We still subscribe to a monthly cable television service with a gazillion channels for our viewing pleasure. I much prefer a quiet corner and a book, but Larry enjoys watching Chip and Joanna Gaines on “Fixer Upper,” “Property Brothers” with twins Jonathan and Drew, and an occasional episode of “American Pickers,” starring Frank and Mike with their nose for antiques, memorabilia and junk. With our favorite network shows on hiatus until the fall, Larry was searching for something to watch in their place, and he ran across a series called “Longmire,” first shown on the A&E network in 2012.
We’d never heard of it, but this modern Western crime drama ran for six seasons, now available for streaming on Netflix. What an amazing invention. Instead of waiting seven days to find out what the next week’s drama will bring, all sixty-three episodes of “Longmire” are right there at our fingertips. Between the activity on the nearby Cheyenne Reservation and in Absaroka County, Wyoming, there is enough lusting, loving, conniving and killing to keep viewers engaged in the storylines from hour to hour. Absaroka County is fictional, based on the setting of the Walt Longmire Mysteries by author Craig Johnson, but is similar to half the counties in Wyoming, with less than fifteen thousand people. At the rate they killed off people each episode, it truly is miraculous there was anybody standing by the series’end.
I watched a few episodes, but Larry kept up with them all. I’m glad to report that by the end (spoiler alert), the bad guys were all killed off or in custody, the sheriff got his girl, Ferg made his grand gesture to win Meg back, and Henry Standing Bear was successfully operating the casino. Great work, Walt!
I like stories that tie up the loose ends by the final page, often by way of an epilogue that checks in with each main character. In the Maisie Dobbs novels, author Jacqueline Winspear allows her main character to complete a final accounting, visiting each of the main actors in the book’s drama to fill them in on the results of her investigations. A nice, neat package, just what I need.
My summer reading list includes many books that will provide that same kind of satisfaction when I reach the end, with cold cases resolved, family estrangement repaired, and the hero and heroine in each other’s arms. I’m currently reading a book that promises international intrigue and dogged FBI pursuit, but it provides no final resolution to its mysteries, at least in part because the delightful and determined Elizabeth Holiday must have taken a black Magic Marker to its pages and crossed out hundreds of lines before I started reading.
Yes, I’m committed to reading the entire Mueller Report this summer. It’s not as engaging as Longmire or an old Agatha Christie murder mystery, yet my current read is fascinating, recognizing the depth of investigation and the careful recording done by Robert Mueller and his team. The redactions are frustrating, often with the note, “harm to ongoing matter” or “redacted for personal privacy,” and I wonder if my fill-in-the-blank imagination ends up making the account worse than it really is.
Writing in Salon, Claire Wexler suggests that “legal experts found the dense document a ‘page-turner,’” but also admits that even in her Washington, D.C. circle of activists and journalists, “I haven’t found anyone who’s actually read it.”
So why bother? No, not to improve my cocktail party conversation, but for these reasons. I’m a nerd, and find its painstaking examination impressive and thought-provoking. I’m also curious, for “enquiring minds want to know.” More than curious, I’m concerned. Its introductory sentence is chilling: “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.”
My last reason? I’m an American. Don Raye’s lyrics ask: “What difference if I hail from North or South, or from the East or West?” Or from a red or blue state? Raye’s answer is my answer. “This is my country, to have and to hold.” I’m not conceding its future to talking heads, Facebook memes or political spin – I’m reading Mueller this summer. Join me?
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