Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well.
Please do not attack Democratic candidates or drag primary fights into our community.
I’ve got a trio of documentary programs for you tonight...something to interest everybody.
Talk about the War on Women…
Suffragettes with Lucy Worsley is streaming on Britbox. I absolutely adore Lucy Worsley’s programs. She is a a Joint Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces in Britain so usually you see her presenting in very grand settings. But this BAFTA winning program is a bit different. This is the gritty history of the British women’s struggle to get the vote — a struggle that escalated from marches in the street to hunger strikes in prison (and the horrific practice of force feeding inflicted on those brave women) to out and out terrorism with bombs. Indeed, if it were not for the social shifts that occurred of necessity because of the Great War, getting the vote might have taken much, much longer. Lucy Worsley’s work is always excellent but, given the political assaults on the rights of women today, this program is an especially important must-see.
Learn how Border Walls signal the End of Empire…
Mary Beard’s Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit is a fascinating four part series now streaming on Acorn and I believe also on YouTube.
Truly, I could listen to Mary Beard all day. A professor of Classics at Cambridge, she makes the distant past very accessible and relevant to us as we are today. In this program, she travels all over what was the Roman world, from Britain to North Africa to the Middle East. We learn of Rome’s spread of influence, how people became citizens, and how this vast and powerful Empire all came apart. (Spoiler: the beginning of the end began when Rome began limiting itself with walls such as Hadrian's Wall in Britain.)
Here is a short trailer from the BBC. (There is an even better one on Acorn which I cannot embed.) I will definitely be watching this series again — it’s that good. And I am looking forward to seeing Mary Beard’s program on Caligula which will be on Acorn soon.
And now for something completely ridiculous you probably never heard of...American industrial musicals!
Bathtubs Over Broadway is an eye opener — and you can find this weird and wonderful documentary about an an obscure American genre of Musical Theater on Netflix. It’s by Steve Young, a comedy writer who worked for Dave Letterman for many years. “Dave’s Record Collection” was an element of Letterman’s show that highlighted funny and obscure recordings — and it was in researching such things that Steve Young stumbled upon records of musical entertainments developed for meetings of employees (usually the sales force) of large corporations — and which were never, ever intended for the general public. These shows had huge budgets, famous stars, and represented a state of American corporate culture that is now long gone. Steve Young has rescued recordings and other memorabilia of these shows from oblivion and written a book about them (Everything’s Coming Up Profits). And now there is this documentary, as well. Glen the Plumber, this one’s for you!!
The weekend begins now. Come in, be comfortable, and share your day, your weekend plans, your menus! This is an open thread.