What a difference a year makes
 
   2015 ends soon – 2016 begins
 
            Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. The best to you at this season of so many faiths and holidays. I hope you spend time as the year ends with friends and family—those who you love and who love you. It is dark this time of year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. And as it grows darker, know that light will be coming again. In just over six months, it will be the beginning of summer. “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” (Shelley)
            What a year of transitions. I moved from teaching part-time with a plan of doing so for two more academic years to retiring fully in May 2015.
​
            So, here in December 2015, I’m looking back on more than seven months without any teaching, prepping, attending of meetings, advising, grading (and grading and grading). I say that not to gloat but to remind myself how much I did give up. I loved teaching. One way or another, I taught for 41 years. I loved my students, even the challenging, rascally ones. I loved so many of my colleagues. Still in touch with many, but it is a complete change for me.
            Over the past several months, I’ve been a fulltime writer. It is more work than I thought, but I love it. Book II will be published soon after the first of the year. Look for it around the end of January or beginning of February. I’ve entered writing contests. I’ve sent my manuscript off to a publisher for review and possible publication. I’ve done some readings and begun lining up others for Spring and Summer 2016.
            I’m working on Book III plus plotting out and jotting notes for a new, completely different sci-fi series.
            But first, complete publication of The Marsco Saga. It’s on course for total publication, all four works, by winter 2018.
            Looking back is looking ahead. In many ways, I’m busier now than when I was teaching. Certainly, writing is no longer a squeeze-it-in event. It is the main event. And my time is more my own. It is easier to schedule in my power walks each day. In our warm autumn weather, much of that walking has been outside, but it will be in the “Y” soon.
            Retirement from teaching has opened me to gratefulness. I landed at Southwest Minnesota State University 26 years ago. Never imagined I would stay that long. But I did and am thankful that I earned tenure, my promotions, and emeritus status at the end. I was excellently compensated and have a fine retirement. It does open avenues to write.
            I am grateful to my friends and readers. Marianne and Elaine and my family members who have supported me and my career and my writing. I am appreciative of readers who have posted kind notes about my book or told me when they meet me how much they loved it. And for those who come to my readings, who set them up, who do the publicity and behind-the-scene work to make them happen.
          So, on to 2016. May your upcoming year be filled with love and happiness. With thankfulness and thoughtfulness. With hard, fulfilling work. With plans dreamt and then accomplished. With a smile, a laugh, a tear, and a bit of mischief. With all it takes to be wonderful and wonder-filled.
            May 2016 truly be a year of peace. 

Giving a reading in the Spring of 2015, Morris, Minnesota. 

                        History Being Made:

                                 My part of 


            Southwest Minnesota State University

            I get Harry Potter updates on Facebook, mostly because I do sci-fi and also because I think the Harry Potter books are one of the literary marvels of our lifetime. When the final two books were released, I preordered them for their midnight sales event. One year I was 9th in Marshall (for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and for the last one I slipped to 29th (for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows).

            The FB info is often about the making of the films, about the actors, now adults, looking back on the filming and all that excitement.

            Those actors, directors, Rowling herself—they must have known they were making history. I like them all—books and films; they’re masterpieces each.

            What I also think about is that rare gift in life to do something and while doing it, realize you and your actions are changing history. The 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion just passed on June 6th. On June 5, 1944, as those airmen, sailors, and soldiers geared up for the morning, they knew they were taking part, however small, in something gigantic and fantastic. Something history-making and history-changing.

            I run in a much smaller circle of world events. I’m not likely to ever produce anything nearly as artistically significant as Harry Potter, although The Marsco Saga may be a success. I doubt I’ll ever be in the political or military spotlight like Eisenhower or Bradley or Churchill, or the ordinary (often drafted) soldiers hitting those beaches at Zero Hour on D-Day.

            My place in history will be pretty small, in that regard.

            I am, however, pleased to know I have contributed to Southwest Minnesota State University.

            This university is significant for two main reasons. It produces its growing share of grads who go off to medical school and fine doctoral programs. Two of my students come to mind. One graduated from Mayo Medical and another is beginning her PhD at the University of Notre Dame.

           But the most significant reason for this university is Main Street. We educate Main Street in so many small towns around here: accountants, teachers, bankers, small business owners, and farmers. During the boys’ state basketball tournament this past Spring when only eight teams were left, SMSU had graduated five of the head coaches. That’s what we do; obviously, we do it well.

           The other significant reason for this university is its affordability and accessibility. For what we do, we are a rock-bottom priced service. Unfortunately, over the past twenty years, I’ve seen the State’s commitment to keeping costs low tip away from students and their parents and towards “tax breaks” and other sham give-to-the-rich schemes. When I came here in 1989, the State paid $2 for every $1 a student paid. The whole state of Minnesota bragged about that. Now, the State reluctantly ponies up about $0.67 (and falling) for every student dollar. Figure out the shift here.

           Besides affordability, accessibility is a major reason we’re here; it makes us such a unique and valuable school. We are not the most diverse student body. Even with three Native reservations within an hour in three directions, we don’t attract many Native students. But, we do attract, retain, and graduate many students who need a fully-accessible campus.

           And, it’s been like that longer than I’ve been here. I don’t think I have gone a semester without a student in my class in a wheelchair, who needs special assistance (like a note-taker due to mobility issues), or who needs to take exams and quizzes in a separate location from the classroom (due to learning disabilities needs).

           I’ve even had students who come in their wheelchairs and with a dog to further help them. For one pair, when I took roll, I noted when Zeus, an 80-pound Lab, was present or when the dog was excused from class. One day I stepped too close to his owner and the sleeping Zeus was up and barking ferociously at me.

           These are the students who make SMSU significant. I’ve taken our students to Europe three times through our Global Studies Program, mostly to England and France. And for all the progressive strides these countries have made, they are a generation or more behind us in disability services. Partly, Europe is built around medieval cities, but partly it is cultural. Americans raise their voices at injustice more willingly than many other cultures. Eventually, someone listens.

           I may not be changing history, but I am adding to this university which in turn adds so much to Southwest Minnesota, the state as a whole, and the nation. We’ve even graduated students from Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, so we’re international in our own small way.

           Our rising costs concern me, however. For one, the Global Studies Program I am so proud of, has risen in cost so that it’s nearly impossible to enroll enough students to make the trip possible. We used to have a subsidy for the trip and most students received a small scholarship to defray costs. But in the end, it became necessary for students to pick up the whole tab for their trip. This decision raised the cost by nearly 35% to 50%; ruinous cost inflation. 9/11 didn’t help, either.

           But the major disaster in higher education in Minnesota was the ill-considered “merger” of the tech and two-year campuses with the seven state universities, which had had their own extremely successful system. “Hostile takeover” comes to mind to describe this, since no one who was part of the universities wanted it or thought this merger was a wise decision.

           This merger has made nothing better in the state universities and often has made many aspects worse. We can’t select what general education classes to allow for transfer anymore; if a MnSCU campus says it meets set standards, we have to accept it. The two-week online Speech class, taught via a two-year campus, comes to mind as a shame, but it counts.

           It’s a sad state of affairs to see something I’ve worked for nearly twenty-five years hit a wall. If orchard growers thought every apple and pear tree should be cut for firewood, not planted, nurtured and prepared for a future harvest, we’d have no fresh fruit. Higher education, especially public higher education, is planting an orchard; its benefits are far in the future, but they are there. Nurture higher ed and in the end the state prospers. The nation prospers.  

           I hope in my final years here at SMSU, I see an upturn in public appreciation and in support for higher ed. Our work is that important. And I have hope. Our new President is sharp and on the ball. I see her leadership at work and her vision for this institution consistent with our history and our mission. All that is good.

           And I have faith. Good things happen when good people put their minds together to create positive solutions. I’m all for that.

           Harry Potter and Eisenhower would agree.

  

Here is the first of several guest blogs written by characters from The Marsco Dissident. I hope you enjoy this insight into Tessa; I imagine this coming from her just before Book I begins in Sac City, in the year 2092.





Tessa Miller, of The Marsco Dissident, guest blog

            Most people don’t know the frustrations of being ABD: All But Dissertation. Of being stuck at the extreme end (the precipice?) of a long, arduous scholarly task. So I’ve got my data collected, my review of previous research completed, and here I sit. The Integration of Computer Systems with Propulsion Optimization: A New Model. Fancy title, long bibliography, clear numbers crunched, blank screen in front of me, and nothing.

            I could speak of my dissertation for hours, of its importance to Marsco, to science and engineering in general, to my plebes, to my career.

            But you’d rather listen to me to talk about my father, Walter Miller, and probably (you’d think?) my former, Zot.

            Procrastination: putting the trivial before the significant.

            Or just shutting down. I’m good at that. Look at that pilot I hung with for far too long, partly to piss off Zot, and partly because everyone needs a companion. But I was shut down that whole time, drifting along, oblivious to all the warning signs of train wreck. You can’t break your heart a second time when you’re using Number 2 to put off dealing with Number 1.

            Why am I telling you this?

            So I don’t spill my guts about Walter and Zot, of course. I’m too controlled for that. Too emotionally detached. I have most people convinced I’m totally together. I’m the one without a hair out of place, my uniform impeccable, my exterior a spotless, polished veneer. My inner life? Turmoil replete with my ripped up guts I refuse to deal with.

            Then again, why not spill them?

            Walter C. Miller, Jr., PhD, Astro-engineer, co-designer of the Herriff-Miller’s that propel Marsco and those few Independent Shuttles that ply between the Moon and the Asteroid Belt. That Miller, he’s my father.

          You’d think that would help my career, except that he’s gone off the beaten Marsco track and become some sort of dissident. Not really a thorn in Marsco’s side. (He’s totally harmless, I’m sure.) But he’s not exactly a rose in a vase at its breakfast table either. He’s a questioner. More philosopher and historian than engineer now, even though back in his day, his theories garnered much praise.

            I should have visited him sooner, since he’s alone and widowed, but things got in my way. Ok, I let things get in my way.

            Zot was there a few times; he let me know that. Even out and out invited me to visit my own father at Walter’s grange near Sac City, that Sacramento, the former capital of the Continental Powers, Marsco’s last enemy, the last bastion of the Powers resistance. But, I refused to go. My excuse? Grading exams and continuing my dissertation research; used my status as an untenured prof at the Marsco Academy (where I’m an assistant professor of astro-engineering), pleaded that these were all vastly more important.

            Zot, Anthony “Zot” Grizotti. An ensign last I heard. (Which makes no sense: hibernation service doesn’t need officers, but there he is.) He’s an iceman, or a hibernation specialist, but not one on a routine Moon-to-Belt mission; no, he’s on some black mission for the Van Braun Center on Mars. Their ship, the Gagarin, is speeding towards Jupiter. Marsco’s first mission beyond the Asteroid Belt, first manned mission. Recon trip for Marsco, but why? For what?

          The crew manifest shows ample icing personnel without Zot. And he never signs any hiber reports, so his duties (even though he’s the sole officer among the hibermen) remain a mystery to me. If he’s in charge (an obvious conclusion), then why haven’t all those posted icing reports come out under his name? If he’s not in charge, what’s he doing on a four-year space flight that’s going beyond Marsco colonies within the Asteroid Belt all the way out to godforsaken Jupiter? What’s he doing?

            I’ve also checked the whole crew manifest: scientists, pilots and other flight crew. Some hot numbers, those gals on the Gagarin. And Zot, a brown-eyed and soulful iceman with a tale to tell and time to tell it, could put every gullible babe onboard into a swoon with his dark features. And if a swoon? But, Zot’s really not like that, all those rumors you hear of randy hibermen, taking advantage of whomever they wish once the crew’s iced.        

          Those two men aside, I do want to visit my father’s grange. Not to see Zot (who can’t possibly be there) and not really to see my father, Walter, either. I’m not seeking to bury the hatchet with him. A hatchet I put between us over Marsco.

          I miss his dogs. They’d be fun to see again. Io and Deimos. Mutts for sure, but loving.

            I have no siblings. No mother, either; she died several years back. At her funeral, when Zot and I were both plebes at the Academy, that’s when I first looked at Zot differently. That epiphany moment. Have loved him since, well, except I’ve stopped loving him now, too, because I don’t really love him anymore, not as much as I did once, so intensely and passionately. That kind of love someone doesn’t forget, except I have, or am forgetting it. And after having a relationship with Zot, rock-solid Zot, why was I with that space-jockey player who’s as sincere as mist and as consistent as smoke?

            Don’t ask.

            Shut down. Denial. Buttoned up. That’s me. And ever-truthful.

            Zot won’t be there.

            Walter will be. And his dogs.

            I have to go, if for my mother’s sake. It’s been three years since I’ve seen Walter. Long enough to forget Zot and return to my father’s place with some adult-daughter distance between us.

            I’m going by ground, too. High-speed bullet from Seattle to a Marsco Sector just north of Silicon. Then a local rust bucket from Marsco luxury to the Sac City Subsidiary. But it will be fine. I want to see how wrong my father is about Marsco. Want to see the transformation, positive transformation, that Marsco reports. Talk of denial. Walter denies all this Marsco advancement.

            I know it’s true. Marsco said so. Why would Marsco lie?

            What does it have to gain by being opaque? It’s always been transparent with its intentions since it seized power, I mean, gained power, reluctantly taking up political power to run the whole world after the Continental Wars devastated the Earth, the Moon colonies, and even some of the sites on Mars.

            It’s a Marsco world, and Marsco’s doing a fine job running it.

            And Zot on the Gagarin and Walter sequestered at his grange, they’ve taken themselves out of the Marsco world. If that’s really possible.

          Crazy. Insane. Enigmas both. Men! 


                                    *
The Marsco Dissident is available now on Amazon for e-readers only. It will be available in print on July 20, 2014. I hope you enjoy a copy in whichever format you prefer.

            

             Taking Stock: Third Week of April 2013
                                       *

                          A Year in a Nutshell
                                       or
                              Welcome Home!

            This is my second blog post in Spring ’13 semester. I originally began this blog site in February 2011, and kept posting essays fairly regularly until last Spring. Then things got pretty crazed; I have only now settled down into a routine. And I do know that this is the second blog in a row I’ve begun with a whining excuse. So, enough sniveling excuses, here it is.
            This past summer, I moved about 25 feet, from BA 221 to BA 224. But that short distance was, metaphorically speaking, enormous. I moved from the office of Chair of the English Department back to my longstanding faculty office, almost immediately next door. It’s the same office I’ve occupied since I arrived on the Southwest campus in August 1989.
            Five and a half years ago when I began my first term as Chair, I took over from an excellent Chair and colleague, Dr. Lori Baker. I left the office in steady, capable hands, with Dr. Neil Smith at the helm. I came in to the Chair’s office under President David Danahar, and left while an interim president, Dr. Ron Wood, ran the show. Late this past February, a new President was named, Dr. Connie Gores, SMSU’s first woman president. I expect great things out of Dr. Gores when she takes over July 1, 2013; I’m sure the campus, community, and I won’t be disappointed.
            Changes and more changes.
            This past summer, a neighbor, Bob, moved to the Cities. Bob was here next door when we first moved to this house in 1991. He and all of us in the neighborhood struggled through the ’93 floods together. Several summers later, we celebrated when the city finally redid the back easement and our main sewer lines, and tore up our lawns and removed our privacy hedges. Over all these years, we’ve exchanged Christmas gifts and dinners. He and I fell into a routine of going to breakfast at Mike’s or Hy-Vee every so often; I miss those eggs and hash browns mornings.
            Surviving events like a flood can bond us. Bob is retired and has all his family and many of his friends in the Cities; he wanted to be closer to all those family events. Didn’t take long for him to pack up and move leaving a void in the neighborhood.
            On campus, the Whitman Room is quiet different as well; its voices and laughter and youthful energy. That’s our English student hangout and lounge. Last May, in one of my final acts as Chair, I formally greeted our newly-minted graduates as they received their degrees at Commencement. Several great students with whom I had worked closely for the past four or five years graduated that day. Many are currently at law school or graduate school in the Cities, Iowa, or Alabama, points over the horizon.
            All these folks off on their new adventures.
            But moving 25 feet is an adventure, too, a grand adventure.
            For one, I teach differently. Specifically, I am back to fulltime in the classroom since I no longer have the added duties of Chair. No extra meetings, no interrupted days with gloom and joy, deaths in families near and far, engagements, expectations of new life, broken hearts, disappointments and acceptance letters, problems with a DARS (our electronic academic record-keeping system), and complaints about the weather. No more long conversations with profs concerning students, schedules, career choices, lack of opportunities, lost causes, fellow colleagues, my decisions (good ones and bad ones—plenty of those), the Admin, the Contract, our pay frozen for four long years, and the weather. Always the weather.
            We live in Minnesota. Somehow the damnable weather must be someone’s fault. And of course, we live in Marshall. Someone must be able to shut off its continuous wind.
            And my short move over last summer hasn’t been as easy as just closing one door and walking through another. I had a semester sabbatical in Fall ‘12, rich with possible blog posts but instead you had to follow me on Facebook. Great travels to London, Bath, and Canterbury to study, to immerse myself in British literary heritage, and to daily walk the ways of Dickens, Browning, Chaucer, Austen, and Pip, Little Dorrit, and so many others.
            But, it is this term’s classes that are occupying me now. Four classes, all different preps, two new to me and both almost still just-out-of-the-box brand new to the campus. My third class I regularly teach, but I significantly changed it. The last is a milk run for me, but one I haven’t taught in five or six years. Frankly, I’m struggling to juggle all this, to know all my 85 students’ names, to plan ahead when at times I have only my experience and intuition to guide me. But, I’m managing. And, I don’t have any of those endless, albeit, necessary meetings.
            (One of my good friends once had a sign on his door: “Call a meeting, the creative alternative to work!” So right he is.)
            Five years as Chair! It still boggles my mind. I had planned on one year; it grew into five.
            But I did like it. I’ll leave it to others to judge how good a job I did, but I know I enjoyed myself. “Enjoyed” in the sense that each day I did have a strong sense that what I did mattered and that I had actually helped people, students mostly. I have the same sense as a professor (i.e., one who’s teaching fulltime), the awareness that what I do matters. The classroom, however, is planting an orchard knowing I will not taste the fruit.
             Being a Chair is often like being an air traffic controller: okay, that one’s landed; this one’s taxiing; that one has taken off. You can see what’s what, often the day it happens. With deadlines and specific tasks, you know when to check off something from the “To Do” list. Not so with lecturing on Browning to high school teachers-in-training or future grad students. Will this end up at Marshall High? In a MA thesis at Kansas State? And what of those who are struggling even to pass the class? Is their possibility of graduation fading?
            In addition to returning to the classroom after a restful sabbatical, I returned to the classroom after an amazing weekend in the Cities called the Landmark Educational Forum. A few of you may at this point believe I drank “the Kool-Aid” or suffered a mind-meld or was abducted by aliens in London, but far from it. Marianne and I went together to our Forum; it was intense and enlightening.
            First off, be clear: Landmark is not a cult. And be forewarned, it is brutally honest. However, the sharp honesty it demands starts with each participant, (that would be me) being honest about the games and stories we (that would be I) believe are true. And believe them even when we know they are our own fictions.
            I won’t give away too much on the whole weekend’s experience, but I will say that even here in Marshall, there are introduction sessions open to all. Or, wherever you live, you can look up Landmark Educational Forum online and find out about introduction opportunities in your location. It is worth the time, effort, and (yes) money to attend a Landmark Forum Weekend.
            And so, this semester: I believe the rest and change in routine created by sabbatical, the passing along of Chair duties, and the personal enlightenment of Landmark have all helped me begin this term on much better footing. I’m behind in grading. Break Week became a grading frenzy marathon, and still I stayed way behind. But, it’s all good.
            And it’s good to be back where I belong, at the chalkboard, at the lectern, holding office hours, grading those long-neglected stacks of frosh comp.
             T. S. Eliot said: “And the end of all our journeys will be to return to the starting point / And know the place for the first time.”
            It’s great to be home.

  

              Downton Abbey and our loss of Matthew Crawley
                                       Spoiler Alert!
                                               *
            Okay, first an apology for not posting anything in nearly a year. I know I have no excuse except “I’ve been busy.” That’s a feeble one, but it’s all I can offer.
            Busy end of my Spring ’12 semester. Busy summer winding down my five-year tenure as Chair of the English Department here at SMSU. Busy sabbatical semester which included lots of writing and editing and reading; a week-long trip to California for a wedding; a three-week trip to London, Bath, and Canterbury; then home to surgery (needed but not life-threatening); Notre Dame going 12-0 during their regular season; Thanksgiving, Christmas, and an intense Landmark Forum Weekend; and then school resuming with a rush and with me again teaching fulltime.
                     [Insert a longing breath for more sabbatical
                              disguised as a deep sigh…..]
                                                     *
            And now here I am, heartbroken over the Season Three finale of Downton Abbey.
            I wish I could sing it like Curly does in Oklahoma!, “ol’ Judd is dead, poor Judd Frye is dead…” but I can’t. Judd wasn’t dead, but Matthew Crawley is most sincerely dead. He lies in a ditch; blood running down his handsome, young face; crushed by his sports car that flipped over on top of him after being hit by a furniture remover’s lorry on a beautiful Yorkshire road near Downton Abbey itself.
            Only moments before, he’d held his son, his only child, born of his beautiful wife, Lady Mary, who never looked better even though she just went through labor and delivery.
            And he’s saved the estate, Downton. And he’s saved his brother-in-law, Tom Branson, from poverty and estrangement from the Crawley family. And he’s saved Cousin Rose, Lady Rose MacClare of Scotland, from running off with a married man three times her age and as randy as a goat on the heather-covered moors of Scotland. And he stood by his sister-in-law, Lady Edith, as she strove to become a journalist.
            Oh, Matthew, so middle-class! He once worked as a lawyer, after all, and is the son of a physician whose practice was in Manchester, the hallmark of all things “trade” in Edwardian times. And yet, he grows so aware of what it will take to save an institution like Downton for generations to come and understands why that’s important for his family and the nation. And those will be his generations, since he managed to melt the icy-but-not-so-maiden Lady Mary and produce a one-and-only heir by her.
           I think at times, if it weren’t for bad luck, the Crawley family would have no luck at all.
           Let’s take Lady Mary as an example. She’s born into the most powerful social class ever, the Gentry of the Victorian Period, and she grows up surrounded by limitless Edwardian splendor. But that enormous grandeur can’t be hers; she’s a woman and can’t inherit directly.  This is a historically inaccurate plot line, by the way. Jane Austen used the same last will and testament tension in Pride and Prejudice, but it wasn’t accurate even in 1813. By 1912, women didn’t have all the rights they do now, but it’s reasonable to assume Lady Mary would have been sitting pretty without tying the knot to secure her own home. But, in 2011 when Season One opens, we accept this twist of fate and horrid Crawley luck as history, but it’s not.
          So, Julian Fellowes, our script writer, has taken some liberties with Lady Mary’s fortune.
           And, even before the opening credits for Episode One (Season One) have ceased running (with the spectacular Highclere Castle in the background and swarms of starched servants preparing breakfast and ironing the newspaper to stop the ink from bleeding), Lady Mary is left with an unscathed heart. This is April 15, 1912, the morning that the tragedy of the Titanic makes headlines. Lady Mary’s fiancé died on that emblem of wretched excess gone with the waves.
          In A Room with a View by E. M. Forester and published in 1908, Lucy and her brother refer to all fiancés as fiascos; it’s a running family joke in this Matthew Crawley-like middle-class family. Lady Mary’s never-seen-on-screen-alive-or-dead fiancé fits as a fiasco to be sure. He was a distant cousin of her father’s, the Earl of Grantham, Robert Crawley, and conveniently close enough in blood to be a lackey for Lady Mary to marry the estate she loves.
          Unlike John Brown, who lies moldering in his grave, this cousin’s remains are never recovered, and he is declared dead.
          Lady Mary wears black, but hardly feels the loss except for the inconvenience of having to find another way “to marry Downton” as it were.
          Her luck runs from rot to riot as a lover dies in her illicitly sensuous bed, potentially razing her social status while her jealous sister, Edith, stokes the fires of ruinous scandal.   
          Now enter Matthew Crawley, by chance, a more-distant cousin and only living male descendent able to inherit Downton from Lord Crawley. Matthew, of course, is smitten at once by the beautiful and haughty Lady Mary, but he manages to insult her even before she’s properly introduced herself and delicately raised the veil of her riding habit, so fashionable in 1890 yet still in style at the Yorkshire Downton estate. Soon, to show how much he really loves her, he even tries to disinherit himself. He knows the law. He tries to give back his future title, and thus Downton, but can’t while he’s upright. No way exists to do so.
          Another unlucky sister of the Downton threesome is Lady Sybil. She’s the youngest, a bit wild, appearing in one scene wearing I Dream of Jeannie Harem garb and in another helping a house maid secure a position as a typist, at the time, a job with a future for a young, independent woman.
          When Lady Sybil is being wildly political by going to a Suffragette Rally that turns violent, Matthew comes along with Branson, the chauffer, to save her. It’s at this point that Lady Mary sees Matthew for what he really is, a decent, smart, kind gentleman who happens to love her and happens to have the key to her happiness—the future ownership of Downton. But, in fairness, I think Lady Mary is more caring and generous than not, but brought up to presume that life will always be fair to her and always gild her way.
          That evening, after Lady Sybil is back safe at Downton, Lady Mary order sandwiches for Matthew. They sit together in a small dining room, just the two. He has wine, which he offers to share but lacks a second wineglass. She accepts but won’t break the enthralling spell by ringing for a servant to fetch one. She drinks from his crystal goblet; one sip’s all it took.
          At the end of The Princess Bride, the grandfather tells his grandson that Wesley’s kiss of Buttercup was one of the best ever given. I would rate Matthew’s leaning over and kissing Mary after he proposes (the first time) right up there. The way she hold his neck to draw him closer, it’s a marvelously done scene. In this informal setting in an all-too-formal world, the seemingly invulnerable woman allows herself to be vulnerable, allows herself to love an honorable man.
          Then, her change of heart: her engagement with Matthew is off and the Great War is on.  Season One closes as that magnificent world ends, at English high summer with its gaiety and splendor, and with thoughts of Sarajevo far from everyone’s mind. No one at Downton that bright day knew the lights were going out all over Europe; no one knew they’d never be lit for these gilded elites again. No one at that summer lawn party has the gruesome vision to imagine the unimaginable horrors of Ypres or Gallipoli or Verdun.
          Season Two begins with Captain Matthew Crawley a gallant officer on the Western Front, the Somme specifically, about the worst hell-hole in the whole bloody, aimless affair. He’s now engaged to Miss Lavinia Swires, like himself, a wealthy middle class denizen. And luckless Lady Mary has snagged a wealthy scoundrel from the heap of conniving opportunists circulating London society but not in uniform.  She takes up this second fiasco, Sir Richard Carlisle, a wealthy up-and-coming newspaper mogul whom no one likes and many fear, even though clearly she prefers the engaged-to-another-woman Matthew. Dante would be hard pressed to know into which circle of Hell to fling this fiasco; he’s mean-spirited and threatening, vindictive, arrogant, and utterly contemptuous of the very privileged society he hopes to marry up to. Even the butler, Mr. Carson, knows better than agree to work for the future bride and her brooding, ill-tempered groom-elect.
          Also in Season Two, Lady Sybil becomes a nurse surrounded by Gentry officers but falls for her father’s worst nightmare, the chauffer:  a commoner, an Irish Catholic, a Sinn Féin supporter, and one solidly principled and conscientious young man. No father could ask for more of his Irish son-in-law except possibly a Trinity degree.
          And this season ends with the Great War reaching its non-conclusive Armistice and the Great Influenza cutting its snarling swath through many of the War’s survivors, including Matthew’s Lavinia. But eventually, Lady Mary sees the light, accepts Matthew’s hand (a second time) and his second memorable kiss in the snow of Christmas 1919. All seems set for a happy Season Three.
          But early in Season Three, Lady Sybil, now Mrs. Branson, dies from complications of childbirth, which paints a cross-hair target on Lady Mary’s back at the end of this season when she, like her sister, becomes pregnant. Was Sybil’s condition hereditary, and thus, would Lady Mary suffer the same fate? Would this pregnancy be another successful live birth that tragically costs the mother her life?
          Circumstances beyond the control of the producers forced Julian Fellowes to let Lady Mary and child both survive but forced Matthew’s death. Dan Stevens’ decision to leave Downton Abbey after three years left few options. So, Matthew, played by Stevens, dies in that ditch five minutes before the end of Season Three.
          It’s a painful loss. Matthew was so upstanding without being a prig, so middle-class in the best sense: fair and open, willing to hear all sides, dedicated to his principled causes, willing to speak up against the disdainful authority and omnipresent precedence of class and society as often represented by his father-in-law. And he loved Lady Mary and let her know it. He actually seemed to me to be the embodiment of everything we brag about as being a modern, enlightened, and liberal-minded American.
          In the USA, Season Four won’t start until January 2014. We’ve ten months to fret, to hope for leaks from across the Pond informing us of what’s up at Downton, and to follow the actors as closely as we are following Princess Kate’s pregnancy.
          I speculate that Tom Branson will shine even more now that he’s not in the glare of Matthew’s stellar status. I’m pulling for Tom and Rose to fall into a stunning and fulfilling love. And I hope Lady Mary will discover she can run Downton as well as our deceased Matthew did. And here’s a plug for Lady Edith finally finding an honorable single man rather than converting to Catholicism and joining an order of nuns heading off to equatorial Africa as a missionary.
          But I fear for Matthew and Lady Mary’s son, who will be old enough in Downton Abbey, Season Twenty-Two to die on the beaches of Dunkirk.