Blossoms in the wasteland...

Television, particularly American television has been described as the great wasteland - empty of any real value or meaning or truth. Now of course that last item is open to some serious debate - truth. Perhaps the critics are correct and the truth presented by American television is its own representation. It could be that mainstream American television rips back the skin and reveals the shallow heart of American culture.

But life is always so much more complex and thus interesting. As if to confound those noble critics the occasional pearl is cast before the swine that devour the swill. But wait. Just who are these swine and what is this swill. It seems indeed that the remnants of the battle between high culture and low culture endure - preserved for all time in the supercilious gaze of the informed and sophisticated minds of the scions of culture - that is high culture!

Meanwhile your trusty correspondent has placed his cultural purity at risk and exposed himself to American Television Culture by watching an episode of Boston Legal. Of course it does star a Canadian, Bill Shatner so I am somewhat inoculated. But I have digressed long enough. What I really wanted to talk about was the raw nerve that this show continually exposes to the world. The lift away the shroud that obscures how the average American has been allowed to lose sight of their great gift of liberty and freedom to the world.

They have come to distrust their own people so much that today over two million Americans are in prison. In fact the United States of American, once the bastion of freedom to the entire world incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation in the world. These are the poor - the disadvantaged - the visible minorities - those who failed the test of the American Dream.

But tonight an episode of Boston Legal gave me hope because a mainstream media had uncovered that ugly sore and let in the light that can act to heal it. I saw a display of a human heart in all of its potential compassion and wisdom. Of course this is fiction. But is not all the world a stage and we but actors...

The shady side of 55...

I was chatting online tonight with a new friend. She is a woman of my generation, just one year younger. What is so fascinating about her is that we seem to have had many of the same experiences both when we were young and growing up in the sixties and seventies and in our adult lives.

What is encouraging is that we both seem to have the same outlook on life. Just cause we are getting older doesn't me we need to act like old folks. We are both dismayed at how some people we know who are in their sixties act like they were in their nineties. She was chuckling about how one guy sent her a picture of his home complete with white picket fence, neatly mowed lawn and a wishing well - all his pride and joy. Now there is nothing wrong with a well groomed yard - just don't make it the highlight of your life.

I would prefer to send a picture of me trudging through a jungle or swinging on a rope getting ready to fall into some tropical gorge. I am not ready to get old yet and fortunately neither is she. So next weekend I will be off to visit her in Edmonton to see if the connection we feel online and on the telephone is even better in person.