Classic Sesame Street - Grover and Madeline Kahn

Death and the Modern Age

A thousand years ago things were different. Hows that for an earth shattering revelation? It's true though. Maybe that's the level of abstraction necessary if one wants to speak the truth. I think I can be slightly more focused and still remain truthful, though. A thousand years ago, death was experienced differently by the living then it is now. It is a risky assertion, but I feel pretty confident in it.

Seriously, though. Before TV, cameras, and the etch a sketch changed our lives forever, if someone died and we cared, generally it was someone we had met, touched, sneezed on, and maybe even kissed goodbye. Certainly, if we had seen them before they died we had met them. I mean, there may have been a cave drawing or a painting, but cave drawings are pretty imprecise and usually the only people art aficionados knew who were in paintings were the dead or the resurrected. Now, we mourn people we shared the world with but never met, and we have pictures to include in our shrines.

I find fame and the famous a strange aspect of our society to wrap my mind around. The idea that people can pass through life, touch us, and never come within 300 miles of us is a strange one. You can almost fall in love with someone without them ever being aware of it. I think I have fallen for Madeline Khan. It's really been a long process, but I only became aware of it a few days ago. I was watching Sesame Street clips on You Tube with Dipity, when I came across Grover and Madeline Khan singing "sing what I sing, sing after me." She is funny, sarcastic, and has a great voice. And she is so cute. I love the blue fur too ... h wait, that's Grover. Anyway, seriously she seems like such a cool person. If she were alive there would be room for day dream encounters (just a hello and lunch ... after all Dipity has a pretty hot mom). Unfortunately, she died over eight years ago. So, it ain't happening. If she wasn't an actress, I never would have thought twice about her. But now ... and it's not just actresses. With You Tube and blogs and all this other nonsense, even ordinary people can be obsessed about at a distance. It's a strange world I've chosen to bring kids into. A thousand years ago might have been better. Hell, fifty years ago might have been better. But how would I know, I only have television and etch a sketched memories to work from.