Dark Shadows. (No, not mine.)

Spent the weekend browsing the old show. YouTube has quite a bit, if you have the patience to weed out the Johnny Depp- Tim Burton overwhelming publicity. YouTube has quite a few clips from the old show, including one with the very beginning. Fan club events and interviews, from then and a few from now.

I saw a few clips that might have been from the short run evening version with Ben Cross as Barnabas. I didn't look at those.

What I did not see anything of, is the two movies they made from the show: Dark Shadows and House of Dark Shadows. Not surprising. The movies were pretty bad. By the time the movies were made, the show had lost focus and was campy. Blood and guts and 'boos' and very little story. An adventure into variations of time travel and ghosts and vampires and werewolfs and anything else 'not normal'.  It created a lifelong interest in these things for me, led me to some good reading that led to better research that led to more reading that leads to more research.

Interesting the bizarre storylines were, and even educational. Entertaining they often were not.

Over time, everyone seems to have lost sight of the fact that Dark Shadows didn't start out as a vampire-and-werewolf chiller and thriller.

It started out as a Gothic Romance.

"My name is Victoria Winters.My journey is beginning. A journey that I hope will open the doors of life to me.and link my past to my future."

Victoria Winters, you see, is an orphan. She has been pulled out of her orphanage to be a governess in a big old house by the sea. The residents of the house consist of an angry young boy, an angsty teenaged girl (and could anyone be more angsty than a teen in the late 60s?), the boy's drunken irresponsible father and the girl's mother who hasn't left the house for nearly twenty years.

Pure Gothic as far as genre goes. Nowadays cliched, but back then the genre was undergoing a revival. (Maybe as an outlet for all that built-up angst?)

It took Barnabas almost a year to appear. The first few months were dedicated to straight out mysterious events that had logical explanations. Then the supernatural began creeping in -- ghosts and premonitions and dreams.

Oh my lord, the Dream! I don't remember the details of the dream, but the storyline was that each person would have the dream, but each person added something to it. And when the next person had the dream, the last person who'd had it died. It was one of the most intricate and well developed plot arcs I have ever watched grow daily. Just seeing bits of it, and sometimes the actors, can give me thrill-chills because it was such a creepy story. (It was also a good way to kill off a bunch of characters that no longer fit, which as an author, I appreciate today and didn't realize then.)

The Barnabas-Josette- Jeremiah- Angelique story was well done as well. The ghost stepping out of her picture and opening her music box and waltzing through the big empty room. WOW! This story would be reworked over and over again throughout the show, but the first incarnation was damned good storytelling. So were a few of the others as Barnabas keeps going back to try and change the past, and Angelique or/and her cohorts follow to prevent him from doing so.

This is pretty much where the evening television remake started, and they didn't do a bad job with it. I would have continued watching. But too many people turned it off or turned away from it when it wasn't played for thrills or laughs. A common complaint was that there was too much sex.

Really? It was a soap opera. Or a Gothic Romance. Romance IS usually about sex, is it not? And exactly why was Angelique so obsessed with Barnabas? If it had just been for his money or his standing, his brother would have fit the bill just as well. No, she wanted Barnabas, and it wasn't so she'd have someone to talk to during meals.

So much good drama in there. Good plotlines, good story arcs.

It's a shame that it is being remembered as camp and memorialized for new generations as a comedy. although I don't mind the laughs. From what I've seen, they are mostly clever, if campy, laughs.

But I sure do wish they'd revive the "it was a dark and stormy night" genre of serials. The endings are so much more satisfactory than the endings to the current reality spooky shows.

Badly made by today's standards (and even their own) but entertaining and mysterious and fun.
I guess that's what most people remember -- the fun. 

Environmental Assessment: Asian Longhorn Beetle: Bethel Ohio

To anyone interested in this fight -- yes, that should be you, if  it isn't -- the Environmental assessment has been prepared, and the officals want to hear from you. They are seeking opinions from the public. Please read the report thoroughly -- it will take a while and multiple readings -- before deciding your stand. But please, do take a stand. Do make your voice heard. The report can be read here: http://www.bethelalb.com/ALB-OH-ClermontCounty-2012-EA.pdf

Now, they are not promising that they will act on what people tell them. They are a government organization which means essentially that they will infer everything and promise nothing. But they are asking for opinions. Let's give them that much.

This is important to everyone, although it is most important to the people of Bethel. It is their trees that are being eradicated. (Not the beetle.) It is their properties being destroyed, it is their countryside being laid bare for flooding and wind erosion. It is their small hometown being turned into a hot spot.

The numbers are hard to comprehend, but there are people gifted with the ability to put the concepts into words. Bill Skvarla, beetle activist, offers this example:  If the street tree in front of the Midway Theatre is the only tree in Bethel that has a beetle, every single healthy uninfested host tree in the entire Village will be destroyed according to USDA's EA-Alternative B.

Imagine that.
Imagine if your home town had to be denuded of all its tall shady trees because a tree in the town part of town had a problem. Would you like that? Would it seem reasonable to you to lose all the shade on your house because someone a half mile away had bug holes (and maybe-probably bugs) in one of their trees?

This is a problem for everyone, not just Bethel. If the government can do this to us, they can do it to others. Maybe the excuse won't be the Japanese long-haired beatles. Or green borers. But There will be something,
I promise you.

And you will have to suffer it, because allowing this without a fight sets a precedent. A precedent of government takeover of your private property. A government takeover of your community's landscape. A government takeover of your right to stand up and say "No!" to the chainsaws and bulldozers.

Read.
Research.
And speak out and speak up.



http://bugs.clermontcountyohio.gov/ALB.aspx;
http://www.agri.ohio.gov/TopNews/asianbeetle/;
http://clermont.osu.edu/news/asian-longhorned-beetle-found-in-ohio-osuextension-offers-information-hotline; the APHIS ALB plant pest page
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/asian_lhb/index.s
html.

Draw Deep, Reach High.

To me, there is nothing more beautiful than a tree. It doesn't matter the type, or the season, or the shade, shape or color. I love trees.
Even ugly trees have a beauty, a symmetry (or dis-symmetry) that catches the eye and takes the breath away.
Is there anything more striking to the eye than the deep luscious green of a Scotch Pine or Blue Spruce towering against the pale blue of a December sky?

Trees connect earth and sky, drawing from deep within and reaching for the unreachable. They maintain beauty and grace as they do so, even in unlikely ways from unlikely places. When bare in winter, their bare bones etch  lines on the horizon -- pen-and-ink drawings of starkness.  Fully gowned in summer greens, these bones peek through, offering glimpses of grace and strength. Spring pastels greet the return of the sun, and the colors are muted for eyes no longer accustomed to bright colors. Autumn brings a bright farewell from the deciduous, a blast of color that will fade in our memories -- nothing could really have been that brilliant, could it? -- until spring tiptoes the colors of life back into our lives.

Our trees are under attack.
Now, under Mother Nature's rules, everything is always under attack from something else. It's the way of growing stronger, living longer. What doesn't kill, makes stronger, no matter the species.

The attacks I speak of are not those of Mother Nature, although She started it. She sent an explosion, an excursion, an invasion of tree-eating bugs. We responded, trying to eradicate the bugs, not with insecticides, not with vaccines or medicines. We have responded to this threat to our trees by destroying the trees.

Can you imagine if this logic was applied to people? (It has been, in the past. Now called racism, and no one wants to admit their part in it.) Can you think of any more diseased species than Humans? Can you think of any more destructive force than Humans?  Has any species trampled more ground, destroyed more places, ruined more lives than Humans?

It may be that Mother Nature has had enough of us. She may be getting ready to destroy our habitats, to tear down our homes, to remove the blight of our being from the face of her earth.  Who can blame her?

And the trees will stand tall against the landscape. Their roots will draw deep from the Earth herself. Their arms will lift to the sky, seeking sun and light and fresh air.

 Between earth and sky, the trees will remain.

If we let them.

Jeanieology

I've found a new way to spend my time and exercise my brain, while I hope for work and stave off health crises. Thanks to two of my sisters, I've been introduced to the addictive world of genealogy.


My sister Rita has long been the family switchboard. She knows who to call, how to inform, and when and where and why of multiple generations. It's one of the things she does.

My sister Jean is the Family Archivist. This is a job she sort of inherited, sort of fell into, and definitely made her own. If she can't tell you about the dead people in the family, probably no one knows. But Jean will try to find out. She's the one for the job. She knows who to ask for help and how to get others interested.

Between the two of them, I've been seduced into the pastime. They became my drug pushers, and Jean has become my supplier, and I need a regular fix.


Everyone grows up with family stories, hearing about odd aunts and whispered about cousins and disappearing uncles. Have you never wanted to solve those mysteries? Everyone has some vague nobility in their lineage, whether it be an Indian Princess, a German Baron, a gypsy queen. Wouldn't you like to find out the truth about that?
 The medical climate today almost insists that if you don't know about these people, you need to find out. Too much disease is being discovered as genetically linked. Too many character traits are being uncovered as symptoms of diseases, syndromes, etc. There is a social imperative to know where and who you came from.

Besides that, it's just plain fun.

Bygone Books

Just last week, I found an original publishment of Mystery Ranch, a "Boxcar Children" book. It was dated 1958 and it has a plain hardcover. It's just a beautiful book to have.

I used the word publishment, because I don't want to call it a 'first edition' or 'original run' or anything like that. Those are all official categories, and I don't know if it really qualifies under the formal definitions of those terms.

I have other older books, some equally as original, but mostly not in as good a condition. They are almost all children's books, and children's books are notorious for being either pristine or well-loved (which can mean mangled.)

I used to call these books "My Legacy", but then came tv shows like Pawn Stars to let me know that my legacy isn't really worth much in terms of cash. What a disappointment.

 I'd like to leave my children something of value.

Then my granddaughter sees me reading, goes and gets a book and seats herself beside me in my chair, showing me pictures and asking me questions and turning a page whenever I do, sometimes peeping into my book to see if there are any pictures or Ts or Hs.
She'll snuggle in and the book may drop from her hands.

 My Legacy has plenty of value.