Making Do

This morning while doing what passes for a quick clean of my kitchen with paper towels and disinfectant spray I was thinking about the house maids in "Downton Abbey," which I've been rewatching recently.

When I view the excess that attends the lives of the Earl of Grantham and his family I feel disgust laced with envy. How dare they consume all those resources for just one family (a family of two parents and three daughters, exactly the size of my own)? 

But then, quick on its heels, this rueful observation: Wouldn't it be nice if I had a cook, a gardener, a chauffeur and a scullery maid?

My house is seldom spic-and-span. It's tidy, but not scrupulously clean. Long ago I realized that in order to raise children, write and bring in some income, standards would have to slip. And slip they did.

Now I have more time but I've learned to live with stains on the carpet and smudges on the walls. Truth to tell, if a crew from Downton Abbey were suddenly to offer its services, I might have to think a minute before I said yes. 

On Midwives and Texas

In my mind now are snippets of the music played in "Call the Midwife." Not just the opening tune, but the crescendo that signals a baby is about to be born, the whimsical notes that accompany Fred the handyman, and the ecclesiastical chords that sound whenever the nuns gather to pray.

All of this suggests that I watch a little too much "Call the Midwife" — and on that point I plead guilty — but there’s a reason why I do. And it’s worth mentioning on this day we’re all grieving the tragic loss of life in Texas.

"Call the Midwife" takes place in the East End of London in the 1960s. Watching it whisks me into a completely different world from the one I inhabit. It’s a world of poverty, to be sure, but also a world of community. It is not a world without violence but it’s a world where police are armed only with billy clubs and the only children who die are rare ones who, despite the best efforts of the midwives and doctors, do not survive a difficult birth. 

I started re-watching the show a few weeks ago when I was feeling under the weather because it never fails to buoy me up. And you can bet I watched an episode last night to calm myself down. The show distracted me from the thoughts swirling around in my mind so I could fall asleep. But now it's morning and the thoughts are back:

When will we do something about the gun violence in this country? Whatever it is, it won’t be enough. But it will be a start. And without it ... well, I just don’t know what will become of us.

Seeing Mom

I find it interesting that to me the most fascinating character in Ken Burns' new documentary "Hemingway" is not Papa H himself (though I realize I've not read many of his short stories and most of his nonfiction), but Edna O'Brien, an Irish novelist who shines as one of the talking heads Burns uses so beautifully.

O'Brien is calm but intense, and her comments cut to the quick of Hemingway's novels. In one of her earlier appearances, she takes on detractors who say that Hemingway hated women and wrote adversely about them. 

To answer these criticisms, she reads a passage from Hemingway's short story "Up in Michigan," considered scandalous when it was published. The passage occurs near the end of the story, after a sexual encounter that the female character did not want, and O'Brien reads it slowly, the camera panning down to her hands, which gesture slightly as she reads the words with that Irish lilt in her voice. 

I don't see O'Brien then but my mother, who was roughly O'Brien's age when she died. I see the same set of the jaw, the same hair, full and of a color not found in nature. The same unbridled truthfulness. 

Mom was a writer, too — though most of her stories were never told. 

(In honor of O'Brien and Mom, a photo of the green fields of County Clare.) 

Downton Sandwich

This winter I've continued my binge-watching spree, plunging back into Downton Abbey after catching up on Victoria. Time permitting, I head down to the basement beanbag chair after dinner for 45 to 60 minutes of immersion in another world.

Add in elliptical-machine morning-exercise sessions, which require that one watch something to make the minutes pass more quickly, and my days lately have become what I've come to think of as a "Downton sandwich": Twenty minutes of Lord and Lady Grantham in the morning and 50 minutes of Lord and Lady Grantham in the evening.

In between I must dress myself, drive my own car to Metro, commute on an overcrowded train with people of all classes, work a long day, then come home to make my own dinner. Oh, the indignity! I'm sure the Dowager Countess Violet Grantham (Dame Maggie Smith) would say something to buck me up, something like, "Don't be defeatist, dear. It is very middle-class," one of her many splendid zingers.

Still, my "Downton sandwich" makes me think about the modern world that was shaking the estates of the rich and titled in post World War I Britain. Makes me compare my life with those of the people upstairs (and downstairs, too, but upstairs is more fun): Where is the ladies maid to do my hair every morning? Where is the cook to prepare me a scrumptious breakfast that will be brought to me in bed? Where is the butler to open the door and dispatch all those horrid telephone sales calls?

These service personnel are scattered to the four winds, I guess. They've become engineers and baristas, doctors and teachers. They're living their own lives. Poor me: I'm left to fend for myself!

(Highclere Castle interior courtesy Culture Trip)

Binge-Watching

Yesterday I spoke with a colleague. We discussed the government shutdown and other matters. She wondered aloud why more people aren't up in arms about what's happening to our country. I posited an answer: binge watching.

Of the two 20-century dystopian novels most in vogue when I was growing up, Brave New World was most on the money. Not for a moment underestimating 1984's Big Brother or the surveillance under which we now live, I think our peril lies in our pleasures, in our need for entertainment.

Enter binge-watching. In the last week, as my body has been trudging through January 2019, my mind and heart are lodged in Victorian England as I binge-watch the PBS series "Victoria."  It's a relatively innocent pleasure as pleasures go—and don't get me wrong: I love it! But  I've noticed it makes me care a little less about present-day reality.

Binge-watching a show is addictive. I'm absorbed in my show just as the denizens of Brave New World were absorbed by their walls. All I need now is a little soma.

(Photo: Courtesy PBS)

Downton Time

The Christmas ornaments are packed away. The tree is awaiting pickup by the street. The last fir needle is (I think) vacuumed off the floor.

All of which means ... it's Downton time. Or at least it used to be.

The urge to watch "Downton Abbey" had been growing in me for days. The U.S. airing of that show on PBS's "Masterpiece Theater" was always perfectly timed, I thought. It would begin here the first full weekend after the holidays, and was a perfect respite to the post-Christmas letdown.

No need to mourn it, though, not in the age of streaming. Last night, I settled down in the beanbag chair to watch Downton all over again, courtesy of Amazon Prime.

What a sight it was was after two years away—and eight years since the first episode: the opulence and the intrigue, the dresses and the jewelry, the upstairs and the downstairs. Seeing it again means I savor the details with full knowledge of what comes afterward: Lord Grantham's generosity, Anna's kindness to Bates.

It wasn't until I glanced at the clock on the VCR player that it dawned on me what I'd done. It was 9 p.m. Without meaning to I was watching the show at exactly the same hour it always aired. As Downton often reminds us: Old habits die hard.

Park Avenue Beat

For the last week or so, I've been watching old "Perry Mason" shows while exercising. It's a fun distraction. The show has enough twists and turns that the rowing machine minutes speed by. I find myself comparing legal justice then and now, marveling at the cut of the men's suits (which they wore at all times) and the women's skirts (and white gloves), pondering the world that produced this show as much as the show itself.

There's only one problem: I can't get the Perry Mason theme song out of my mind. It's with me when I walk, when I cook dinner or empty the dishwasher.  It's even with me in the office.

It has a lot of moxie, this theme song. It's decidedly tabloid, with a detective-magazine feel. Called "Park Avenue Beat," the song was written to exude sophistication and toughness, Wikipedia informs me. It was composer Fred Steiner's most well-known work.

All I know is ... I wish it would go away.

A Walker at Pemberley

Over the weekend I watched one of my mainstays, the Pride and Prejudice miniseries that debuted in 1995 and never grows old.

What struck me this time around is how much time Miss Elizabeth Bennett spends traipsing around the countryside. She walks in all weathers and all terrains. She walks in the cold and the rain. She dirties her petticoat and muddies her shoes. She walks around the estate at Pemberley, where she runs into its owner, Mr. Darcy, fresh out of the lake and dripping wet.  It's a scene to thrill every female English major's heart!

Later, in dry clothes, Darcy escorts Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle around the estate, along crushed stone paths, through copses of trees. This all could have been mine, Elizabeth said to herself on an earlier tour of the house, having second thoughts about spurning Darcy's proposal as she reevaluates his character — and his property!

But the quiet walk the couple shares bodes well for the future. And as the camera pans out, we see the placid beauty of the English countryside. I saved the last two episodes for another night. But I know this: One day Miss Elizabeth Bennett will be a walker at Pemberley.

(Lyme Park, Cheshire, where the lake scene was filmed.)

All Together Now

I'm still being riveted nightly by the 18-hour documentary film "The Vietnam War." And I mean that literally — as in riveted each night.

It's interesting to talk with people about the show and the different ways they are watching it. Some started it a week ago Sunday, kept up with last week's nine hours as best they could but will admit to being a little behind.

Others are recording it and planning to binge-watch it later, seeing it as all (or most) of a piece. This is the television style of day, of course. To take control of one's viewing, watch as little or as much as one wants at a time, place (and with a delivery method) of one's choosing.

As for me, I'm watching the film in real-time.  Even night before last, when Claire and Tomas were over for dinner, I watched what I could and then caught up with the rerun, also known as an "encore presentation," which my PBS station runs directly after the first show of the evening.

While my viewing habits are in part dictated by lack of technical knowledge (including DVR technique), they are also generational. I like keeping up with the show on its own time. I feel a kinship with all the people watching at the same time. There's a communal aspect to this that soothes and heals.

And where did I develop this habit of communal viewing? From annual TV events like "The Wizard of Oz" and "Peter Pan,"  From watching "My Three Sons" with Mom and Dad (provided I brush my teeth beforehand so I could jump in bed the minute the show ended at 9 p.m.). And ... from watching some of the same evening newscasts that have been replayed on "The Vietnam War."

(Photo: CNN.com.)

Inner Cowboy

I waffled about the title. Should I say "Inner Cowgirl"? Or perhaps the gender-neutral "Inner Cowherd"? No, I'll stick with the inaccurate and politically incorrect "Cowboy"— because it's the word to use when describing the TV series "Lonesome Dove," last weekend's escape fare.

I can't get the show or its theme song out of my head, even though I've watched it before and read the book it was based on. It's same effect every time — one of enlargement, and even (despite the tragedies that beset the cattle drive from Texas to Montana) of joy.  It's the characters and their quest.  It's the frontier, the heartbeat of a nation. And it's the sweeping views of rivers and plains and buttes and valleys.

As national myths go, it's not a bad one, though it has certainly gotten us into trouble: the rugged individualist wedded to guns and glory. But if offers to the suburban commuter some sense of elemental wholeness, of a time when life was harder but perhaps truer. I could be all wrong on this, though. It could just be my inner cowboy talking.

Mad Woman

Tonight is the premiere of "Mad Men." It's the fourth season of a show I've usually watched on DVD; this will be the first episode I've seen in real time. So we have the excitement of a premiere (even though a television premiere), the glamor of New York City in the 1960s, and for me, wondering about the popularity of this show and what it means about us. The characters are compelling, the time period just out of reach enough to be strange and wondrous, and the style is divine. We like "Mad Men" because it's a good show. But we also like it because it reminds us of the way we used to be. We smoked, we drank, we were not kind to women and minorities. But we were not as plugged in, we were not as politically correct; we were, I think, more human.