Possibilities

Robert Kennedy - photo courtesy of www.saddleback.edu

Pete Seeger (right) with Bob Dylan - photo courtesy of the Austin Chronicle website

Peter, Paul and Mary - photo courtesy of www.marytraversblogspot.com

Joan Baez - photo coutesy of the BBC website

We have bought the DVDs of the second season of Mad Men. Now, if you're a regular reader here, you'll know that I am pretty near obsessed with this show. And being the deep thinker (some would say over-analyser) that I am, I have been asking myself: why? Why do I love this show so much? Yes, the clothes are beautiful. Yes, the sets are mesmerising in their period detail. Yes, the plots are thoroughly engaging. But is there something else? And then I realised - yes, there is. Innocence. If you know the show, you may well laugh at this juncture. Innocence? In that hot-bed of extra-marital activity of an advertising agency, Sterling Cooper? Are you kidding? Are you even watching the right show? But what I mean is, the overall innocence of the era. Hey, I am no fool. I am well aware that people throughout time are people. They have good motivations and they have thoroughly awful motivations. Sometimes in equal measure. But when I think of the early to mid 1960s, I think of it as an era of innocence, when Western society as a whole (and that is all I can really vouch for) believed that things were possible. I'm sure there are a million holes that you could poke in that argument. This idea was informed initially by what my mother has said about the era: "People believed in things. We thought we could change things." Now, my mother was no radical and neither am I. I am notorious, in fact, for not having strong opinions on matters political. But I love the idea that people thought things were possible. Folk music of the era spoke of it especially. People like Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary and Pete Seeger. Music, thanks to my Mum, that I was raised on.

Lately too, on this same theme, I have become fascinated by the story of Robert Kennedy, JFK's brother. And before I go any further, I know all about the stories of the Kennedys. The philandering, the extra-marital affairs, the apparently appalling attitude towards women. And I don't condone that for one second. But, recently, watching a documentary about Robert Kennedy, I was very interested to learn of the change he went through after his brother's assassination, how tragedy and absolute sorrow nearly broke him. But eventually, it didn't. He didn't live imbibed with hatred. His social policies, in fact, suggest the complete opposite. I love this quote of his from 1968:

"My favourite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

To me, it suggests that growth - not destruction - can come through pain and life's sometimes profound hardships. There is not always the easy fix which we sometimes seem to look for today, but solutions will come.

Do you agree with me? Do you think that more than anything we are blighted by cynicism now? Or are we, as Kennedy began to suggest, learning from all that's happened worldwide since the 1960s - as painful as much of it has been - to emerge in a better condition when all is said and done?

Cranford

Cranford has finally made it to our tv screens here, some time I believe after it was screened to considerable acclaim in the UK. I enjoyed it thoroughly, though I must admit I have not read Elizabeth Gaskell's book. It has been on my shelf for many years, since my long-past days as a rather lazy English Lit student, when it was on the required reading list but I somehow managed to avoid it. Some people, of course, loathe period dramas, and there are elements to them which you can see would rankle: first, the oft-levelled charge: "But nothing happens!" and also, that they present an idealised view of the past. Both of which are mostly true. No-one ever seems to have bad teeth or body odour issues, unless the story is set during the Black Death, and these surely must have been the case in the days before toothpaste and efficient water supply systems. But there are also components to these dramas which must be basically accurate depictions of the pre-electricity age. The slowness of life. People did not leap into their cars and head out of town. They didn't plan holidays on the other side of the world (except in extraordinary circumstances). They didn't have emails to check or mobile phones to answer and they certainly didn't read blogs. They went visiting. They were aware of what was going on immediately around them (perhaps too aware if Cranford is anything to go by). They observed the seasons. They rose with the sun and often slept when it set. They lived by candlelight. They sewed, knitted or baked what they needed. And, of course, a lot of this often made for very hard work (especially if you were not fortunate enough to be born into the middle or upper classes) but it also gave communities a slow tempo and an essential bond which is perhaps lacking in many ways today and which people seem to be seeking out - the trend towards slow food, the growing interest in making rather than buying, the multitudes of communities grouping together online. I am not sorry bonnets, corsets and many societal restrictions have fallen by the wayside, but perhaps we have lost other things too, and it is the echo of them which draws us to Cranford.