It’s not easy being a middle aged person. You get set in your ways and you find yourself having expectations, perhaps ridiculous expectations. You go through your day thinking that sanity and courtesy will prevail and it doesn’t and it makes you angry.

The other day, on Facebook no less, a friend accused me of prissiness. Now I have many and sundry faults. There are doubtless people who would be more than happy to enumerate these faults to you and that’s not paranoia; we all like to gossip. Yet prissiness is a fault that I have never been accused of and it occurred to me that perhaps it is my again-ridiculous expectation that folks would think of others besides themselves that might make me look like an extremely prissy old crone.

The accusation came from my complaint that people who snowshoe or let their dogs walk all over cross country ski trails should be ashamed of themselves. I thought my statement was somewhat restrained. After the rotten cross country ski that I had in which my skis could not glide because some snowshoer couldn’t take three steps to the right and snowshoe on the snowshoeing path or some dog walker refused to keep his/her dog out of the skiing trail, I was ready to write something far worse and over the top. After falling and getting tripped up, I was pretty annoyed. To add insult to injury, I got called prissy in public…but the person who wrote that is a really good friend so I forgave her. Besides, some good cross-country skiing friends weighed in so I felt supported in my alleged prissiness.

Then there was the concert at Higher Ground in Burlington. If you are middle-aged and if you have flat feet as I do, I strongly discourage you from going to Higher Ground to see someone that you really like. Feel free to disagree with me but my experience was far from pleasant.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings played there on February 11^th. Sharon and the band do the best soul music that I’ve heard in a long, long time. The songs are great, the horn section and bass player are flat-out fantastic and Sharon works overtime to entertain you. What a great voice she has! It was bad enough that she was struggling with a microphone that cut in and out but she had the crowd with her every step of the way. She was terrific.

On the ticket, the show time was indicated as 8:00 PM. In fact, that was when the door opened and let you into a ballroom with just a very few seats in the back. The first band went on at 9:00. The Dap-Kings went on at about 10:30. By then, I had sore feet but I was ready for a great show. Just my luck, some drunk guy, ‘way taller than me decided that he and his girlfriend (both with no sense of rhythm) were going to dance in front of me with no care for who was around them. He nearly knocked over a lady well into her sixties. When he jabbed me in the stomach with his elbow…I was not happy and vociferously expressed that. He didn’t care, he just kept it up, banging into other people and being a regular jackass. Meanwhil,e all the other young people danced in place without hurting others. Curses upon such as he!

Life would be so much nicer if we all took a few minutes to consider how our actions might affect others. We’ve heard it before, but the Golden Rule still stands as a way to get through a day by making the world better for others and therefore, yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you….and if you can see Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings in Montreal, by all means go!

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I don’t like horror movies or movies that have a blood bath of killing, but there’s one TV show that I’ve watched week after week for the last six years. It’s a show that has more than its share of icky and gory carcasses, and there’s both romance and humour to be had while hanging around those carcasses. That show is Fox’s Bones, which is on every Thursday at 9:00.

The show is very loosely based on Kathy Reichs, a real-life forensic anthropologist who has written many best selling murder mysteries. I am a fan of that genre, but not one of Reichs’ style, which probably puts me in a minority. Reichs produces Bones and I really like the TV show a lot better than her books.

The plot revolves around a brilliant but socially inept forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and her F.B.I. partner, Sealey Booth (David Boreanz, formerly the star of the show, Angel) who solve murder mysteries together. Booth is a former U.S. Ranger and sniper. He is warm-hearted and relies on hunches to solve mysteries while Brennan (Bones) is a firm believer in scientific method and logic to solve mysteries. Bones just doesn’t get people. The two spar constantly and the spark between them is reminiscent of the 80’s romantic comedy Moonlighting which spent two years with the tease of whether the characters (played by Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis) would ever become a couple. The two years in which they did become a couple was seen to lead to the cancellation of the show. Obviously, the writers of Bones have spent the last six years doing everything possible to avoid the “Moonlighting curse.”

Bones also relies heavily on the ensemble cast who support the two main players. Brennan’s best friend is Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin), the team’s forensic artist and computer whiz, who tries to teach Bones how to behave like a normal person and has her own romance with Dr. Jack Hodgins (T. J. Thyne). Apparently, the Moonlighting curse has not applied to them because, after an on-again-off-again relationship, Hodgins and Angela were “allowed” to marry and now Angela is pregnant.

They are the more off beat couple on the show as Hodgins, who comes from a ridiculously wealthy family, is mad for conspiracy theories and Angela is a warm, high spirited artist type who doesn’t exactly fit in with the squints or scientists. There is also a series of graduate students, each with eccentricities that adds comic relief to the mysteries that are solved each week.

This is the key to why Bones differs from the Law & Order and CSI series on television. There is more focus on characters and the development of their own lives interwoven with the mysteries makes the show feel more like a movie rather than an episodic TV murder mystery. This is why I think that I’m able to stand all the blood, guts and gore; there’s humour and character development from week to week. The characters have changed and grown from the first year to this, their sixth season.

Will Bones and Booth ever get together? I think that they will when the show has a series finale. Meanwhile the writers will do everything that they can to stretch out that romantic tension for as long as they can to keep Bones going into as many seasons as they can manage.

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I don’t like horror movies or movies that have a blood bath of killing, but there’s one TV show vaguely in that genre that I’ve watched week after week for the last six years. It’s a show that has more than its share of icky and gory carcasses, and there’s both romance and humour to be had while hanging around those carcasses. That show is Fox’s Bones, which is on every Thursday at 9:00.

The show is very loosely based on Kathy Reichs, a real-life forensic anthropologist who has written many best selling murder mysteries. I am a fan of that genre, but not one of Reichs’ style, which probably puts me in a minority. Reichs produces Bones and I really like the TV show a lot better than her books.

The plot revolves around a brilliant but socially inept forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and her F.B.I. partner, Sealey Booth (David Boreanz, formerly the star of the show, Angel) who solve murder mysteries together. Booth is a former U.S. Ranger and sniper. He is warm-hearted and relies on hunches to solve mysteries while Brennan (Bones) is a firm believer in scientific method and logic to solve mysteries. Bones just doesn’t get people. The two spar constantly and the spark between them is reminiscent of the 80’s romantic comedy Moonlighting which spent two years with the tease of whether the characters (played by Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis) would ever become a couple. The two years in which they did become a couple was seen to lead to the cancellation of the show. Obviously, the writers of Bones have spent the last six years doing everything possible to avoid the “Moonlighting curse.”

Bones also relies heavily on the ensemble cast who support the two main players. Brennan’s best friend is Angela Montenegro (Michaela Conlin), the team’s forensic artist and computer whiz, who tries to teach Bones how to behave like a normal person and has her own romance with Dr. Jack Hodgins (T. J. Thyne). Apparently, the Moonlighting curse has not applied to them because, after an on-again-off-again relationship, Hodgins and Angela were “allowed” to marry and now Angela is pregnant.

They are the more off beat couple on the show as Hodgins, who comes from a ridiculously wealthy family, is mad for conspiracy theories and Angela is a warm, high spirited artist type who doesn’t exactly fit in with the squints or scientists. There is also a series of graduate students, each with eccentricities that adds comic relief to the mysteries that are solved each week.

This is the key to why Bones differs from the Law & Order and CSI series on television. There is more focus on characters and the development of their own lives interwoven with the mysteries makes the show feel more like a movie rather than an episodic TV murder mystery. This is why I think that I’m able to stand all the blood, guts and gore; there’s humour and character development from week to week. The characters have changed and grown from the first year to this, their sixth season.

Will Bones and Booth ever get together? I think that they will when the show has a series finale. Meanwhile the writers will do everything that they can to stretch out that romantic tension for as long as they can to keep Bones going into as many seasons as they can manage.

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Anyone who has followed my columns knows that I’ve done much whinging and whining about the changes in the CBC Radio 2 format. I liked the old classical station that I came to love when I moved to Canada. If I wanted rock and/or roll (a Reverend Lovejoy reference for you Simpsons fans), I would turn my dial over to CHOM when I lived in Montreal or to some of the obscure New England stations. I don’t know if anyone can still get WBTZ, the alternative music station known as “the Buzz” that broadcasts out of Burlington, but it is next to impossible to pick up in Lennoxville. I always enjoyed their mix of old and new pop/rock music though the commercials made me turn the station off about as many times as I turned the station on.

The thing is, when I get in my car, I don’t feel like futzing with my iPod and all the wires plus I figure it’s not good for the iPod’s battery to leave it in the glove compartment in minus 16 weather, so I’ve been leaving CBC Radio 2 on for the drive to and from work to make my life easier and to pretend that I’m keeping an open mind. I may be middle aged but I’m still curious about new music that’s coming out.

A crazy thing has happened; I’ve started to get used to Radio 2. I’m tentatively admitting that I like it. In the morning, I’ve been listening to Bob Mackowycz who plays a solid mix of old and new music. He definitely has a well loved play list as I’m getting a little tired of hearing We Could Have Had It All by Adele (I’m also getting more than a little tired of singers with only one name, kind of presumptuous, don’t you think? Why should Adele be the quintessential Adele? There are probably some other very special Adele’s in the world…and don’t get me started about Ellen! I had the name first.) Other than that, I must admit it’s kind of nice to turn on my radio in the morning and hear Bob Mackowycz sing the praises of a group like The Clash who I used to love and then hear Rock the Casbah which, politically incorrect as it is, is still a great song and frighteningly timely.

When I come home from work and then hit the exercise or guilt machine, I listen to The Drive with Rich…Terfry. The reason that I put the pause in is that’s exactly how he says his name on the air and all the time. Everybody has his or her eccentricities and that’s his, I suppose. He’s had a running theme to the show for the last few weeks which has been music to exercise to, and for me, that’s been very handy as he’s been playing a lot of upbeat music, like Adele’s You Could Have Had It All, but then, I grew up with AM radio when the number one song was played a lot so that doesn’t put me off too much. Terfry plays everything from Joni Mitchell to Patti Smith to Elvis Costello to a Canadian band called Lazy Susan whose single is called Sweet Thing, (not to be confused with Van Morrison’s song of the same name which is infinitely better), to The Decembrists who have garnered lots of favour, according to my Facebook friends. It’s a great mix of lively music and Terfry is an engaging radio DJ without being annoying.

CBC Radio 2 may not be the class act that it was a few years ago, but in its drive to be all things to all people, there are bound to be some hits and misses. CBC Morning and The Drive are a bit of what Peter Gzowski’s Morningside was, but in a more musical vein. When you play a wide mix of music, you are sure to please some of the people some of the time.

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This has been a week in which the world seemed to get a little smaller. The demonstrations in Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia calling for a change in government and a more democratic government have grabbed our attention. In Great Britain, there have been demonstrations for quite a while protesting governments cuts to students. I’m starting to believe that 2011 is this millennium’s 1968 – people are calling for a world where everybody gets a chance to have his or her say and a world where people just feel that they might have a chance to get ahead period.

It’s very easy to feel that all that stuff is happening over there. On Saturday, I was cross-country skiing in the woods and feeling very apart from the world, but as I was swishing around and falling in the snow, I did get a little quiet time to ponder something that the Prime Minister of Great Britain said. He claimed that state multiculturalism has failed and that countries need to implement what he called, “muscular liberalism.” His idea is that once you immigrate to Great Britain, you have to accept its values. This is not unfamiliar territory. We’ve had a similar discussion here in Quebec with our debates over reasonable accommodation.

With a world so interconnected, I think that Prime Minister Cameron is trying to go back to a 1950’s world that will never exist again. Nowadays, people are moving from one country to the next in search of employment and in search of a better way of life for their families and themselves. With cyberspace, we are connected through Skype, Twitter, Facebook, and whatever social networking system will come along in the next few years, and there are sure to be plenty more with bells and whistles that we haven’t thought of yet. Very few places are isolated anymore; what happens in Egypt may eventually have an effect on us, particularly if oil tankers aren’t making it through the Suez Canal.

You can only ski in the woods for so long nowadays, both literally and figuratively. Whether you are in Montreal, Sherbrooke, London or New York City, you are sure to encounter people whose cultures, upbringings, food, dress are going to be different, maybe radically different, from your own. To think that we can create a national or international system of right values in the twenty-first century is nostalgic daydreaming and it’s the kind of daydreaming that can get us into trouble. We have to recognize that the days of one people of one nationality and one colour living together in harmony are long gone, and let’s face it, even within that same group, someone was always fighting with somebody else anyway.

We have to face the fact that we live in a multicultural world and multiculturalism simply can’t be allowed to fail if we are to live in some semblance of peace. People will come to live in our country and they will have to find a way to navigate through our value systems. Yes, they will have to learn to live side by side with us, but it might be a little much to ask them to accept everything that the rest of us believe in, hook, line, and sinker. Perhaps over time, they will adapt to us, and as our society becomes more diverse, we may adapt a little to them. That kind of give and take makes for a more peaceful and perhaps a more interesting social environment. In a world where modern day fascists are making hay with our fear of terrorism, decrying multiculturalism is downright dangerous. A prime minister should know better.

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January is a long, cold, dark, and cruel month. I’ve called it the dark night of the soul, and for me, it ever and always will be. Everybody always tells me how much they hate February, but February has longer days, and every now and then, you get those wonderful thaws where you just barely feel the warmth of the sun. The icicles are dripping off roofs, and spring feels like it’s around the corner.

What we don’t need in January is negativity, but…lists aren’t necessarily negative if they spread mirth, delight, and a feeling of commonality. If you feel the way I do, that’s great, and if you don’t, turn the page:

1. Sarah Palin: The shooting was bad enough. It was horrific. Did you have to cover yourself by using terms like, “blood libel?” What’s wrong with you? Stop giving women politicians a bad name and be a TV personality. It’s good money and you can be as dippy as you want.

2. Horoscopes: O.k., get ready for this. Astrology isn’t real; it’s fun, but not real. Yes, I am the epitome of a Gemini, but no one cares. Now, I’m a Taurus? Oh, gee, it just goes to prove that astrology isn’t real. Thank you for that amazing non-story when millions of people are starving to death, dying of AIDS, or from wars. Feel the shame!

3. American Idol: I can’t stand Simon Cowell, but he has my undying respect for getting out. He should have done it two years ago. American Idol has done more to ruin popular music and television than Coca-Cola and Sprite. Would Ella Fitzgerald have won American Idol? I don’t think so. Ignore it and it may finally go away.

4. Reality Shows: Are we getting sick of them yet?

5. Demographics: The largest generation is getting older, there are fewer kids, and how does society pay for seniors’ health care and pensions? It’s all bad news. Maybe I will get used to eating cat food in my retirement. I can have dog food on Sundays.

6. China: Bad news always comes out of China. Things like melamine don’t belong in milk; lead does not belong in toys. A guy wins a Nobel Peace Prize, and you don’t let him out? May we please get some good news from China already? Peace in Afghanistan would be really nice too.

7. Automated telephone systems: Your call is important to us. Please wait an hour and a half, and the next available representative will not be able to answer your question. Too late, our offices just closed.

8. People in the United States who compare President Obama to Hitler: Read your history, please! Hate him, revile him, sneer at him, but don’t compare him to the man who gave organized slaughter a name. It just makes you look ignorant.

9. Wack-jobs who picket funerals with disgusting signs: Your grandparents knew about manners and maybe compassion. You don’t.

10. Columnists who make lists.

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How many of you think that the Gomery Report is funny? How many of you can even remember the scandal that it investigated? You’d know if you watched This Hour Has 22 Minutes on Monday, January 17^th. No, it wasn’t doing a goof on Canadian History; the show itself was Canadian history, a good six years old. Political humour isn’t funny unless it’s current, but Comedy Central Canada just keeps playing reruns of This Hour Has 22 Minutes because even though it’s old and stale, it’s Canadian.

Good comedy almost always has an element of surprise. After all, a joke isn’t funny if you know the punch line. A pie in the face isn’t funny if you can see that pie coming from a long way off. Similarly, if you’ve seen the same stand-up comics do the same routines over and over again on Just for Laughs, it’s just not funny anymore. How many times can you watch Shaun Majumder do the most embarrassing shtick that couldn’t get a laugh from a college kid who’s had a few beers? It wasn’t funny the first time and it gets increasingly pathetic with each watching. A comic, who I’ve already seen, has to be particularly funny to get a laugh out of me after I’ve watched one of his pathetically un-funny introductions or eulogies to each comic’s routine. Yet I watch in hope, hope that one day I’ll see something new that will make me laugh.

While I applaud the mission of the CRTC to maintain Canadian content so that Canadian artists can be employed and that the country’s media reflects Canadian culture, there ought to be a law against the number of times a show can be broadcasted because it’s Canadian and cheap.

Speaking of Canadian content, if I’m paying for BBC in Canada, why can’t I see British programming? It makes no sense. When I watch ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, I see American shows and not reruns of a bunch of Canadian home improvement shows just so the station can meet its Canadian content requirements. A little research answered this question. BBC Canada is owned both by a Toronto company, Alliance Atlantis (80%) and BBC Worldwide (20%), therefore the CRTC considers BBC Canada to be a Canadian network. (Please don’t try to read that sentence aloud – you may hurt your mouth.) As a Canadian company, they must show a certain quota of Canadian shows, and that’s why you get a lot of Debbie Travis and Holmes on Homes.

Much of cable TV, particularly during the day, is made up of reruns. I can accept this to a certain degree, but when primetime rolls around, I would like to get what I pay for if I have to pay for television. If I watch a network that advertises itself as a network of reruns – Déjà Vu, for example – I’m aware that I’m paying for old shows. When I pay for a specialty channel, I hope to watch new shows. As a fan of British television, it is extremely disappointing to pay for a channel called BBC and find that it’s a home and garden channel in disguise.

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Every day when I get home from work, tired and battle-weary from the tensions of the day, when I turn to television as a sedative to get my mind off my troubles, there’s one show on in the late afternoon that can elicit a chuckle out of me and make me smile. That TV show is Barney Miller which is on the Déjà View channel from 4:00-5:00.

It’s been at least 30 years since I watched this series so it’s brand new to me and I’m falling back in love with it. For those of you who weren’t around in the 70’s when this show was a hit series, the action almost always takes place in the squad room of the 12^th precinct located in lower Manhattan. Barney Miller (Hal Linden) is the captain of the precinct and his detectives are an eccentric group. Miller puts up with them with a long-suffering patience and humour and is the show’s straight man. Detective Fish (Abe Vigoda) is nearing retirement, has a daily war with his digestive system and his deadpan reaction to criminals and colleagues is hilarious. Max Gail plays Wojo, a young detective who is insecure and sometimes seems to have more brawn than brains. Detective Harris sports an Afro, is always neatly groomed, is writing a novel and is perpetually on the lookout for a better apartment. Yemana (Jack Soo) constantly has his nose in a racing form. The inimitable Steve Landesburg (who unfortunately passed away last month) also has a killer deadpan delivery as Detective Dietrich who is the squad trivia know-it-all.

In each episode, the detectives deal with mostly small-time crooks or people in conflict with one another and try to solve problems while working out of an ancient cockroach infested building while being perpetually underfunded for the police work that they are trying to do. As people who have to put up with each other day-in and day-out, their relationships with one another and with their spouses makes for some very funny situations. In addition, when you watch the show, there are many faces that you will recognize from other TV shows and many well-known character actors. Trying to remember who they are and what they’ve been in is part of the fun.

The series had an eight year run and while the dialogue and characters are a bit stiff in the first year, the writers and actors seemed to warm up to the characters that they were portraying to the point that when you watch the show, it seems very much as if you are watching a comic play, particularly because the show is shot in video rather than film. Over the years, the show increasingly added dramatic elements as well as comedy. For example, toward the end of the series, Miller has marital difficulties as his wife has increasing difficulties dealing with her husband’s job.

Some people may find the show somewhat politically incorrect as it was filmed about the same time as All in the Family. For instance, Barney Miller’s treatment of female cops and female victims may make you wince now and again. Otherwise, it’s a very funny show with superb character actors and great scripts.

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One of my friends has been urging me to watch the HBO series, Bored to Death, which has been running at odd times on HBO. Strangely enough, it’s impossible to find out when a program is on HBO Canada unless you go on the Internet and check on HBO’s web site. In the case of this show, here is what you find: Jan. 8 -1:30 AM; Jan. 17 - 3:30 P.M.; Jan.24 - 3:30 PM.

This seems like craziness to me. Unless I am a virtuoso in the use of a VCR or have a handy dandy digital recorder, what’s the point in telling me to watch the show? I’m new to HBO, so I can only think that the show, Boardwalk Empire with Steve Buscemi is on all the time, and HBO shows a few other shows every now and then. Don’t get me wrong, I love Steve Buscemi in all the Coen Brothers films that he’s in – the dude abides, and all that – but HBO seems to replay certain series day and night and then they just go away!

The other night, I watched Bored to Death for the second time and actually laughed out loud in a few places. The premise of the show runs something like this: Jonathan Ames is a struggling writer in New York City whose girlfriend has broken up with him. His writing career is not going very well either, so inspired by a detective novel, he advertises on Craig’s List as an unlicensed private eye and clumsily solves mysteries while hanging out with his neurotic comic book writing best friend, Ray (Zach Galifianakis) and George (Ted Danson of Cheers fame) who is a marijuana smoking man about town and editor of a New York City magazine. This makes life more bearable and interesting.

I found the first show that I watched tedious, but the second episode that I watched was quite funny. It is definitely a character driven series, and though some of the situations are impossibly ridiculous, that’s where the comedy comes from. Ted Danson definitely steals scenes. He’s such a natural for this part, and his character seems to have no problem turning lemons into lemonade without mussing a hair on his beautifully coiffed head. Mind you, if you are offended by vulgar language and drug using characters, this show is definitely not for you.

Right after Bored to Death came How to Make It in America though that sequence may never be repeated on HBO again; it’s all about catching shows when you can. Another vulgarity warning for this show that is about yet another struggling young man in New York City. Ben (Bryan Greenberg) is an aspiring designer who is friends with Cam (Victor Rasuk), a free spirit and would-be future mogul. Cam takes it upon himself to get Ben “back in the game” after his breakup with girlfriend Rachel, now dating a successful hotelier. The show is all about the hustle to get money for projects and to network with the right people.

I loved how this show was shot and the script moved quickly. I was also surprised to find the characters more likeable than I expected from the beginning of the show. The two friends meet obstacle after obstacle together, and you can’t help but sympathize with Ben, who can’t even begin to get over his girlfriend, and is perpetually unlucky in love.

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Do you see what I see? As the last few notes of Christmas carols recede into your memories of Christmas 2010, are you looking down at your protruding paunch and thinking, “Wow – can two days of food indulgence make such a noticeable and rapid difference in my waist size?”

Readers, it has reached the point where no one can look at me and comment on my sylph-like physique. My jiggling extremities may be cute to my husband who tries to come up with the right answers in the hopes of maintaining peace and serenity in the home, but my mirror has no tact. My mirror does not lie. I daresay your mirror isn’t lying either. If you are North American and middle-aged, chances are that you don’t have the muscle tone that you could have to lead a healthy lifestyle and that you are carrying over five pounds extra than you should.

For myself, it’s not so much the appearance that concerns me, but the possibility that my careless diet and lack of exercise is going to land me in the same boat that my parents were in once they were in their sixties – an inability to walk very far or do very much because they were overweight.

Right now, I am on the cusp of making another year’s unfulfilled resolutions when it comes to exercise and my foe, bad cholesterol. What is this deal with good and bad cholesterol? Does good cholesterol ride a white horse and comes to the aid of damsels in distress? Does bad cholesterol ride into town packing pistols and shooting up the town to the point that the whole community breaks down and somebody somewhere has a stroke as a result?

My doctor told me that I should be happy that I have a high level of good cholesterol but though my bad cholesterol is not at a level for major concern, care would be a good idea. Having deep-fried potato pancakes twice in the course of two days is probably not what she had in mind. In other words, I sent the bad guys into town and the sheriff wants to have words with me.

While I have resolved to cut back on butter and get on the guilt machine (my name for the elliptical trainer that I bought four years ago to get into shape and which I have probably not used more than ten times), I’ve got a few words for the sheriff too. “It’s Christmas!” January is the time to buck up and get started and be miserable through the short days with the closest promise of relief as Easter, which is some time in April. At Christmas and New Year’s, let me celebrate. Let me throw dietary caution and guilt to the wind. Let me ignore those December magazines that tell me how to get through the holidays without gaining five pounds that are going to take me six months to lose. In other words, and very rude words, “Mr. Sheriff, shut up.”

What is the good of being healthy if we cannot eat and drink and celebrate with good friends if we must have half a mind to what we’re eating and drinking? Granted that some of us have illnesses that require us to watch what we eat in order to avoid serious harm. This is not what I’m talking about. The obsession with perfect health and youthful appearance that can be a detriment to enjoying the good things of life is just silly. I say enjoy, be moderate, and make sure that you have great people to eat and drink with, and you will be happy. This is what I wish you in the New Year. Get out there and enjoy and have a happy and safe New Year.

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This is the time of year when you think that people will hang out with friends and family, eat too much shortbread cookies (all right, that’s probably just me) and drink a little too much wine or whiskey with our holiday dinners. Yet many of us will use television as a form of family entertainment after a big meal to kick back and enjoy the Christmas spirit, and what will we watch?

In the next twenty-four hours there are three movies that are going to be repeated on several channels: It’s a Wonderful Life, Scrooge (A Christmas Carol), and Miracle on 34th Street. Why are these three films repeated year after year on Christmas Eve? I think it’s all about what Christmas has come to mean in our secular Western society, the opportunity to have a second chance. Without question, this is many steps away from the kind of redemption that is implicit in the religious significance of the Christmas holiday for people of the Christian faith. Yet Christmas has been adopted as a winter holiday by people all over North America, and like it or not, when people celebrate the holiday, folks choose to look past the gift-giving to another purpose whether it’s a time for being with loved ones, showing an annual social conscience by giving to the poor, or looking to the hope of peace on Earth and good will towards all men and women.

Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which was adapted into the film, Scrooge in 1951 with Alistair Sims as Ebenezer Scrooge, is all about redemption. As Scrooge is forced to review his life, he realizes that if he doesn’t change his ways, he will die alone with no one to mourn him and no one to say a kind word about him. Through magic, The Three Ghosts of Christmas manage to bring about a serious change of heart in Scrooge who becomes a real benefactor to the Cratchit family, and who most importantly, saves Tiny Tim’s life.

It’s A Wonderful Life, Frank Capra’s masterpiece of 1946 and once called “the best film to never win an Oscar,” tells a similar story, but in reverse. George Bailey is a very good man who always sacrifices his dreams for the good of others. When his uncle foolishly loses a bank deposit, putting George in danger of going to jail, George regrets all that he has done. He is about to end his life when a rather clumsy angel, Clarence, uses magic to help George see how important his sacrifices have been, and what a poorer place his community would have been if he had never lived. Once again, a supernatural intervention takes place through the auspices of Christmas to bring about a sincere change of heart.

A Miracle on 34th Street has two versions, one made in 1947 and a re-make in 1994. If you’ve never watched the old version, give that one a try as I find that it has a certain magic lacking in the modern one. There are some very tough messages in this one about faith for a secular society. Santa’s magic is on trial and the judge and jury are really an unbelieving single mother and young daughter. Yet in this film, the magic is much more subtle – is it magic or just a set of coincidences? The viewer is left to make up his or her own mind. For those of us who want to believe in magic, there’s just enough evidence to help us out.
If you want to believe that people can change, that the world can change, these three Christmas classics will help you convince that doubting Thomas uncle of yours that there is magic in the world, and that this magic is more likely to take place around December 25th. To all readers of The Record, I wish you all the joy and magic of the holiday season and then some.

Times and Channels: A Christmas Carol/Scrooge, CTV, Friday night at 11:30; It’s a Wonderful Life, Friday night, NBC at 8:00; A Miracle on 34th Street (1994), Friday night, CBC, 8:00. CBC will air the 1947 version on Saturday night at 11:00 PM.

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It had to happen; I’m getting sick, yes, sore throat, chills, runny nose the whole bit, and Christmas is coming. I should be shopping, baking cookies, decking the halls, and jingling bells, but all I want to do is lie on the couch and watch Christmas shows. If I haven’t the energy to “deck them halls,” as Lucy told Schroeder in the the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, then I’ll just have to watch someone who can; maybe an animated character who is immune to animated cold germs.

What do I watch? Being the age that I am, I mostly say phoeey to the new Christmas specials, and that’s probably a mistake. Why, just this past week, the three Canadian tenors were belting out carols as was the remnants of Barenaked Ladies on CBC. I go for the classics.

In no particular order, (I’m too sick to prioritize), here are some of my wacky Christmas TV favourites:

A Christmas Carol and all its manifestations: My favourite, of course, is Scrooge with the irreplaceable Alistair Sims as Ebenezer. I own it on DVD …my kids hate it. So we go with some other versions like The Muppet Christmas Carol with Michael Caine. Surprisingly, they do use a lot of Dickens’ text, but they also have singing vegetables and dancing rats. Then there’s that old classic, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. I’m ashamed to say that I know some of the songs by heart.

Speaking of Muppets, there’s also the other Muppets Christmas Specials. I’ve managed to buy two as I’m a big fan of the work of Jim Henson and Frank Oz. In my favourite, the Family Christmas (1987) Fozzie surprises his mother by bringing the whole gang to her farmhouse on Christmas just as she greets Doc and Sprocket of Fraggle Rock who have rented the house for a quiet Christmas. They don’t get one. The DVD is very disappointing because songs have been cut as Henson only got the rights to use some of the songs for a one-time TV special. I tend to watch it on a tired, old videotape that also has A Charlie Brown Christmas which I still love.

A Christmas Story with Darren McGavin and Peter Billingsly: Set in the 1940’s, it’s the story of Ralphie, a boy who wants an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle, and is thwarted by the inevitable, “You’ll shoot your eye out.” This is a Christmas Eve favourite that we watch year after year. You can buy it at Archambault, by the way.

Off beat favourites include: Garfield’s Christmas where the greedy and gluttonous Garfield learns the true meaning of Christmas with lots of songs packed into thirty minutes, and the Claymation Christmas, which we must watch on VHS as I can’t find it on DVD for under $30.00. This show is simply a series of carols that have been animated in the Claymation way, and it’s really a treat. The California Raisins do a jazzed-up version of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Yes, those raisins sure can sing.

So if you’ve come down with a cold, like me, don’t let it get you too far down. Lie on the couch slurping chicken soup or tea with lemon and honey, and be prepared to make a leap of faith that with Christmas magic, everything will be all right.

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A few days back, while I was perusing my Twitter page, I discovered a news story that seemed to be ignored bye the major media of the day:  Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent senator from Vermont, held an 8 ½ hour filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor protesting the proposed tax bill that had been agreed upon by the Democratic and Republican parties.

Senator Sanders, affectionately known as Bernie by many, is the first Senator to declare himself a socialist and who admits to admiring European style social democracy.  In Canada, we call them NDP; in the U.S.A., they’re called Communists, pinko-s and loonies.

That long a filibuster is a triumph of the spirit over the flesh.  Bernie is 69 years old and for a filibuster to be carried on, the person is not allowed to eat or go to the bathroom.  If he does, he loses the floor.  Senator Sanders, a 69-year-old man, did not eat or leave the floor.  He did have some short-term subs in the persons of Sherrod Brown a progressive Democrat from Ohio who spoke for 3/4 of an hour and center-right Democrat Mary Landrieu who took the microphone for 1/2 an hour.

Historically, Senate filibusters have been used for bad purposes too.  In the 1960s, Strom Thurmond pulled a filibuster to oppose the Civil Rights Act that was passed in 1964.  The famous senator, Huey Long, spoke for fifteen and a hour hours to block a bill that would have also benefited rich Americans over poor ones and wound up reading from Shakespeare to keep going.  Interestingly enough, no filibuster has ever successfully blocked a bill from being passed.  Sanders definitely knew from the get-go that history was working against him.

No matter where you stand on taxation, socialism, and the income disparities that are a serious problem in many Western nations today, you have to admire the courage of the man to get up and speak for the little guy.  In his speech, Sanders referred to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, two billionaires who have openly questioned why they need a tax break. 

He spoke passionately about the jobs that are leaving the United States as corporations move to countries like Thailand where the minimum wage was recently doubled…from eleven cents an hour to twenty-two cents an hour.  Sanders asked how American companies were expected to compete with companies whose labour costs were so low and he asked why it is that we are all racing to the bottom because of the greed of big corporations.  Finally, Sanders enumerated the banks and corporations that were bailed out at American taxpayers’ expense, thanks to the recent disclosure of the list.  This list includes Korean, Japanese and Bahrainian banks.  Then he spoke of small and medium-sized businesses that were unable to even get a loan, businesses that could be a source of jobs for a population starving for jobs.

I watched about a half hour of his speech and I was riveted, not because Bernie is such a dynamic orator – he isn’t – but because the ring of truth was so loud and so clear that you couldn’t help but admire the honesty of the man.

Tommy Douglas, in his famous Mouseland speech said that, “Beware the little man with an idea. You can lock up a man but you can’t lock up an idea.”  Sanders sent a definitive message in homespun words that a government that ignores the working and middle classes is doomed to failure…and more debt.

Ellen Goldfinch may be reached at radiomother@yahoo.ca

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They said that it was snowing in excited tones on the news

I wonder why they always sound so surprised ‘cause every year it snows

Anybody ever hear of Sandy Denny?  She sang for a while with a popular British folk-rock band called Fairport Convention, had a solo career, and met an untimely death from a brain haemorrhage caused by a fall down a flight of stairs.  I’m glad I’m not a rock star.

The first snow always makes that lyric play in my head and I was reminded of it by something that my husband said.  He was at Clark’s and one of the salespeople remarked that the store had sold 120 units of mittens and gloves even though they hadn’t had a lot of people come in.  I suppose the freezing rain may have had something to do with that.  I took a slide on to my backside while walking the dogs last Saturday and my husband sent me back to the house to take a long hot shower and put some ice on my back.  Strange how middle age can make a gentle fall that might be nothing for a kid a potential catastrophe.

The run on mittens and gloves is probably a reaction to snow, freezing rain, and everybody hastily putting up their Christmas lights while the weather was relatively mild a couple of weeks ago.  People are finally realizing that winter is here and it always surprises us, maybe because our autumns seem to be getting gentler.  Sure, we had a freak snow at Halloween, but everybody knows that the two coldest days in the fall are Halloween and Remembrance Day, both days where you have to be outside for a long time whether it’s walking your little one around or standing at the Cenotaph.  I can’t remember anyone ever complaining that either of those days was unseasonably hot. Yet this year, October and November have been fairly warm.

When I took that slide on the ice that was hidden by a thin layer of snow, I could vaguely smell January coming.  Everybody always complains about November and rightly so.  November is grey, bleak, with a damp cold that is downright unfriendly, but November has anticipation.  We can’t help but look forward to Christmas, so as the days get ridiculously short, we’re putting up lights and glitzy decorations that take the sting out of the cold, grey weather.  When New Year’s has come and gone, there’s nothing to look forward to but a dark January, which I like to call the long, dark night of the soul.  Once the holidays are over, that seasonal adjustment disorder hits me like a ton of bricks and I am SADD in all capital letters.

Of course, skiers have a completely different take on January; they revel in it.  They watch weather reports with baited breath.  They bounce up and down with glee at the first snow flake, and comes a blizzard, they are almost unendurably ecstatic.  You may want to kill them but if you are a confirmed hater of winter, you have to envy that love of winter snow.  This is their season and I try to take comfort in the joy of others.

Of course, my other solution has been to take up cross country skiing which, believe-you-me, is a lot of work.  Like an idiot, I bundle up and then when I’m sweating like the proverbial pig, I’m peeling off the hat, the scarves and tempting pneumonia with reckless abandon.  There are mornings in the woods when the sun shines on the snow in the trees and it’s magical – so much so, that I can almost enjoy winter…and that’s the trick.  Get out in it and enjoy it.

Equipped with my brand new woollen mittens that my husband picked up at Clarks with the cat food and the dog food, I will try to approach winter and snow with the joy of my dog, Molly…but I refuse to roll in the snow unless I’m sent flying by a hidden sheet of ice.

            

            Ellen Goldfinch may be reached at radiomother@yahoo.ca

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I have just discovered my twin and she’s an African American woman named Charlene who works in a post office in Yonkers, New York.  The reason that I bring up the fact that she’s African American is because I’m definitely not and this calls into question a whole bunch of stuff, yet Charlene was pretty convincing so I have to believe her.  If Charlene says that we’re twins, it’s good enough for me.

Two weeks ago, my family were down in New York visiting my father who is in a nursing home in the northern most tip of New York City, an area called Riverdale.  We’ve discovered a Marriott hotel that is a 15 minute drive north in the city of Yonkers that makes staying in New York and visiting my father much easier as the hotel has its own parking lot.  I can tell you some very unhappy stories about trying to find parking in lower Manhattan, but I’ll just put you off driving down to one of the most vibrant cities in the world.  Actually, if you must stay in Manhattan, a hotel called On the Avenue which is on 78th Street and Broadway, is a very nice hotel (although the rooms are small, but all Manhattan hotels have small rooms), and we’re usually able to find parking on the street within ten to fifteen minutes of getting near the hotel.  This hotel is a good option if you want to bring your car into the city.

I hope you find all this information useful, but what I really want to tell you about is my twin, Charlene.  I had to go to the post office in dealing with some family business and was pleased to find that the post office was open all day Saturday.  I walked in with a bunch of mail that I wanted to put into a package, so I needed to buy an envelope, stuff the mail into it, and send it on its merry way.  Every time poor Charlene started to suggest what I could do and how my task could be achieved, I repeatedly anticipated what she was going to say and as usual, I was incorrect every time.  This is an unfortunate habit that my family has dealt with for years.  Charlene had a different approach.

She said to me, “Do you know what the word foreshadowing means?”  I was taken aback by the question, but I reassured her that yes, I did know what foreshadowing means.  She continued, “I used to do the same thing to my English teacher in college and she used to say, ‘Charlene, you’re foreshadowing.’ ” I promised her that I would be quiet and let her talk.  She looked at my husband and said, “And I want you to be quiet too.” He complied.

Charlene weighed the package and gave us our options and we paid for it to be sent.  “You’re my twin because you do the same as me.  What’s your name?”  Well, that was it.  We started to chat, I wound up telling her that we were from Canada and the whole mailing experience was about as pleasant as it could have been made to be.  I found out a little bit about Charlene, her colleague Daisy re-weighed our package and found that we owed a few more cents…and then wouldn’t let us pay it.

I think that Charlene and I really are twins because it’s always been my own philosophy that if I’m going to work, I’m going to have fun with it which luckily is very easy when you’re working in a small high school.  I get to joke around with kids all day long; some kids get my jokes and some don’t.  Sometimes it’s the ones who don’t get what I’m on about that provide greater entertainment.  Trying to have fun with things as simple as buying stamps just makes life more liveable and that’s the attitude that makes Charlene and I twins even though Yonkers and Lennoxville are far apart.  Try it some time.

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The borough of Lennoxville is very much like most of the college towns that I’ve seen and we have the bars to show for it, but most college towns have a variety of daytime hangouts. Lenn, as kids affectionately call it, has McDonald’s and the drop-in centre forthe high school kids. Café Java has been a university hang out of sorts. Tim Horton’s gets a mix of folks, and now we have La Brulerie de Café.

As soon as I walked into the new café, it was like stepping into a more urban setting.
Brick walls, wood ceilings, and jazz pumping out of the sound system made it seem
like a Montreal café. One student was surfing the Internet on her laptop (I meant to ask
whether or not the Wi-Fi was free), and in the passage between the front and back rooms,
there were two computers with enormous screens being used by people also happily
surfing the ‘Net sipping on big mugs of coffee…and that’s what I was really there for.

While the ambiance was very welcome, I showed up for the caffeine. I’d heard that there
was a coffee roaster there, and that you could buy bags of Ethiopian fair trade coffee
that is a very wonderful blend of coffee. For years now, I beg my husband to go to Café
Myriade whenever he’s in Montreal to pick up a brand of coffee called 49th Parallel
which has flavourful coffee beans that are perfect for espresso or regular coffee which
we make in a contraption that we bought at Myriade called an Eva Solo. I’ve been very
excited about the fact that there is a coffee roaster within a ten-minute walk of my house,
but I’ve been too busy to get there till last weekend.

We went for lunch and coffee. Unfortunately, we showed up after 1:00. It’s important
to know that they close the kitchen at 1:00, but happily, there were some sandwiches left
which heated up were really delicious. I had a date square for dessert and my husband
had a cranberry raisin square. Both of these were really good too.

We ordered two cappuccinos. As some of my readers will remember, I was in Italy this
summer and that experience turned me into the worst kind of coffee snob. Don’t get me
wrong – I am very willing to drink bad coffee and mediocre coffee as long as there are no
pretensions involved. I was hoping for an excellent cappuccino at La Brulerie de Café,
but it wasn’t excellent. It just wasn’t strong enough and a cappuccino should be strong.
People get all caught up in the milk foam, and this is very wrong. In Italy, you get the
steamed milk and a little foam on top, because in that country, it’s all about the coffee.
The coffee is always rich and strong, and that’s the way it should be. The one that I had
at La Brulerie de Café was very drinkable but it really wasn’t strong enough.

I’m not a complete traditionalist; a true Italian would never drink a cappuccino in the
afternoon and I was happy to be able to go out for a cappuccino close to home so I’m
hoping that this will improve and that the folks at the Café will use a stronger blend. I’d
be willing to settle for a smaller cup and less milk.

My other suggestion is that the staff should walk around and clean tables. When I went
in the back to look for a cozy table, one had coffee cups still on it and just about all the
empty tables had crumbs. This doesn’t make a good impression. Apart from that I,
like all of my friends, are delighted that La Brulerie de Café has opened up a branch in
Lennoxville, and I’m hoping that it has a long run in our town.

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In his novel, Pattern Recognition, William Gibson called the endless adolescent crowds that invade Camden Market in London on Saturdays, the Children’s Crusade.  We, in Lennoxville, have our own Children’s Crusade between 8:00-9:00 every weekday morning.  I’m referring to the parade of young adults who emerge from the houses and apartments on College and Depot Street and trudge across the bridge to the Bishop’s University/Champlain campus.  They brave the College Street crosswalk and dare traffic to stop.  Mostly it does; sometimes it doesn’t.

With time, many of us are getting better at seeing pedestrians who have a right of way that they did not have before.  It was only a few years ago that any one who wanted to cross College had to dash out when no car was coming with the hope that an automobile didn’t just materialize from another dimension.  It should have been an Olympic sport, but unfortunately, there are no medals for courage or agility in outwitting cars.

I should be more sympathetic to the students’ plight but as a motorist, I’m getting testy.  Is it just me or does the traffic on College seems worse now than in years past, and is the crosswalk the cause of the problems?  I have seen joggers run blissfully past me as my sporty little car that is capable of great speeds painfully inches its way toward the third traffic light just in front of Bishop’s where I wait to make that left turn across the bridge that will take me to work.  I could understand this kind of traffic if I was back in Montreal or even New York City, but Lennoxville?  This is a small town of 5000 tops, even when the students are here.  What’s with all this traffic?

On mornings when the traffic is moving, it’s a lovely 5 minute drive with the mountains, the trees, and church steeples all looking very pastoral and very pretty.  Yes, those are the mornings that make you glad to be alive.  Most mornings, however, I am faced with the monumental decision of which street will be less congested, Queen or College.  My coffee is not strong enough to fortify me with the prescience needed to make such a crucial choice.  If I go down Queen, I can make a left turn by the Town Hall, and if I’m lucky, I can make another left on to College from Depot, but I have to be cocky.  I have to have nerves of steel to sneak out in front of the traffic and make my way to the Promised Land in hopes that the crosswalk won’t bog the traffic down too much.  At least my hairdresser appreciates my problem; the traffic has turned my hair gray and she’s making money dying it closer to its once youthful brown.

It could be that the new 410 overpass will alleviate some of the traffic so that the large trucks that are a pesky component of the morning traffic will go another way, but I’m not overly optimistic.  There is still the Children’s Crusade to contend with, and though the kids finish school and graduate, there are more, always more, to take their place. 

If this is the case, once the new highway is up and taking the strain off in-town traffic, we can be sure that more experts will come up with a new scheme, maybe a fourth traffic light, so that at least you could move for a few minutes before the next student waits to cross the street.  Maybe we could see a footbridge go over College Street, something like the bridges in Venice, or maybe they will come up with hover crafts so we can all fly to work like George Jetson.  Yes, that’s the answer…except by that time, I will have retired.  Pity, I always wanted one of those.

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Two weeks have gone by since I wrote my last column about reactions to jury duty.  I’ll cut to the chase: I got exempted because of my poor French skills (I’m not proud of that), and the fact that I am health care proxy for my 91 year old father who lives in The Bronx.  In the last two weeks, Dad has taken a turn for the worse. I will head down to see him soon, something that I would not have been able to do had I been selected, so thank you, Sheriff’s Office, for your understanding at a bad time.

On a more cheerful note, I’ve had some wonderful conversations with friends and emails from folks who have been called up for the selection process. One reader was convinced that if she thought about jury duty often, she would get called up and sure enough she was:

“I tend to believe in the law of attraction...What I think I create. Well.... I have been thinking briefly, but profoundly about this event and I "knew" that this was coming for me. When I received the notice I felt such a contradiction of feelings. I felt excitement and terror all in the same bundle. I think I am bilingual enough to be chosen, but I really don't know how strict their demands will be. I have such mixed feelings especially because I am a teacher and my students and I are beginning to build a strong and cohesive community together, I feel worried about them as I imagine the possibilities. So, my rendezvous is Wednesday, October 13th (I am not one bit superstitious) I hope and wonder and dread what the outcome will be.”  She wasn’t the only teacher that heard the call of Lady Justice; I’m wondering how many teachers if any will wind up as jurors.

What I find truly interesting is that some people that I spoke to and heard from by email expressed an honest concern about doing the job properly, whether it’s following the nuances of the case in both official languages or going in with preconceptions about the accused.  I received one email that explained this worry with a story that I’m going to reproduce here:

“I've honestly been working on not judging people by their looks for a good twenty years. When our daughter was tiny, we went to the fair and she wanted to go on a bouncy castle thing. Adults weren't allowed beyond a certain line. She had to take off her shoes and in her excitement got a knot in her laces. A big guy, tattooed arms, shaved head and leather vest approached her and I was about to scream ‘Get away from my kid!!’ when he knelt down, untied the knot and gently lifted her up on the air mattress. I try to remember that.”

Other people’s reaction was to ask me how I “got off.”  There was a fair amount of understandable worry that they might be perceived as being more bilingual than they really are.  For example, at the courthouse, one of my friends got into trouble when she said, “I don’t speak French.”  This was not what the lawyers wanted to hear; they wanted to know whether or not potential jurors could understand French.  When my friend quickly explained that she meant to say that she didn’t understand French, she received her exemption.  Yet another friend who is over the age of 65 - which is supposed to be an automatic exemption - tried calling up to get out of going in but was told that he had to go – I, on the other hand, was exempted by phone.  Go figure.

Meanwhile the process continues, and I wonder if the search for a juror will move to another locality where they will try to find twelve more not so angry men and women who will give the accused their fair shake at justice.  If you see a yellow letter in the mailbox, try not to panic.

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Over and over again, RG told me to take the camera out.  Sometimes I do listen to him.  I pulled out the Sony, went upstairs and decided it would be best to get the zoom lens out.  I'm awkward at it but I managed to exchange lenses without too much of a hassle, and most importantly, without asking for help.

I went out on the balcony and took about 35 shots.  This was my favourite.

People keep asking me how it is that someone who grew up in New York can live in the Eastern Townships.  I've been here for close to 22 years.  If this photo doesn't answer the question, then there's a part of me that you really don't know.

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If you were one of the 4000 people who received a yellow letter in the mail summoning you to jury duty, as I was, I’d be very curious to know your reaction.  My reaction was, “Why me?  Why now?”  Just that morning on my happy walk through the woods where a mysterious Good Samaritan had cleaned away the enormous trees that I clumsily climbed over for months, I was attacked by bees and stung three times on the arm.  Then my husband phoned me at lunch to tell me that I had received a letter from the Ministère du Justice and did I want him to open it for me.  Bees and jury duty in one day makes me wonder about fate, destiny, and all that other existential stuff.

It is one week later and over the course of the week, I’ve discovered that many of my fellow Townshippers are experiencing the same call to be the lady with the scales, Lady Justice herself, and their reactions are joyful.  Most people have responded with fear.  What will I be asked to do?  Will it be some gory murder trial?  That certainly crossed my mind. Show me blood and I’m going to faint, and then have nightmares for the next twenty years.  Luckily, I never tried to work in an Emergency Room of a hospital because people showing up with things sticking into their bodies that should not be stuck in their bodies would just render me useless and possibly unconscious as would photos of the same.

There’s also the level of fantasy about delivering a guilty verdict to some gangland criminal and spending the next twenty years, (I’m kind of stuck on the number twenty in this article – I apologize for the repetition), living in fear of someone hunting down jurors, one juror at a time, once he got out of prison to fulfill his goal of the ultimate revenge.  You think you’re safe, and then, wham-o!

People who know that I write – whatever that means, we all write, we all have stories to tell only some of us are brave enough to put it on paper – where was I?   Yes, I was being a writer.  People who know of this habit of mine tell me that jury duty is a wonderful opportunity though I’m not sure to what.  My imagination is good enough for me, thank you very much, and most of us have sat through enough episodes of Law and Order to have a sense of the courtroom.  My nephew-in-law has told me on a number of occasions that this is patently untrue; courtrooms in real life are not at all like they are on television.  If that’s the case, I don’t need to sit through something more tedious than Law and Order to get a feel for courtroom tedium.  Tedium is exactly what writers are not supposed to convey, so I am hesitant to perceive jury duty as a golden opportunity.

What I find truly fascinating is that the people who have NOT been called for jury duty say that they wish that they had been summoned.  Maybe someone should go on television and say, “Who wants to do jury duty?  Call this number and come on down.  We will see if you’re the kind of guy or gal that we need!”  I bet they’d find people who would work out just fine.  There would be people who would be willing to give justice its best shot.  Unfortunately, most of the people that I know just aren’t champing at the bit to get into the courtroom and participate in the wheels of justice.

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