In a message dated 12/2/99 12:14:47 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> Ric Burn's epic PBS series, "New York: A Documentary Film" has come and
gone.

Sharpshooter,

And I did not even miss it, or view it, or care one whit 'til now. I much
prefer being awake day-by-day to NY, or hide away elsewhere, like LI on
weekends, and READ it's history as I'm reclined. Televised documentaries
serve well to entertain the illiterate, most of my neighbors on LI, or those
who have only a passing interest in a particular subject. I may be a bit
burnt out on the History Channel showing how guns work, so forgive me. If Ken
Burns did the life story of Jesus it would not cause me to think that it was
the WHOLE story, or very much more real than any other mythologized rendition
of divine perfection that I've encountered so far. TV distorts NY, and
everything else, as well as the decent people of NY, something terrible. As
an Upstater for many years the ONLY view for me was through the boob tube,
aptly named. I was raised believing NY was HELL, as it can be if you let it
get to you. Well, being here now, it is not all quite so hellish as I
imagined. There are various shades to hell and there are some really nice
people hereabouts. Which gets my goat when in Texas recently a lady in a
bookstore says she is sorry I am from NY and hopes I get over it. They don't
even seem to know their own history in that Republic. (Did, or did not, Deaf
Smith, a NEW YORKER, procured the whore to divert Santa Ana at the Battle of
San Jacinto?) This was right after her, the lady in the bookstore, telling a
story about Mini Pearl and synchronicity. Or was it serendipity? The view of
NY for me was never quite the same as modern Eurasians wanting to go to
Disney World, but fair enough. Prior to the last two decades I always thought
Tokyo had to be a safer place than NY particularly from the lack of
information. Then I married a lovely lass from Northern NJ and subsequently
adjusted. The place, NY, is always presenting a complex mystery around
another corner, if not a knife, an overly full busom, a yellow taxi or a hot
uzzi. There is such an incredible variety that no interpretive history, to my
viewing, will suffice to mimic the reality. NY is a place to be for those who
are easily bored if left to themselves for too long of a stretch. Then, for
one thing with television you never really see how bad an environment NY is
for the poor, nor how good it is for the wealthy. Seriousness aside, for the
most part I like plain entertaining escapist bullshit and little
pseudo-education in my TV viewing. As to the Dutch coming here for money, my
ancestral line of Dutch moved on up the river fairly quickly for a stint of
post-revolutionary stone farming, then west for mutton, only to return 200
years later, for love of money.

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