I was a journalist for about 15 years, before I spent the last 4 or so years in insurance. I recently returned to journalism on a freelance basis, and I realized how much I miss it. For a little over a year I've been freelancing for a weekly local newspaper (that still has a print edition - yay!). For them, I primarily cover events in a nearby, smaller city that traditionally doesn't get as much coverage. Mainly I report on the city council meetings there, which I thought would be excruciating, but that I have actually learned a lot from. This week's meeting was particularly scintillating, with new businesses coming to the area, an overhaul of parking ordinances, sales tax incentives...and...cupcakes!
They all got along at this meeting. That doesn't always happen.
In other news, there's a new Western wear store coming to the city, which I'm sure has everyone breathing a sigh of relief because the other one we had here just announced it will be closing. We're Okies and we need our cowboy boots, damnit.
And finally, free food, which, let's face it, is the real reason journalists do what they do.
TV Discovery of the Week
I cancelled cable about 20 years ago and I now refuse to pay for streaming services. Thankfully, there's a lot of free stuff that's actually really good, but you do have to spend some time looking for it. I'm actually glad I cancelled cable all those years ago, because it meant I had to get creative to find worthwhile movies and TV shows, which led me to shows from all around the world. I wish we required our kids to watch foreign shows, so they could see that there's a great big world out there and that the way we do things here in the United States is not the only way and definitely not the best way.
I recently down a Reddit rabbithole, as I am wont to do, and saw mention of an Australian series called "Spirited," about the ghost of a 1970s British punk rocker and an Australian (living) dentist who meet and fall in love after the dentist buys the penthouse the rocker was staying in before he disappeared in the early 1980s. It reminded me of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir," which I've long been a fan of, and I'm also a fan of anything ghost-related and all things punk rock. Also, shows from Australia and New Zealand are increasingly becoming my favorites because I prefer their sense of humor and they're nearly all full of quirky characters - "Spirited" being a perfect example. I couldn't believe the series was free online at Amazon's Freevee, because anything with that kind of cult following typically isn't.
I had never heard of the two lead actors, but I was already a fan of Angus Sampson, who plays one of the supporting characters. As always, he was right on target in this show, and in fact, the casting was incredible all around. I'm now actively seeking out other shows featuring Claudia Karvan and Matt King. The show does a great job pulling you into the love story but also makes the supporting characters engaging and relatable and gives each of them a backstory and a character arc. We follow the dentist, Suzy Darling, as she finally learns how to stand up for herself and the punk rocker, Henry Mallet, as he tries to remember how he died and as he learns to face his new reality. Henry adjust to being dead was particularly heart-wrenching.
A show's soundtrack is as important to me as the storyline, and this show's tracks excel at evoking the punk rock era. The Henry Mallet/Nerve songs sound like something I would have grown up listening to - on vinyl, and many of the songs are available on YouTube.
Check out "Spirited" on the Freevee app or for free on Amazon Prime
Adventures in Gardening
I have a brown thumb. I rarely get anything to grow, and if I do, it dies pretty much immediately. I've lost count of how many times I've watched "On a Clear Day," not just because I like the movie, but because I wish I had Barbra Streisand's character's ability to make plants grow at will. My inability to foster any kind of life would be bad enough as it was, but it was especially crushing because I come from a long line of farmers on both sides of my family, and I grew up eating fresh veggies from my maternal grandmother's and great-aunt's gardens. With the way things are going, pretty soon I'll be subsisting on dandelion salad like they did in the Great Depression, so I figured I'd better try to figure out how to grow something, anything, that can keep me from withering away and floating down the street and into the abyss.
I decided to try something a little different, because I can't start anything from seed, so instead I've been taking my veggies and then starting new plants from them. So far I've had the best luck with the green onion, and have consistently been using off these three for a few weeks now. Maybe at long last I'll have my own victory garden.
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