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. 

Flow of Family Fun

My brother's wedding Saturday made me think of how we, as a family, handle the ebb and flow of these get-togethers. Summer means there will be a few, and maybe a few more.

I opted out of many family events because I wanted to avoid conflict with my dad, who is gone now. He and I were on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, and he was always outspoken about his beliefs. I don't think he ever meant to start any fuss and bother, he just wanted to convince everyone of how he believed.

Add to his firmness, the fact that he was deaf, and whether one agreed or disagreed, one had to shout and make prolonged eye contact to converse. I don't know how it works for others, but shouting, even over innocuous topics, ends up with me becoming angry. Shouting as a physical function, raises the blood pressure, which causes a flood of other reactions.

Anyway, because of the situation, I avoided. Didn't stop my girls from knowing their grandfather, did prevent them from seeing me act like a shrewish lunatic with him.

Now, I see my own daughter mirroring this behavior. Because of work and also because of some personal issues with family members, she has avoided the family get-togethers. No one wants to be involved in a fight, or to be the person everyone in the family fights with or becomes angry over the fighting.
Anyway, she has chosen to abstain from the possibility of conflict.

But she worries about her child not getting to know this side of her family, and the solution Tam reached was the same one I did. To allow the child to attend in the care of another family member. (In her case. me.)

Maybe it's wrong, but it seems to me the best solution. Not in every situation, not for every event, but in general it's a good thing. It acknowledges the importance of family, it keeps up traditions. even starts a new one -- tradition by proxy.

Like all families, we disagree. Sometimes we take sides against one another, and we'll talk to a third member about how stupid so-and-so is about whatever. We can be vicious or angry, or vicious and angry.
But when we get together as a group, we try to enjoy one another's company without conflict. We aren't perfect, sometimes a forbidden topic slips in and someone feels attacked.

We respect one another. We know we are available to each-and-every in at least some way. Making an effort to keep the young ones connected even when we can't teaches them, by example, that family IS important. The events that Family is Fun. No matter if it's you or they who are the stupid or wrong ones. Family IS.

As the worldly world whirls by, as weather wreaks havoc, as all our institutions are besieged, there can be no stronger message to leave our children.

As I lay dying (or so I thought)

Yesterday I thought I was entering my final illness, persistent cramping diarrhea. The pain was worse than childbirth (except for the actual birthing). The effects of dehydration were debilitating, as you can imagine. My sister and my nephew had both commented on bellyaches, so I thought there's probably just something going around, and it was nothing major.

As the day wore on, I changed my mind about that. If there had been gas in our car I would have had my husband take me to the hospital, even though I have no insurance and every test, every procedure, every help would have to be paid for by us. At that point (about 3 in the afternoon) even the IV for dehydration would have been worth the cost. Because I was afraid to drink anything, even warm water.

Instead, I went to bed.
While in the bed, I reviewed my life. It's the first time I ever did that when I wasn't contemplating suicide, so it was a novel experience in its way. The results of the review were more satisfactory this way, I have to admit, but there were some things not so satisfactory.
Of course.

I wished I had played more with my girls when they were young. More walks, more pushing on swings, more silly talk, more books read together, more time. Just more time to enjoy them. But pushing swings is boring after the first couple of shoves to get them going, and neither of my daughters had any great interest in books when they were young. We did walk, from time to time, and the walks nearly always had that 'special' air. I suppose that's a good thing. The regret over not taking enough walks is partly because it indicates a lack of special times, so if the times it happened were special -- well, there's just a balance there, so that one is probably okay.
I hope.

I wish I'd had more patience at some times in some of my jobs, but I have no big regrets over any of those. I gave every job I ever did everything I could, everything I had. Sometimes I didn't have much, and sometimes I hated the work, but I gave it my all. Sometimes my all was more, often less, but it was what I had and I put it into the work.

My writing? I have four completed novel manuscripts on top of the bookcases. I have three of those novels on floppies, which do me  no earthly good these days, but maybe somewhere, someday... someone. I have various writings here and there. It would be nice for my family if I could become posthumously famous, so that I'm not leaving my family nothing but a hole in their hearts.
I hope.

The good-bye letters I wrote a few months ago worried me a bit. I thought about tearing them up before I died, but decided I'd just leave a note with them. Don't remember if I dated them or not. Probably not. I wanted them to be generic, any time. I have letters written to Tracy and to Rex and, I think, to Jean. I haven't been able to bring myself to pout anything in writing for Tammy-and-Hailey. No good excuses for saddling her with my responsibilities, which she would be the one carrying the brunt of the load after the dust settles. No good excuse, no reason.
Anyway, I decided to just write a note, or maybe I'd get a chance to tell Jean before I expire in the hospital. "Hey, never mind those. I wrote them for Christmas last year, or maybe the year before."

It was a different thing to look back at my life this way, from this new angle. I didn't have no instant conversion to wanting to continue living in spite of all its pain, which I have seen happen. I wanted the pain to stop. I wished that I had done some things differently, but feel that I did the best I could at the time.

That's what we should all be doing. The best we can, with what we have. The what we have can be time, or energy, or even interest. Money of the lack thereof is a partial excuse, not a good one.

Be the best you that you can be.

Do the best you can with what you have.

Watch and work and learn and live.

Then,  you can contemplate death with equanimity. Is there any better way to live?

I Want Summer

I want summer! I want it to come. I am tired of rain and fog, rain and clouds, rain and … you get the idea. I want it to be summer, and I want it now.

I want the flowers; the roses and honeysuckle that sweeten the air. I want to see fields glowing with greens, from the first fuzzy yellow haze of beans to the grass green of corn. I want to watch the colors of the treetops deepen; from spring green to their deep summer shades.

I want it to be warm. No, I want it to be HOT. I want to sweat, I want the air to sweat, and bring closer all the sweet perfumes of growth.

I want the dry scent of dust to clog my nose and tickle my throat. I want to smell the ripening of tomatoes and blackberries. I want to open the window and know that some neighbor has freshly mown his lawn.

I want days that linger, even after the sun has gone. I want light to remain in the sky, coloring the white puffy clouds above me. I want long gorgeous sunsets that last for hours, painting the brilliant blue skies with petal pinks and vivid oranges. I want to listen to the children playing up and down the street, to hear the roar of the crowd at the Little League games behind the school. I want to go to sleep to the purr of a weed-eater, and waken to the roar of a lawn mower. I want to hear the gentle spitter-spat of water sprinklers and the splashings from swimming pools. I even want to hear the nerve-grating chorus of cicadas as I try to sleep.

Come, summer, with your warmth and your beauty. Chase away these rainclouds that cause the days to drag and the nights to blur. Bring to me your clear sharp colors, your clean, crisp scents, and your soul-awakening sounds. Bring me your warmth, your light, your joy.

Another Good-Bye

Dick Clark died today.
Davy Jones died a few weeks ago.
Mike Wallace.
Whitney Houston.
Thomas Kinkade.
Before that, someone else.

Of course, people die every day, just as people are born every day. Deaths of celebrities really have small meaning in the real lives of real people, except that they give us pause. A pause to remember a time in our lives when they were that important, perhaps, or just a pause to acknowledge that, hey, they did something with their lives. They made multiple lives better, somehow.

Of course their contributions are no greater than the lives of a grandfather succumbing to age -- Alzheimer has already stolen his mind and heart. The loss of a celebrity has less meaning than the loss of a young bald woman leaving behind children and one more clue in the fight against cancer. No celebrity death touches that of a  death in utero.

2012 has already had more than its share of celebrity deaths, or so it seems.

2012 is supposed to be the end of the world, according to ancient Mayans. They even predicted an exact date, in spite of our completely incompatible calendars and the many changes we've made to ours over the years.

There's a theory that the end of the world could be the end of the world as we know it.

As our artists and entertainers and informers die off, one by one, we know there may be something to that. The leaders of one of the greatest eras of entertainment are dying off, and We Who Made Them Great must mourn, and know that it will be our turn, one turn sooner than we'd thought.

Black Friday

Watching the craziness on the news last night reminded me, as it often does, of the early days of the event. Back when only a few stores had early bird sales -- my mom and my sister and I hurtling through the dark night down miles of highway and into unknown areas of the relatively unknown city. One favorite was the Gold Circle store. (Do they still have those anywhere?) I don't remember which location we went to. Somewhere in Cincinnati. And it seems, not unreasonably, that the store was up on a hill. I could be wrong about that. It was cold, it was dark, it was fun. The secrets of Christmas seemed to ooze through the air, out of all that hurrying darkness.

Another tradition, swallowed up by the malls and the push to grab the sales, was the Day after Thanksgiving at McAlpins. We went to the one at Cherry Grove Plaza. (It was called a shopping center then; nowadays it would be a strip mall. The only thing new is the words.) There were early bird sales there, too, but they were later -- at least for us! We would have had to go home and get the rest of the family. The big deal at McAlpins that day was the parade and FREE Santa Claus pictures. Not free until noon, not free for the first two hundred customers -- FREE. All day long.

I'm not sure when the McAlpins thing started, but it continued until my own children were old enough to be taken for the free pictures. By then we were into the 90s and malls were taking over the shopping world. They weren't a new idea -- Beechmont Mall had already been around for ages, or so it seemed. But it was an idea that was taking over, and the shopping centers (strip malls of the day) were hurting. McAlpins decided to move into the newly built Eastgate Mall as one of the anchor stores. Eastgate Mall was on different roads and in a different part of the county, and a long way to go for many of the Cherry Grove people.
The first Christmas there, they did have the parade and the free pictures. One of my cherished memories is that of Santa Claus saying to my girls, "I'm glad to see you. You're here every year."
But that was to be the last year. The parade was too difficult for traffic flow, and my god, they couldn't give away free pictures! The mall's Santa would lose business, god forbid!

Now, Santa comes out of hiding before the Halloween costumes are marked down and hidden away. The malls are suffering and closing and losing their anchor stores -- the cost is too high. The sales are too low.
Shopping Centers have returned in their new guise with their new name, and they seem to be thriving. Or at least surviving.

I can't help but wonder if there isn't a connection between the sales troubles and the Santa Clauses. No mall Santa that I know of ever recognized the families that come year after year. Can it be that in troubled times, people would rather shop where they are seen as people instead of so many dollars worth of sales?