Virtual Gatherings

Jill and I spent a quiet Thanksgiving Day with just the two of us. Brian and TJ could not travel--nor did we really want them to. However, we were not completely isolated over the long weekend. As noted in the two previous postings, I made a trip Saturday morning to the Brandywine Museum, and we had delightful Zoom gatherings on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.

Saturday evening was a "virtual cocktail hour," organized by our friend Cat, with a group of SF fans from various parts of the country: Pennsylvania, New York, Chicago, and other areas. There's just one rule in these "parties"--no politics. So, for about 90 minutes, we discussed food, family, entertainment and other hopefully non-controversial topics.

The three-hour gathering on Sunday was all family: Brian and his wife, Heather, "zooming" in from Connecticut, and TJ from Brooklyn. Lots of catching up on work, social life, etc. was on the agenda. At the end, it was almost exactly like a conversation we would have had post-dinner had we all been in the same room.

We will definitely be doing more of these until the pandemic eases.

Playing House

 As I noted in yesterday's post, the exhibit at the Brandywine Museum also includes a couple of absolutely exquisite dollhouses. Here's a look at them:

This one was owned by Sarah Cordelia Mellon Scaife and was donated to the museum by her daughter. It is not known when she acquired the dollhouse or the many objects and dolls within it. The museum dates it at about 1900.

This is just one room of the very large dollhouse that belonged to Ann Wyeth McCoy, N.C. Wyeth's daughter. Curiously, she never had a dollhouse as a child and this one was built for her by her husband in 1966, by adapting a tool shed into a nine-foot house with six rooms. When it was donated to the museum, the house was deconstructed so each of the rooms could be displayed individually (the nine-foot height of the complete building would not fit in the galleries).

All Aboard!

 Every year, between Thanksgiving and New Year's, the Brandywine Museum of Art turns one of its galleries into a marvelous exhibition of model trains, many of them once owned by the Wyeth family of artists. (The museum's collection is dedicated largely to the Wyeths and their friends and colleagues, including many of the great illustrators of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.)

Earlier today, I made a visit to the museum, located in Chadds Ford, PA, on the banks of the Brandywine Creek. It is housed in a converted mill, not far from the site of N.C. and Andrew Wyeth's studio and home. (The museum offers tours of the studio as well.) Here's just small sample of the train layouts on display--all are operating and some include pieces that visitors can operate with a foot pedal

If trains aren't your thing at the holidays, there are also exhibits of two wonderful dollhouses. I'll show a little of those in the next few days.

Not Being Thankful

 Continuing to be thankful in trying times can be difficult. Of course, there is much I am thankful for--I and my entire immediate family are healthy; all those of an employable age are gainfully employed; my retirement income is sufficient to allow me to make a contribution to our wellbeing.

What makes it hard to be thankful? Well, the pandemic, naturally, as it constantly intrudes on our lives in various ways: Our children were unable to be with us on Thanksgiving and more than likely will not be here for Christmas, either; the many things we might otherwise do on a long weekend, such as attending a movie, are unavailable as well; the activities I thought would keep me busy and happy in retirement--chief among them community theater--are suspended as well.

The political situation also grates on me--and not just because our President is being his usual recalcitrant, obstreperous self. It's the feeling that a significant portion of the populace (possibly 40 percent or higher) not only refuse to accept reality, they insist that their view of things is the reality, and that we who see things through fact and science are the deluded ones.

On the other hand, I am thankful our courts--for the most part--know that they cannot be the thumb on the scale of democracy, no matter how much their political masters might wish them to be.

Be Thankful

 

TV Drama and Current Events 2

 Following up on yesterday's post:

Last night I watched two more shows presenting new episodes produced since the pandemic: NCIS and FBI. Neither one seemed to make any concession to what has been and is happening in the real world. No one in either cast was wearing a mask or other protective gear. The sets for their respective offices were unchanged--no social distancing between desks, no plexiglass barriers. There was no reference in dialogue, on either show, to the virus.

In fact, on FBI. one of the leads did something that, under current conditions, might be considered highly risky: She slept with a man she had met only weeks before and did not live with. Granted, he's a fellow FBI agent, but....

Unlike the episodes of All Rise and Bull from Monday night, these scripts could have been (and probably were) written before the COVID crisis.

TV Drama and Current Events

 How much should episodic television acknowledge and build stories around current events? Last night, I watched two shows, All Rise and Bull, which dealt in part with things that have happened since they stopped production in the spring. 

Both are, of course, legal dramas, and the new set-up in their fictional courtrooms reflected the pandemic--masks, social distancing, plastic shields on desks, etc. In fact, the courtroom part of Bull actually began with the judge explaining what the new safety protocols would be and why. Once that was past and explained, however, the story could well have been told a year ago.

All Rise, though, was completely dependent on the events of the past few months for its story. And not just the pandemic--several of the regular characters, and the defendant in the central trial, had been involved in the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer and their experiences shaped their actions in this episode and look to do so in the future.

I wonder how this will look to audiences who view these series in syndication or streaming in the future, when the context for them will be long gone. I recall that, as an example, Law & Order had very few episodes directly connected to the events of 9/11 and, indeed, waited a couple of years before delving into them from a legal perspective. The cops all wore black arm bands and black bands on their shields for the 2001-2 season, but there were no overt dialogue references to their experiences on that day or the aftermath. The West Wing did one "special" episode that dealt with the issues surrounding 9/11--but not the events themselves--and then never mentioned it directly again.

Is serial drama better off not paying attention to the "real world"?

A Turkey of a Holiday

 What are your plans for Thanksgiving? I can tell you what mine are--not much of anything. Our children are not coming home (sensibly), so Jill and I are planning a very small-scale dinner: a three-pound turkey breast, stuffing, side dishes, apple pie for desert.

I lost much interest in the parades (either the big one in New York or the local one in Philly) some years ago--and as the ones this year will be almost entirely artificial in nature (is it really a parade if you're just going to bring the floats, bands, balloons, etc. around a corner, show them on TV for a bit, then wheel them off around the next corner?), I have even less interest now. I have never been a football fan, so the afternoon and evening entertainment is not appealing either.

We'll probably find a movie or two to watch, read, maybe catch up with some friends on line. We have tentative plans to Zoom with the kids on Sunday at some point. I'm thinking of it all as practice for Christmas, which will probably go much the same way.

Hoping for a Miracle?

 I've come to the conclusion that a certain part of the political spectrum doesn't really want to do anything to stem the tide of COVID infection. This morning a local columnist argued against closing schools again, as many local districts plan to do. In the past, this columnist has also argued against closing or restricting businesses, and against restricting public worship or other gatherings. So, as I said, I wonder what she does think should be done?

Clearly, we cannot rely on the public "doing the right thing"--too many of them see such things as wearing masks, social distancing or limiting their own gatherings as unacceptable infringements on their personal choices. In those areas of the country where those activities were merely "recommendations" or "suggestions," the majority of the public simply took the attitude of "I don't have to, so I won't"....and now those areas are, on a per capita basis, in far worse shape than the densely populated areas that adopted restrictions much earlier.

Perhaps all these folks are simply waiting for the vaccine...with no thought for the hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens who become gravely ill--or die--before the vaccine spreads effective immunity through the whole population.

Adaptation to Comics

 From the 1930s through the 1970s, comic-book adaptations of movies and TV shows were common place. Until the mid-1960s, the best-selling comic book in the United States was Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, featuring tales of Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and the gang. That title and scores more like it were created by the staff at Western Publishing, better known for the Little Golden Books, but published and distributed by Dell, a major magazine publisher of the time. In the mid-1960s, Dell cancelled its deal with Western and Western--who had always held the actual licenses from Disney, Warner Bros., etc.--began publishing under its own imprint, Gold Key. (Later, in the 1970s, some of these titles were also published with a Whitman imprint--another Western Publishing branch, best known for coloring books--and sold through places like Kmart and the surviving 5&10 stores.)

Western also did the occasional movie adaptation and lots of titles based on Western and situation-comedy TV series. Other publishers got in the game as well--DC had series featuring Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and others. Marvel/Atlas had a few. Even tiny Charlton got into the mix, with titles based on B- and C-level movies like Gorgo.

The trend had virtually died by the late '70s (though Gold Key continued to publish its long-running titles), until Marvel's deal with Lucasfilm and 20th Century-Fox for Star Wars changed everything. Suddenly licensed properties were seen as profitable again. But it's remained as tied to blockbuster movies in the SF, fantasy, and horror genres.

Which is a shame--DC Comics, a sister company to Warner Bros., producer and distributor of The Big Bang Theory, might have had a hit comic book based on that show. Marvel, owned by Disney, might be cashing in on Duck Tales even now.

But, today, all the action seems to flow in the other direction, as the film and TV companies see their sister comics publishers as sources for intellectual property and little more.

Why Vote-by-Mail Frightens the GOP

 In an effort to figure out why the idea of universal or near-universal voting by mail is such a nightmare to the Republican Party, I did some research on Presidential election results in the two states that currently have universal mail-in voting: Washington and Oregon.

Before 1988, both states reliably voted for the Republican candidate. In 1988, both went Democratic and have ever since. What changed? Well, vote-by-mail was signed into law as an option in Oregon in 1987 and by 2000 it was universal: Every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail. In Washington, the option went into effect in 1991, and went universal in 2005.

Why should this make such a difference? Over the past 30 years, high turn-out elections have resulted in Democratic wins, both nationally and on a state level. Mail-in voting, as we saw this year, substantially increases turn-out; make it easier to vote and more people will vote. Then the question becomes, why does higher turn-out result in more Democratic victories? Minorities, women, and independents are the groups least likely to vote, traditionally, and they are more likely to vote Democratic (yes, even the independents). Increase turn-out generally and, naturally, more voters from those groups will vote.

This does not bode well for the GOP in the future. Current predictions are that the United States will be "minority-majority" by about 2040 (that is, more people will be black, Latino, Asian, or some other ethnicity than white). When you also consider that women are already more likely to vote than men, and the phrase "demographics is destiny" looks like an obituary for the Republican Party.

Music, Music, Music

 I am a huge fan of orchestral movie music. Right now, as I type this, I am listening to Elmer Bernstein's recording of Miklos Rozsa's magnificent score for The Thief of Bagdad. Just hearing the score summons up images from the film. Rozsa, of course, also scored Ben-Hur, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and another personal favorite Time After Time. (Anyone know where I can get that one? I-tunes doesn't have it.)

Speaking of Bernstein, his music for To Kill a Mockingbird, with its haunting recurring theme for Scout and Jem, is part of what makes that film my favorite of all time and my vote for best film adaptation of a novel, ever.

Naturally, John Williams' many scores for science-fiction and fantasy films, from Star Wars through Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters and Harry Potter, are constant companions as well. But Williams has some other credits you may not be as familiar with: He wrote the theme for TV's Lost in Space, and his score for The Reivers, a non-genre movie, is delightful.

Alfred Newman's score for The Mark of Zorro, starring Tyrone Power, built almost entirely as it is around the stirring theme music, is a standout, and another one I wish I could find a recording of. 

That leads us to Erich Wolfgang Korngold--composer of Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk--and to Max Steiner, famed for Gone With The Wind, but who also scored Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Dodge City, The Searchers, Jezebel (another with a remarkable recurring main theme) and King Kong.

Do you have a favorite film composer or score I haven't mentioned?

Walls with Holes

 Pennsylvania announced new rules for dealing with the surge in the virus yesterday...and two of them concern me, not for what they are intended to do or their direct consequences, but because they impress me as being inherently unenforceable.

The first restricts private gatherings, even in your own home, to no more than 10 people. A good idea, yes, but how do you prevent violations, or even know when they have occurred? What punishment ensues for those who do violate this restriction?

The second calls for anyone entering the state from another state to either have tested negative within 72 hours before crossing the border or else quarantine for 14 days after arriving. Again, how is this to be enforced? Beyond airports and train stations, Pennsylvania has literally thousand of roads (and not just major highways) that cross the state line with Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York. In my own area, there are scores of little local streets that go from towns in Delaware County to towns in New Castle County, Delaware. Many of them do not even change their names as they go from one state to the other; the only indication that you have moved from Delaware to Pennsylvania is a change in the style of the street signs and, possibly but not always, a sign that says "Welcome to Pennsylvania". It is quite literally impossible to guard everyone of these crossings with a state cop or other official to ask for proof of a COVID test.

Why does this concern me? Because regulations and restrictions (whether concerning COVID or anything else) that cannot be enforced lead to a belief (among a certain class of residents) that none of the regulations and restrictions matter. "You can't stop him from coming into the state with a full-blown case of the virus? Then why should I bother wearing a mask in the store?" Yes, most residents will not take that attitude...but if the past eight months have taught us anything, it is that there is a significant number that will use any excuse to defy even common sense rules, if they see them as inconvenient or somehow intruding on their individual rights. And it is that small but significant number who then spread the infection among the rest of us.

Yes, I protect myself...and so I am not likely to contract COVID (I've come through the whole thing so far, even while working in a store for four months, healthy). But my worry is that these people will strain our medical system, will force even tighter restrictions on businesses, and eventually cause severe damage to the state and the nation.

Facing a Brick Wall

 How do you argue with someone who rejects your every source of information, statistics, and data as biased and illegitimate? When they consider established places like the New York Times, UN agencies, even encyclopedias and almanacs, as purveyors of "deep state" conspiracy?

If you can't even come to agreement on well-known historical events like the American Revolution, Civil War, civil rights movement, and how they happened and what their outcomes were, how do you have a rational discussion?

We often talk of speaking to a brick wall. This may be worse. A brick wall simply doesn't respond. This is like getting back a distorted echo.

Two Nations Separated....

 ...by a common language, is how Winston Churchill is alleged to have described the United States and Great Britain. I am beginning to think their ways of producing television are also the same, but different.

Most of the genres of TV we are familiar with in the US are equally popular in the UK: sit-com, soap opera, detective/police, game show, talk show, reality/competition. (It could be argued that last really started in the UK and migrated here, unlike most of the others.) But the way they handle them is very different.

First of all, there is no "season" in the sense we mean in broadcast TV in Britain--no sudden influx of new material on all channels in the fall with shows running 20 to 24 episodes until the early spring. No, over there, the new "series" (as they call it) is as likely to begin in March as in September--and it might run fewer than 5 episodes or as many as 30 (depending on the genre). And, whether the show is on non-commercial BBC or one of the commercial channels, there seems to be no set running time. It might be as little as 25 minutes or as much as 90...or virtually anything in-between.

The style of the shows can be quite different as well. Though not as violent as most American crime dramas, the British ones tend to be more grim...so much so, that Jill and I find we cannot "binge" them in the sense of watching an entire season in a night or even a week. Of course, there are some lighter-hearted ones, such as Rosemary and Thyme or Shakespeare & Hathaway.

Game shows often seem to be a strange combination of quiz and celebrity panel/talk show...even to the point of taking one from each and combining them as in 5 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

In these days of pandemic and lockdown--and having switched from cable to streaming--we're watching a lot more Brit TV these days in our house. If you're doing the same--what do you watch?

Values Shopping

 Whatever happened to conservative values? I remember when conservatives stood for norms and traditions--in politics and life in general. It was conservatives, after all, who forced through the Constitutional amendment restricting Presidents to two full terms, after FDR "broke" the tradition begun by George Washington. It was conservatives who complained when Jimmy Carter appeared on TV for an official statement in an open-collared shirt and a cardigan, instead of the tradition of a business suit. Or when Barack Obama wore a (heaven forbid) tan suit, instead of the "traditional" dark shades.

But now, after four years of a President who casts aside norms and traditions of far more consequence, even to acceding to the results of an election, conservatives rally to his side. Why? Is it because winning is more important than principle? Is it because having your way on contentious issues like abortion is more important than norms and traditions?

Conservatives often deride progressives and liberals for having values that shift depending the circumstances...of not having hard-and-firm principles...as though being willing to see the whole picture, from all sides of the issue, is somehow soft and wishy-washy. 

If that's true, then what the hell are they doing now?

Serial Issues 2

 I realized after posting my first discussion of this topic that I had left out one way of dealing with the characters and world of a continuing series--aging and changing both in real time. One of the best examples of that I can point to is Kathy Reichs's novels about forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan (which, BTW, have nothing in common--save the protagonist's name and occupation--with the TV series, Bones, ostensibly based upon them). Tempe Brennan ages from her early 30s to her early 50s in the course of the novels, and the cities she works in--Charlottesville, NC and Montreal--reflect the changes in those locales over the 20 years as well.

With that oversight out of the way, let's turn to the problems of dealing with time in comic books. Traditionally, comic-book heroes remain unchanged from issue to issue, so that a new reader can pick up any issue and understand the hero and his world just from the contents of that one story. That has changed a bit in the past 30 years or so, but still the problem remains--we don't want to deal with a 60-year-old Superman. 

Actually, Superman is one of the characters least affected by all this. His origin is not specifically tied to any one real-world event. It is enough to know that he arrived on Earth as an infant about three decades ago--whether that means pre-World War One, as it did when he first appeared in print, or in about 1990, as it must today. Much of the same is true of Batman--except for one thing: It is well-established that his parents were killed, when he was about ten, on their way home from seeing a movie, most often said today to have been about Zorro. When that was first proposed about 30 years ago, the presumption was that it was a revival-house screening of The Mark of Zorro, starring Tyrone Powell. Today, it would be easy to assume it was 1998's The Mask of Zorro, with Antonio Banderas.

Other characters present more challenging circumstances. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four in 1961, they probably figured the series would last no more than a decade or so--and in that time, the readership would turn over two or three times. Instead, it has lasted six decades--and many of those initial readers are still with it today.

They tied the quartet's origin to the space race...with Reed, Ben, Sue. and Johnny sneaking onto a military base to take off in the ship of Reed's design to be the first humans to orbit the Earth. Now, with the four having barely aged in those 60 years, it's tough to figure out why there mission was so secret.

Even more troublesome is the backstory given Reed and Ben: They both fought in World War Two! In 1961, with the war only about 15 years in the past, that was believable--it meant they were each about 40 years old. But WW2 vets are now in their 90s! Reed and Ben's military service must have been in the Gulf War. Even worse is that they fought alongside Sgt. Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos--whose exploits are definitively set in that war. (The explanation of Fury's longevity and eternal youth is a tale for another time.)

And since virtually every Marvel character can date their origin and age in relation to the Fantastic Four--well, you see the problem.

Basically, Marvel just ignores it all. But I pity anyone trying to build a timeline of the Marvel Universe in the comics.

Trump's End Game

 Today on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough wondered why President Trump is continuing his hopeless fight to prove the election was rife with fraud. Paraphrasing a bit, he asked, "Why does the President prolong a story that only makes him look worse with every passing day? He wakes up every morning to a TV screen showing that his numbers either haven't changed or have gotten worse. If he would simply move on, we would do the same and another news story would be our lead."

It's a good question: What is Trump's goal in all this? Is it simply to prove to himself and his base that he is not a loser? That they were right to support him? If so, in the end, it does nothing of the kind. Poor losers are the worst kind of losers. Is it to hold his base together for a potential run again in 2024? In that time, his reputation will only be in further tatters. He will surely face criminal and civil charges in state and federal courts...and even if he wins or those charges are dismissed, his name and brand will be eternally tarnished. No matter how big his base, will the Republican Party be dumb enough to nominate a candidate with those kind of black marks? The negative ads write themselves.

Quite frankly, I don't understand it. 

I do understand why the GOP has, as a rule, not abandoned him to his fate. They hope to hold his base together long enough, at least, to win the two run-off Senatorial elections in Georgia, so that they can maintain at least a slim majority in the upper house. But that can't really be Trump's goal--if he's not going to be in the White House (and he's not), why should he give a damn who controls the Senate?

There's one other possibility, of course. Maybe he's like the ex-lover who kills his former mate: "If I can't have her, nobody will!" In this case, "If I can't be in charge, I'll destroy the country instead."

Serial Issues

 Every writer who begins writing about characters who will appear in a series of stories eventually has to make some decisions. Among them are: Will my characters age in the course of their adventures? Will the world around them change or are they permanently in the period in which they began? Every author--no matter what the genre--answers those questions differently.

Arthur Conan Doyle--although he wrote the tales of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson over a period of some 40 years, from 1887 to 1927, he largely kept their activities in the period before World War One...and, except for the idea of Holmes' retirement in His Last Bow, they remain essentially ageless. 

Another famed detective team, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin (created by Rex Stout), are treated somewhat differently. Their adventures span about the same amount of time, from 1934 to 1975, and like Holmes and Watson, they remain the same ages throughout. (There are minor hints that they have aged somewhat, perhaps five years or so, in that span.) But Wolfe and Goodwin's world advances just as the real world did in those four decades. Cars become sportier and faster, New York's skyline changes, television replaces radio, the Mets replaces the Giants as Archie's favorite team.

Erle Stanley Gardner took the same tack with Perry Mason. Mason remains a man in his prime through pretty much the same period as Wolfe and Goodwin, and his world is always contemporary with the period in which the stories were published.

Yet another team, Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin, began their adventures in a comic strip in 1963 and continued there and in a series of novel and short stories from 1965 to 1996 (the comic strip continued until 2000). Peter O'Donnell keeps them essentially the same age throughout and the world around them reflects the period the stories were written.

This creates interesting problems for two of these series--the Wolfe and Blaise stories. Perry Mason's "origins" are not specifically tied to any one era or event (despite what the current TV series says). Thus nothing prevents him from having been born at the turn of the 20th Century (as he must have been in his earliest stories) or around World War 2, as the last of his stories would imply.

But Wolfe is established as having been a "freedom fighter" in his native Montenegro--at first in the period before the first World War, when the Balkans were a hot bed of various failed revolutions. Wolfe is said to be in his late teens and early 20s at that time and, as he is generally assumed to be about 50 during his career in New York, those events must have occurred around 1900. But if he is still about 50 years old in 1970, and he was 20 when he was a "freedom fighter," those events would have happened during World War 2.

And now, we have a paradox--Wolfe and Goodwin were both working for the US government during WW2, Wolfe as a special adviser, Goodwin as a major in the Army. Those events are frequently referenced in stories that take place after the war, even up to the 1970s.

A similar situation faces us when tracing the origins and career of Modesty Blaise. We're told she was a "displaced person" in the Middle East when she was, perhaps 10-12 years old. As she is in her early 20s in 1963, that would put her "origin" at about 1950, and her circumstances a result of either WW2 or the creation of Israel in 1948--possibly a little of both. But she is still in her early 20s in the 1990s...so what caused her to be a "displaced person" about 15 years before that? Well, the Yom Kippur War was in 1973, perhaps that is the catalyst. And any of the number of other conflicts between Arabs and Israelis between 1948 and the present could explain her beginnings now.

In another posting, I'll deal with problems facing characters such as Superman and Batman.

A Better Way to Honor Veterans

 My father was a Navy SeaBee in WW2; Jill's dad was a career Army officer; we have a niece who graduated from West Point and served in Iraq.

But still I am bothered by the militarism that surrounds Veterans Day...why must our remembrance of these men and women be marked by parades in uniform and military equipment rolling on our streets? Why is this not a day for quiet contemplation of the sacrifices they made and the service they performed? Why not prayer services and graveside visits? Why not an equal emphasis on all the non-belligerent service they have given? Most of our astronauts have been members of the military. National Guard and reservists assist in disasters and emergencies. Coast Guardsmen perform literally hundreds of rescues every year. Why is the honor given for those services not equal to that given in war?

After all, the date we have chosen for this remembrance is the end of "the war to end all wars"--as vain as that hope might have been. Shouldn't we be honoring the service of these men and women with a solemn promise that no future generation will have to add to their ranks?