Celebrate Creativity

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Celebrate Creativity and the Hall of Imagination -` My name is George Bartley, and in this podcast episode I want tof into a house that might not make it into Better Homes and Gardens - but is often classified as Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest work.  The story is definitely complicated from a psychological standpoint, and a great example of how Mr. Poe dealt with vampiric c...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Celebrate Creativity– This is the House of Imagination. My name is George Bartley, and this episode has the night watchman talking to Edgar Allan Poe about his creativity. In future episodes, Mr. Poe will talk specifically about a few of his most famous works. Hello Mr. Poe - I'm going to get directly to the point and ask you why you are considered by many to be ex...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Celebrate Creativity– My name is George Bartley and here I'd like to talk with Mr. Poe about the most influential person in his life– And buy influential, I don't necessarily mean that in a good way. Now, many scholars have claimed that the most crucial element of Poe’s life is the fact that at a very early age his life was placed in the hands of a man who jus...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Celebrate Creativity and the Hall of Imagination. Today I would like to talk about a man who played a crucial role in the family fortune surrounding Edgar Allan Poe.  This wealthy individual was known as William Galt, and he was a wealthy businessman in Richmond, Virginia. Galt was known as "Uncle" William to the Allans, though he wasn't actually John All...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to celebrate creativity and the Hall of imagination– This episode is called Mommy Issues. It begins with a conversation between Mr. Poe, and myself, the night watchman. Now Mr. Poe, we want you to be comfortable here, and I spoke with the museum supervisor and we agree that it might be best to start with a conversation about someone who you probably loved very much, your m...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Celebrate Creativity and the Hall of Imagination. You know, I have been thinking a great deal about the wax figure of Edgar Allan Poe education was one of Jefferson's constant preoccupations and this is where Edgar Allan Poe comes in. And the supervisor of the museum suggested that I talk with the writer about a period in his life when he did not experience the str...

Send us Fan Mail In a few nights, the clock would strike midnight. The museum would become still. Those dark eyes would open. And I would have to find a gentle way to tell Edgar Allan Poe that death had not silenced him. It had only kept him from hearing the applause. Mr. Poe, you famously wrote this poem about the fact that you always felt alone– From childhood’s hour I have not been As others we...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to celebrate creativity and the hall of imagination– This is the second episode regarding Edgar Allan Poe for the month of October. And the proceeding episode, the night watchmen had been called to the office of the supervisor for the wax museum. We begin with the night watchmen speaking– Sir, are you calling me in here because I did something wrong? No. In fact, I called...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to *Celebrate Creativity*. I am the Night Watchman here at the Hall of Imagination—the finest wax museum in the whole world, at least during the hours when respectable people are awake. After midnight, it may still be the finest wax museum in the world. But it is not always respectable. I had just reported for work when the little red light began blinking on the telephone...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the  what should be the second of two episodes looking at Fallingwater from a musical perspective– and this episode is Fallingwater Dreams. Part two This podcast episode begins with the night watchmen– Roughly pattern after yours truly–talking to the wax figure of Frank Lloyd Wright, about a CD of music that I wrote when I was a guide at Fallingwater. And yes, this the...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the  what should be the first of two episodes looking at Fallingwater and the house  from a musical perspective– and this episode is Fallingwater Dreams. Part one This podcast episode begins with Mr. George Bartley talking to the wax figure of Frank Lloyd Wright, about a CD of music that Mr. Bartley wrote when he was a guide at Fallingwater. And yes, this is based on a...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the second episode in this miniseries about Frank Lloyd Wright. This is George Bartley in a wax museum in the city of Chicago, and we are talking to a wax figure of .the great architect himself. When we left Frank was talking about his trip to Europe with his–how shall I see it–his lover MAMAH. When Frank returned to the United States, he did not live with his wife Kitt...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the Hall of Imagination –my name is George Bartley and today I'd like to talk with one of my heroes. And seated behind a desk is a rather elderly gentleman and a suit and straw hat. Could you tell me who you are sir,? I am Frank Lloyd Wright –the architect. This is quite an honor– You are one of my heroes. That is an honor for me to hear.  I have noticed that you a...

Send us Fan Mail Finally! This is the concluding episode for The 700-Pound Pineapple  There are moments when an ordinary object stops being ordinary. It becomes a symbol. It gathers meaning until it weighs far more than any scale could measure. That is what happened to the pineapple in this series. At first, the seven-hundred-pound pineapple was an exaggeration, a way of describing the absurd weig...

Send us Fan Mail In the previous episode, I talked about Dostoevsky, but I want to emphasize that the author does not offer a cheerful slogan. He offers recognition. He knows that illumination and darkness can occupy the same life. And in this episode, I want to explore some of Dostoevsky's ideas from a purely personal perspective. At the beginning of this journey, the seven-hundred-pound pin...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Celebrate Creativity . This is Part Five of The 700-Pound Pineapple , an episode I call “The Idiot.” In the first episode of this series, I talked about my own experiences with epilepsy. I do not intend to tell that entire story again. It is already part of the journey of the seven-hundred-pound pineapple, and it belongs where I first placed it. But personal experience...

Send us Fan Mail I had never expected a wheelchair to feel like freedom. That may sound strange. Most of us grow up thinking of a wheelchair as a symbol of limitation. In movies, television programs, and even ordinary conversation, someone is said to be “confined to a wheelchair” or “bound to a wheelchair.” The language suggests imprisonment. It suggests that the chair is the problem and that the...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Celebrate Creativity - and this is the third of a series called the 700 pound pineapple - an episode that I call Pigs on Ice. Whereas in the last episode, I ended on a relatively elevated tone with musings about creativity - in this episode at least I wanna start out by talking about the continuing saga of the church people or pig S on ice brigade. And if you have not h...

Send us Fan Mail It was agreed that every week the church people would bring roughly 4 bags of groceries– food that was certainly welcome at first. It may not have been the greatest food, but that is not really an issue when you're hungry. Then the food pantry– And I will not use any names–started bringing food that had clearly expired– Some of the expiration dates were from several months ag...

Send us Fan Mail Hello, my name is George Bartley, and I'd like to welcome you to Celebrate Creativity–this is basically the introduction to a six part series called The 700 Pound Pineapple - and if that title doesn't make much sense right now, stick with me and I can guarantee you that by the end of the series it definitely will. Six episodes for one podcast series out of many may seem...

Send us Fan Mail What does a pineapple weigh? And no, due to the incredibly personal nature of this podcast series, I will leave the wax museum format for several episodes to talk about an actual experience and how I responded and did not respond to a ramifications– But getting back to that pineapple… According to the remarkably unreliable authority of my imagination, this particular pineapple wei...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Hall of Wonder - part of Celebrate Creativity. Today I want to start exploring Shakespeare's play–Macbeth. And here is the wax figure character of Macbeth, himself. You know Macbeth, I will get directly to the point. Some people call you a monster. Mr. Barley, I would not be so quick with such a judgment. Mr. Shakespeare's trick is much sharper than that: he s...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the Hall of Imagination - and today I'm speaking with one of the characters of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. And today's episode is entitled “CALIBAN: THE ISLAND SPEAKS” First I better briefly fill you in on the opening plot of The Tempest. So: there’s a man named Prospero. He used to be a duke—very fancy—then he got kicked out by his own brother. He ends...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the Hall of Imagination for the episode “Plagues” The strange thing about an invisible enemy… is that you can’t glare it down. You can’t bargain with it. You can’t even boo it off the stage. WILL (dry): Oh, you can boo it, sir. The heavens will not care— but you may feel better. GEORGE: This is an episode that deals with plague in Shakespeare’s lifetime… and COVID in ou...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the second and final episode of Master Shakespeare and myself as we discuss parallelism, and a few other matters.  We begin in the Hall of Imagination in a Chicago wax museum at night. Mr. Bartley: Master Shakespeare,There is still another meaning of parallelism that interests me. You and I are separated by more than four centuries. You wrote for the Elizabethan and Jac...