the shape of trees

Friday Night Lights.

1 Comment

On July 15, Friday Night Lights ends its five-year run. And recently, the folks behind the Emmy Awards announced four nominations garnered by the cast and crew: Outstanding Lead Actor, Outstanding Lead Actress, Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series and Best Drama Series. So well deserved.

This television show is one of my favorites. Drawn to it initially by the fantastic cast headlined by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, I’ve been introduced to so many talented actors, all playing characters I’ve come to love. Life –and football- in Dillon, Texas are pretty interesting to me because of them.

Friday Night Lights is the sort of show you can’t help but record because you want to watch it slowly –watch parts again, really savor the work. You can save up a few episodes to watch together –”serious TV time,” I call it. It’s a joy, a learning experience, moments of appreciation that television could be that good.

Few shows make it to my “serious TV time” … Picket Fences, The Sopranos and Northern Exposure are in there. Of course, now there’s On Demand and Hulu and all sorts of ways to watch your favorite shows, but this Friday night, I’ll be doing my serious TV time, watching several saved up FNL episodes in honor of Peter Berg and everyone associated with it – including the series finale.

And as far as the Emmys are concerned, I watch several of the shows nominated for Best Drama Series … but I hope Friday Night Lights wins this year. It would be proper thanks for the inspired storytelling.

Snaps for brainywoman.

Leave a comment

The global community of inspiring women is awesome. Always supportive and social, it’s really satisfying to serve them. Fun, too.

Recently, one of my clients –brainywoman.com– was nominated as “Most Positive Website in June” by  PostiveThinking-Toolbox.com. Site creator Bonnidette Lantz interviews Patricia Anaya –the woman behind brainywoman.com- here. Snaps!

One of the things Bonnidette loves about brainywoman.com is reading our stories featuring all those brainywomen out there creating a difference in their lives and in the lives of others. “So, every time you highlight a brainywoman, there is a chance one of your readers can say, ‘Ah, yes -that is me,'” she says. “‘I can do that.'” This is exactly why bw Magazin’ is structured the way it is. “I want to thank my editor, Janet Muniz,” Patricia responds, “because she is the woman behind the stories in bw Magazin’ and I have learned a lot from her. She is a wonderful woman!”

Thank you, Patricia –and thanks for your kind regard, too, Bonnidette. We appreciate it.

If anyone would like to tell their story, or tell the story of a friend, tell us! Visit brainywoman.com here and we’ll get you published.

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

Successful unveil.

Leave a comment

After celebrating five years of publishing trade magazine HUDSON’S Childrenswear Review, co-founder Margaret Mobius took stock of her media company’s future. “In recent months, we have taken the time to really consider our dream – our brand, goal and focus, and our customers’ needs and wishes,” she says. “Now, we are excited to introduce to you our newly re-designed website.”

On July 1, Margaret and our staff unveiled a clean, well-organized online presence for HUDSON’S featuringa “magazine flipbook” version of our current issue and a nifty advertiser section that highlights our advertisers in a stand-out way.

Developed by Jordan Mansfield, the all-new HUDSONSCR.com also has links to official blog HCRSourceBook (two years’ publishing in May), HUDSON’S Facebook page and more.

I’m excited! It’s a fabulous start to the rest of 2011 and beyond!

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

In praise of day husbands.

4 Comments

Check out what my day husband –long-time collaborator and creative partner J.Churchill Morgan- says about working together:

Most partnerships pale in comparison to the day husband-day wife bond –that rare and most unique of creative synchronicities capable of moving every project to a higher level. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be part of that? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t benefit, least of all a client.

What’s cool about asking your day husband (or any trusted creative partner) for an endorsement is, you can throw a little love their way. I find that a testimonial says just as much about the person or company giving it, so when you put one out there, it reflects graciously. A reward in itself.

Thank you.

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

Clipping coupons.

Leave a comment

What I’d like is to hike the hills of Julian, California.

Feel the sun on my shoulders and smell the sweet heat of the Earth. Stroll the streets, shop a little, maybe have a piece of pie. Stop by Pine Hills Lodge for an adult beverage. Continue on a wine tasting adventure and visit some old friends. Watch the sun go down sipping a nice Grenache Rosé.

What I’m doing, though, is clipping coupons.

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

Bright core of failure.

Leave a comment

I’m meditating on abundance today, a practice that grows richer with the concept of flow.

The title of this post refers to a poem written by Rumi. Whether you’re flourishing in success or lamenting a failure, it is really all the “same glory,” as his words are translated. “You live in beautiful forms, and you are the energy that breaks form,” Rumi writes. “All light, neither this nor that.”

My yoga teacher Nancy Ayala

What a lovely expression of abundance, of flow. No matter what you face or how you get there, your personal power fills that place where experience lives with its light. It’s the epidemy of abundance, coming from a place of “full” … able to move in and out, back and forth, up and down, no matter what it looks like on the outside.

At the end of each yoga class, my teacher says, “My light sees your light.” I can’t help but feel full then, feel the abundance of life.

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

Cowboy in another life.

2 Comments

Dreaming about the lovely Absaroska Mountains in Paradise Valley, Montana near Chico Hot Springs Resort and Day Spa. Up near Yellowstone and Livingston. They don’t call it Big Sky for nothing. Saddle up and move ’em out.

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

Summer introductions.

Leave a comment

Today, I smell peonies growing in my front yard, the scent filling my office. The Earth has already opened its arms to the solstice and I am following suit.

Many across the country have already experienced summer’s heat … and fire or floods … but she’s only recently revealed herself to us here in the Pacific Northwest, shyly exhaling soft, warm air over all the living things. Big sigh. Not to say that things haven’t been growing around here; it’s a moist Lord-of-the-Rings sort of landscape lush with pine and green. A shade garden, I think they call it.

What I know is, it’s warmer outside than it is in here, so that’s where I’m heading. To celebrate the sun.

And … to find scented geraniums at the garden shop. I’ve got the truck today!

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

World according to …

Leave a comment

Right now in Toronto, Moses Znaimer’s ideacity11 conference is in full swing. Also known as “Canada’s Premier Meeting of the Minds,” ideacity reminds me of a three-day TED talk for “the 600 privileged to attend.” Those unable to be there can watch featured talks and more from the website.

I’m thinking of the very first time I heard of Moses Znaimer. He spoke at a Promax confab. The co-founder of Citytv so rocked everyone’s world with what he had to say, that he honored the group with an encore performance –this is the one I witnessed. Not that I wouldn’t have gone to his original gig; I remember being drawn to his photo in the program (to the left). I just wasn’t allowed to go at the time. Which is fodder for another post.

Nevertheless, Moses did not disappoint. Back then, he was leading a “Television Revolution,” presenting his ideas about media production, punctuated with innovative Citytv video expressing his theories in action:

Television is the triumph of the image over the printed word.

Print created illiteracy. TV is democratic. Everybody gets it.

The true nature of television is flow, not show; process, not conclusion.

As worldwide television expands the demand for local programming increases.

The best TV tells me what happened to me, today.

TV is as much about the people bringing you the story as the story itself.

In the past, TV’s chief operating skill was political. In the future it will be -it will have to be-  mastery of the craft itself.

TV creates immediate consensus, subject to immediate change.

There never was a mass audience, except by compulsion.

Television is not a problem to be managed, but an instrument to be played.

It was exhilarating at the time. Much still tingles today, doesn’t it?

For those of the thinking persuasion, it’s not only a desire, but a passionate need to meet with others of their tribe and -well- think together every once in a while. Author and teacher Robert Grudin calls it, The Grace of Great Things. At least for me, it is.

Moses may like the sound of that, too.

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

Still wearing flannel pjs.

2 Comments

Here it is, the middle of June, and I’m still wearing flannel pajamas.

This is not to say that I’m actually working, wearing flannel pajamas (think the flannel suit on Wall Street,  for those uninitiated in the foibles of freelance work). Unless it’s four o’clock in the morning, I arrive in my office dressed appropriately and smile every time I answer an email. Even if it is just down the hall.

Yet I’m still sleeping in flannels, under several comforters, too. Long winter’s nap, as they say, the preamble to summer solstice notwithstanding.

Only the occasional morning greets me with sunshine right now, frequently mellowing throughout the day to the gray of clouds –angry rain clouds at that.

And it’s chilly. My office stays a brisk 62 to 65 degrees.

Good sleeping weather, though.

It’s just that … with the sun rising here a little after 5 AM, setting after 9 PM, it’s such a pity to squander the light behind a veil of dull.

This of course, is just my opinion.

I’m very ready to enjoy a cup of coffee sitting outside on the deck … in a caftan, perhaps (come to think of it, I even own a flannel caftan).

Do you like reading my posts? Why not sign up for an email subscription? You receive a little somthin’-somthin’ to ponder every Tuesday and Thursday.

Photo credit: erix! Erich Ferdinand