Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: The First Show I Remember Watching

 

The Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge is hosted by Long and Short Reviews. They offer this blog hop as a weekly prompt to help you gain new friends and visitors. You don't have to participate every week, but if you decide to post and join the blog hop for a week, Long and Short Reviews asks that you share your link on their weekly post on their website (it will be the top post on the home page each Wednesday morning). The link list remains open for new links for 48 hours. Visit the other bloggers participating to see what they discuss that week. Comments are appreciated. 

Happy hump day! Hope your week is going well. Today, we are talking about television. Today's Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge asks us to share the first show we remember watching. Keeping in mind that I am a Gen Xer, we only had a handful of channels back then: ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and Channel 38 out of Boston. 

My earliest recollection is watching Sesame Street on PBS. Long before Elmo was even imagined, Grover, Bert, Ernie, Big Bird (my favorite), Kermit, Oscar the Grouch, Count von Count, Gordon, Susan, Bob, Luis, and Mr. Hooper lived on Sesame Street, helping me learn how to read, spell, and count. I still sing some of the songs from the show, and used to sing them to my children. Here are a few of my favorites:

"Waiting On" Wednesday: Heroines of Mercy Street by Pamela D. Toler

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

My pick for this week is:

I've become totally hooked on this six-part mini-series. Being a Civil War buff, I am so glad I stumbled upon the show in my Facebook feed. I was able to catch up on the past three episodes thanks to my Amazon Prime membership. When I heard about this book, I pre-ordered it right away. 

The true stories of the real nurses on the PBS show Mercy Street

The nurses of the Civil War ushered in a new era for medicine in the midst of tremendous hardship. While the country was at war, these women not only learned to advocate and care for patients in hostile settings, saved countless lives, and changed the profession forever, they regularly fell ill with no one to nurse them in return, seethed in anger at the indifference and inefficiency that left wounded men on the battlefield without care, and all too often mourned for those they could not rescue.

Heroines of Mercy Street tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, hotel turned wartime hospital and setting for the PBS show Mercy Street. Women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinney, Anne Reading, and more rushed to be of service to their country during the war, meeting challenges that would discourage less determined souls every step of the way. They saw casualties on a scale Americans had never seen before; diseases like typhoid and dysentery were rampant; and working conditions-both physically and emotionally--were abysmal.

Drawing on the diaries, letters, and books written by these nursing pioneers, Pamela D. Toler, PhD, has written a fascinating portrait of true heroines, shining a light on their personal contributions during one of our country's most turbulent periods.

What are you "waiting on" this week?

Award-winning Documentary Producer/Director William Petrick Brings His Experience to The Five Lost Days

Today's guest blogger is Emmy Award-winning documentary producer/director William Petrick. Petrick has created documentaries for National Geographic, Discovery, MTV, Court TV and many other cable and broadcast networks. He is currently a senior producer with Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. You can find out more about his book, The Five Lost Days, by clicking here. This book is available at Amazon.com.

In the article below, Petrick answers my question of how his experience helped him in writing The Five Lost Days. This novel tells the story of struggling documentary producer Michael Burns, who has traveled to the remote Maya Mountains of Belize to capture exclusive footage of the last surviving curandero. The traditional Mayan healer may hold the key to discovering new medicines among the vast, uncharted flora of the rain forest. But with a violent civil war spilling across the border from neighboring Guatemala - and Burns inexplicably drawn to the aging curandero's American apprentice - the filmmakers stumble into a more explosive story than they ever could have imagined.


"I don't think I could have written this novel--or wanted to--without the experience of working in documentaries. The best reporters and producers really want to get the story right when they travel to far-off places and conflicts. But, many times, there comes a time when the story you thought you were going to cover doesn't materialize and, suddenly, there you are in a JOB--someone's paying you to get a story and feed it to the media beast. At that moment, what's truth and what isn't can get blurry as can your own perceptions. The pressure to tell a story--any story--takes over with unforeseen consequences. It's not always bad, of course. Sometimes this professional panic can yield truth no one was expecting--especially the filmmaker.

As in many other professions and lines-of-work, there is also a very peculiar culture to the documentary and news business. I don't always like it but I am perpetually fascinated by the women and men who choose to do it for a living. They're in this novel in all their courage, insanity and just plain loopiness. When I think of a crew member, I think of the people on Burns' crew (the main character) who will do anything, risk anything to GET THAT SHOT. They're like bush pilots in the wilderness who risk all as a matter of routine."

You can read excerpts from The Five Lost Days here.



THE FIVE LOST DAYS VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '08 will officially begin on December 1 and end on January 30. You can visit William's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com in December and January to find out where he is appearing!

As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available. The winner will be announced by Pump Up Your Book Promotion at the end of every month!