APRIL 2025

THE RITES OF SPRING 

AND COMING OF AGE

By Rev Protodeacon George A. Haloulakos

In the early 1990s, filmmaker Ken Burns included extensive interviews with Pulitzer Prize winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin for his documentary on the history of baseball.  Ms. Goodwin shared her childhood love for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the ensuing public interest provided the impetus for her 1997 memoir Wait Till Next Year.  In this unusually poignant and moving book, Goodwin harnesses her research and writing skills as a historian to recreate the post World War II era of New York City as she recounts growing up in love with her family and baseball.  Baby Boomers will recall this as a time when the neighborhood establishments (e.g., drug store, butcher shop, soda fountain, churches plus various other public venues) were the places to share stories while neighborhoods were equally divided between fans of the Dodgers, Giants and Yankees.  Children would gather in the neighborhood streets to play from daybreak to dusk. What makes this a compelling read is how Goodwin's personal history is woven into the tapestry of her family, friends, neighbors and fellow church goers with the major events of the 1950s along with the decade-long dominance by the three New York MLB teams (1947-1956) as a backdrop to mark the passage of time.

Goodwin found that sharing her experience as a baseball fan could not be shared without telling about her life as a young girl reaching adolescence during the decade popularly remembered as the "Fabulous Fifties."  In this first person narrative Goodwin enables the reader to meet her wonderful parents: her mother who instilled in her a lifetime love for reading but was largely housebound due to a debilitating illness, and her father who taught her the joy of baseball (including how to keep a written record of fandom with score books) while encouraging her to be self-reliant while respectfully bringing her voice to any conversation anywhere at anytime!  The reader also gets to know Goodwin's two sisters, schoolmates, friends, neighbors, teachers and storekeepers.  Wait Till Next Year definitely evokes a "you are there" feeling but without being overly nostalgic.  What emerges is that Goodwin's childhood paralleled the ten-year career of her favorite player, Jackie Robinson, spanning 1947-1956.  Goodwin observed that the news of Jackie Robinson's retirement in January 1957 left her feeling empty as his career had been her childhood.  But this feeling of emptiness would soon give way to deep personal grief.  The passing of Goodwin's mother shortly after Robinson's retirement marked not the only end of her own childhood but occurred at the closure of a classic baseball era as the Dodgers (along with the Giants) left New York to relocate to the West Coast that very same year.  

  

Like every Baby Boomer, there are moments of joy, sadness, wonderment, frustration and all the feelings connected with coming of age that are all recounted in a personal but respectful tone.  For Goodwin, it was a time when neighbors formed an extended family, television was young and the street a common playground while the great festivals of the Roman Catholic Church and the seasonal imperatives of baseball combined to produce in her a lifelong passion for history, ceremony and ritual.  There is much more, but hopefully this may inspire you to read Wait Till Next Year as a way to celebrate Springtime along with yet another new season of baseball.  Goodwin's memoir is a unique time capsule that provides context for her childhood adventures at a very special time and circumstance in our nation's history.  In a sense, her story becomes our story, and we are all the better for having experienced it through her masterful narrative.

NOTE: Photos are from the public domain.

 

MARCH 2025

BABY BOOMERS 

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Meet Colleen MacFarlane

By Rev Protodeacon George A. Haloulakos

Baby Boomers provide a living bridge between vastly different worlds.  Childhood was spent largely outdoors (often without in-person adult supervision) with neighborhood friends creating their own entertainment and developing life skills based on imagination plus hands-on, physical activity that included bike riding, playing ball, making handcrafts as well taking care of family pets (dogs, cats, guinea pigs and even exotic pets such as turtles).   As Boomers came of age, there were no mobile phones or Internet access for mass markets.  Personal computers (PCs) were in the very early stages of being introduced into the workplace.  No DVDs or streaming, but video cassette tapes, recorders and players were starting to emerge as "must have" consumer products in the 1980s.   Boomers were fully immersed into carving out significant corporate careers, and then following up with creating their own business enterprises or reinventing themselves several times over by starting entirely new professional and personal pursuits while building households, raising families and caring for aging loved ones.  Now fifty years later, we are a generation that has helped usher our parents into that "long day's journey into night," have seen children grow up and move on with their own lives while we now approach the end of our careers and our young selves are gone forever.  Yet Boomers have remained resilient by preserving time-honored traditions from the past while also helping to advance the future by passing along wisdom acquired through lifelong experiences.  This is the overarching theme addressed in this special Blog and accompanying GNN podcasts.

 

 

This month, Galaxy Nostalgia Network features two podcasts in which we interview published author Colleen MacFarlane.  Through the prism of Colleen's published work, we are able to reconnect with fun, meaningful pastimes we enjoyed as children while also gaining deeper insights and clarity on life issues that were often shrouded in mystery, misinformation or both.  Colleen's lifetime reflects a treasure trove of experience and wisdom that she has successfully translated into deeper, practical understanding about a wide variety of subjects: people with disabilities, genealogy, how our precious pets become part of our family, financial literacy, fun with a purpose through solving puzzles and word games, giving of herself by helping other aspiring authors, and connecting with people of different backgrounds and generations through sharing recipes plus do-it-yourself arts and crafts.

 

As one who has read much of Colleen's work (my personal favorite is Ivy's Epilepsy -- a story that helps us understand about people with disabilities and how pets can improve our overall well being) and given the honor to lead these conversations, I can fully attest that you will truly enjoy listening to her keen insights and humble testimony on how we can all make a difference through kindness to others.  The takeaway or realization from Colleen's testimony, is that learning never stops and life abounds with opportunities for each of us to be at our personal best.  Please join us for these very special podcasts featuring our conversations with this truly extraordinary person, Colleen MacFarlane.

 

 

We also invite you to learn more about Colleen by visiting her website at:  https://www.colleenbooks.com/

 

FEBRUARY 2025

ROD SERLING AT 100 

"The Loner"

A Very Special Tribute

By Rev Protodeacon George A. Haloulakos

In this month's Blog, we belatedly pay tribute to Rod Serling (December 25, 1924 - June 28, 1975) in honor of recently marking the centennial of his birth.  As many Galaxy Nostalgia Network audience members already know, Mr. Serling has not only been the subject of several monthly GNN Blog columns over the years, but also several GNN podcasts including two dedicated specifically to his classic TV show The Twilight Zone.  In this Blog, we are paying special tribute with a Serling-like twist: instead of focusing on the popular, time honored classics associated with the man, we honor Rod Serling by showcasing an underrated and perhaps largely forgotten TV Western series he created that aired one season (September 1965 - March 1966) with 26 half-hour episodes on the CBS network every Saturday night.  It was the one of the last CBS series broadcast in Black-and-White and had alternating sponsorship by Phillip Morris and Procter & Gamble.

Nearly fifty years after his passing, Serling is renowned if not legendary for his award winning TV programs (Patterns, The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery) and critically acclaimed full-length movies (Requiem For a Heavyweight, Seven Days in May, Planet of the Apes, A Storm in Summer and The Man).  A deconstruction of any of these aforementioned TV shows and movies would demonstrate Serling's mastery as a storyteller noted for clarity, concision and penetrating insights into the human condition.  Ironically, these unique skills, while on full display in The Loner, did not translate into commercial success for this short-lived TV series.  Yet a reappraisal of this almost forgotten prime-time TV Western drama not only affirms Serling's integrity as well as superior understanding of humanity, but illustrates that he was way ahead of his time.  In today's digital world of streaming limited series via the Internet or Cable TV, The Loner would be a perfect fit.  Instead, it was a series that in the days where there were only three major TV networks and its creator was in a constant battle to stop network executives from tampering with his scripts, it unintentionally became a short-lived series that was not given time to gain popularity or achieve commercial success.

The Loner featured Lloyd Bridges as the title character, William Colton, a former Union cavalry captain who journeyed throughout the American West in search of a new life immediately following the American Civil War.  It was an adult western written for a mature audience as each week it tackled such issues as the horrors of war, pacifism, prejudice, survivor's guilt and other such topics not generally found in other Western themed TV shows in the 1960s.  It was not a typical shoot-em-up or straight morality storyline with a neat, tidy ending. The Loner often had ambiguous or unresolved endings leaving it to the viewer's imagination.  The lead character, Colton, was shown to be a complex, thoughtful individual whose wartime experience influenced his relationships and actions when dealing with difficult situations.  The show was noteworthy for having stellar performances by legendary guest stars that included such luminaries as Anne Baxter, Sheree North, Katherine Ross, Brock Peters, Leslie Nielsen, Burgess Meredith, Jack Lord, James Whitmore and Whit Bissell.  As a mid-1960s entry, The Loner was televised exactly 100 years after the American Civil War, thereby providing Serling an opportunity to transfer his creative writing style from The Twilight Zone into a Western genre to examine the divided loyalties that existed in the immediate aftermath of The War Between the States.  Despite the very high quality production values, The Loner did not achieve the ratings or commercial success desired by CBS.  In retrospect, Serling's mature, adult TV Western was more suitable as a specialty niche type program rather than for a mass market viewing audience.  In today's digital world chock full of lots of viewing portals from Cable TV to Internet streaming services, The Loner would likely be packaged as a thought-provoking limited series targeted to an adult or mature audience.  Like Rod Serling himself, The Loner was way ahead of its time as it approached its subject in a more subtle, less ostentatious style than its competition.

In celebrating the centennial of Rod Serling's birth, The Loner, while not having the commercial success or notoriety of other more well-known Serling projects, is a worthwhile watch to celebrate the creative genius of a writer whose body of work gave us a deeper understanding of humanity while setting a standard of excellence revered to this day.  What are your memories and thoughts about Rod Serling and his amazing record of accomplishment in both TV and film? Please share them by either posting to the Galaxy FACEBOOK page (and liking us) or writing directly to me at: Haloulakos@gmail.com

NOTE: Sources for photos are from the public domain.