and enjoy quality time together” in “whirlpool and swimming pool suites” that “are a delight to the senses…the ultimate romantic experience.” Locations are in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.

Many of the comments on Molly’s wall are the typical things you hear around here: “You’re going to Syphilis?” “Bring your own sheets.” “Gross!” Stuff like that.

There are words of joyous positivity: “[Expletive deleted] AWESOME!”

I commented: “It was one of the top five most depressing places I’ve ever been to.”

My husband is one of the coolest people I know. I adore him. We’re not prudes. But because we are a couple of wiseacres, Sybaris is definitely not anything we can take seriously.

So when we received a night’s stay there as a wedding gift we said, “Syphilis! Gross!”

The only person who should be giving the gift of a room at Sybaris is the person who wants to take the recipient there. Otherwise, it’s creepy. Imagine getting the gift of a “romantic paradise,” aka “don’t come a-knockin’ if this room is a-rockin’,” from your aunt and uncle. Gross. Your in-laws. Double gross. No one should be up in your business like that.

Our wedding gift of a night’s stay at Sybaris came from my husband’s former employer, which consisted of two female clericals and eighteen sweaty guys. One of whom came up with the idea (probably one of the “girls,” as they were called), all of whom chipped in for the gift. “Sure, I’ll chip in for Johnny to have a night of wild sex at the Syphilis.” Wink-wink-nod-nod-know what I mean? The jokes had to have gone on for weeks.

We finally went, just days before the gift certificate expired.

There are many things I remember about the place. Watching every trace of sunlight disappear in the cracks of the door as it closes behind us. The vacuum-seal sound it makes. Mirrors. Everywhere. No windows. Anywhere. The bidet.

Our favorite place in the large suite is the round James Bond-style booth in the corner. We drink one bottle of wine there and open a second. We watch TV in bed. Just like home. I get up to go to the fridge and ask John if he wants anything, and he says, “Yeah, I’ll take another piece of that leftover pizza.” Just like home. Except the bed is on a platform and has little white lights all around it like a marquis, and there is a mirror above it. We can give a crap.

The whirlpool is very cool. We move over to it and take our bottle of wine.

At night (it’s perpetually night there, you are so sealed off) I finally fall asleep. Somewhere in the middle of it, I am jarred awake and stare up at the mirror. John is snoring.

I feel the most incredible sadness about being here, because it’s not really working for me, and I think about the others who’ve been here, for whom it also has not worked, albeit for different reasons. Couples who’ve been here as a last resort before one of them goes to a divorce lawyer. People who’ve been here cheating on their spouses. One partner with high expectations; the other oblivious, self-centered. Back to business as usual when it’s all over.

My sadness is exacerbated by something I see the next morning. John is going out in search of breakfast to go, and I’m sitting outside in the bright morning sun, sick to death of being sealed off.

As he drives off, another couple pulls up and gets out of their car. He is barefoot and wearing cargo shorts that his belly flops over. He is talking into his cell phone and walks five, six steps ahead of the woman, who is loaded down with white to-go bags. The man opens the door to their suite and then lets it swing shut. The woman juggles the bags to get her thumb and two fingers free so she can finally open the door. She bumps it open with her butt, then disappears inside. Vacuum seal.

John comes back with the food and we eat it in the car. He goes inside and gets our bags, clears out the refrigerator, double-checks for any left-behinds, and then drives us around front to check out. The registration area is packed with commemorative items: T-shirts, champagne glasses, silk rose petals that you can shape into your own hearts on your own bed at home.

If the night was a success. If some kind of spark had actually been created during the rekindling process. If you didn’t go back home to business as usual.

I know I took some pictures of the James Bond table and the room but I can’t find them. You’ll have to look at Molly’s story to see what the place looks like.

Sybaris started sending promotional postcards to us in the mail immediately after our stay there. After a year of getting one every other week, I finally emailed them and asked them to take us off their list. “Of course,” they wrote back.

Since then, for about five years, we’ve been getting the same postcards, addressed now to “Current Resident.” I shred our address and put the rest in recycling.

 

 

 

 

Steal Like an Artist, Pt. 2: Meet my analog desk

08. June 2012 · 5 comments · Categories: Books

Pretty pathetic, huh? Yeah.

That brown paper, our cats like to lie on. I put it on the floor during the day and pick it up at night so they don’t wake us. Sometimes I forget to put it back down and it just stays there for days.

That’s my stack of old cookbooks, upper right, bathed in the light of the heavens. Magazines I haven’t gotten to yet. A note from a neighbor inviting me to a bi-weekly ladies night out I haven’t made it to yet. There’s lots of dust.

I do ninety-nine percent of my work on my laptop, which I use in the living room, on the bed, at a desk with a view of Lake Michigan. It is what Austin Kleon refers to in his book Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative as my “digital desk.”

So what is an “analog desk” then? It’s the polar opposite of the digital desk and Austin makes a case for it in Chapter 4, “Use Your Hands.”

“Computers have robbed us of the feeling that we’re actually making things,” he says. “Instead, we’re just typing keys and clicking mouse buttons.”

In addition to being a writer, Austin Kleon is an artist whose work is inspired by others artists going back to the 1860s: making poems by blacking out words in newspaper stories, which you can see on his Newspaper Blackout Web site (and book by the same name). He used to do most of his work at his digital desk, but then he realized something:

“Sitting in front of a computer all day is killing you, and killing your work. We need to move, to feel like we’re making something with our bodies, not just our heads. Work that only comes from the head isn’t any good.”

So he made major changes to his setup:

“I have two desks in my office—one is ‘analog’ and one is ‘digital.’ The analog desk has nothing but markers, pens, pencils, paper, index cards, and newspaper. Nothing electronic is allowed on that desk. This is where most of my work is born, and all over the desk are physical traces, scraps, and residue from my process. (Unlike a hard drive, paper doesn’t crash.) The digital desk has my laptop, my monitor, my scanner, and drawing tablet. This is where I edit and publish my work.”

Once he did this, Austin discovered that work “didn’t feel like work. It felt like play.”

Some of the most joyful times in my life have been when I’ve created analog-style. When I was an art minor in college. When I produced a community play for kids and sketched the costumes and painted the set. A poster I made after a bad breakup years ago titled “Things I Want To Do,” which hung in my office and fascinated my friends. It was the simplest thing. But they loved it. And I loved making it.

I have been glued to my digital desk far too long. The current state of my analog desk reflects this.

My only defense is that I have been playing in a band. So I am creating at the music stand. But point well taken: time to clean up the desk but good. Get out the sketch pad, and I don’t know. Doodle. Paint. Cut up magazines. Something. Not sure what yet. Audrey Niffenegger came up with the title The Time Traveler’s Wife while working on a project in her art studio; she wrote it down on the paper she covered her analog desk with, and her book was published a few years later.

“If we just start going through the motions, if we strum a guitar, or shuffle sticky notes around a conference table, or start kneading clay,” says Austin Kleon, “the motion kickstarts our brain into thinking.”

Now hand me that Lemon Pledge.

 

Lake Michigan from our place, Pt. 1 [PHOTO GALLERY]

31. May 2012 · 9 comments · Categories: Photos

Since moving to Wisconsin I’ve lived in two extremes: out in the country and down in the city.

My husband had already been living in the City of Milwaukee’s East Side neighborhood for a year when I moved into his place: an Art Deco building along Lake Michigan that’s a stop on architectural walking tours.

If you could float high above our building and look down, you would see that it’s shaped like a capital “I” with serifs. On the upper floors, where we live, this means that you can see Lake Michigan from each unit, no matter which side of the building you live on.

Our view is from our dining room, framed by three neighboring buildings: one to the left, one to the right, and one below. I look out at the lake every single day. Its characteristics can change sometimes several times in one day, along with the landscape, the sky, the light. It’s like a perpetually changing work of art.

I started taking pictures of Lake Michigan, framed by the same three buildings, about eight years ago, year round. I have a few hundred now. Here are forty of them. Enjoy.

Steal Like an Artist, Pt. 1: "Copy your heroes"

22. May 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Books, Events

Two weeks ago we went to Boswell Book Company to see writer/artist Austin Kleon, who wrote a really nice book called Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, published by Workman this year.

The book’s premise is contained in this T.S. Eliot quote in the preface:

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.”

Joan Didion, from the cover of The White Album

Steal Like an Artist does not condone plagiarism; Austin Kleon means something quite different. “What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere,” he says. “All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.”

This statement should bring relief to the writer, painter, poet, designer, musician. It does to me.

I know it’s an old notion, but look at Lady Gaga, who’s often accused of stealing from Madonna. If she had held out for a truly original idea, she’d still be waiting and maybe have produced nothing. Millions of people would have missed out.

I’m not a fan of Gaga, but that doesn’t matter. What I admire is the sense (or nerve) she took to be influenced and to press forward. “All creative work builds on what came before,” says Austin.

He goes on to paraphrase writer Jonathan Lethem, who “has said that when people call something ‘original,’ nine times out of ten they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.”

John Cheever, from the cover of The Wapshot Chronicle

For Lady Gaga, Madonna is a reference, an original source. Madonna in turn had her sources. If we were to trace back through them all, as Austin maintains in his book, we would see that their ideas have a history.

Whether Gaga has stolen, defaced, imitated, or turned what her sources did into something better or worse, I will leave up to you to decide for yourself.

The point is: There is a lot of magnificent stuff worth stealing. Identify it and who does it. Study those people, their work, figure out how they do what they do. Then practice it until you feel your own voice come through.

In his visit to Boswell, Austin told us about the eight, nine artists and writers he copies. He has pictures of them hanging in his workspace. He encouraged us to do this too.

Going up in mine: John Cheever and Joan Didion, without a doubt. Stephen King too, who is often dismissed as a genre writer. But his writing is clean and vibrant and beautiful and I would love nothing more than to be able to write like him someday.

Centuries of time have passed. We in 2012 have no hope of creating anything truly original anymore. But we can take from those artists we love, and bend, twist, and shape what they do into something that reflects our voice, our aesthetic.

Who are your heroes?

 

Ex-stepmoms, ex-wives, friends

15. May 2012 · 5 comments · Categories: Stories

Not long ago, I met Vivian (not her real name) for lunch.

We hadn’t seen each other since I remarried in 2004. There had been no falling out, no one said anything mean or stupid—our lives just diverged, started taking place on different paths.

We met back in 2000, at church. We hit it off quickly and discovered we had a lot in common: we were both with divorced men with two kids, and we were both struggling.

I hate to even call the guy my husband. We were married just under three years. He doesn’t feel like he was ever my husband.

My absolute last chance to back out came during our wedding ceremony—yes, during—when two minutes into it, my fiancé, aka Mr. Gadget, stopped the minister.

“I forgot to turn on the video camera,” he said.

While he fiddled with the camera, the minister looked at me and I looked at him. And I kid you not: a massive thunderstorm broke out. The whole room got dark. I should have come to terms right then and there with the fact that the reason our wedding was being taped was because no one in his family or my family had bothered to show up.

Lightening struck. Thunder shook the church. A voice inside my head said: Walk back down the aisle, now.

I didn’t.

Three months later we were in counseling. We went through four, five different therapists as he looked for the one that would tell him exactly what he wanted to hear.

In the meantime, Vivian and I met other people at our church who were trying to make their blended families work too. We formed a step-parenting group, small but mighty. The women, and some of the men, in that group became my closest friends for a while. Some of us are still in touch via social media. But we don’t talk like we used to. It makes me sad sometimes, because they really helped me through a very dark period in my life, not all of it because of this guy. I wonder if they remember that they helped save my life.

Things came to a head at my house when, late one night, my sixteen-year-old stepson said, “I don’t have to listen to you, you’re not my parent,” grabbed my arms, twisted them, and left welts the thickness of fettucini. My husband had already gone to bed. I woke him up and told him what happened.

“You probably deserved it,” he said.

The next day he got in my face. I started moving out my things while he wasn’t around. Two of my step-parenting friends stored them in their shed, one went to my divorce hearing with me. We all went to Vivian’s wedding.

I stopped going to church. Dated. Met my current husband and got remarried. I didn’t see Vivian again until earlier this year, when she emailed me out of the blue one week before her divorce hearing. Her husband had problems similar to my ex’s, with the extra-added bonus of substance abuse and certain other addictions.

She looked very tired. Beat up, with no bruises. Cried when we touched on certain subjects. She asked me a lot of questions about what happened in my own situation, which had ended nine years ago almost to the day.

Vivian was scared to go to her divorce hearing, but she did, and survived. When she emailed me to say, “Let’s have lunch,” she added, “I have a present for you.”

After we sat down, she slid a book across the table. The full import of which did not occur to me at first. The cover is that of a 1951 Harlequin novel; inside, journal paper.

In the back, behind a tab, is graph paper, the sight of which always takes me back to my father, a retired NASA engineer, who brought the stuff home from work, which I used to pilfer and write and draw on. My boxes of childhood memorabilia are rife with it. One of the tablets my dad gave me back then is in my office drawer.

“Thank you,” I said to Vivian.

A lot of the questions Vivian asks me force me to go back to a time I really don’t want to go back to. It was horrible. I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I had walked back down that aisle.

But I did do it. So did she. Despite the fear of losing ourselves in these relationships; being persona non grata at a time in our lives when it definitely should have been all about us; the anger over not trusting ourselves.

Now that I am through it, I am happy to reach in and help pull someone else through. Happy it’s been nine years, and that I can actually laugh at bits of it. To have new graph paper to draw on. To have Vivian back and see that she is prettier every time I see her.

What books also sometimes tell us [BONUS]

08. May 2012 · 5 comments · Categories: Books

I recently purchased a few more old cookbooks, among them The Special Diet Cook Book by Marvin Small (New York: Greystone Press; 1952), which I got for a buck.

I usually pass on diet cookbooks because their look-and-feel tends to be clinical; most have no food illustrations or photographs, the hallmark of old cookbooks. There’s nothing special about The Special Diet Cook Book, other than it’s now the oldest one I own.

But there’s something else about it that makes it one of the more fascinating books I own: marginalia.

Merriam-Webster defines marginalia as “notes or embellishments (as in a book)” that a reader scrawls in the margins of a book’s pages. According to Wikipedia, Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a famous writer of marginalia. So is Voltaire, Mark Twain, Sylvia Plath, and David Foster Wallace.

As a research assistant in graduate school, I worked two semesters for a professor who studied marginalia written in late 19th-century books and magazines. Marginalia permits us to imagine a reader who engaged with a text. The notes they make in the books they read can tell us something about them, how they lived, how they read. And sometimes it can be very entertaining.

Case in point, this handwritten note that fills the inside cover of The Special Diet Cook Book (all spelling and grammar errors are the annotator’s):

“This book is not tops in diet. It cant be, as it is a cookbook to begin with and next it uses egg whites, pepper and mustard. That kills a big part of it for health diet and worse yet, vinegar and land salt too. Still its better by far then just some cookbooks. If your lucky, some time you may get Paul Braggs health cookbook. That is a much more better one. It has 402 pages, 33 pages of indexes and Prof. Paul Braggs picture in back. This costs 5 cents more, but is worth a thousand more. Its not what the doctor ordered. It tops that. It gives a vitamine chart on foods. You will see less where vinegar is left out in the other book and much white flour also land salt and not so much pepper or mustard and maybe less egg whites.”

Two more notes read: “See page 251” and “See 336.”

no images were found

Page 251 is where “The High Residue or ‘Regularity’ Diet (Anti-constipation)” chapter begins. Here is written: “This looks best.”

On page 336, where “The Low Fat – Low Cholesterol Diet” begins, “very fine” is written.

In the low fat chapter, “Yes” is written next to the recipe for “Fat-Free Whole Wheat Bread,” and “Fine” next to “Oatmeal Bread.”

“Cream of Mushroom Soup” gets an “OK.” Notes next to other recipes include “Not this” and “No,” and in some cases it’s an upper case “NO.” You can almost hear the reader shouting.

Where each “NO” appears, so does a bold “X,” right through the recipe. Under “Apricot Mustard Sauce” and “Pickled Beets,” the ingredients dry mustard and tarragon vinegar are struck through with such vehemence there’s a depression in the paper. Why the reader considered dry spice and vinegar enemies to a healthy diet, we’ll never know.

Most of the rest of the cookbook is unmarked. Did the reader have only cholesterol and constipation problems? Did the reader actually prepare the recipes? Or just read them?

In the preface is scrawled: “This book is posibly not half tops in a health cookbook. The best part is the calorie chart. Yes and no-no.”

Marginalia also indicates that the book had a few different owners. On the title page is written: “A special gift to Mr. Mrs. Senecal from L. Hollenger.” “Senecal” is crossed out and “Mr. Mrs. Morey” written in, in a different hand. It is unclear if one of the Senecals or Moreys wrote the marginalia, or if someone else did.

Whoever did, though, maybe he or she is right. Maybe it is a bad diet cookbook. Then again, maybe anger management is in order.

In either case, stuff like this is gold to storytellers. Put ten of us in a room, show us juicy little nuggets like these, and we’ll tell you ten different stories starring the Senecals, the Moreys, the book, and what happened to them. And they’ll all be good.

 

BONUS! Banana Salad Bazaar

Fish fry, supper clubs, and lunching with the Octodemons

02. May 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Events

This month it’s my turn to pick out the next Octodea meeting location, time, and date. The email went out yesterday: we’re meeting May 17, and in honor of Cinco do Mayo we’ll go to Riviera Maya in Bay View, a hip neighborhood just south of downtown Milwaukee.

I first heard about Octodea from co-founding member Ron Faiola, a videographer and producer. We met through my husband John, who’d known him since their younger days in the music scene. In a conversation one night, Ron and I discovered we’re both in the same business.

“You should come to the next Octodea meeting,” he said. “I’ll tell Joe about you and have him send you an invitation.”

He went on to tell me that the group was formed in 2003 when he and some colleagues—Joe, Pat, Scott, and Dave, along with a few others—banded together as a partnership of creative professionals who refer each other to clients and bring each other in on the projects they’re working on.

“We’re always looking for more good people,” said Ron.

The word Octodea comes from parts of other words that were combined to create it. Members are independent graphic designers, product development and branding experts, Web developers, writers, editors, videographers, photographers, directors, and producers working in print, multimedia, and business theater. Dave has taken to nicknaming the group “Octodemons.”

We discuss a topic at each meeting. March, it was social media. Last month, we were interviewed by a college student writing a paper on entrepreneurship. All of us have been in business for ourselves for a long time, and it took a while to remember why we started what we started all those years ago.

This month our topic is the new AMC show “The Pitch,” a competition that pits one ad agency against another. In the first episode, the client is Subway; in the second, it’s Waste Management. By the time May 17 gets here, a few more episodes will have aired, so we’ll have a lot to talk about.

We always do. Last month, after we got that slow start talking about ourselves, things picked up and became more fluid. After the student thanked us, the discussion broke into three or four smaller conversations. At one point I looked up and felt a vibration, an energy, a brightness that only comes from people who love what they do.

“It seems easy compared to some of the other groups you belong to,” said my husband. “You seem to really like it.”

It is. And I do.

Ron came in January but hasn’t been back since, with good reason. A few years ago he shot and produced a documentary called “Fish Fry Night Milwaukee,” showcasing the city’s fervent love for the Friday night tradition. While out shooting “Fish Fry,” he discovered that the supper club is alive and well too, so he shot and produced his film “Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old Fashioned Experience.”

Then Ron went to Chicago and got himself a book deal for Wisconsin Supper Clubs. He had to excuse himself from Octodea while he traveled around the state interviewing supper club owners and patrons. And eating things like Monte Cristo sandwiches on French toast, and Cajun Alligator. When last I emailed him, he was visiting supper clubs “#44 & 45 of 50!” so he should be home any time now, if he isn’t already.

See you soon, Octodemons.

 

 

 

 

« Older articles
Newer articles »