seanessay.com Gleaning, definition: finding scraps of knowledge on the web. My solution here is something I already know — run away from social media for some portion of the day. When I did that in the first half of June I did fine; when I didn’t in the second half, well. I lost a considerable […]
Champion to Orphans
essaysbysean.blogspot.com “Orphans make the best recruits.” M to 007, in Skyfall Although commonly disparaged in self-help books, Pollyanna is a nice novel. I enjoyed it as a classic about an impoverished orphan refusing to be defeated. Surely Amy Adams would have played the heroine if any Pollyanna movies been made during Amy’s girlhood: “I think […]
Free Fall Party
essaysbysean.blogspot.com Preface Up high. The RGO Treehouse. Plate glass walls on three sides. We of the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society are having our Christmas party. I am one of four asked to read aloud for five minutes. Folks know me. Not from any blog, but from attending the drop-in “Free Fall Friday.” (Now held on […]
Remembrance Day Handshake
essaysbysean.blogspot.com A grey Monday afternoon. November the eleventh. I am back home at my small writing table. I did not go to drink beer with veterans after the Remembrance Day Ceremony, because I attended alone. I haven’t had a survivor guilt dream for (I think) a decade. Back when my platoon had our ten year […]
Learning Fine Art, Sans Martians
essaysbysean.blogspot.com If fine art finds some people as oblivious as Martians then maybe that’s from people turning away from two sorts of time. I sympathize. There is the time needed to learn: Training the eye and heart to appreciate the best. Which is nice to do, but who has the time for learning to enjoy […]
Martian Machine Passing Parthenon
essaysbysean.blogspot.com “Martian Machine Passing Parthenon” Being the title of a photolithograph, from after the War of the Worlds. Prologue Chief Engineer Gordon Malloy of “The Orville” (TV) in Lasting Impressions: “We look at these images of people who lived hundreds of years ago, and they’re so distant looking, that it’s easy to think that they […]