Friday, March 16, 2018

Unintended Marathon

Actress Connie Britton was interviewed on Kelly and Ryan this morning.  I've liked her since I saw her on Friday Night Lights years ago.  I know she did Nashville, and for that reason I started watching the show, but just couldn't get into it, so I stopped watching.  But now she was talking about a new series, 9-1-1, where she plays a 911 operator.  I vaguely remember seeing the show promo'd before it began, but decided I had enough of that kind of show in my life and so never checked it out.

However, Britton talked about her mother in the show (played by Mariette Hartley), who has Alzheimers.  They ran a brief clip from the show and I thought it was a one-time appearance by Hartley and I'm all about views of Alzheimers.  This week's show is #8 of Season 1 and I decided to check out episode #1 to get a feel for what the show is like.  It also stars Peter Krause, whom I always enjoyed on Six Feet Under.

Well, not only is Hartley a recurring character, with short scenes in every episode, but the show itself is very good.  "I'll just watch the second episode," I said after the first one ended.  By the time I finally pulled myself away from the set, I had watched five episodes, with only two more to go before I was caught up, and I finished those before I went to sleep.  I don't often do marathons, so the show must be good.

After four episodes, watching Britton deal with her mother and feeling it so familiar, Mom decides to escape one night while daughter is sleeping and daughter goes out searching for her, telling the police that Mom is 75 years old.  

I hate it whenever it is pointed out to me how young writers consider 75 year olds old and decrepit.  But it does make it OK for me to be dealing with serious memory problems, seeing the handwriting on the wall for my own future.

Anyway, the main thing I did today was watch a marathon of 9-1-1.  I was going to stop after episode 4 but my choices were to watch episode 5 or Chris Matthews, and that was no choice. I chose 9-1-1.  Matthews drives me nuts and I get angry with myself every day for watching him, but he bridges the gap between Ari Melber and Chris Hayes.  9-1-1 was much better.  

(No wonder I so often have to struggle to find something interesting to write about here!)

I also got some letters written to some of my Compassion kids.  Two of the three are some of my best writers, write in English, and actually share parts of their lives, so when I respond, I try to make their letters very personal (once a month I write a generic letter that I can send to all 29 of them).

Compassion often sends videos and texts about the importance of letters and how important they are to the kids, who may often never get any encouragement or even affection from those around them.  The kids always send me bible verses so I try to reciprocate -- me, who knows essentially nothing about the Bible, but Google is a great help.

This week I found another source that I will use until I have used everything I marked for use.  After I watched the recent PBS special on Mister Rogers and was reminded on how he spoke with children, and how he made them feel loved and accepted and encouraged them to be the best that they could be, I checked out Mister Rogers quotes and have a whole bunch of them to share with the kids.  

This week's quote was: "You are a very special person. There is only one like you in the whole world. There's never been anyone exactly like you before, and there will never be again. Only you. And people can like you exactly as you are."  I'm sure Mister Rogers, if he were alive, would not mind being plagiarized in a personal letter to a child who definitely could use his type of encouragement.

I did some reading of the book "White Houses," by Amy Bloom, which is listed as a novel, but which is based on the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and her partner, Lorena Hickock in the days when the president's girlfriend could live in the White House and the first lady could have a lesbian partner and the press ignored it.  Those were nicer days.

The book I made for my mother arrived and I am very pleased with it.  I will take it to her today, though her Alzheimers buddy won't be back for a couple of weeks, as she is on spring break.

I also had an e-mail from Says You, which surprised me.  When they did a shout out to me on my birthday, when we went to a taping in San Francisco, I was tickled and we looked forward to listening to the show this weekend.  But the e-mail says that had to be cut for time reasons, but they sent me an audio, which was fun to hear again.  I'd embed it here, but couldn't figure out how to add an mp3 file.

And so the day ended.

And I didn't go to Michael's today either.

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