Kirstie Alley, Tornadoes, Christmas Trees, and the Respect for Marriage Act
Ending the Year on a Relatively Good Note
I stopped watching Cheers about the same time that Kirstie Alley joined the cast. I gave it a shot for a few episodes, but the show, even with the ever-awesome Woody Harrelson, had changed too much. Or maybe I was just getting older. I was pregnant that year and grieving the loss of my grandmother and sister-in-law, so television as a whole was not as appealing as it had been, or would become. Looking back, I don’t think it was because of Ms. Alley. The loss or change of major characters can alter a show’s context and feel. Some shows can survive that while others can’t.
I remember liking Alley’s performance in “Wrath of Khan,” which many people think is the best of the Star Trek movies. I liked “The Voyage Home” better. It was funny (“Oh, him? He's harmless. Back in the sixties, he was part of the free speech movement at Berkeley. I think he did a little too much LDS.”) and made an environmental point that nobody was really making at the time. “We’re gonna lose the whales, man! Wake up!” Plus, who wanted to see Spock die? One of the best characters ever created for television, and you’re just gonna kill him off? Because at that time we had no idea he would be resurrected for another dozen movies in the franchise, including an alternate universe one where he was somehow still alive and knew it was an alternate universe. I mean, come on. Best character ever. I cried hard when Leonard Nimoy died.
I remember crying pretty hard when CBS killed off McLean Stevenson’s character in MASH too, but I consoled myself that the actor wasn’t dead and surely he would get another great role. He never did. But unlike Cheers, MASH did survive that major character change. Maybe it was because it happened earlier in the series. (Btw, when I looked up the correct spelling of Mr. Stevenson’s first name, Google told me that Shelly Long was trending.) RIP, Kirstie.
I didn’t really like Fleetwood Mac the first time I heard them either. A college boyfriend was a big fan, and I just couldn’t see it. Or hear it. Until one day I did. My daughter answered one of those Facebook quizzes a few years back about her mother, and to the question “What music does she like” she responded “Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Los Lobos, and that album by Fleetwood Mac.” Thank you, Christine, for all the hours of joy you gave us. You were truly perfect.
A post popped up in my FB memory feed this week reminding me that four major actors from “Mary Tyler Moore” all died in 2021 (at the point I wrote it, only three had died, but Betty joined them on December 31): Gavin MacLeod, Cloris Leachman, and Ed Asner. I loved Ed and Cloris. I met Cloris once at a book signing, and she was a delight. Ed was a courageous dude who fought enough fights that he ended up losing jobs and doing voice work toward the end of his career, plus an occasional appearance on “Grace and Frankie.” Not that either of those were terrible gigs. “Grace and Frankie” is a masterpiece, and “Up” was nominated for Academy Awards and considered one of the best films of 2009. I’ve never seen it. But it’s on my schedule for New Year’s Eve. Eh, I’m a year late.
I’ve had a head cold all week so I’m late on everything. Feeling better this morning, so I got the Christmas tree up and decorated, which involved some massive detangling of lights (brand new ones), and I did not cuss my way through it. I miss doing this stuff with my kids, but every single ornament has a memory and a story that I enjoy recalling as I try to balance their arrangement on the tree. I bought a real one this year. I have no idea why. I have a perfectly fine and ridiculously skinny artificial one in the basement, but I just felt like it, and now of course I have needles everywhere.
Years ago, maybe more than a decade, I bought some beautiful fabric with the goal of sewing it into a fine tree skirt. I never got around to the sewing part, so I mostly just bunch it around the thing each year, but tonight, I’m getting out my needle and thread and hemming the edges, and then I’ll add some velcro to make it stay in place. Just because you don’t get to a project right away doesn’t mean you never will. Maybe I’ll get ambitious next year and buy some quilting material to stiffen it. Or not. I’m not god’s gift to the womanly arts, that’s for sure, but I do try. I managed to give my daughter a perfectly fine engagement party last month, even if I did forget I’d already bought wine and stored it in the basement and then bought more, so now I have about a dozen bottles sitting on a table downstairs that I will never drink. They will make lovely Christmas gifts. I get by.
It’s tornado season again. You can tell because the air is suspiciously balmy for December. It was exactly a year ago yesterday that the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville was hit and people died (right next door to where my son works). Then there was the day of tornadoes on New Year's Eve in 2010 that hit St. Louis and spots all over the Mississippi Valley. Here’s hoping for an uneventful month of weather.
I won't get into it in detail, but it's been an amazing week of good news on the political front. Congratulations to Senator-Elect Warnock and well done to the good people of Georgia. The U.S. Congress passed a bill to protect same-sex marriage (and threw in a protection for interracial marriage while they were at it, just to be safe, and wow, good thinking, y'all!). And a pat on the back to whoever negotiated the deal that freed Brittney Griner and returned her to her family after she was arrested and convicted for carrying a tiny amount of cannabis oil in her luggage. (Yeah, it was dumb, but not worthy of nine years in a Russian prison.)
There's still a lot of work to be done everywhere we look, but we are definitely ending 2022 on some high notes.
Wishing you all a tornado-free week ahead, full of Christmas cheer, lots of cookies, and some good TV (“Wednesday” is on my list)
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