With the beginning of the new month, I've changed my Sidebar Art Gallery for my September show. So far I've had nine shows: Winter, The Kiss, Green, Rebirth, Women, Men, Children and Roses.
I've called this newest show Autumn.
Fall is my favorite season of all. When you scroll along the art work, you'll see why.
Guitarist Les Paul helped to change the musical landscape when he designed a solid-body electric guitar in the mid-1940's.
Last week at the age of 94, Les Paul passed away. But his legacy is so enormous and his influence so great, you are assured of hearing his guitars wherever rock music is played.
Photo Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis
Les Paul was what psychologist George Swede refers to as a Universal 2 Creator. In Creativity: A New Psychology, Swede defines Universal 2 creativity as "any collaborative works that affect large numbers, being unique and having value."
Without Les Paul's risk-taking innovation - before his solid-body design, all guitars were hollow-body - how would the crucial sound of the electric rock guitar have developed? Though Les Paul is sometimes referred to as the celebrity endorser of the Gibson guitar company's design, Les Paul had already built a solid-body prototype called The Log in his own workshop. In true Universal 2 Creator style, Les Paul collaborated with Gibson guitar makers to fashion an electric guitar he could passionately stand behind, push its physical limits and make personal modifications on.
Paul also experimented with early versions of laying tracks in the recording process - again by himself in his own workshop.
Here is just a sampling of guitarists who use Les Pauls as their instruments of choice:
Geraldine over at My Poetic Path has a monthly prompt inspired by film titles.
"I’ve always been intrigued by movie titles," she writes. "Obviously, Hollywood and other film-makers work hard to weave their magic with the teaser that is the title. But what other roads could be explored with that very same phrase or word?"
This is actually a movie I haven't seen. There are a lot of those, which tends to confuse people who know that I went to film school. I wrote about this phenomenon over at my group blog, Popculturedivas:
It Could Happen to You follows the story of a Queens, New York cop (Nicolas Cage) who tips a diner waitress (Bridget Fonda) with the promise of half his lottery winnings - which turns out to be $4,000,000.00.
Could happen.
For Through the Opera Glasses today, I thought I'd take Geraldine's prompt and share with you some favorite TV shows and films that put my kind of quirky twist on the premise: It could happen to you...
It could happen to you...you're sent to live in the British countryside during the Blitz, and a game of hide-and-seek finds you hiding in a wardrobe that empties out into a land called Narnia. And the first person that you meet is a faun carrying an umbrella and an assortment of packages.
It could happen to you...your boss sends you to a small coastal Scottish town to convince the residents to sell out for Houston oil interests, and oh yes, to watch the sky for a comet which the boss wants named for himself. And a hot marine research scientist seems not only interested in you, but may be a mermaid.
It could happen to you...a respectable fruit and vegetable retailer should be able to find love in the Big City, but your heart belongs to the mermaid who saved you from drowning when you were a kid. And the naked woman who shows up at the Statue of Liberty reminds you of that haunting connection you once felt, but isn't this woman an obvious human, a frustrating one that you discover you finally can't live without?
It could happen to you...one night your trip home from downtown gets sidetracked, until you are seriously caught in the surreal zone between the last train and the first one for the next day. Will anything ever resemble normality again?
It could happen to you...you waitress in the diner of your small Louisiana town, trying not to hear the thoughts in other people's minds - because you're a telepath. Finally the most attractive man you've ever met enters the diner. You can't hear a thought from him at all. Because he's a vampire...who could ask for a more perfect boyfriend?
It could happen to you...your mysterious music teacher suddenly reveals himself when you show interest in a former suitor. Not only is your mentor irresistably hot, but he's also a homicidal stalker who retreats to his wind-up monkey music box when he gets upset.
It could happen to you...you seek the counsel of an old woman whom you've been told can get your unfaithful wife to return to you. When she casts a spell, you can see the sudden raid on her apartment by shapeshifters and officials arresting her for unauthorized use of magic. You discover you're a Light Other, and go to work for a secret service organization dedicated to watching over the activities of the Dark Others in an uneasy Cold War-like truce.
It could happen to you...you packpack across the Yorkshire moors with your college buddy, stumbling upon the creepiest pub in all of England. A nightmarish attack by a werewolf turns out not to be a nightmare at all, and your romantic chances with the hot nurse who tended you in hospital get seriously jeopardized every time the moon comes out.
It could happen to you...you find things heating up between yourself and a former fellow journalist, but you've hit on a monster story about British spy shop MI-5 and have to follow it. Arms-length objectivity flies out the window when you're pulled into a deadly hostage situation at a TV station and you end up working alongside MI-5 agents to sort things out. Why report on the news when you can make the stories that must be covered up yourself?
It could happen to you...you can't remember who you are or why high-powered killers are after you. Or why you are capable of dispatching an attacker with your bare hands. Or why these killers appear to be government officials.
Champion of the Arts - I write historical and paranormal fiction, as well as poetry. I love to showcase creative works by artists of all stripes. Blogging from Nova Scotia, Canada
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