PBS -- several interesting series lately

[Lucy]

Has anyone but me been watching the two series that PBS is now running?

One is called, "The Greatest Story Ever Told."
and the other is "Country Boys."
Think the latter series is through showing, this time around, at least, but "..Greatest Story.." has more coming next week.

"Country Boys", I just sort of accidently found myself watching parts of a couple of episodes. It was a longitudinal, real life observation of a couple of boys growing up in the mountains of Kentucky. I can't explain why it just sort of hooked me into watching it when I had really thought of watching something else -- hard to explain what held my attention.

In case you didn't hear anything about it, "Greatest Story" is a chronological walk through Hebrew Bible history, and it is fascinating the way it's done on location.

As a few of you may know, antiquities from that region of the world, and linguistics, and archeology of that period are big interests of mine, as is the art of storytelling, so one of the things I particularly enjoyed was hearing the local people tonight in the part that occurred in Egypt recalling the events as though they happened yesterday. That's how important preserving history through story is in that part of the world among some groups.

It is difficult for those of us who have difficulty remembering what we did five minutes ago to appreciate the method ancient peoples, particularly those in Egypt and in contact with them, as were the ancient Hebrews, had of maintaining in their collective memories thousands of years of history, but they did it, and as archeologists will tell you, they did it with an amazing degree of accuracy. Ancient stories were preserved long before the historical period, and ultimately written down It was interesting to see the places where the actual events occurred, and just "visiting" those places, and understanding the historical setting, helps one to more fully appreciate the meaning of the texts.

The next installment has to do with the travels of Moses, Inc., and their wilderness experience. Sure hope that I don't have to miss any of it.

This is one I'd like to actually have in my library -- that good, but designed for the average person without much background in all the technical stuff, so if archeology, etc., aren't your thing, don't let that keep you from tuning in.

There is a book by the speaker, but the video is excellent. I would imagine that the book has more detail, however.

I'm hoping that when it comes time for fund raising that they'll show these episodes again, one right after another on those days like they have other popular programs, so that people can fill in the blanks from what they've missed or just want to see again.

Wow, wish I'd known how good this one would be before it was almost over -- I would've posted earlier!

Yours, Luce

[JJ]

Thanks Luce...I'll check it out... JJ