New Year 2013

From "Raven Red"

.  . .apartment 4-C upstairs is home to a slightly different breed of pioneer. . .  . The elusive nightly bacchanals engender creative, pre-pubescent daydreams. . .  a scene straight out of the movie "Repeat Performance," where a dapper though dissolute Louis Heyward is about to welcome in the New Year with his lovely though murderously ticked off soul mate, Joan Leslie. As Lew stands frozen in fearful asymmetry, his wife whips out a dainty Saturday Night Special and plugs him real good.  She’s a gussied-up, slender female Shane in diaphanous evening apparel.  Here is a synopsis from Turner Classics for your enjoyment:

Brief Synopsis
Sheila Page, a Broadway star, shoots Barney, her murderous husband on New Year's Eve. She flees her apartment and goes to her Producer, John Friday. When she arrives, it is New Year's day, a year earlier. She has been given the chance to live life over and correct the errors of the past only to find that the end will be the same although the path will be different.

On the actual New Year's Eve however that the movie is being aired, it is Lila Mae who is being attacked, systematically punched, pummeled and pushed by Blood Brother for a prime viewing spot in front of the apartment’s sole, twelve inch, black and white TV.  Ineffectually she attempts to take retaliatory "shots" at him from behind a club chair. . . .  even as she is meticulously battered however, a miracle takes place on the small screen.  Louis and his gal get to relive the entire year exactly at the moment of truth— precisely at the stroke of midnight the clock mysteriously turns itself back twelve months and all the evil of the past is reversed!

This feat of noir film sorcery does not go unnoticed by Lila.   She too longs for the day when her lot will be vindicated and she'll be released from the odd mischance that has thus far ruined her young existence. She imagines it will ultimately come to light that she actually is residing within the wrong family because of a terrible mistake made on the day of her birth, when she and another infant are accidentally switched in their cradles by the well-meaning though harried nurses. These facts, when discovered, will prove that Selma and Frank are not her real parents, the dump she lives in cannot possibly be her rightful home and that Blood Brother is in no way a relation. The notion of clean slates and spontaneous transformations is very appealing because Lila realizes, even then, that no one is given a second chance. . . she dreams of deco palaces with breathtaking terraces overlooking glimmering city lights, closets bursting with filmy gowns, all in a scenario where Mother is unbelievably kind, Father filthy rich. . . sumptuous settings and exciting plot lines. . . . She has been left with no choice but to construct a perfect present from an imperfect setting. . . ."

Christmas Post

From “Daddy’s Little Girl and the Old Book”

. . . . I found a discarded Christmas tree on West Eighty-fourth on one of those metallic gray days late in January, and the overturned decoration was not a tree at all but something artificial, a fake cluster of branches no more than three feet high, and seriously, though somewhat unevenly, sprayed silver. It was the quintessential appearance of the appearance. When you touched the nettles on the piteously skinny though eternally glittery stems, random twigs and flecks of silver paint came off in your hands. I fell in love with it instantaneously and hauled this painted shard of simulated forest back to the apartment. Then I placed it on a dresser and kept it there until May, when most of the “foliage” had fallen onto the floor, creating a nostalgic, formless little carpet of bright needles. It made me feel good to do something my mother would not have dared. Once, at Christmas time, as a small child in Europe between the two wars, she had attempted to sneak into her house a tiny, toy evergreen, elaborately festooned and  no more than six inches high-  nonetheless it was the ultimate forbidden signifier of despised and feared Goy-dom next to all those nasty little crucifixes- and apparently it did not end well. . . .

A Few New Yorkers, Part One

Excerpt from the classic “A Few New Yorkers Have Sushi”

(soon to be adapted for PBS as “Upton Shabby”)

“It was the oddest thing,” she murmured, half to herself, in a voice barely audible to her guests. Mindlessly pushing back a wisp of meticulously ironed bang from a wan forehead, Vidalia Tartine adjusted a pair of rimless eyeglasses on the bridge of her nose and sighed; the lenses gave off the slightest tint of lavender, having long faded from the more robust violet hue that everyone had so fervently sought the summer before; replacing them now of course was out of the question.

Vida, as her friends preferred to call her- ever the life of the party they cajoled in deference to an innate, dolefully contemplative nature- suddenly grew pensive, as if recalling something of deep significance as she gazed distractedly at her guests and absentmindedly began clearing the faux “Melmac” plates. Was it possible she mused that once upon a time in New York there truly had existed a bevy of servants for those even of simple means, small battalions of proud house workers at the ready to assist the recently anointed middle classes with their every burgeoning albeit nouveau domestic whim? And had it indeed been a noble, if not sought after employment she further mused, this uniquely crafted metier as it were of preserving someone else’s priceless set of china? The entire notion now seemed an incredible fantasy and untoward extravagance in an age where even a humble trip to the dry cleaners was prohibitive for the newly unemployed. Vida liked to muse and have notions.

One of her dangly silver earrings, Vida’s only adornment, a simple and inexpensive affair inset with miniscule blue plastic triangles intended to evoke lapis lazuli or something of the like, moved ever so slightly as it caught the glaring halogen beam of a hugely discounted, pointlessly oversized floor lamp; this fixture she mused once more had been purchased on final reduction at Home Depot and offered the only real illumination in the tiny apartment. The earrings, like the lamp, were a rare indulgence. Vida had treated herself at a crafts fair near Edith Wharton’s restored Berkshire “cottage” one summer during a rare weekend away from the sullen, desultory air of the August metropolis- Vida liked the word "desultory" a lot but was not sure how to pronounce it. Alas it had clouded over for the duration of the seventy-two or so hours she had spent musing in those beloved forests of Arden. But oh, how long ago that now seemed, and how life had changed so irrefutably since that brief, pastoral sojourn. She momentarily flashed on her present position as evening shift caller for a particularly and stringently soulless telemarketing firm and realized ruefully how precious nonetheless these few dreary weekly hours had become to her financial and spiritual well being.

Vidalia’s thoughts were jarred back to the present as dinner concluded, amid the clack of plastic forks as the last of the Fairway spicy shrimp sushi was consumed after having been meticulously doused with green mustard and scallion teriyaki. The Britta water jug stood empty and somewhat forlornly nearby, a reminder that it was time to relocate her guests to the seating area a scant foot or so away from where they huddled in those awful and hard little chairs. She imagined what it would be like to have a formal library of one’s own, with leather bound volumes filling polished oak or satin mahogany cases, overstuffed chairs and the smell of musk, a tiffany lamp or two, tea cozies and intricately embossed game tables where perhaps one could engage in a spirited hand or two of whist. She noticed that several “After Eights” lay scattered along the cheap hemp mats and that the diners were rosy with organic wine. Of course there would be no cigars or brandy, and the coffee was of an inferior pre-packaged brand, but still, was it not essential for certain traditions to prevail if civilization were to continue? Behind where she stood, on a wall shelf of white pressed board edged with gold leaf contact paper that she had applied herself -albeit somewhat unevenly- several nineteenth century novels in the Penguin edition, their shiny belle époque covers gleaming though somewhat dog-eared, leaned lazily to one side. In a vain attempt to secure this unruly, obstreperous cadre of turn-of-the-century narratives, “House of Mirth,” “Portrait of Lady” and “Washington Square” were all lying flat and piled on top of each other to form a decidedly pell-mell bookend; a copy of “The Bostonians” had fallen to the floor unnoticed. The small space’s decor emitted a parsimonious insouciance, a kind of mock drawing room ambience more suited to the gilded, earlier years of a previous century than to a millennium recession worthy of a stockbroker’s ransom. It was undeniably the perfect moment in which to settle in and partake of a good, old-fashioned ghost story. . . .

    

Rest Stop, Part One

I love the smell of greasy French fries at a rest stop along the Jersey Turnpike on a damp April Sunday. The unmistakable scent of frozen potato scraps sizzling away in vats of rancid, bubbling oil adds a certain flavor to the chilly air of a parking lot. You stretch your legs gratefully after hours of cramped inertia and inane FM music, waiting for your husband to refill the tank or take a leak in one of the labyrinthine rest rooms- a giant suite of busy commodes devoid of an outside door- and it never fails to remind of a simpler time. How complicated it can all get, so far from home since the annoying and nauseating family road trips of childhood. The only relief in those days from the sniping and tearing at each other of your parents up in the front was a couple of brief stops for gummy jelly apples or charred, skinny hot dogs with watery mustard. Now you can look forward to petrified veggie burgers and wilted, make believe salad along with the sticky swirls of pink cotton candy. 

We were returning from a bar mitzvah in Virginia, an event I vowed I would never attend when I first ripped open the oversized envelope to find an unexpected summons to celebrate! The announcement wound its way into the mailbox along with an offer from “Publishers Clearing House” and a five dollar coupon from Bed, Bath & Beyond. In a hefty, corporate looking packet padded with confusing directions in teeny font, pre-stamped RSVP card and related “data” about the event was a rather large, florid invitation. It was etched on heavy, oversized paper and surrounded by a thick border like an illuminated manuscript. In the center of the colorful, exotic design, obviously intended to evoke something medieval and Judaic, were boldly embossed the names of the child and his parents. Every word and numeral was fully spelled out to make it look appropriately official, first, last, middle names, day, month, and year. I felt as if I had been called for jury duty. My immediate reaction was irritation. Now I’d have to answer with some ridiculous excuse, or worse, endure a vague and protracted struggle about possibly being a good sport and going.

Suddenly there were visions of hysterically sifting through a clearance rack for something cheap and festive, or maybe just dark and glittery, hopefully in “final reduction” stage; it didn’t seem fair. I immediately reassured myself that I had “plenty to wear” knowing full well this was a pathetic rationalization. Nor did I realize at the time that the initial anxiety would pale next to another wardrobe nightmare. As it turned out, despite my “hunch” about stowed accessories from the past most likely hiding in the recesses of my closet, the four dust mite-ridden corners upon inspection failed to conceal even one pair of shiny, toe crushing ballet flats or weirdly shaped heels in faux lizard. This discovery ultimately led to an act of last minute desperation: an inevitable sprint to Bloomingdale’s the evening before the event and half an hour or so before the store closed, where a smoothie named “Antonio” dramatically solved the problem with only mildly hurtful patent leather sandals; he’d dug them out from somewhere “in the back” presenting them with a flourish. It seemed I’d been naively living out my life in sneakers and clogs.

Ironically, in retrospect even the shoe catastrophe eventually would start to look like an eye dropper of lithium in a bucket of psychosis before it was finally all over. The very worst part of the “prep period” was yet to come- recurring images of endless hours on the turnpike, relentlessly swerving back and forth between lanes, sparring with sixteen wheelers and all sorts of highly dysfunctional families and sleep deprived truckers on the miserable round trip between south of DC and New York. If there was an accident, it would take even longer, maybe forever. In between terrifying flash forwards of ambulances and tow trucks, I worried that the flat shoes would not make me appear tall enough, that my own, modest family background would not measure up, that the gift would fall gravely short.

There were so many things to obsess over I barely knew where to start. For several weeks before the ominous “reply” date, a deadline that began to loom like an upcoming tryst with the electric chair, nearer and nearer each day, I vacillated between anger and forgiveness, despair and hope. Each morning the RSVP inched twenty-four hours closer. Why did certain people feel compelled to organize such potentially torturous events and then inflict them on others in the guise of joy and hospitality? Why couldn’t I be like those other casual party goers who lived for gatherings like these and actually owned sequin-covered fabric (We just got back from a wedding in Minneapolis- a grandniece- it was absolutely beautiful!)? 

"I'm Nobody! Who Are You?"

This is my letter to the world. . .    

I used to think Emily Dickinson was a bit silly and simplistic. C’mon folks, there is no frigate like a book? All those subsequent, bad frigate jokes. . . to take us lands away. . . now of course I realize how exceptionally perceptive she was!

Indeed, pain has an element of blank, and apparently so does my blog. Nobody reads it. Well, maybe somebody glances at it now and then, but nobody comments. I've even adjusted the settings to make it easier to add a comment without having to create a google account- just click "Anonymous" then sign your post with your name if you wish. For a while, I was optimistic- even in the darkest hours. . . there’s a certain slant of light- I was convinced there would be zillions of interesting comments, a real discussion!- after all, hope is a thing with feathers. Unfortunately in reality, not everything flies.  On the other hand, why did I need the approbation, or i-recognition? After all. . . the soul selects her own society, does she not?

How dreary to be somebody. . . .

On the other hand, maybe not-

I taste a liquor never brewed,

& write a blog seldom googled-

Three Painters Named Steve

I’ve had three painters named Steve. I realize this may not sound very exotic, or even promising for an opener- a story about house painters? Why? Also, I cannot help but notice that the few short stories still making their way into print, having managed to survive the extinction process of this fast fading art form, inevitably contain dogs, trailers, guns, and/or at least one broken-down vehicle, none of which are included here. But you know how it is- inspiration can come from strange sources.

The first Steve was Greek, and he adorned my walls with solid, classical brush swipes for about a decade. Well, maybe “adorn” is not exactly the right word. He was more like what is generally known around these parts as a “shmearer,” but he was fast, unobtrusive, trustworthy. He was also old fashioned and liked to start the job at 7:30 a.m. sharp, if not before. Somehow this did not inspire terror, but rather comfort; the hallowed work ethic. He had a thick neck too, which I’ve always admired in a painter. Actually, his name was Steve Thanasopolis, and for some reason we always called him “Mr. Thanasopolis.” He was older than us by about twenty years, and somehow this bestowed upon him the dignity and wisdom of age. In addition, he was a bit courtly and formal, with vague intimations of a statue from the Met’s Greek Gallery, though of course not quite as perfect albeit he still contained all his limbs, nor was his nose or an ear missing. “Hello, is Mr. Thanasopolis there?” A few seconds later with the phone barely muffled, “Hey Daaad, it’s for you, pick up. . . pick up!” That would be Mr. Thanasopolis’ son, about whom we occasionally wondered. Mr. Thanasopolis lived in a little house on the other side of the Bronx, one of those red brick steadfasts, with a clinically depressed wife and an obese grown child, the son. We eventually found out about the darkly moody wife through several phone interactions over time with what appeared to be an unusually dead voice on the other end, and about the son through Mr. Thanasopolis himself. Prior to learning about the son, I had envisioned a little patch of working class heaven and salt-of-the-earth autonomy, the tiny driveway, the neat yard, a place of one’s own as compared to my boxy apartment in a busy, anonymous high rise; I pictured a place where the son, now a grown stock broker or similar practitioner of the American Dream, occasionally visited. The kitchen would have linoleum and be dated but incredibly neat. I have to admit when I learned about the true living conditions my heart did sink a bit- a disappointment almost tragic- you know what I mean. It turned out the son who worked for one of the communications megaliths, installing wiring or something, eventually moved into the basement apartment with a girlfriend, a “Spanish girl” as our painter pointed out, “and all they do is eat- they’re eating me out of house and home.” Mr. Thansopolis did not like Hispanics. He claimed they talked way too much and way too fast. This bothered him. It was a small nod to racism, but basically he seemed like a good guy, if a bit ignorant.  

Mr. Thanasopolis’ was born in Greece, he was not educated, and charming though he was his English was deplorable. He once sent me to the hardware store for a new “atlas” and when I attempted to purchase the said item, a befuddled clerk after several tries finally barked incredulously, “You mean outlet?” For a moment I felt like a semi-literate immigrant myself as I slowly absorbed the horror of my unforgivable mistake and could only nod mutely. There simply was no explanation that would even slightly ameliorate the confusion I had inflicted with my weird request. But I tended to take Mr. Thanasopolis at his word, however he pronounced it. He had an aura. He was wise and kind. He was like our painter-therapist. And as has often been observed, painting can be more stressful than moving, though of course this makes no sense whatsoever when you really think about it. Once in a very rare while, when there was wallpapering to be done, Mr. Thanasopolis brought along a testy sidekick named Hobson, an odd name for a strange guy. Hobson was a doozy and usually felt free to comment on anything and everything that caught his fancy. You could say there was a distinct lack of boundaries here. If my husband and I huddled in the living room passing the time talking quietly while he papered the bathroom, he felt obliged to note on his way to the kitchen for some water, “Talk, talk talk, all you guys do is talk, I’ve never heard anyone talk so much!” There is nothing you can say to this of course. Hobson would accompany these and other annoying comments with a slightly malicious smile. All we could do was return a half grimace and hope it would all be over soon. Mr. Thanasopolis did not bring Hobson along all that frequently. He once attempted to explain the guy’s obnoxious behavior by telling us about Hobson’s daughter-in-law, who as it happened, was “a Chinese,” implying by his inflection that this was several notches down from even Hispanic, which he called Spanish. Somehow this serious error of judgment on the part of Hobson’s son had taken the last of the paperhanger’s mirth, if there ever was any to begin with. I think it also gave Mr. Thanasopolis himself a tiny bump up socially in his own mind, the thought of Asians somehow being way over the top, or under the line, regarding anything that passed for acceptable; he related these events in his usual soft-spoken, classical way with more than his usual politeness and empathy. “She’s Chinese.” It was if he had said “it’s terminal,” or “there are some things you just can’t explain.” She may not even have been Chinese, but Korean or Indonesian or Japanese or Malaysian, or something else.  

Anyway, Mr. Thanasopolis could be sloppy, and we had to clean the place like crazy while straightening up afterward, but he was fast and cheap, and mainly fast. No matter what the job, he was in and out in a day. If you asked him to paint the coliseum, it would have taken him not a jot longer than seven hours, guaranteed. We were always working and raising the kids and stressing out and somehow he calmed things down by applying layer after layer after layer of paint globs on our deteriorating plaster walls. A few years went by and we hadn’t heard from him; he had a habit of calling in once a year to see what room we were up to. As it turned out, he had undergone a triple bypass during the  absence, an event he related to us one day quite stoically and almost casually when we had him back to slap some acrylic on the cabinet doors. It also appeared to have taken quite a bit out of him we were sad to see, but he remained heroic, still intent on wielding a roller and cutting a ceiling line with his customary sloppy though lightning quick panache. The last time I spoke with him though, his voice sounded a bit weak and I told him I would call him back when I had a specific start date. And that was it. The kids were gone, my tastes had changed, and I was looking for finer finishing touches, fewer globs and drips, more style. It marked the end of an era and we think of him often and wistfully.

“Ready to rock ‘n roll folks?” Now we were getting older and the painter was younger, a circumstance that snuck up on us while still working and getting the kids through college. Steve Capodanno often liked to start the morning with this cheery meditation on skim coating, one of his particular specialties. Aaah, the magic, and insane expense, of skim coating, let alone wire meshing and wet sanding. But oh the result on aging plaster walls. A numbers of years had passed since the philosophical ruminations of Mr. Thanasopolis, and we sought a higher standard of perfection, a more youthful touch, if not in our bodies and souls, than on our walls, the trappings. Steve was also from the Bronx, though the part nearer the water in an enclave a smidge more upscale than some of the other ethnic, brick covens of the borough. He was also the opposite of Mr. T in temperament, loud, funny and expansive- a natural for stand-up we often told him. And he was always just plain ol’ Steve, not “Mister” anybody. First names were here to stay by then, and the entire country had  resorted to nicknames or even mere initials by then, in international diplomacy and the War on Terror as well. Formality was dead. When Mr. T. had been in the house I too had begun to feel a bit mythological, like a character from an ancient story, maybe a member of the chorus, serious and classical. With Steve, both my husband and I became teeny boppers instantaneously, reverting to incipient Bronx accents and telltale colloquialisms that several intervening decades of denial had all but erased, at least in public. Fuggeddaboudit. When Steve II's cell phone rang, it was “Whassup?” I suddenly had the urge to cook up a mean, thick sauce and slap some vinyl on the turntable. I found myself inordinately grateful for having been born and raised in this northernmost province of the Big Apple, provincial though it be. “Let’s face it, where ya’ gonna go” boomed Steve, when we occasionally fantasized about moving to the suburbs and leaving crumbling plaster walls behind, along with dog poop and incessant traffic.  “It’s all right here!” Remotely placed though we were, Manhattan, center of our five borough universe and the planet too, was after all just a quick train ride away- this was the implication- “c’mon folks, just a short drive down the road, right? The suburbs are booorrrinnng. . . . . “

It was around Christmas in fact that Steve was about to take advantage of our world class urban setting to find himself in the frenetic midst of organizing what sounded like an inordinately large number of married friends for a holiday outing. The idea was to partake of a festive dinner somewhere in midtown and then head to Rockefeller Center to see The Tree.  As the holiday neared, his cell phone rang incessantly as he attacked and slathered the walls. He seemed to be the main arranger and uniting force behind the project. Everything seemed to be going according to the plans as well, barring some minor conflict over the exact dinner hour (“we do not want to eat too late and get bad service,” argued Steve as he meticulously sanded the inside of the cabinet door), that is until one of the women, a recent divorcee, decided she did not want to be the only “single” and threatened to bring her kids. Molotov cocktails of angst flew and firecrackers thrown from the roof of an emotional skyscraper landed perilously close to people’s heads. Steve’s wife had to finesse this gal out of the picture, and fast. “This was supposed to be a couples thing, was it not?” he boomed into the cell; “Why does she always need to bring her kids? They’re teenagers, for Chrissake!” There was obviously a history here. This was not the woman’s first transgression. Why did they need so many people anyway he mused? She would not be missed it was concluded, always causing trouble. Steve himself finally understood the real and true reason she had most probably gotten divorced in the first place- like, “Who could stand a person like that? No wonder the guy left!” To hell with a more equitable new world order. This dame was annoying. It was clear. We totally agreed. We had by then been completely taken over.

It was weird. Although Steve came from an upstanding Italian American family, his father a retired member of New York’s finest, his grandparents poor but pure and hardworking immigrants from Southern Italy, I slowly began to feel like a member in good standing of a milder, more innocuous form of the Cosa Nostra, or at least a Mafia Princess by marriage, or a cousin once removed. Or maybe just the haggard ex wife of a bookie, and then, as the paint job stretched out, an ignored, aging mistress even to one of the lesser lieutenants, but by that point I was willing to settle. Close my eyes and I’m livin’ in Jersey and driving something big, black, shiny and ominous. . . . We have two great danes and the house is set way, way back from the road and has a security system the envy of diplomats and heads of government. My kitchen of course eventually came out fabulous, and Steve moved on to his next gig with a higher up in the Teamsters Union. He was not cheap, but really, really great, a perfectionist. Steve had a son too, but unlike the the progeny of the first Steve, this son, Phillip, was described as no less than a wunderkind who managed to finish college half a year early and land a job doing something in healthcare during one of our greatest, most jobless recessions. And his wife, Patty, was totally functioning and had "a really good job" where "they love her!!!" I believe she worked for a car dealership. Steve eventually retired at a relatively early age and is now enjoying the palmed luxuries of gulf coast Florida at bargain prices. At least that's what I picture.

I recently came to understand that Latinos are getting heavily into the construction business. In addition, they are quite reasonable and do excellent work. I contacted this guy named Santo, but apparently he likes to be called “Steve.” It's amazing. I’ve also begun revisiting Latin jazz  and brushing up on my high school Spanish, pathetic as my sentences probably sound to the trained ear, and idiotic as I appear when attempting to converse sociably. But I like to be prepared. The economy is not getting any better.  I’ll probably never be able to afford to move, the place needs work, and like the second Steve says, “Where am I goin’? It’s all right here!”- not borrring like the suburbs. You never know when the realization suddenly hits that the whole mess needs to be gone over again - joint compound, a roller, a fine brush- and colors periodically do need to be updated. I’m thinking about using something called “Dreamy Cloud” in the entranceway.The building ain’t getting any younger muchachos, and living in this city ain’t getting easier- mucho trabajo, poco dinero, as our new contractor opines.

(S)o(a)pium for the Masses: A small tribute to “Downton Abbey”

Dear M’lords & M’ladies:

The Great Recession? Why worry?  The prospect of an anemic

recovery? This too shall pass. War with Iran? Can’t really think about that now. An important, upcoming presidential election? Borrring. . . .

Why obsess about any of the above, when we have Downton Abbey to calm our spirits and enliven thoughts on Sunday nights. . . .

During that other “great” Depression of the 1930’s movie fans were offered the gossamer fantasies of the rich and careless, fancy-stepping their light fantastics in dry martinis and billowy chiffons, from My Man Godfrey and The Thin Man  to Cole Porter and the nifty footwork of The Gay Divorcee and Swingtime. Today we are invited to bask in the reflected glow of early 20^th century, upper class England, in an uber soap redolent of the great romantic novels, from Pride and Prejudice (the unfairness of entail) to Jane Eyre (blind Rochester vaguely reminding of Matthew in the wheelchair, or is it burned Patrick/Peter?). The series gives us lace strewn ankle length frocks from the WWI, an authentic country estate inside and out, etched wine goblets, and the icing on the pastry, an unabashed and hefty nod to the ineffable Upstairs Downstairs- staff member for staff member- from cook to butler, from  parlor maid to scullery wench to evil footman.  Even the title prompts subliminal literary associations: is it meant to evoke the glitz of a sophisticated “downtown” milieu or the moral rigors of a strict “abbey”-maybe it’s both!

Will Lady Mary and Matthew endure in the long run, and will the House of Crawley- about to be “exposed” rather brutally in the local scandal sheet as a result of Mary’s youthful folly- also weather the storm? Perhaps the dastardly “Sir” Richard- latter day Rupert Murdoch as it were- finally will be “exposed” himself. . . . Why does Bates insist on looking so cryptic all the time, messy divorce to ungrateful tart notwithstanding, to say nothing of a threat of imminent execution!!! And is there really anyone on the planet as maddeningly sensible as Anna??? Will Daisy screw her head on right and finally accept a meager war widow’s pension and warm father-in-law overtures in a world devoid of social security? Something is not clear to me: was that the new parlor maid innocently cozying up to Lord Grantham, or vice versa, as Carson kept a watchful eyeball on the developing situation. O thy name is Haughty Disdain indeed Carson, but how exquisitely so- what power in that deprecating glance! Nary a fork nor spoon misaligned will escape thy withering scrutiny, nor will Lady Mary ever lack for your understated guardianship, the fact that sensible Mrs. Hughes views your favorite as an “uppity minx” notwithstanding. Dour, malevolent O’Brien- she suddenly seems strangely conflicted, and the chauffeur too is a person of some interest. But it’s Maggie Smith as Granny G. that is my beacon: one could do a lot worse than end up so feisty, smarmy and yet annoyingly wise in one’s own dowager-ly dotage! As for Lord & Lady Grantham, well, the very name says it - they are grand and they grant, period, though not without the attendant emotional turmoil.   

The combinations and plot twists, meaningful glances and clipped though dense-with-meaning dialog, even in the face of egregious miniseries manipulation, engenders my complete addiction to this fictional world of manners and morals, irony and intrigue. . .  . My husband and I argue over the motivations and personalities of the main characters: he can’t understand why Matthew tolerates Lady Mary and says she’s “mean”; I bristle, countering with the pressures of entail and her status as eldest daughter combined with the forced sublimation of early feminist stirrings- can any of us forget that handsome, irresistible (literally) young Turk? I personally view Edith, the younger somewhat confused sister, as a complete nincompoop, while he, taking the more analytical view, sees her as “developing” and “growing.”. Where can all this possibly lead? I must admit the whole thing holds me captive to its high definition, digital thrall-   I’m helpless in the face of this mesmerizing epic saga on the little screen, exquisitely decked out in silk settees, silver soup tureens, carefully crafted chignons, amazing hunting outfits, silly hats and jet onyx jewelry. I’ll admit to having shamelessly enjoyed reruns as well.  If you haven’t seen it, do give it a try. What harm can possibly ensue from one little episode . . . .

A few critics have skewered Season Two for not approximating the glory of Season One, but this is pure balderdash! Can every single episode thrill like the first? Besides, the glorious number seven of the second series ensures that disaster will follow, does it not?