Ruining a good thing

O.K., here's my critique of the HBO production of Game of Thrones, which one of my staff had ordered, and lent me to watch. It looks great, perfect, some things, like The Wall, so much better than I'd imagined in reading the book; the music was mesmerizing, the opening credits amazing, the acting, virtually without exception, excellent. But but but.

Bob had warned me that there was a lot of "gratuitous sex," and as it turned out, that gratuitous sex ultimately ruined the show for me, and made it impossible for me to continue watching it. Just way too much totally unnecessary sex, nearly all of which involved women -- usually totally naked women -- being thumped soundly from behind, bare breasts flopping. The only time I witnessed what you might call halfway affectionate, facing-each-other sex was in the scene where Princess Daenerys convinces her barbarian husband to try it that way for a change. And interestingly, that was her only sex scene in which she was allowed to keep her clothes on...presumably because they had to cover up the man's penis (still that particular double standard?).

I ignored this stuff for as long as I could, but when we finally reached a scene that could in no wise be described as anything but pornographic -- two totally naked women having sex, in various positions, accompanied by much exaggerated heavy breathing, under the gaze and tutelage of a man -- I decided that was it. I couldn't even just fast-forward through this tasteless scene, because I realized the man was doing a helvua lot of talking, while gazing at his two whores, and when I turned off the mute, sure enough, he was giving all this information that was actually important to the story. But doing it to the accompaniment of this totally distracting heavy breathing. Boo hiss.

Although the show did such an excellent job otherwise in adhering to the book -- one of its many pluses -- none of this beat-the-bitch down sex is in the book, not an ounce, not an inch of it. There is a sex scene between the Queen and her brother, while they are visitors at Winterfell -- which the boy Brand inadvertently witnesses, which brings about his near-death -- but it's nothing like what we were shown on the screen (brother pounding sister from behind, though in her case she's clothed, just has her skirts hiked up.)

Some folks will respond with irritation: well for heaven's sake, you don't have to watch the thing. If someone was watching it when it was being shown on HBO that someone could switch it off and not tune in again; in my case, and that of anyone else watching the DVDs, rather than the original show on T.V., we could simply stop watching it. Which is of course true, although while in my case I could just return the borrowed DVDs to the gentleman on my staff who had lent it to me, and be out nothing, if one had ordered the DVDs, started to watch them, and discovered how much offensive sex there was in it, one would just be out of luck, and that much money.

But here's the real thing, the big thing: what a shame that what was otherwise such a well-done production of a fascinating story that so many of us enjoyed in book form, should be ruined for what must surely be a goodly number of us by the addition of scenes of pornographic crudeness and offensiveness that had nothing to do with the book. If all that had been left out, the men in the audience would be no worse off -- you can't miss what was never there -- and the women in the audience would not have had to sit through so many scenes that one begins to suspect represent the director's fantasies about putting women in their proper place. Frankly, I feel sorry for all those actresses who are forced to agree to perform in pornographic scenes, in order to snag what are otherwise excellent parts. Boo hiss.

Rip-offs, and misnomers

One of my favorite very short pieces of music has, in my opinion, a completely inappropriate title. The piece is from Handel's oratorio Solomon, and is entitled The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. Now, wouldn't you expect that music announcing the arrival of a queen would be rather grand and stately? But this music is light and lively; it conjurs up, for me, a bevy of fairies, with gossamer wings, flitting from lily pad to lily pad down the length of a pond. It's light-hearted running, or in-and-out flight; it is not the arrival of the Queen of Sheba. I never have any luck embedding links, but I'm going to try again, with the Youtube link. Hope you are able to listen!

Ha! I did it! Can't believe it. Anyway, as to the rip-off part of this missive: I recently ordered season 2 of the British T.V. drama series Blue Murder, which ran 2003-2009 in England. I had been given Season 1 by a friend, and really enjoyed it, 'though comprehending the Manchester accents (one of the interesting things about this show is it is not set in London) can be a real challenge. Another interesting thing about it is that the Chief Inspector, in charge of finding all those murderers, is not only a woman, but a single mother-of-four (she caught her husband in bed with the nanny when she came home with the happy news of her promotion). And not only that, but she's overweight! Hardly obese, but she could definitely stand to lose a few pounds. So here is this frazzled woman dealing with a small son afraid of bullying at school, a teenaged son getting in with the wrong crowd and doing some bullying himself, a daughter who is mortified by what her mother is wearing whenever she makes a televised press statement, but also hates it when her mother puts on perfume and eye makeup when a man comes over, and a new baby (she was pregnant when she was promoted/caught her husband in flagrante)along with ever-changing nannys...while at the same time running hither and yon solving crime. She's a smart, funny, unusual heroine, played by Caroline Quentin, an actress known more for her comedic roles. And there's a very cute, sexy actor, Ian Kelsey, playing her second in command.

So there you have Blue Murder, which I ordered the second set of, my little once a month splurge on something that is not rent/food/gas/electic bills/sewer bills/water bills/oil bills/medical bills...and there are only four episodes on the two discs! There were three discs, six episodes in Set 1. Why two fewer? I've already watched the four! What a rip-off!

Walking in the other guy's moccasins

One thing I really like about my local PBS television station is that I'm able to get not only BBC World News, but Deutsche-Welle News (in English), and just recently they've started running an English-language news program from Japan (with incredibly detailed descriptions of the various problems at the stricken power plant). I like hearing about what's happening in the world from a perspective other than American. For that matter, I like hearing about what's happening in the rest of the world! Except for disasters like major earthquakes and tsunamis, we hear very little about the rest of the world on our network news.

For example, I've been learning a lot about the German economy during the recent economic crisis. They're doing much better than we are, in terms of recovery, mainly because their economy still depends so much on exports, and the things they export -- especially cars -- have continued to sell. On the other hand, I have become familiar with how desparate the economic situation is in Spain, in Portugal, and in Ireland.

And I've been learning about German politics. Of course I knew before that Angela Merkel was Chancellor (well, actually no. I knew she headed the government, but I think I thought she was, maybe, the Prime Minister. Which she essentially is, but in Germany the position is called the Chancellor); but I doubt I would ever have known that her very popular Defense Minister, Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, was forced to resign when it came out that he had plagiarized much of his doctoral thesis. I was somewhat surprised, but pleased, to see that so many people thought that was important enough to merit his leaving office. ("It calls into doubt his integrity," one person said). I couldn't help wondering if the same thing would happen in this country. Would people think it was that important?

The one thing I continue to have trouble with, though, is the German language. When German speakers start talking their voices are quickly muted to make way for the English translator's voice, but you still hear a few snippets. And I'm sorry, but that is just the most incredibly ugly language. Here are all these reasonable, well-meaning people espousing perfectly reasonable ideas and opinions, and they all sound like angry Nazis.

It was interesting, seeing how all the various political leaders took a real bashing from their own people as the result of the economic crisis; 'twern't just Mr. Obama. In England they actually got rid of the head guy (Gordon Brown), people have been very unhappy with Sarcozy in France, especially after his government raised the retirement age, to save money; and in Germany, Merkel's popularity has steadily slipped. People have to have someone to blame, and it's easier to zero in on the country's very visible political leaders, than on the invisible people who really caused the problems.

So anyway, I'm having my horizons expanded. Thank you, public television.

Dirty cars, and love

Greetings from the land of filthy cars. I've been wanting to say that ever since I started this blog, and finally remembered to do so when it was appropriate, i.e., in the middle of winter, when everyone's car is, indeed, filthy. Even if it has just snowed, which has served to give your vehicle a little bath, two minutes on the road will take care of that, as the sand put down by the public works people, and the slush produced by traffic rumbling over still-snowy roads, gets thrown up by all that passing traffic. Most people don't bother to wash their cars all winter; there doesn't seem to be a point. So here we are, the land of filthy cars.

And here's a question for you. Why, in sit-coms and romantic comedy films, does the guy always say, when asked by a third party if he loves the girl, something to the effect of "What's not to love? (or maybe "Of course I love her.") She smart, funny, beautiful..." And that's it. Those always seem to be the reasons men trot out for loving the woman in question, even though as a matter of fact real-life men rarely love a woman because she's smart or funny (beautiful, yes). They may admire her brains, and enjoy her humor, but that's not why they love her.

Nobody ever says, "Of course I love her -- or, What's not to love? -- she's sweet, kind, loving, she hasn't got a mean bone in her body, she puts up with me, I can be myself when I'm with her, she's great in bed..." In other words, nobody ever gives any of the real reasons men love women.

This shows an appalling lack of imagination or insight, or else just plain laziness, on the part of a heckuva lot of writers. Even if you want to be succinct, because the whole show has to be squeezed into 24 minutes, even if you don't want to come on too heavy, because the show is a comedy, you should be able to come up with something besides "She's smart, she's funny, she's beautiful." Even "I don't know why I love her; why does anybody love anybody?" is better.

Ah, but what comes next?

My, we do live in interesting times, don't we? I watched the protests in Tunisia with amazement, was especially amazed that the marching and shouting and street violence actually resulted in the much-despised president "stepping down," as they say, and leaving the country. A popular uprising, in that part of the world, actually toppling an unpopular government.

And now we have Egypt, which is even more aston-ishing. The country as a whole has enjoyed greater prosperity than Tunisia, but there are still many people unemployed, many of them young and educated, chaffing at having that education, and not being able to find a job (the same problem that exists in Tunisia). And so very many people living in gross poverty, on the equivalent of $2 a day, I heard on a news analysis program. And a government that has been a tiny bit more tolerant of self-expression, but not if it includes criticism of the government.

Then, thanks to mass communication, the Egyptians are able to watch the successful uprising in Tunisia -- hey, if they can do it, why can't we -- and a few hot-headed young men, who always seem to be the ones to lead insurrections, take to the streets, and the powder keg is lit.

I think how the French Revolution must have started in just this way, with the common people finally having had enough of their dire circumstances in juxtaposition with the wealth and luxury of the aristocracy, and the indifference of the government. In fact, that seems to be the recipe for "revolution": the bulk of the people living wretched lives, with no sense that the government gives a damn about them. A few brave souls start shout-ing, marching, and all the lemmings join in. Then the mob mentality sets in -- there's violence, destruction, and the powers that be get scared. Inevitably they bring in the police/army -- the guys with the guns. But if the guys with the guns have any sympathy at all with the protesters -- as seems to be the case in Egypt -- or if the protesters are in sufficient numbers, and of sufficient desperation -- the government may be out of luck.

Of course we all learn about this stuff in school -- for some of us, a hundred years ago -- but now we're able to watch it being played out on our television screens. We are able to watch history being made, as we did with the moon walk, the assasination of Lee Harvey Oswald (I remember passing through the living room, glancing at the television, which had been left on all-but-constantly since Kennedy's assasination, and actually seeing Oswald gunned down), the Vietnam war, or for that matter the Iraqi war, during which we were given practically a blow-by-blow. Television really is a remarkable thing.

The current history-in-the-making is fascinating, but also unsettling, because most of the people involved in the yelling, marching and stone-throwing are not in any way pro-American. Even though they are vehemently against their current governments, they are just as vehemently anti-American. It is going to be very interesting, seeing how the world proceeds to change.

Down in the 'hood

Just as I'm always a few years behind in my reading, I'm behind the rest of the country on television viewing. Some time ago my friend Mary out in California mentioned that she and her husband enjoyed watching The Wire. I had to admit that I'd never even heard of the show. This isn't quite so outrageous as it might seem, since there was only a brief period, after I moved to Maine, when I had cable T.V. (The Wire appeared on HBO, 2002-2008.) Except for that brief period my television viewing has been limited to what the rabbit ears on my T.V. can pick up, i.e., the local area PBS station, and (as I discovered only recently) the FOX station.

Someone donated to the library the first season of The Wire on DVD, so I decided to check it out. Despite the fact that I almost ODed on the F word during the first episode (no doubt there to emphasize how realistic the show was...I did notice that in later episodes while the word hardly disappeared, it was used a little more discriminately); and despite the fact that occasionally I could not understand either what the drug dealers or the police were saying, thanks to their respective jargons, there was no denying that the show was inter-esting. And gradually I had to admit it was damn good. Great characterizations, totally believable acting (were those real kids from the projects that they'd hired for the show?), intriguing, complex story line, sly, ironic humor.

But hey. Such a distressing, depressing world it illuminates. The world of the drug culture in inner city America. It is, indeed, a hideous picture of America; and you know, as you watch, that it is only too true. What especially breaks my heart is seeing all the kids, I mean little kids, caught up in this. It's bad enough, the 16 and 17-year olds, sitting on the couch out in the middle of the courtyard of the "low-rises" (which are right next door to the "towers", or high-rises), overseeing the nonstop trafficking of heroine, every direction you look. I think to myself, what a waste of human potential. But in one scene "D," the top overseer, breaks all the eggs a little girl who couldn't be more than ten just bought at the store, because he's figured out she's been "thievin,'" i.e. keeping some of the money that should have been turned over to him. That little girl, like too many real-life little girls, and boys, is involved in the drug trade. Damn.

In another scene, Wallace, one of the more appealing dealers, gets waked up by his...sister? cousin? he's taking care of about six little kids in a three-room apartment with electricity filched from a neighboring building...gets waked up because the girl needs help with her math problem, which involves the number of people getting on and off a bus. When she is unable to do the problem in her head, as he reads it to her, he gives her another example using a drug transaction, and she is able to do the calculating immediately. He demands to know how come she can do that, but can't keep track of the people getting on and off a bus, and she says, "You mess up on the stuff, they fuck you up."

Actually, this scene represents one of the strengths of the program: it shows the human side of all the characters. Wallace getting up when the clock radio goes on, walking around brushing his teeth while rousting the kids from their beds (mattresses on the floor), "Come on, get up, you're gonna be late for school -- what, you wanna go into foster care? You wanna go into foster care, you leave your black asses right where they are." One of the drug king's major shooters, a basically hang-loose guy who just does what he's told, having a roomful of gorgeous tropical fish that he dotes on. One of the girls who works in the "titty bar" run by the drug king, not being able to see much at all without her big glasses that she (naturally) rarely wears. Among the police, the complete jerk of a Deputy Commis-sioner for Operations at one point telling the major "hero," after a fellow police officer has been shot, that he is not responsible. Telling him in a rough, tough way, but telling him. And on and on. Life. For real.

So now I have to get hold of season 2.

Beauty for the eye, and the ear

I have just been enjoying one of my favorite traditions, that of welcoming in the New Year with the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concert. It is always such a gorgeous melange of music, dance (some of the pieces include performances by members of the Vienna State Ballet), and grand, elegant buildings. Besides the Musikvereinssaal, in which the concert is held, and which features an amazing ceiling of gold, the dancers swirl through rooms and gardens of various palaces and museums to be found in Vienna -- this year it was the Art History Museum. The Musikvereinssaal is filled with flowers, and with people from not only Vienna, but all over the world, who have paid top dollar to attend the most famous and heavily watched concert in the world. And it is so obvious that they are having a grand time, as are the musicians.

The two dances that were featured were enough to satisfy the romanticism buried deep inside every grown woman. In one a lovely, lithe dancer in a red dress was wafting gracefully through pale yellow and gold rooms full of stark Roman and Greek statuary, eventually accompanied by a beautiful young man in white tie and tails. The use of color was inspired: the red against the pale yellow, in striking contrast to the austerity of the white statuary; in shots from above, the two dancers against the black and white mosaic floors. I thought how remarkable it was that here they were whirling and lifting their legs in the way of all ballet dancers, surrounded by priceless art. You would have to practice plenty, to make sure you didn't knock over anything.

Another dance started out with one young dancer in a frothy pink dress, and her young man, again in white tie and tails (and black tights, I eventually realized), pas de deuxing on a landing of the grand stairway. The camera changed angles to reveal a second, then a third couple. Eventually the place was alive with couples, some of the young ladies in the pink, others in a pale grey layered with pink, all of them gliding through the wide, white-painted doorways of gallery after gallery, all in a line, and all lined with great works of art. It was elegant, beautiful, utterly satisfying.

And of course, through it all you are hearing all of this great music, written primarily by various members of the Strauss family. 'though this year there was also a haunting rendition of Jacques Offenbach's Overture to Die Rheinnixen. The concert always finishes up with three encores, one of which is always the On the Beautiful Blue Danube waltz (An der schonen blauen Danau). This year as the orchestra played, television viewers were treated to shots taken along the length of this mighty, historical river, wending its way from Germany, through the Austrian valley of Wachau, with castles on the hills above the river, past Vienna (Vien), past Budapest, Hungary, through Rumania, finally emptying into the Black Sea. For the first time I had a sense of this river as a river, about which Strauss wrote such a melodic and memorable orchestral piece. The opening is so haunting and affecting, I can imagine a native Austrian feeling the tug of home when he's far from home, and he hears it.

I have decided to do something I have been tempted before to do: register for the drawing for next year's concert. The orchestra's web site opens registration between Jan. 2 and Jan. 23, with winners announced in March. Tickets are so in demand, this is how they have to handle it. There are actually three concerts one can attend: the Preview on Dec. 30th, the New Year's Eve concert, and the one on New Year's Day that is televised. I'm going to register for all three, as the program is the same at each. The main thing is to be there, soaking up the music, the ambiance, the sense of tradition...the magic.

Who knows, this time next year I might be in Vienna.

The idiot box

I was exposed to a lot of network and cable television while I was at my sister's in San Antonio. A reminder that in my own home I have access to only the local area PBS station, since that is all my rabbit ears will pick up (actually, I did just recently discover that I could also pick up the Fox station out of Portland, so whenever I feel like seeing the forensic show "Bones," or old episodes of "Two and a Half Men," I can flip over there). I can only say that being limited to public tele-vision, for all my annoyance at the frequent periods of "begging," would seem to be a blessing.

It isn't that the programming on network and cable T.V. is so relent-lessly bad -- I know from having seen the occasional episode of this show or that that there are some well-written, intelligent shows to be seen, along with, of course, all the garbage for the lowest common denominator out there. No, the big problem is the commercials. The constant, constant barrage of commercials. For every three or four minutes of a program you seem to get five minutes of commercials. I know there were not so many commercials during a show -- or for that matter between shows -- in the "good old days" as there are now. Indeed, I can remember when there would be one product advertised per commercial break.

What I don't understand is how the people who watch a lot of tele-vision can stand it. Sitting with my mother and watching to keep her company I would sometimes feel my soul fluttering up out of my body. You can't even flip to another channel, because they all seem to run their commercials at the same time. To be constantly hawked at about this product, then that product, then that product, all too often in a very frenetic, if not downright screaming, way: it's got to be mind-numbing. Especially as they'll sometimes play a commercial that you just saw one or two commercials ago, over again. "Yes," I would say aloud to the offending television, "you just showed us that."

Not only do I wonder how people stand this endless advertising, I wonder why they stand for it. My mother, in her drastically weakened little voice, stated the obvious, "Well, they have to pay for the shows some way." Yes, but. Does it really take that many commercials to pay for a show? Or has that ol' bugaboo, Greed, gotten its tentacles in here, as well as in Wall Street and the real estate market. 'Hey, how about squeezing in four commercials, rather than just three? Or say, why not five?'

Maybe it would be a little better if all the commercials came between shows; then at least you could watch the actual programming without having the story line or your concentration/enjoyment broken by all this stuff you're not likely to pay much attention to anyway. Of course the advertisers would say no, people would just get up and go out to the kitchen for a snack between shows; but to judge by my siblings, they already do that, during the course of the show. And I'm sure there are other folks like me, who just hit the mute button. Those advertisers are already not reaching a whole bunch of us out here. They're just adversely affecting our viewing pleasure.

So maybe we should tell them that. Start a campaign: Reduce the Number of Commercials (RNC). Maybe write our congressional representatives urging them to introduce laws limiting the number of commercials that can be run during a show.

Or maybe just switch to the public broadcasting station, and give money like crazy during the pledge drives.

America's Best Idea

Like many of you, I've been enjoying Ken Burns' latest opus, The National Parks. Part II was especially inspiring, with its tales of those who fought to preserve our natural (and later, ancient cultural) wonders, against the relentless, single-minded commercial urge of the nation. I stand in awe of people like John Muir, who can fight year after year for a cause they believe in -- in his case, the preservation of the Yosemite Valley, and of all the land that eventually became Yosemite National Park -- despite setbacks, despite being up against powerful, moneyed opponents, despite simply not being successful, for so long a time. I consider it one of my character flaws that I am too easily discouraged; had I been in Muir's place, I fear I would have given up long before the moments of success could arrive.

But then, Muir's successes were often not quite complete -- as when he succeeded in having the high country around Yosemite Valley declared a national park, but not in getting the valley itself trans-ferred from the (indifferent) care of the state of California, to the federal government -- or they weren't permanent, as when the city of San Francisco managed to persuade the federal government to allow the Tuolumne River in the Hetch Hetchy Valley to be dammed, to form a reservoir for the Bay Area. But he plugged on, he never gave up, which is of course what They always say: you must Never Give Up.

I've certainly learned lots of fascinating facts, thanks to Mr. Burns & Co. For one thing, I hadn't realized how far in the past John Muir lived, worked, wrote! I thought he was active, making his travels (to Alaska, among other places) and writing his books, in approximately the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Undoubtedly a shameful thing for a librarian to be admitting, but I also have to admit that I've never read any of his books. I simply knew they were considered classics in the realm of environmental literature, books one did not discard from the collection, even if no one had checked them out in a long time.

But good lord, the fellow stumbled onto Yosemite -- which he promptly fell in love with, and which soon became his life's obsession (something else I didn't know) -- way back in the 1850s. And I didn't know that it was because of him that the Sierra Club came into existence, for the express purpose of protecting Yosemite. I also had no idea that that organization went back as far as it does (1892). Just as I didn't know the Audubon Society was originally started by someone named George Bird Grinnell, who worked tirelessly in the late 1800s to preserve natural habitats and their wildlife. One of the most satisfying moments of Part II was when it described his publishing in the magazine Forest and Stream, of which he was editor, an article on the slaughter by poachers of buffalo in Yellow-stone National Park, which so outraged people that Congress in short order passed the National Park Protective Act, thereby saving the buffalo of the park, and animals throughout all the parks. Yes! The power of the press!

Indeed, again and again in this series we are learning about individuals -- many of whom I personally had never heard of -- whose passion and dedication were given over to protecting and preserving the natural wonders of this country, for the enjoyment of all of us. These men -- and early on they were all men -- are as much an in-spiration as the parks themselves. And certainly the many gorgeous views of the various parks is an inspiration to get out there and experience some wilderness.

It reminds me of the time I went camping with my Aunt Kittisue in Alaska. My lovable aunt's idea of camping was to put Pavarotti on the cassette player, pour a glass of wine and wait for the steaks to cook on the habachi. While she and her friend Mary were doing that, and enjoying a good gab fest, I made the short walk from our campsite out to the road. Straight ahead reared that awesome sight, Mt. McKinley, completely white though it was the end of May. It was ten o'clock at night but the sun was still shining, and all the birds were still singing (I wondered fleetingly if they dropped dead from exhaustion because they never knew when to go to bed). I stood there in the middle of that two-lane highway for a good ten minutes, and no car passed, there was no sound but birdsong. And I realized that there was virtually no touch of humankind for many miles in all directions; we were surrounded by true wilderness. And I was forcefully struck, for the first time in my life, by how valuable that fact was, the fact of wilderness, of land untrampled, undeveloped, uncommercialized. Just nature, doing its thing.

The National Parks, America's Best Idea, is reminding me of that moment, and that conviction.

Pathetic

I'm afraid that's my word for Maine Public Television. Throughout nearly all of March they were doing the pledge drive thing. A whole month! An endless cycle of the same old shows – Celtic Women at Slane Castle in Ireland, Yanni at the Forum in Acapulco, Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, My Music, My Generation, the 60s-- endlessly interrupted by lengthy pleas for money. Mind you all of these are good programs, but you can derive pleasure from watching them only so many times, and they were all repeats as it was. And do the folks at MPBN really think people sit there patiently while they beg, during each of those interruptions? Of course not. Most people flip the channel – and if what they find they like, they don't come back. I myself, having no alternative viewing (I do not have cable or satellite, and the only station my rabbit ears pick up is MPBN), I hit the mute button, and go back to reading or working on the computer or whatever, until I notice out of the corner of my eye that the program has started again. Eventually, of course, I got to where I just left the television off.

And here's the thing. We just went through this in December. Not for a whole month, but for about two weeks. And then there was the pledge drive in August. And now, at the end of April/beginning of May there will be the annual auction, when there will be nothing on from 8 p.m. until midnight, for a total of ten days, but these eager folks trying to convince you to place a bid on all sorts of items various businesses and individuals have donated.

Of course, I do realize that what all this begging means is that Maine Public Television is desperate for money. And I guess that's a sad commentary on the state of Maine, that its citizens do not do a better job of supporting what is unquestionably a stimulating and refreshing alternative to awful, awful network television. On the other hand, it's also possible that many people, like me, have given what they can; and for them, there's an end to it.

An article in the Bangor Daily News last month mentioned that employees of MPBN agreed to a pay cut last winter, and 10% of staffing was cut. The Network also considered deactivating a transmission tower in the north of the state, to save money. How-ever, there was a real public outcry about that last move, and it was shelved. (The article made the point that for many people in the sparsely populated northernmost part of the state, MPBN is the only American station viewers are able to get. As one person said, we know more about Canada than what's happening in our own state.) Yes, it's plain they need money badly.

Quite possibly other public television stations across the country are suffering similar drops in public support, just as so many other charitable organizations are. I don't know what the solution is, for these beleaguered stations, but I don't believe it is constant begging. It is especially annoying once you have given. Eventually you want to yell at the screen – exactly as I did one night – I gave already! I don't believe keeping after them and keeping after them is going to make more people feel guilty. If you can give, and you want to, you will; if you can't or don't want to, you won't.

Do you suppose these stations would qualify for some of the stimulus package money? Put some of those people who lost their jobs back to work? And insure that I am able to watch Jim Leher and the News Hour, Bill Moyer's Journal, the NOW New Magazine, Masterpiece Theatre, the occasional nature or music program (the first time it's aired), without having to listen to endless reminders that I'm lucky I have access to all these fine programs, and should therefore send money? It's doubtful, since the arts in general seem to have been an area sorely neglected by The Plan. But some form of government subsidy, as they have in other countries, may indeed be what is needed.

Of course, all those people (like my friend Clifford) who are appalled at how much money the government has already committed itself to spending, are undoubtedly even more appalled at my suggestion. Let 'em sink or swim, may be the attitude. Public television may indeed be in the process of sinking.

One thought leads to another

I don’t know how many of you watched the public television show “Carrier,” about life on board the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier. The show ran in its entirety here in Maine over several nights a few months ago, and now they’re rerunning it in hour-long segments every week. I watched it the first time, and found it fascinating, although I occasionally felt they concentrated too much on a particular crew member (the young fellow with the pregnant girlfriend back home), and gave too much air time to the Pentecostal group, in the segment on religion on board ship. The Pentacostals seemed to be a very small group, out of all those people on board, to receive so much attention from the producers, and I suspected it was because their services were a little more “out there” than the more staid services of the other denominations.

I also took exception to the final segment, when the cameras followed some of the crew to their very homes and, it seemed to me, invaded their privacy to a really egregious extent. Of course, these crew members had agreed to be followed in this way, but I felt it made the show slip over the line into the unpleasantly voyeuristic...from the pleasantly voyeuristic, I suppose.

But overall I thought it was T.V. at its best: informative, while being entertaining. And one thing I learned, that amazed me, was how young most of these sailors are. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. And working at extremely demanding, stressful, important jobs. And doing a good job! They are still in many ways immature – one older sailor declares the ship is like one big high school – but the navy is teaching them discipline, and responsibility, and they are able to take a well-deserved pride in their contribution to the running of the ship.

Seeing this made me think of something else, the work programs established by Franklyn Roosevelt during the Depression. I was thinking it was the WPA I had in mind, but a dip into that highly useful if not always reliable People’s Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, showed me it was the CCC – the Civilian Conservation Corps – I was really thinking of. The WPA did have a number of work projects, that produced things like bridges, post offices, guidebooks by authors, what has proved to be invaluable photographic records of conditions of the time by various photographers, etc. But the CCC was especially developed to put young men to work. According to Wikipedia they planted trees, constructed shelters and trails in state and national parks, built fences, roads, including logging and fire roads, even installed phone and power lines. My father worked in the CCC for a while, and it was a godsend for him, as it was for many young men.

And I thought, why don’t we have something like that now? Something besides the military that could instill some discipline and a sense of responsibility into young people (have to include both sexes these days), something that would enable the young men, at least, to work off some of that energy and free-floating testosterone in productive ways. I’ve actually had this thought before, when I would see young men just hanging out, begging for the opportunity to get into trouble. Or I’d think about all those kids being destroyed in gangs, because they have nothing else that makes them feel important, gives them a sense of being part of something bigger than themselves.

And now I discover that we do have something like that! Again according to Wikipedia, 41 states have some form of a CCC program. So why don’t we hear more about them? How many young people are actually involved in them? Are these organizations going into the ghettos and recruiting? Hmmm...