A Pause That Refreshes

Long time, no write.

This being the week of my birthday, I gave myself the gift of detachment from the ugly realities of what is happening internationally, nationally, locally. That meant no paying attention to unfolding life and, by virtue of that, writing no blog entries.

I recommend these breaks, the pauses that refresh, to anyone. While the world churned away, feeding the wants and desires of the tinpot dictators, attention whores and spinmeisters, I watched a lot of TV reruns. I will continue that by ignoring the opening tonight of yet another virtue-signalling NFL season.

Call it cheap escapism, much less expensive than jetting off to some tropical island for a respite.

There was an abundance of the old Perry Mason series episodes to be viewed, available many times each day on my satellite TV provider’s channel 82.

There also was a smattering of old movies on channel 132, some Magnum, PI, episodes and various other dated television and film opportunities.

In one Magnum episode tonight, Frank Sinatra’s character dispatched two thugs who had raped his granddaughter. It was raw and fitting.

I marvel at those simpler times as recorded on film, when Mason’s private investigator buddy Paul Drake could say “Hi, beautiful,” to Mason’s secretary, Della Street, and the world didn’t brand him a sexual harasser.

A lot of people smoked in those shows, drank alcohol and generally lived their lives free from a more modern form of addiction, that being to social media and political correctness.

There was a stark contrast in shows of that era between good and bad, something accentuated by them being filmed in black and white.

No room, back then, for hucksters, navel gazers, poverty pimps or race baiters to be glorified in the story lines. The public recognized wrong from right and the people putting out the shows were very aware of that, so they didn’t try to turn every show into a propaganda piece to appease the far left causes of the moment.

Entertainment was just that, entertainment, not political indoctrination. Similarly, I recall the actual news broadcasts of the time were direct, to-the-point recitations of facts, not opinion, narratives and propaganda passed off as the truth.

For those of you too young to recall such a time, I invite you to revisit it indirectly by viewing some of the great TV and films of the past.

Do this with a mix of inquisitiveness, close study and open-mindedness.

Compare then to now, and shed a tear for what we have become.