Memoirous

I wrote a few weeks ago about my mother and her soap operas, you know, the daytime dramas that were on from about 1- 3 pm. Scheduled right after she got her morning household chores done and before the kids came home from school. That was life for the middle-aged, middle class housewife. Even the term house wife seems archaic. Anyway, I was reminded of this as I watched my daughter doing her business while walking around wearing headphones. She subscribes to a podcast. You can tell the generational difference: me, a baby boomer, has recently subscribed to Country Living magazine as a way to disengage from the world and all the stressful news. She, a millennial, has decided to pay for exclusive content from the podcast. I asked her what that meant. Of course, she rolled her eyes at me. (Just kidding, but it felt like it.) Behind the paywall (again, these terms!) she is privileged to take part in group chats, given access to YouTube videos to watch interviews that normal listener...

The BBC has a prodigious number of podcasts of all kinds available to listen to. https://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts I started with 13 Minutes to the Moon about the ill-fated Apollo 13 launch (the 50 th anniversary) which has been interrupted by another kind of disaster that has the world glued to their radios and TVs, the virus. Presenter, Kevin Fong a medical doctor, has been pulled away to assist the NHS to fight the pandemic. His narration is riveting—even if we already know this story, it is well worth listening to. Also from the BBC is a documentary called Death in Ice Valley https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p060ms2h about the mysterious body of a woman found outside the city of Bergen in Norway in 1970. The podcast has been tremendously popular since it first released in 2018. Ten Episodes. Eerily enough is the sound effect of drumming rain in the background that lends an atmosphere pf noir. Death in Ice Valley has been downloaded or streamed a total of five ...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a post last year, from 2017:  2017 was the pits. Let’s hope 2018 holds more for you, me, all of us. Aside from the fact that 2017 was the pits, there’s another interesting fact: I had a very productive, successful writing year with many things to celebrate. It just didn’t feel that way. From that earlier post: ** Not only a book contract for a novel I’ve been trying to sell forever, but 13 acceptances of “Other Writing” plus an eBook, Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing. Whew! It simply doesn’t make sense when I think of how chaotic and frustrated I felt. But as I also mentioned in an earlier post, a post from last year, from 2017, podcasts got me through the year. From the podcast, Hidden Brain, I learned that chaos can actually be good for our creative process. Messy inspiration. In Praise Of Mess: Why Disorder May Be Good For Us , November 29, 2016. I realize this podcast was pre-Trump. How could the modera...