• One Thing or Another Columns,  Podcasts

    From the Podcast Archives: Ginny Brennan, Producing Director for Music Mountain Theatre, Joins the Podcast

    Now that life is returning to its new kind of normal we’re able to enjoy going to the theater again, and Lambertville boasts one of the best local theaters in the country. Last year I had the pleasure of interviewing Ginny Brennan, Producing Director and one of the founders of Music Mountain TheatreAfter a year-plus of staying away due to Covid restrictions we’ve been delighted to go back, having recently seen the theater’s productions of Murder at Cheltenham Manor (a fun whodunit perfectly suited for this mystery writer!), and Head Over Heels, featuring music from 80s icons The Go-Gos.

    About Music Mountain Theater

    MUSIC MOUNTAIN THEATRE opened its doors on October 6, 2017 with its inaugural production of Phantom.  In addition to our Mainstage productions, we offer performances for Young Audiences throughout the year.  Our theatre school offers classes encompassing a range of disciplines across acting, musical theatre, and dance.  

    It is the mission of MUSIC MOUNTAIN THEATRE to enrich, educate, and entertain our community through the study, performance, and appreciation of the arts.

    Enjoy the One Thing or Another Podcast on Libsyn, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart Radio, SoundCloud, Amazon Music, and at OneThingOrAnotherPodast.com

    Copyright MadeMarkPublishing

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Comparatively Speaking

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.

    What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.

    I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Comparatively Speaking

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.

    What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.

    I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Let’s Face It (Unmasked At Last)

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    I took the gestures we make with our faces for granted. I failed to understand how crucial a form of communication our faces are, and how strange it would become when we no longer exposed them to each other.

    For fourteen months I did the right thing for myself and my community. I wore a mask despite finding it uncomfortable and inconvenient. It was required at my job, but I also wanted to be part of a solution when no one was sure what the solution was. This pandemic was a new experience for me, my country and the world. At least it was new insofar as it had been a hundred years since the last significant one.

    Then the vaccines arrived, like the calvary showing up in a syringe. Most people I know managed to get appointments after sharing among ourselves how difficult it was, a form of pandemic gossip and communal anxiety. We sat in chairs, we rolled up our sleeves and offered our fleshy arms, and we walked away amazed at how anticlimactic it was. I went through this for months and all I got was this lousy vaccination card.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Let’s Face It (Unmasked At Last)

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    I took the gestures we make with our faces for granted. I failed to understand how crucial a form of communication our faces are, and how strange it would become when we no longer exposed them to each other.

    For fourteen months I did the right thing for myself and my community. I wore a mask despite finding it uncomfortable and inconvenient. It was required at my job, but I also wanted to be part of a solution when no one was sure what the solution was. This pandemic was a new experience for me, my country and the world. At least it was new insofar as it had been a hundred years since the last significant one.

    Then the vaccines arrived, like the calvary showing up in a syringe. Most people I know managed to get appointments after sharing among ourselves how difficult it was, a form of pandemic gossip and communal anxiety. We sat in chairs, we rolled up our sleeves and offered our fleshy arms, and we walked away amazed at how anticlimactic it was. I went through this for months and all I got was this lousy vaccination card.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Are We There Yet?

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    “Who was that masked man?”

    The Lone Ranger

    I’ve learned the past year that it’s possible to forget what someone looks like without a mask, as well as to marvel at the face of someone I’ve never seen without one. In the grocery store where I work four days a week, masks have been omnipresent for over a year now, especially among those of use who work there, euphemistically called ‘associates.’

    I wear a mask because I’m required to, and because I care about my community, my family, and bringing this all to some kind of end. But I don’t like it. In this case, ‘hate’ is not too strong a work. My glasses fog up. I breathe my own spittle. And I often wonder, as we enter the post-vaccination stage, how long we’ll have to keep wearing them, and how much of it is requirement and how much is conditioning. I imagine we’ll find out as states begin to eliminate mask mandates and companies follow suit. I will add, with emphasis, that not getting the flu last year was a big plus. Masks are uncomfortable and often annoying, but they have helped us minimize our contagious disease transmission to an amazing level.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: That Relaxed Fit Time of Life

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    At sixty-two, not having to hoist my leg over a bicycle bar is a relief. I’m not worried about body parts, just about getting my leg that high.

    It hit me recently when I was out looking for a new bicycle. I told the young man working at the store that I was mostly concerned with comfort. I’m not trying out for the Tour de France, and I don’t imagine myself riding in that event, unlike many of the people I see zipping around the New Jersey countryside with brand names on their backs and Spandex hugging them more tightly than a human ought to be hugged. I’m just a guy who lives in the woods and wants to get my heart rate up a few times a week by circling the back roads of my rural community.

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: It’s About Time

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    Time is not so much an arrow as a comet we ride, streaking across the sky. We only think it drags because we’re on it, like riders saddling imaginary horses that stand stock still while the ground moves beneath us.

    The good news is that I’m old enough to collect Social Security. The bad news is that I’m old enough to collect Social Security. When I was twenty, I never imagined being forty. It seemed so far away from that youthful ground I stood upon with naive bravado. Then when I hit forty, I thought fifty would be the last milestone to publicly mark, quietly retiring birthday observations with the exception of a few close friends and family. And finally, when I approached the age when referring to oneself as a senior becomes culturally appropriate, I decided I could at minimum look forward to collecting a monthly stipend for my troubles. We should all be paid for getting old, at least those of us lucky enough to live that long.

  • Columns,  Dreamshaping,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: Are We There Yet?

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    This column was always intended to be lighthearted, even in its most serious moments. Sure, I look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all. I even ponder death now and then, since it’s pretty much the end point for all of us. Where we go after that, if we go anywhere, is not something I spend much time thinking or worrying about. I have appropriate clothes for any destination,  or none at all, in case it’s especially hot.

    But 2020 was so difficult, so groundbreaking, like a sledgehammer outside my bedroom window, that it stands unique among the years of my life. And now, two weeks into a new year, it’s still here! The same election we would normally have moved beyond by now, accepting it as part of the political bargain we make for living in a country where people are allowed to vote, keeps hold of us as if to prevent our escape. The frustrations of lockdowns and limited interactions and one-way grocery store aisles and the politicization of absolutely everything has us frayed within an inch of insanity. And that’s just Tuesday!

  • Columns,  One Thing or Another Columns

    One Thing or Another: The Joys of Being a (Almost) Halloween Baby

    By Mark McNease

    It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

    I’m reprinting this column as an annual tradition, knowing that the current pandemic has altered the reality it presents for all of us. But the fun of Halloween remains and its pleasures will return someday. Nothing can keep a good witch down!

    October has always been my favorite month. It’s the month when autumn really makes its presence felt, especially if you live where the seasons are discernible. (It recently went from air conditioner weather at the tail end of a relentlessly hot summer, to a sudden and unexpected freeze with a 30-degree drop). It’s flu season, which is always good for a sick day or two spent lying on the couch taking over-the-counter cold remedies that do nothing to stop you from feeling like death is close by. Honey, is the healthcare directive in place? You’re sure you’ve still got your copy? And how about the will? Can I change it by tomorrow? My sister forgot my birthday, I’m not sure she deserves the belt buckles.

  • One Thing or Another Columns,  One Thing or Another Podcast,  Podcasts

    Liz Frances of Street Noise Books Joins the One Thing or Another Podcast

    I was browsing the Independent Book Publishers Association website came across an interview with Liz Frances, founder of Street Noise Books. Liz was kind enough to join me on this One Thing or Another Podcast. Listen in as we talk about her background, her passion for marginalized communities, and her commitment to making noise!

    Among their titles:

    Stupid Black Girls: Essays from an African American
    By Aisha Redux (Author), Brianna McCarthy (Illustrator)

    A provocative collection of narrative essays with a unique point of view.

    In this book a first generation American New Yorker uses her bold voice to share life experiences through the lens of race, culture, and spirituality. Exploring topics ranging from night terrors, to schizophrenia, to gentrification, to the author’s personal September 11th story. Illustrated with stunning artwork created in response to the essays, this book is a unique collection.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


    Spellbound: A Graphic Memoir
    By Bishakh Som

    The meticulous artwork of transgender artist Bishakh Som gives us the rare opportunity to see the world through another lens.

    This exquisite graphic novel memoir by a transgender artist, explores the concept of identity by inviting the reader to view the author moving through life as she would have us see her, that is, as she sees herself. Framed with a candid autobiographical narrative, this book gives us the opportunity to enter into the author’s daily life and explore her thoughts on themes of gender and sexuality, memory and urbanism, love and loss.

    See a full list and descriptions at Street Noise Books.

  • One Thing or Another Columns,  One Thing or Another Podcast,  Podcasts

    Guest Rick Rose Talks Lockdown Playlists, Best TV Binge Bets, and My Return to The Twist Podcast

    Fasten your headphones as Rick Rose and I take a look back at the month of May and a look forward to the future. We talk lockdown playlists, best recommendations for TV binging, politics, culture, and my return to co-hosting The Twist Podcast. Enjoy the YouTube edition of this, too … seeing is believing.

    Enjoy the One Thing or Another Podcast on Libsyn, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify iHeart Radio, SoundCloud and at OneThingOrAnotherPodast.com

    Copyright MadeMarkPublishing

  • One Thing or Another Columns,  One Thing or Another Podcast,  Podcasts

    Terri Schlichenmeyer Talks the Book Life


    Listen in as I have a chat with book reviewer Terri Schlichenmeyer, aka The Bookworm, about her life, her journey, and her job as a syndicated book reviewer.
    Terri has been reading since she was 3 years old and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 15,000 books.

    Enjoy the One Thing or Another Podcast on Libsyn, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify iHeart Radio, SoundCloud and at OneThingOrAnotherPodast.com