"Cheryl Isaak" wrote in message
...
PBS had a great program in the Victory Garden but, IMO they ruined
it. They need to go back to the good old days when they had great
hosts and spent their time on interesting gardening subjects.

Then there was 'Chef Marion'. Her food must have been the blandest
food in the world. I wonder if she even knew what seasonings were
used for. I wouldn't want her cooking for me, that is for sure. Then
she had to go to Europe to watch the chefs over there. Again, I
wondered what that had to do with gardening.

I believe Russ Morash was the original producer of Victory Garden. Its
concept was based on the Victory Gardens grown in back yards and any patch
of unused ground during the war when food was scares and rationed......good
concept, great original hosts, wonderful show. I never missed it and give a
huge amount of credit to that show for starting my passion for gardening,
edible as well as ornamental. Roger Swain did most of his segments from his
own personal garden, I liked him too. Russ Morash also came up with the
concept for This Old House when he started personal documentation of the
restoration of his own farm house and many people would come around asking
him how and why questions. He was also the producer of the original Julia
Child series on PBS.

Where did Marion come from? She was Russ's wife and a Julia Child wannabe.
Go figure! During her tenure as "Chef Marion" it was well known that she
wasn't the most beloved person on staff. IMO her cooking sucked (possibly
the same method used to get herself the 'chef' slot) but that aside, there
were some serious "diva issues" going on behind the scenes. But, how do you
tell the producer his wife is a major PITA? My own, very personal take on
the 'foreign travel' was that dear Marion whined incessantly enough about
exotic vacations and since PBS had "hosts" and not "stars" and the pay
wasn't on the commercial TV scale of today good ol' Russ figured out a way
to get the old crone these 'working vacations' paid for by the studio
budget.......there is no hard and fast basis for this conjecture, just my
personal opinion.

About the time all the "visiting this lovely garden" segments started
appearing with that droning, boring old codger the original hosts were
either leaving for the great compost heap in the sky or just plain jumping
ship.......why the hell would I care how they grew frikken palm trees on
some remote tropical island or managed to heat a 4,000 square foot green
house full of 'collected from extensive world travels' specimen plants,
tended by 3 full time gardeners on some bazillion acre historical
estate.....and Chef Marion giving her stupefying blathered commentary while
was standing behind some person in Guatemala making wild boor and banana
flambé casserole.....I stopped watching Victory Garden.

This Old House morphed into the "Norm can build it with more of those damned
biscuits" show, and you too can take a decaying heap of rubble and make a
lovely historical house for only who knows how many dollars of donated
materials and labor if you can supplement this with a $3 million dollar
second mortgage.

Watching Ground Force was more entertaining than informative, but I usually
did enjoy it and got a few good ideas from time to time. When Titchmarsh
left Charlie and Tommy were hard pressed to keep it afloat. When Ground
Force came to America it really went down the drain. So much for one more
garden schlock program to *not* take up time on a Saturday morning.

FoodTV has gone the same route. Apparently the majority of television
production powers that be feel the public needs more entertainment (and I
use the word loosely) than education and more "personalities" than experts
in whatever particular area. Perhaps I am of the old school and have gone
back to my honed skills of reading for research as learned long ago in
school when you actually had to do such a thing to find an answer. In 30+
years I have amassed a rather large, impressive personal collection of BOOKS
(*gasp*, what a concept, replace reading for the remote) on these subjects
for personal reference and take extensive advantage of the massive amounts
of information available on the internet to garner gardening and culinary
skills and knowledge. I'm also a regular patron of the library, sadly for
the masses; seemingly used less than ever. Happily, for me, there's seldom a
line at the check out desk.

The other thing that always leaves me amazed (but no longer surprised) are
the many simply common and/or commonly simple questions asked of this group
that can be answered by a 2 minute or less search on the internet or, heaven
forbid, a trip to the public library. How in the world do these people
manage to find and post to a newsgroup but can't figure out how to use a
search engine? Granted, discussions and exchanges of ideas and information
between peers and mentors is a wonderful thing indeed, but when somebody
asks what grows in their area because they are going to start a landscape
business; or what can grow in my backyard, but never give the slightest clue
as to their location are only a few of many posts that just make me shake my
head and think........."Ohferchrissakes, these people are breeding and we
let them VOTE too?"

And that, boys and girls, concludes the Tuesday afternoon mull and rant
program on wreck.gardens.........

Val