Starting all over again: "Lark Rise to Candleford"

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It’s a remarkable thing when what you’ve been meditating on and practicing, important truths of human nature—identity, humility, sorrow, betrayal, forgiveness, understanding, patience and love—are suddenly demonstrated by people with real faces, in real situations. Never mind that it’s TV, and fictionalized. This is training of the highest order.

In the last few weeks when Don and I got home from work, after we walked the property and then made supper, we sat down with our food to an episode or two of a British “costume” drama. I rarely watch TV. But as my friend Arti at Ripple Effects said not too long ago, How are you holding up while you wait for the third season of “Downton Abbey”? Well, while waiting we queued up several other BBC costume dramas (thanks to our daughter Lesley’s recommendations) on Netflix. (I posted about “Little Dorrit” here; I love not having to wait a week between episodes, or for the next season months later.) Next was “Lark Rise to Candleford,” and now that we have finished it, I want to tell you that this show is affecting me so much that I am channeling characters in my job and relationships.

The Lark Rise series is based on a trilogy of semi-autobiographic novels by Flora Thompson, written in the 1930s and '40s about her life in a rural hamlet in the late 19th century. The setting is Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England, with serene and sublime rural scenery. Lark Rise is a tiny hamlet of families of farmers and craftspeople, and Candleford is a town eight country miles away where fashion and progress are edging their way in. Young Laura of the hamlet goes off to work at the post office in Candleford as an apprentice to her mother’s cousin, the postmistress Dorcas Lane. Thus begins our witness of relationships between the folk of Lark Rise and the folk of Candleford, a sort of lateral Upstairs Downstairs footpath.

Queenie and Alf of the hamlet Lark Rise

Each character is flawed and deeply developed through the four seasons; they model how to push through problems and meet one another with tough love. No one is spared humiliation or failure. There are wise souls in the hamlet, and there are fools. Likewise, you will find the same mix in Candleford, as in all places. When the hamlet and town folk meet, class distinctions and prejudice surface. Society’s rules get challenged. Neighbors help neighbors at home, and between town and hamlet; they hurt them too. They live Rumi’s advice: “Be generous and grateful. Confess when you’re not" (from his poem "The Well"). And then like the old Jerome Kern song says, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again.

Looking for wisdom, I channel Dorcas Lane, postmistress at the center of Candleford life to whom everyone goes with problems. When a student comes into my office for advice on what to do when she has gotten herself into a mess with a professor, missing class, handing in a paper late, threatening to fail, I ask myself, What would Miss Lane say? You can laugh with me when I tell you that when I do find something to say out of her deep wisdom, I often feel my head tip just so, and my voice lilt like hers. “You have to go meet with him, and see if you can set it right. It might not be too late, mmm?” The other character I channel is Queenie Turrill (in the previous photos, above, played with effortless perfection by Linda Bassett), the elderly Zen beekeeper in Lark Rise who opens her home to anyone who needs her, which they often do. She is the center of the hamlet as Miss Lane is of the town. She teaches me not to take myself too seriously, to live in the moment, and to connect with nature. Both Miss Lane and Queenie have failings. A thread through the series is Miss Lane's "one weakness" which accumulates into many weaknesses. I'm not the center of anyone's universe but my own, but I do have about 700 students who turn to me for advice. I also have a grandson who is listening and watching as his little life unfolds. Sometimes the best advice comes out of one's own failings.

Four seasons, forty episodes, 2008 to 2011, and one actor shared with Downton Abbey: Brendan Coyle (Mr. Bates in “Downton Abbey,” Robert Timmins in “Lark Rise to Candleford”). Another actor, the most important one in the series for me, Julia Sawalha, who plays Dorcas Lane, is shared with BBC’s 1995 six-episode TV series “Pride and Prejudice” (which I've watched a dozen times at least): she was Elizabeth Bennet’s sister Lydia, the air-headed flirt who ran off with Wickham. It's illuminating how Sawalha pulls off extreme traits of idiot recklessness in Lydia and prudent serenity in Miss Lane.

The writing of Bill Gallagher’s screenplays is some of the best I have ever seen on film. Every episode made me weep (and often Don too). At the end of an hour’s watch, Don and I would look at one another, stunned that an easier and more clichéd line or closing had not been written, and that the writing was so intensely satisfying. Insights are astute and deep. This is not only for women. My husband got annoyed whenever the next DVD was delayed. Directed by Charles Palmer.

I welcome suggestions for other series. Next on our queue is "Cranford" but I am sure we'll start this one all over again at some point.

top photo: ChurchCrawler at flickr

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Our cousin's military funeral

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He signed up for the Marines when he graduated high school in 1973.

He served a few years. No one in the family knows what he did, he couldn't talk about it. He was a Marine on undisclosed missions in the Pacific.

Now, just before his 54th birthday, Don's cousin is gone, from congestive heart failure. What secrets were better left unsaid, that didn't take him to his grave, but he took them there?

Good night, David. Time to rest.

This was my first military funeral, though I've seen them on TV and in movies.

I was feeling sheepish about my camera until one of David's sisters met me going inside with "Thank you, none of us thought to bring one. I want the kids to have something to remember this by." From that point on, I felt complete freedom, with a purpose. If you know me, you know my protests against militarism. But it was time to set that aside and do something for the family.

Arriving at the cemetery we were greeted by a row of seven Marines holding rifles by their sides, poised in readiness for the 21-gun salute to come. I snapped several shots of their fixed faces before I went inside the mausoleum for the ceremony. Like the guards at Buckingham Palace, they were stoic and unmoving, barely breathing it seemed, in their stillness.

Inside, as the other three Marines fulfilled their ceremonial charge - one playing "Taps" on his horn outside the door, the other two marching up the aisle, then folding the flag in meditative precision - I felt calmed. When the rifles rang their 21 shots outside - each Marine firing three times in sync - and David's daughter burst into a sudden wail, I realized this is why we offer ceremony, why we turn to it in times of great sorrow and joy. In the silent, slow folding of the flag, how carefully they caressed it with their white gloves, how tightly they held it between them in their task of transformation. And I saw, as if for the first time, how beautiful our flag is. In those moments I didn't see borders, or patriotism, or war. I saw stunning, vivid colors in a bold design unlike any other flag in the world, and it had become a blanket covering a soldier at rest. A thing of comfort. And when the Marine handed David's widow the red white & blue fabric triangle I felt its power. Ah - the American flag, an instrument of healing!

I remember how I felt at age 7, perched on the floor in front of our black and white TV, watching Caroline Kennedy - one year younger than I - holding the hand of her mother dressed in black, in a veil. They walked up and touched her daddy's flag-covered casket in the vast Capitol rotunda - first her mother's black-gloved hand, followed quickly by her own small white-gloved hand - this girl with hair and white anklet socks like mine. Then her mother's kiss on the flag. They were us. We were being healed by ceremony.

If you're interested, you can view David's military honors in this YouTube slideshow.

a flick of a switch

While Don was recuperating from shoulder surgery, we got hooked watching "24," the TV show that started in 2001 about the CIA operative Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) and the counter-terrorist unit in LA. Now that we can queue TV shows on Netflix, four episodes on a DVD, we could watch interruption-free, one episode after another. The writing is quite good, and the acting is excellent.


We finished the third of the six completed seasons last week (the seventh season premieres January 2009). In a strangely oxymoronic way, the show displays politically progressive viewpoints, while in the context of the very structures Progressives would like to see changed or eliminated. The politics in it are complex, not black and white.

Each season became more intense, the violence more graphic and more personal. Sure, Jack Bauer is a great guy who only tortures someone because he needs to save a million Americans. But this past season (3) when he had to shoot a colleague in the head and deliver his body to the terrorist enemy (a former British MI-6 agent gone sour) to keep him from releasing a biological weapon that would kill millions of Americans, we decided to stop watching.



Two out of the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture this year were violent films, including the winner, “No Country for Old Men.” The other is “There Will Be Blood.” Today we decided to take “No Country” off our queue because it’s rated R for strong graphic violence. Everyone says it’s a great movie.



It’s sort of strange that we cover our children’s eyes to protect their developing minds from violent acts, but it becomes okay as adults to entertain ourselves with it. I know it's out there in the real world, but as my mom used to say, "you get hungry for what you feed yourself."

I dunno, I’m getting sick from feeding myself violence through the TV.

Who am I: Deep Thoughts

I'm trying to think of a term for myself that sounds right. I inhabit a little non-working farm with my husband.


He is the farmer. He plants the seeds. He weeds and hoes. He sprays organic stuff to get rid of bugs.


He is the farmhand (remember Eb on "Green Acres"?). He lugs the heavy stuff, does the grunt work.


He is the farmer's wife. Forgive me, but he is. He not only picks the berries, he comes in the house sweaty and dirty from picking, and he gets out all the canning equipment and makes jams and jellies, while I sit and read. Well, I help sometimes. But he has all the knowledge, all the drive.


I, who am I?


Sticking with the Green Acres connection (please click on the link for the theme song and opening sequence), I am Lisa. Now she's not the typical farmer's wife, which is why I can say Don is the farmer's wife and I am Lisa.


Unlike Lisa, I can actually bake a real cake (not put a box in the oven and watch it come out a cake). Unlike Lisa, I am not a city girl, and I don't wear evening gowns around the house.


But she is the closest I can come, so far, to discovering who I am.



And oh, see all this pumpkin glory? Yes, my husband's first pumpkin harvest. And yes, it was HE (shall we call him "Ollivah"?) who cut one up (not easy), baked it 1 1/2 hours at 350F, pureed the flesh in the food processor, strained the juice, made homemade pie crust (Carolyn Roehm's recipe; if you look at this link, she looks a little like Lisa), and made pumpkin pie. It's the best darn pumpkin pie I've tasted, so fresh and REAL, unlike canned pumpkin. And he used the recipe for pie that our old friend gave us, who died a couple of weeks ago after a beautiful long life. She used molasses, and that, my friends, is the secret to extraordinary pumpkin pie. You can see it makes the pie dark too.