Elena's Newsletter - 2024 No. 07
Entertaining * Educating * Enlivening: A monthly newsletter about the creative arts, culture, psychology, health and current issues
Image by Prateek Gautam on Unsplash
In this issue:
- Introduction: You never really know people....
- Abracadabra! A Manual for Making Dreams Come True
- EGMP Creative Artists Interviews - new opportunity!
- Recommendations
- CREATIVE CORNER
* Resources: Videos (and Pauline Viardot)
* Playlists: Independently July and Stand Up and Fight (last time for this section!)
- WELL-BEING
* Life in Balance: Have you read this yet?
- Quote: Mary Travers
Note: It is recommended that this Newsletter be viewed on a laptop or tablet.
July 20, 2024
I experienced a small rent in my reality a week ago and decided I'd share the experience that provoked it with you. I made this decision in part because I want to support a friend's new book whose creation came at personal cost to her and partly because I want to make the point that we never really know another person, even those close to us.
The 1970s was an incredibly difficult time in my life, but there was one very bright spot. Although I attended an uninspired midwestern university with a lackluster music department, I got lucky! As a double major in voice and piano I was assigned a gifted piano teacher who became a mentor who changed my life.
The teacher I was assigned, John Cowell, was a composer and concert pianist of great energy, musicality, intelligence and kindness. He was totally unlike most teachers in his pedagogy, thank goodness, and didn't stifle me or my music as music teachers tend to do. He had studied piano with the great Olga Samaroff at Juilliard, who was also known for unusual, innovative and brilliant pedagogy, and it was easy to see how her style might have influenced his. He saw my gift and, just as importantly, saw me, and encouraged me. I can't over-emphasize what this relationship and his teaching meant to me. I blossomed piano-wise and became quite a competent pianist. I only wish I had been so fortunate with voice teachers!
I studied with John Cowell from about 1973-1977. Eventually I moved east and, as my life became quite challenging at that point, I lost touch with him. But sometime after 2000, I started thinking of playing again, and I remembered him (I never forgot him!), and I called him at his home in Seattle. It was as if time had stood still! We had a wonderful, warm conversation, he gave me the name of a piano teacher here in New York who might provide a referral, and as he was in his early eighties by then and thinking of legacy, I offered to do a website for him. It was so wonderful to connect with him again! He died just a few years later.
At some point soon after, as a result of my work on his website I became acquainted with and developed a relationship with John's daughter, Edna, a lovely, sweet woman, with a loving husband and daughter, who worked in insurance in the Tacoma area. We've kept in touch, mostly through Facebook.
A week or so ago, I noticed a Facebook post by Edna indicating that she had just published a memoir. When I read the post, I was stunned. I will cut to the chase here. Edna's cousin—my teacher John's nephew—was Ted Bundy.
Edna's memoir is about her close relationship growing up with Ted, who was often at family gatherings, which of course included my teacher John. When Edna was in college in Washington, she lived very near Ted and often had him over. She continued to believe in his innocence for a long time, until she could no longer deny the evidence. As she states in the book, we never really know people, even those who are close to us.
It all started when John's oldest brother’s daughter Louise became pregnant at a young age and the father abandoned her. As was often the practice in those days, Louise's parents in Pennsylvania took her and baby Ted in and raised the baby as if he were their son and Louise's brother. After three years, Louise and Ted moved to Washington for a new start, living at first for a time with Edna's family. Throughout his life, Ted was part of Cowell family gatherings and remained in touch with them. He also remained a close friend of Edna, John's daughter.
The nightmare of killings by Bundy occurred mostly in the 1970s and culminated with his arrest right around the time I was in my final year or so of studying with John. Since learning of Bundy's connection to the Cowell family, I've thought back repeatedly to those times with my teacher and whether I saw any signs of stress or distraction in him during the time after Bundy was first arrested. I didn't, at least to my recollection. I'm certain none of his colleagues knew about this. Again, we never really know what's going on with another person, do we?
Edna kept her relationship to Bundy a secret throughout her life for many reasons, and now that she's in her early seventies, she's decided to share it. The result is her memoir, Dark Tide: Growing Up with Ted Bundy, which documents her and her family's relationship with Bundy, as well as her letters to and from him as she slowly came to terms with the fact that he was in fact a killer and tried to get him to give details to the police so that the remaining unidentified victims' families could find closure. (He never did.)
Edna's interview with the Daily Mail (Ted Bundy's family break 50-year silence to reveal serial killer's chilling final letter | Daily Mail) includes a picture of a family picnic, with Edna and her brother on horseback, and my teacher John (wearing shorts) standing immediately to the right of Ted Bundy. I literally got chills when I saw that picture, which was taken about six years before I worked with my teacher.
There are and will be more than a few interviews with Edna. To start, there's A&E's What It Was Like Growing Up with Ted Bundy - A&E True Crime (aetv.com) and NY Post's Inside the dark family history that made Ted Bundy a killer (msn.com). There’s also a video interview with Piers Morgan. More information about Edna and the book can be found at Dark Tide - Official Book Site.
Edna's book is available now: Dark Tide: Growing Up With Ted Bundy.
Please give Edna a virtual hug and buy the book! I'll join you!
ABRACADABRA!
A Manual for Making Dreams Come True
by Elena Greco
Have you still not gotten traction with the dreams that truly matter to you? Have you given up on dreams because you're tired of trying and not succeeding and the feeling that comes afterward? Do unfulfilled dreams still nag at you?
Don't let past defeats stop you! The chapters of this book are a blueprint that will accompany and support you on your personal journey to making your unique dreams come true. Most importantly, if you do the work of this book, it works. Go ahead. Reach for the stars ... and grab them!
In addition to offering tools you can put to use right away to achieve your most heartfelt goals, Abracadabra! lists every challenge you will face in pursuing your dream and offers a practical solution to it.
Here's what readers are saying about the book:
This book is great! Sound and wise advice with clear instructions. Brilliant.
~ Llorraine Neithardt
Click below to view, purchase or review the book (I’d greatly appreciate your giving me a rating or review!):
ABRACADABRA!
A Manual for Making Dreams Come True
Abracadabra! 🎩🐇
EGMP CREATIVE ARTISTS INTERVIEWS
In August I'll begin work once again on an EGMP project (Elena Greco Multimedia Productions™ is my production company) called the EGMP CREATIVE ARTISTS INTERVIEWS. My goal is to produce and publicize video discussions and interviews with creative artists about creativity and what it means to be a creative living and working in the US. You're welcome to join the adventure!
I'm open to interviewing creatives who've been working for more than a decade in any creative art, especially performing, music, visual art, theater and dance, and working at least part of that time in the US. Writers are welcome, too. If you would like to be interviewed and tell people what being a creative in the US is like for you, let me know. I'd love to interview you and give you exposure at the same time. As a bonus, you might find that the process of arriving at your answers to my questions increases your own understanding of your creativity. I would send you the questions in advance. The final videos would be yours to use as you wish, and my own use of it would also be promotion for you. We could each use either or both of the final videos for our own purposes. I love mutual promotion!
You could choose either or both of the two sets of questions. You could also choose to interview me using the questions of the series, or you could ask me whatever questions you like. I'll be using Zoom for future video recordings, so you can participate from anywhere, and we'll keep the interviews to five minutes each. Comment below if you're interested! I’ll receive an email notification of that.
EGMP Creative Artists Interviews - Part 1 - Elena Greco
(click to view interview)
Above is a link to an interview from the first set that I did quite a while ago. In it, I respond to an interviewer who asks me questions from the previous first set. I interviewed everyone else. Each artist answered the questions very differently!
Creativity is a life-long interest for me, and I'm looking forward to completing this series and getting it out in the public eye so that creativity might be better appreciated, particularly in the US!
RECOMMENDATIONS
(A fireproof copy of a Handmaid's Tale book was auctioned for $130,000 at Sotheby's to help fight book bans) (photo of Margaret Atwood by Sotheby's)
THE HANDMAID'S TALE (Hulu)
I have hesitated to suggest this month's recommendation previously because it is wrenching emotionally and I usually prefer to promote things that support a positive feeling. But in these perilous times, I do feel I really must recommend THE HANDMAID'S TALE (Hulu), a television adaptation of Margaret Atwood's great book of the same name. It represents rather graphically what can happen in a (formerly American) totalitarian society in which women are subjugated and treated as property. Unfortunately, there is much that is now eerily familiar in this series. (Note: The sixth and final season is due out this year.)
If for no other reason, watch it for the exquisite production values (costumes, cinematography), inspired direction, and outstanding performances by the always brilliant Elisabeth Moss (who also directed some of the shows) and others. The show has won numerous awards, including Emmies, Writers Guild, British Academy Television, Peabody and Golden Globes.
CREATIVE CORNER
All things related to creativity and the creative arts
PLAYLISTS
My seasonally-themed Playlists which offer lots of great rep for singers have been a regular feature of the Newsletter for a while. But now I need the space for other great things!
As the final Playlist segment, this month I'm doing something special. In addition to the July Playlist (which is also special!), I'm giving you a Stand Up and Fight! playlist, with music to inspire you when you need to find the will to fight to save democracy from fascists ... or when you just can't find the energy to face the day, tackle your new project or slay the latest dragon. Here's to slaying dragons!
Going forward you can follow my Playlists at ELENA GRECO. I'll be adding more in the future and revising the old ones monthly.
Playlist: Independently July
Playlist: Stand Up and Fight!
RESOURCES
My RESOURCES page offers recommendations to help you live powerfully and creatively.
RESOURCES - VIDEOS
(click on link above)
Do watch the video by yours truly about the great Pauline Viardot at the link above—July 18 is her birthday!
WELL-BEING
All things related to health and healing
LIFE IN BALANCE
LIFE IN BALANCE is a multi-part series exploring health: what it really is, how to get it and how to maintain it, easily and naturally.
Subscribers (it's free!) receive the latest series posts on alternate Tuesdays.
If you haven't begun to read about this all-important topic yet,
get started!
Life in Balance: Part 1. What Is Health?
