Meanwhile, Back At The Abbey

After hearing for months that costume drama "Downton Abbey" was the best thing since buttered scones, I decided to watch an episode via Netflix instant. And then another. And another. I emerged two days later sleep-deprived and hopelessly in love.

This show is like sweet crack cocaine for a silly woman with a head full of romantic notions and a genuine longing to know the world as her forebears knew it (witness past obsessions with the Little House and Anne of Green Gables series and everything written by Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters). The costumes are lovely, the sets are lovey, the actors are lovely ... it's just a lovely way to spend an hour -- or many, many consecutive hours.

Now, I will admit that the plot wavers from believability once or twice, and that the whole thing might be slightly melodramatic. However, love is blind. And willing to forgo sleep, food, sunlight and human interaction for extended periods.I

could and possibly will write more about the show, but for now I will end with a thought it provoked: Stoicism is close to extinction in America, if it isn't dead already.

I think we can trace stoicism's decline to the 1980s, when daytime talk shows -- which rewarded people for blabbing their troubles before a live or taped audience -- began to proliferate. When our once stiff upper lips began to soften. When it became not only acceptable but desirable to receive the pity of others.