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:

Book Review: Little House in the Hollywood Hills by Charlotte Stewart

For those who thought maybe Charlotte Stewart was defined only as the beautiful and kind schoolteacher on Little House on the Prairie, Little House in the Hollywood Hills will show what a diverse and talented actress she really is. Though definitely more well known as Ms. Beadle (LHOP) or Betty Briggs from Twin Peaks, Stewart's career has spanned decades and found her on everything from soap operas to TV shows to big screen movies like Tremors. 

In her classy, eloquent style Stewart shares her work, her life and her personal struggles. She shares glimpses into what an actor's life is and about the addictions and breast cancer diagnosis she's had to fight along the way. She shares memories of her husbands and the actors she has the chance to work with. You come away feeling like you really know her.

It took me a while to read Little House in the Hollywood Hills, mostly due to my other commitments, but it also reads at a much slower pace than some other celebrity memoirs. Three other female stars from Little House on the Prairie have written memoirs, and you'll notice the slow and steady pace of Stewart's book is different from the others. You're really immersing yourself into her life, and she brings you in calmly and casually and holds you there for a moment or two before bringing you further. It's very much a book that captures the essence of the Charlotte Stewart I met at a cast reunion in 2014.

Little House in the Hollywood Hills is the perfect addition to your Little House on the Prairie book or TV tie-in collection.

Paperback: 326 pages
Publisher: BearManor Media (April 7, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 159393906X
ISBN-13: 978-1593939069

I purchased this book from Amazon. This review contains my honest opinions, which I have not been compensated for in any way.

I read this book for the following challenges...

March Special Feature - Giving Up, Little House Style

Some of my Little House friends are rereading the Little House books in order. These beloved children's stories by Laura Ingalls Wilder have been my favorites for years--though I admit they did not interest me as much when I was a child as they do now.

We are currently reading and discussing On the Banks of Plum Creek, the fourth in the series. The most recent dicussion centers around Chapter 12 - Christmas Horses. In this chapter, Ma talks to Laura and Mary about what Pa wants for Christmas - a set of horses to help him harrow and harvest the wheat. The girls want things too, but horses aren't on their lists.

But after talking with Ma about Santa Claus and being unselfish, the girls soberly agree that they will ask Santa for horses. And in the next chapter they are pleasantly surprised to find that while Santa Claus did bring horses, he also managed to bring a few treats for Laura, Mary, and their baby sister Carrie; so the girls have a wonderful Christmas after all.

It is this type of sacrifice for the good of the family that endears the Little House books to generations of fans. The way in which the Ingalls family always ends up pulling together and helping one another is inspiring and makes you want to have that type of family too.



When the classic televison series Little House on the Prairie aired in the 70's and early 80's, it is exactly that pull together and help each other, our love and faith will get us through type of mentality from the books that Michael Landon and the crew captured week after week. While over time the storylines were based less and less on the material from the books, the essence and tone of the television series never changed. This is what I fondly remember about watching the show on the one television our family owned.

My children live a life much better than the one I lived. Growing up we had few material possessions and our family is what would now be called dysfunctional, at best. There are few things that my children want for, though it seems their list increases by the day, and I often wonder if, as parents, we have been successful in teaching them to think of others. And then I ponder the meaning of the sacrifice made by two young girls living on the banks of Plum Creek, and hope that our family could pull together in such a crisis, where our livelihood and our future might depend on it.

The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder might have taken place during the 1800's, but for those of us living now, they not only entertain, they teach the values that will make our world a better place.