Traditional Values

I've been watching a lot of The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie lately.  Then I saw something about someone (Netflix?) rebooting Little House and, of course, there they were... the pearl-clutching army in the comments worried about THE WOKE AGENDA is gonna ruin it.  

I got news for y'all.  If this happens, and you don't like it, nobody says you have to watch.  I stopped watching the original TV show when they decided to divert from the "facts" of the books.  Mary never married and Albert didn't exist.  That's how you deal with offensive TV shows.  

Anyway, that got me to thinking about the question of how these wholesome shows might have handled certain topics. 

 I realized Little House did handle a lot of the topics.  Mary's blindness gave them the vehicle to show that the disabled are not so different from the abled.  They brought in nonwhites from time to time and, again, focused on the similarities more than the differences. Nellie married a nice Jewish boy.  I have come to the conclusion that, given the limitations of television in the 70s and 80s, that Little House is yet another example of something that was WOKE all along.  

I don't recall a lot of the specific storylines on The Waltons.  But in recent viewings, I saw Elizabeth deal with possibly being paralyzed and an attempt to heal her by a "gypsy".  The Waltons are friendly with a "colored" family.  Well damn, that's some DEI stuff right there!  

All of this led me to wonder how these shows would handle certain other topics.  

Homosexuality:  The Waltons made it a point to be historically accurate, but I guess they could have a couple of "confirmed bachelors" or "old maids" sharing a home.  Maybe they did and I just don't remember. Maybe the Baldwin sisters weren't really sisters!  Little House would probably take a similar route, but given the pattern of that show, it'd be some stranger who wanders into town just long enough to confess the deep dark secret to an Ingalls.  

Interracial Marriage: Maybe one of the Walton boys could bring home a Japanese bride after WW2.  Maybe some local natives want to court the citizens of Walnut Grove.  But I can't see how a black/white pairing would work without destroying any semblance of historical accuracy.  One takes place not long after the Civil War.  One takes place in the American South.  Both predate the Civil Rights Movement. 

Transgenderism: This would be handled much like homosexuality.  (The girl-disguised-as-boy-for-protection trope does not count here!)  Little House's setting could set up an Albert Cashier type scenario. Albert Cashier Hell, maybe Grandpa Walton served with an Albert Cashier... when did the military actually start examining recruits? 

Which leads me to why I gave this blog post the title I did.  Often when we hear about traditional values, it's people raving against the sort of things I just mentioned, but considering how these topics could have worked in the shows... some of our traditional values aren't bad.  

These fictions reflect the world as it once was.  Did Olivia Walton or Caroline Ingalls bother much about what the neighbors did in the bedroom?  Did Charles Ingalls and John Walton assume the the new guy in town was female because he had no beard?  I don't think so... not unless they were hurting people.  These are traditional values - if a person is harmless, what they do is none of my business. 

But maybe I'm just pushing that woke agenda. 

 

Another Gladys Box (Part Two)

 

Remember this?  I finally got it sorted through and put away.  It was quite a job.

I found a huge bin for Family Archives, to replace the little one I could no longer fit them into.

Which led to a storage dilemma.  It was simply too big for any of my hidey-holes and I don't want to have to go down to my storage for archives.  

So I started playing bin roulette.  

The one on the floor I bought for Lego blocks, intending to slide it under my loveseat.  It was too tall.

The quilting supplies on the loveseat went to their intended recipient, but I kept the bin.

The green lid is what I was keeping the archives in, Barbie bin held my Lego blocks until it overflowed, and I don't remember were the purple-latch one came from.  

(The little one with the purple lid and checkerboard tin are for gift wrapping.)

The Lego got divided into Barbie and Purple Latch.  For now, anyway.  More on that in a bit.

The two flat bins hold the archives now.  Photos in the smaller, other stuff in the larger. They fit under the bed, where it simply did not occur to me to put Lego.  

This lady remains unidentified.  I still feel very strongly that she's close kin to those surrounding her.

The tinted tots did turn out to be the same kids as in the black-and-white.  Arthur and Marian Parker, my uncle and my mother. 

The storage where I keep holiday decorations is big enough to hold the new huge bin!  Halloween abandoned its red bin for that one.  I think I'll dump all the Lego blocks into the red one, which will fit into a hidey-hole.  Barely.