Steampunk Granny goes from Coffee To Ghosts

                                                                

 

On Friday, August 15^th, my daughter Marie Reid and I headed out to Mullica Hill and the Crescent Moon Coffee & Tea Shop.

                                                                                      

 

I was there to sell Roof Oasis my first book in a series of apocalyptic tales with a twist and Tall Tales and Short Stories by our South Jersey Writer's group. My daughter was there to sell her lovely jewelry. It was a beautiful day and there were many visitors to the shop. Side note: Great coffee selection.

 

                                                                Marie setting up her stand

I was able to coerce Sharon, the owner of this fabulous little gem of a shop located on 141 Bridgeton Pike, to take a picture with me.

 

                                                                                

Kathy was the first person to purchase a book that day. We chatted about my using what is happening to our food and water supply in today’s world and how it led to the catastrophic events in my book.

 

                                                                              

A very good friend and her son and granddaughter stopped by to visit while I was at the Crescent Moon. Elaine’s granddaughter Autumn seems to like Roof Oasis, too.

                                                                           

 

 

Later that night my ghost hunter buddy, Jean, and I headed to the Laurel Hill Cemetery. It was an event for professional photographers to get some rather unusual night shots of the beautiful site. While the pros were busy doing their thing, Jean and I did ours: ghost hunting.

 

                                                                         

Luckily, the other people there did not have a clue to what we were doing or they might have been a bit frightened to know that the cemetery was extremely active that night especially on the road heading towards Millionaire Row.

 

                                                                                 

I was able to spot a female spirit, but only in mist form, but when I snapped the photo, I got this.

                                                                                 

               All in all, it was a delightful day for selling my book and communing with the dead.

                                                                       

 

You can see a very faint orb lower to the ground between the cross and the large pillar

The Knick Season 1 Episode 2: Mr. Paris Shoes

                                                                         
                                                                 

There is a new show on Cinemax and I posted a review of season 1 episode 1 last week. This is one great show and all my friends who are into Steampunk will especially enjoy the period sets and clothing. Think of the show as Penny Dreadful meets Nurse Jackie. It’s that good.

 On episode 2, poor Dr. Edwards (Andre Holland is forced into using a cluttered hospital basement as his office. This shocks Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance), who is stand up righteous over women’s rights and the rights of minorities, but her hands are tied because the other doctors at the Knickerbocker Hospital are as bigoted as you can get.

                                                                                  

While the ever resourceful Dr. Edwards miraculously changes the dingy basement into a clinic to treat black patients, who are discouraged from using the white’s only hospital, Dr. Thackery (Clive Owen) and his fellow surgical comrades experience a horrible event due to improper installation of electrical wires causing a surgical patient to catch fire and an operating nurse to get electrocuted. The incident may have been caused by Herman Barrow (Jeremy Bobb) pocketing some of the money to get the work done right. Barrow is also in debt to a loan shark named Bunkie (Danny Hoch), who doesn’t take kindly to anyone being late with their payments.

                                                                              

We get an in depth look at Thackery’s drug routine which have him spending great deal of time and money at a local establishment in China Town. Thackery later questions Nurse Elkins (Eve Hewson) on her loyalty and her silence about an embarrassing incident.

                                                                                

Jealous over Dr. Edwards knowing how to do a complicated procedure for which he wrote an article in a French medical journal, Doctors Gallinger (Eric Johnson) and Chickering (Michael Angarano) have ambulance driver and bully Cleary (Chris Sullivan) break into a library in order for them to steal the journal.

                                                                                 

Later that night, Barrow loses a tooth thanks to Bunkie, Dr. Edwards stands up to a bully at his dilapidated boarding house, and Cleary catches Sister Harriet (Cara Seymour) wearing street clothing and entering a tenement. What is the good sister doing there? Sister Harriet is helping poor mothers to eliminate an extra mouth to fee. Will Cleary rat out the good sister? Tune in next Friday at 10 p.m. on Cinemax to find out.

Steampunk Granny's review of The Knick

                                                                                        
                                                                 

If you’re not faint of heart at the sight of blood and if you don’t mind a few burly ambulance drivers fighting over your body, then I have a show for you to watch. The Knick is going to be a hit show for Cinemax because of the fine acting and script. The series is directed by Steven Soderbergh and stars Clive Owen as Dr. John Thackery. The action takes place in New York City and the year is 1900.

 

                                                                          

Dr. Thackery works at the Knickerbocker Hospital, but when he’s not saving patients with limited resources, he’s battling his drug addiction. Hospitals did not have a great reputation in those days and the belief was that when people entered a hospital; they died. It wasn’t for lack of care, but more the lack of sanitation and knowledge that bacteria could destroy the best surgery.

 

                                                                          

Surgery was done in amphitheaters where anyone could sit in the balcony and watch as the surgeons sliced through flesh while giving a blow by blow description on what they were doing …not very sterile. If that isn't enough to put the fear of God and germs into you, there is also a war between ambulance drivers. I kid you not! They are paid by the number of bodies they bring in to be cured. This leads to a lot of gang style fighting...imagine being the poor sucker on the stretcher.

                                                                     

When Thackery refuses to hire a Harvard graduate, Dr. Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland) because the man is African American, Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance) has her powerful father pull the lighting fixtures off the hospital walls. Cornelia is in charge of Social Services and she is against segregation. Thackery backs down and the fixtures are returned, but the show is packed with interesting characters including my favorite, Sister Harriet (Cara Seymour) an Irish Catholic nun who smokes cigarettes and has a snappy answer for any and all idiots who cross her path. I love this nun.

                                                                       

 The clothing, streets scenes, surgical tools, hospital setting is accurately portrayed making the viewer feel that we have just tumbles through a ripple in time and landed on the streets of ole New York…but do be careful of the horse drawn carriage coming your way…the mortality rate is high and you might not make it back home.

                                                                      

This is a great series and I’m giving it a four **** star rating. Watch it.

Steampunk Granny's Review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

                                                                      

I love my grandchildren and this year, as a high school graduation present, my granddaughter Kathryn Gilbert came out to visit my husband and me. She also had time to visit with some of her cousins. Kathryn comes from a very small town in Wyoming. She was in for a cultural shock. While she tends to be quiet, we on the East Coast are anything but. As an extra treat, my youngest grandson, Nathan, was also able to spend the week with us because his parents were visiting their oldest son, Jimmy, who is a Marine.

                                                                       
                                                                         

                  At the Franklin Institute with Katrina, Kathryn, Nathan and Granny

 

We were able to spend some time with my granddaughter Katrina before she left on her own vacation to Arizona. What I enjoyed most about Kathryn’s visit was that we had a chance to talk about our writing. Kathryn will be going to college with hopes of teaching English in school and Kathryn, like Katrina and I, is a writer. She plans to one day publish the book she’s been working on. I asked Kathryn if she would like to do a review with me about a film we saw this past week, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. She said yes. This is part one of a two part post and we’ll begin with my take of the film.

 

                                                                           

                                                                          

                                                                 Planet of the Apes

If you’re my age, you’ve probably seen the original 1968 film, Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston as George Taylor the American astronaut who with his crew crash landed on a strange planet after spending thousands of years in hibernation. The film which is based on Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel, La Planete des Singes, introduced moviegoers to intelligent gorillas and speechless, animalistic humans.

                                                                               

The film’s ending, along with Taylor’s shocking realization of his true location, is seared forever in my mind and I became an instant fan. Unfortunately, I found most of the sequels to Planet of the Apes a big disappointment, but at the time I wasn’t sure why. It was only after watching the 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes and this year’s blockbuster, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes that I understood what was missing from the earlier films.

 

                                                                             

                                                              Rise of the Planet of the Apes

To give my thoughts on The Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, I do need to mention the 2011 film The Rise of the Planet of the Apes which was directed by Rupert Wyatt and starred James Franco as Will Rodman and Andy Serkis as Caesar. The 2011 film did what all the previous films in the franchise did not do. It allowed the movie audience to become one with an intelligent species that is endangered in the real world.  Will Rodman (Franco) a scientist from the Sen-Sys Biotech Company is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, a disease that his father is victim to…but we all know that the plans of mice and men often go astray.

                                                                           

The company does its research on chimpanzee subjects and the drug ALZ-112 makes one of the chimps, Bright Eyes, extremely intelligent, but she goes on a rampage. Due to this mishap, Will is forced to take her infant and raise it. Infant Caesar grows more intelligent each day, but he still has animal tendencies that Will Rodman must deal with. The drug may be a blessing for the primate characters of the film, but its side effect on humans is catastrophic. While the airborne disease becomes a pandemic nightmare for mankind, Caesar and his fellow intelligent chimpanzee friends escape to Muir Woods; their new home. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes changed the game plan on the franchise by telling the story from a new perspective. We began to identify with Caesar. He was the hero of the film; the survivor against man’s cruelty towards non-humans.

 

                                                                               

                                                     Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 

The 2014 film directed by Matt Reeves and starring Andy Serkis as Caesar, Jason Clarke as Malcolm, Gary Oldman as Drefus and Toby Kibbell a bonobo and Caesar’s second in command, focused on the lives of the primates living in Muir Woods.  Have you’ve ever truly looked into a primate’s eyes. I do whenever I am at the zoo or when watching all the National Geographic documentaries about the dire conditions of a species, be they Chimpanzee, Bonobo or Gorilla. There is intelligence in those eyes and before we split off from our cousins millions of years ago, we were just like them and we have the DNA to prove it ranging between a 95 to 99% similarity.

                                                                             

In the 2014 film we see Caesar in charge of his troop of fellow primates.  They’ve not only built shelter for themselves, but they successfully hunt for food. When Drefus (Oldman) the leader of a small band of human survivors living in a section of San Francesco sends Malcolm and his team to check for a source of water power to keep their city running, they encounter Caesar’s son, Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) and Rocket’s son, Ash (Doc Shaw). Ash is injured.

                                                                              

The film deals with Caesar and Malcolm trying to keep peace between the two species, but mistakes are made by both sides and it’s not only the humans who thirst for supremacy; stupid choices are made by both men and beast alike.

Conclusion

Humans have this false illusion that we are above nature. It is because of this mistaken belief that our oceans are polluted; our air dirty and species around the globe go extinct at an alarming rate. We forget that the havoc we cause to nature will eventually come back to kick us in the butt. If we don’t respect nature and the other life forms that share this planet with us, then we are doomed.

                                                                               

When you look into the eyes of any animal, you see a comrade that has survived, like us, the evolutionary trip through time. They deserve our respect. See the movie. We are witness to an old story told through new eyes and it feels right.

Kathryn Gilbert’s review of the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes will be posted here on my blog next week.

Steampunk Granny does Tigers, Monkeys and Sharknado 2…Oh My!

                                                                       

I have been doing day trips all week with my granddaughter Kathryn who is visiting from Wyoming and my grandson Nathan who lives in New Jersey. Yesterday we headed out to the Philadelphia Zoo. The big cats and the primates were our favorite sights. We witnessed a Tiger trying to get to an orangutan that mischievously walked above the tiger’s resting spot near  the café where Nathan, Kathryn and I were eating lunch.

                                                                   

                                                                       

Nathan takes Parkour lessons and I've often wondered if the French invented the different movements for this sport by watching these guys.

                                                                  

                                                                                                                                                 

I introduced Nathan and Kathryn to Sharknado 2 “The second one”. Nathan thought Sharknado 2 was stupid until I explained to him that this was the whole point of the show. It was a tongue-in-cheek, MST3K sponge worthy (yes, I'm quoting Elaine from Seinfeld) type of film. It was meant to be downright stupid. Once Nathan understood, he sat back and enjoyed the movie.

                                                                             

How could you not like Sharknado or Sharknado 2? Where else can you find flying sharks and lots of people to snack on. The Syfy channel deserves a pat on the back for bringing us the sequel to Sharknado.

                                                                                       

Our Shark Ninja fighter, Fin Shepard (Ian Ziering), and his trusty sidekick, Skye (Vivica A. Fox), must help the frazzled and clueless citizens of New York survive the flying sharks, and they have to work quickly before two opposing tornadoes meet in the center of New York City.

                                                                                    

The show was made even funnier with Mat Lauer and Al Roker playing straight men to the oncoming shark attack weather alert as does Kelly Ripa on her show.

                                                                             

I can't wait until Sharknado 3 comes out and I can't wait until the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel does the next Mega Bad Movie Night featuring this film

 

Steampunk Granny Begs Your Patience

                                                                  

I have my granddaughter Kathryn visiting from Wyoming for the next ten days and I have been quite busy taking her and my youngest grandson, Nathan, on daily day trips. I promise to entertain my friends with my many adventures once the grandkids go back home. I am having fun with Kathryn and Nathan. I just hope they don't break old granny.

Steampunk Granny and Super D at the Book Asylum

                                                                          

                      Steampunk Granny and Super D at the Book Asylum

This past Saturday, Super D (Dawn Byrnes) and I were doing what we do best; selling books. We were at a quaint and lovely little gem in Blackwood New Jersey called Book Asylum.

                                                                             

Rosemary and her son Jason welcomed us with open arms and trays of goodies as we began to set up our books.

                                                                       

                                                                                 

Dawn and I were selling the South Jersey Writers’ Group's first anthology, Tall Tales and Short Stories from South Jersey. I was also selling Roof Oasis, my first book in an apocalyptic series.

                                                                                   

Roof Oasis is an apocalyptic tale with a twist and tells the story of twins Michael and Lucy and their fight against a malicious leader who wants total control of the world and will do anything to achieve this goal. Both books can be purchased from Amazon.com and Amazon/kindle.

                                                                              

My granddaughter Kathryn is visiting from Wyoming. She wants to be a writer and since she and my grandson Nathan are spending the next ten days with me, I thought that Kathryn would enjoy learning about the other side of writing; marketing your book.

                                                                                             

We'll be selling our books in August at The Crescent Moon in Mullica Hill on Friday August 15th from 1 to 3
Stop by and say hello and hopefully buy a book or two