Erratta.

You don't know what out of order is? I'd show you, but I'm too old, I'm too tired, I'm too fuckin' blind. If I were the man I was five years ago, I'd take a FLAMETHROWER to this place! Out of order? Who the hell do you think you're talkin' to? I've been around, you know? There was a time I could see. And I have seen. Boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn't nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that.

"The Light Has Gone Out of My Life."

I POSTED THIS on Facebook a few days ago, & people seemed to like it.  But...it's actually 128 years ago TODAY that a young man, stricken with grief, wrote something extraordinarily crazy in his diary. When I encountered those words a little over a century later, they shook me hard because  I had a context that young man didn't.  Feel free to share this. Be good to each other.  
DMc


***

On February 14, 1884, a young man wrote in his diary, "The light has gone out of my life."  

It was an understandable moment of despair. He was just 26 years old, and his beloved wife of four years had just died in his arms, leaving him a single father to a one day old baby girl. His beloved mother had died earlier in that same day, so at once he'd become an orphan and a widower and a single parent.

It was two days before he could write again. In his next entry he detailed the courtship of his wife, and the christening of his daughter, and on the 17th he detailed the burying of his wife and mother. "For joy or for sorrow," he wrote, "my life has now been lived out."

Except...He was wrong.

 

Two years later he would marry again. He would have more children. He'd go on to become a cattle rustler on the Badlands. When he returned to New York, he'd take up a job as Police Commissioner, cleaning up the corrupt force. When the Spanish American War broke out, he'd lead a cavalry brigade in Cuba called The Rough Riders.

Two years later, he became Governor of New York. Less than two years later, Vice President of the United States. And then, eight months after that, upon the assassination of  William McKinley,  Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States.

He was 42 years old -- the youngest President ever to assume office.  Roosevelt went on to help to create the National Park system, oversee construction of the Panama Canal, take on the Trusts and reform capitalism in the United States. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. They put his face on a mountain. He's universally considered to be one of the United States' Greatest Presidents.

 

And that daughter, Alice, grew up to be the toast of Washington and live a life full of scandal and going her own way. She outlived all his other children.

A few years ago now, I was lucky enough to be doing a story at the Library of Congress just as they were digitizing pages from this diary. I put on white gloves and was able to hold the book in my hands and stare at those words. "For joy or for sorrow, my life has now been lived out."  I was pretty unhappy at that time. I wanted to sob. It was so human and almost unbearable.

But I think of it every year. And for a lot of years I thought of it alone. No more for me. I'm as happy as I'll probably ever be and that is indeed a good thing.  

So if you'll indulge me, please let me say to you that today, you may feel like there's no light in your life. But never forget that your life, for better or for worse, is not "lived out."  If a bull headed Type A guy like Teddy Roosevelt can be wrong about such things, well, then, I trust you'll see that maybe your troubles aren't so special, nor so vast that they can't be overcome.

CBC Drama Gets It Right

Wrote this on FACEBOOK this morning and it got shared around. The completist in me wanted to post it here. One time only thing. Comments are disabled since I don't really do this thing anymore. If you want to send me a Tweet on Twitter, I'm at @heywriterboy


WRITERS LIKE TO complain. That's our lot. But if you're of the Canadian lot, you should be taking a closer look at the CBC this January -- specifically their drama department. There's good news there.

 The CBC premiered a show called ARCTIC AIR a few weeks ago. It's about pilots flying in the North, very much an offshoot of (and produced by the same company as) ICE PILOTS, a popular reality show. The show was the highest premiere on CBC in twenty years. But the real story is not getting a big number for a first show -- lots of Canadian programs manage that. (Which says to me that Canadians are perfectly willing to sample homegrown fare, contra to the naysayers; they simply won't watch if they don't like what they see. Which should be, you know, the point.) The real story of Arctic Air is that they stayed. They like what they see. Three weeks in and the show is still over a million viewers. What's more -- I've heard that it's also very solidly PVR'd -- with final numbers adding sometimes 20 or 30% to the final viewer tally. That's not supposed to happen with CBC shows. The audience is older and conventional wisdom says that they don't use PVR's. Except that's not what's happening. ARCTIC AIR is winning its timeslot -- and it's being PVR'ed for later.

 Beyond that one show you have REPUBLIC OF DOYLE consistently pulling in over a million in their 3rd season. It's not just a Russell Crowe guest shot. I personally don't think the stories are as good as they could be (but full disclosure, I worked on the show for 10 minutes in Season 1, so I would think that.) I raise that point because what the show does have is specificity -- it's utterly unlike anything you'd see on private nets in Canada..it's firmly rooted to place and people like it enough that they hang in through the loopy plotting. That's a win and I'm happy for it.

 Beyond that you have an aged Warhorse in HEARTLAND, a show that rates consistently huge for a family audience, up near 2 million some weeks, with Christmas movies also pulling in great numbers. 

CBC just wrapped up the last season of BEING ERICA. Though the numbers slipped as the show went on, I talk to women I know in their 30's and there's a definite chord that was struck there. It connected emotionally. And it also managed format sales -- when was the last time a Canadian TV drama did that? 

I've heard encouraging things about the upcoming pilots CBC has in the pipeline. I'm just at the beginning of developing something with them, and find the executives engaged and passionate about story. You always have to worry about bureaucracy at a place like CBC - it's a crown corporation, after all. But the point is - on CBC, Canadian drama is actually CANADIAN drama. It doesn't disguise locations. It doesn't get shuffled off to summer or bounced around the schedule.

 Nothing's perfect. ARCTIC AIR has been promoted, and it paid off. But the CBC buried its excellent movie on John A. MacDonald...a movie that MACLEANS said might have been the best Canadian historical drama ever. I watched it and it reminded me of I CLAUDIUS...low budget and you didn't care because the characters and the meat were so good. They also mishandled the promo for MICHAEL: TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS, which at least partially led to that show's disappointing ratings. But the critical reception was almost universally positive.

So they're doing dramas that win timeslots -- in winter, when the competition is tougher -- and dramas that get populist love and critical acclaim.

 People, that's firing on all cylinders.

 Brits are rightly proud of stuff like SHERLOCK or LUTHER or LIFE ON MARS or ABFAB or DOCTOR WHO...where's the chorus of people going, "hey, you know what, for my $30 bucks a year CBC's actually giving me some pretty good stuff?"

There's a lot of layers at CBC and much opportunity for second guessing, and that's something they have to continue to be vigilant about. But there's a core there that's not flailing -- they're actually blooming. 

Considering how much of the time people just want to bash the CBC for ideological reasons, and the number of people who want to complain about the CBC cancelling INTELLIGENCE like, 6 years later, I believe only for the sake of decency maybe it's time to acknowledge that something pretty spectacular is happening over there.

They're doing shows that Canadians want to watch. Not all of them, no... and yes, the sample size is very low compared to your average U.S. network...but really, look at how many shows they do total, and how many are connecting with audiences, and the conclusion has to be that they're doing something right -- unless you're being churlish, I mean.

If you're a creative and you've been wary of developing with CBC in the past, I think it's time to recognize that the team there is getting things right, finally. May the corporation have the wisdom to keep them moving onward and upward with great Canadian shows rooted in place, inventive in tone, that Canadians continue to embrace the way they're embracing them now.

 And wouldn't it be wonderful if some journalist wrote THAT for a change?