Documentaries: NerdFest 2009.

It's been a rough week. Work's tough as it's my first week taking over duties from the girl who got laid off, so I'm generally exhausted. Seriously, it's 9:40 right now and I'm in bed on a Friday night. I also went out to celebrate my friend Martha's birthday this week, and had the most amazing meatloaf EVER at my friend Emily's new restaurant. She's a very talented chef - if you are in Charlotte and want a new restaurant, I highly recommend it, it's called Commonhouse, and it's at the corner of Hawthorne and Central. Cheap prices (nothing over $15), everything on the menu is a solid fantastic choice, and hey, I have VIP coupons for anyone who wants them.

I got home from work tonight relatively on time, and after tearing into some sweatpants and letting the dog out, I decided to indulge in my not-so-guilty pleasure: PBS documentaries. I can watch them for free on Netflix.com, and I've gotten into them lately - yes, it's possible, more so than usual. I watched a fantastic one on Thomas Jefferson last week that I highly reccommend - it examined the entire man, fames and faults, and I was sad for it to even end. There was so much that I never knew about him - things like the fact that he was plagued by grief his entire life, beginning with the death of his father at 14, and losing all but two of his children and his wife. He was brilliant beyond words in his vision for our country, but he found matters of the heart to be so difficult, he couldn't relate to almost anyone. Due to his years living in Paris as the US Ambassador to France, Jefferson brought us things like raisins, olives, and apricots, and left the French with that little experiment we call democracy. Finally, I learned that despite Jefferson's attempts to abolish slavery in the early Constitution, Jefferson never saw fit to free his own slaves in his lifetime. His words on the subject described what would eventually lead to the Civil War - that slavery was "akin to holding a wolf by the ears - it's terrifying to keep holding on to it, but you don't dare let it go, either." My mother's family comes out of Jefferson's descendents (my middle name, Epes, is my great-grandmother's maiden name. Jefferson's longest surviving daughter, Polly, married Thomas Eppes - a P was dropped somewhere later - who was actually Jefferson's nephew. Altogether now...EW!), and even though the guy existed hundreds of years before I came around, I definitely see little parts of him in my family. How much of that is Mr Jefferson's blood, I don't know, but it feels cool to be part of that kinda family.

Tonight I got home from work and randomly selected a documentary about the Shakers. I wasn't expecting to like it, but wow...the Shakers were definitely a part of American history that has been drastically overlooked. For those of you who don't know who they are, the Shakers started out in the late 1700's when a woman named Ann Lee came from England and told her testimony of how God had spoken to her. She created a society with her followers that lived in communal areas, and their religion centered on simple living and hard work. All of the followers were celibate (um, yikes!), so they relied on conversions and adoptions of orphans, and they were, at their core, both feminist and modernist. All members were considered equal, and unlike the Amish (who many associate them with), the Shakers thrived on innovation and invention to make work more enjoyable, as they felt their work brought them closer to God. Shakers invented the common clothespin, water-repellent fabric, over half of the innovations to the modern washing machine, the circular saw (a woman invented that one!), the flat broom, the packaged vegetable seed, and created some of the most stunning, original and useful architecture and furniture in the United States. They were the first religious group to be granted consciencious objector status, and oh yeah...they made some nice chairs and wrote the song "Simple Gifts", which is best known as Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring". It's kind of sad that they've been reduced to the touristy dead-religion status, where people think of them as these crazy people who lived a hundred years ago, but in reality, they still exist. There's literally four left in the world, and they live on a commune together in the south part of Maine. I hate to think that this peaceful, benevolent people may die out in my lifetime, 300 years after Ann Lee started the movement. Maybe that's what this world needs, a few more Shakers.

Anyway, both of these documentaries are fantastic, and I'd recommend either of them. You can watch them for free online if you are a Netflix subscriber, or you can probably watch them on PBS.org as well.

I'm going to bed now.