Who ever thought of calling them action figures instead of dolls? As a marketing professor, I can appreciate the wisdom in that choice since the word doll had become associated with properties like Barbie and Baby Tender Love and boys are sensitive about their masculine Read More …
Author: tdwise@saumag.edu
Christmas Nostalgia: Decades of Cool Toys
For today’s post, I thought it would be fun to look up ads for some of the cool toys I remember from decades past. Those of you who were born in the 1980s might remember the Mighty Max playsets. I used to give them to Read More …
Christmas Nostalgia: A Christmas Carol, Part 2
In yesterday’s post, I introduced you to three retellings of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. All of them, I thought, were straight retellings. Today I wanted to look at some of the more colorful versions. One of the artistically creative versions was released by Disney. Read More …
Christmas Nostalgia: A Christmas Carol, Pt. 1
One of my personal Christmas traditions is to watch a few versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. My first acquaintance with Dickens’ Christmas classic was this cartoon which was produced in 1969. It was produced by API productions for CBS television’s Famous Classic Tales. Read More …
Star Wars Origins: A Fanciful Look
In the past few days, I’ve had the opportunity Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Man Who Invented Christmas. The latter was a fanciful look at how Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. I saw it at Shreveport’s Robinson Film Center (where I also Read More …
Season Out of Time: Weird and Wonderful Wax Museums
The wax museum in Season Out of Time was more or less inspired by the Josephine Tussaud Wax Museum in Hot Springs that I used to go to as a youngster, but I found out about another museum in my research that really reminded me Read More …
Season Out of Time Research: Magazines from the Vault
As many of you know, I’m in the process of revising Season Out of Time, a novella I wrote in graduate school. Since part of the novel is told through the eyes of an eleven/twelve-year-old boy (He turns twelve in the story.), I’ve been channeling Read More …
Season Out of Time and My Paranormal(?) Experiences in North Carolina
My uncle’s family lived in the mountains North Carolina, and my family used to visit them in the summers. About twenty miles from where they lived was an area known for its mysterious “ghost lights.” Brown Mountain was the original location of Read More …
Season Out of Time Rewrites: School Days, School Days
This is a sample of the rewrites I’m doing for Season Out of Time. It tells how Jim, the main character, meets Jaime. I’m channeling my inner sixth grader here: It was the last day of sixth grade and Jim Koslow was determined it was Read More …
Season Out of Time: Remembering Twelve
Season Out of Time is a kind of love letter to the last part of my childhood. What were you doing around the time you turned twelve? Do you remember who your friends were, what you enjoyed, and how you felt about growing up? I Read More …