Marilyn, the moose and other TV observations

When I was five, the smell of popcorn woke me and I toddled downstairs. As usual our living room was full of people watching a flickering black and white television screen, one of the first in my childhood town of Reading.

I had my favorite program, Big Brother Bob Emery http://www.bostonradio.org/essays/big-brother.html where we patriotically toasted the president with a glass of milk, part of the propaganda that I didn’t realize was propaganda until years later when at a Rotary meeting in Boston with my Swiss boyfriend, we started with the pledge of allegiance. Rituals leading to blind patriotism.

When I Love Lucy became popular if I were in my pajamas and all ready to go to bed, I could stay up that extra half hour on Monday night to watch her.

I like TV, especially overseas where I can watch news from several countries. I find it interesting that CNN international has the dramatic sign LONDON ON ALERT when it reports on the fall out while the BBC gives it far less emphasis in its matter-of-fact style. France covers it with a mention of the expulsion of some of the radicals, one of whom was interviewed the other night on BBC's Hardtalk.

American series can dominate. There was a period that almost every country was showing Friends. However, Mash was never shown.

I had left the states when Northern Exposure became popular. Visiting Boston I saw it, loved it, and my friend Bill taped many episodes for my next trip. (He and I indulged in mega marathons of West Wing on my last two visits.) Since I thought NE was one of the better series that the US had produced I never understood why it wasn’t picked up by the international networks.

My daughter bought be a NE DVD. However, I have discovered that the series channel shows three NE episodes back to back in English on Thursdays nights and even better than the original the only commercial interruption is between episodes. So now I can watch Marilyn and the Moose.