Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Riding thru the Glen and other adventures near and far

Thought I'd surprise Bill Hess, if he looks my way, with these superb photos I gleaned from his blog earlier today. Top shot is a man on the street. Below that are some of the luminaries in the photography world who appeared at a Photography Seminar Bill attended in NYC.

The rumpled guy on the right works for the Times and created their "Lens" photography blog.

Bill Hess has created one of the web's best photo-journals. He has 1230 friends on FB, 1100 more than I do.

I'll bet neither Bill nor You - anybody out there? - watched the old program The Adventures of Robin Hood, aired on British and American TV from 1955-60. Scott never heard of it. That's cuz he was three when the show went off the air.

The history of the show is fascinating, but first take a look at these photos I got off my telly:

Littlejohn is cutting Robin Hood's hair. Robin is played by handsome British actor Richard Greene - 1918 – 1985 - dead at 66 of cardiac arrest.

Friar Tuck, with his incredibly sweet face, died at age 46 of "an overdose."

Maid Marian, played by the lovely Patricia Driscoll, is still alive at age 84.

I chanced upon the program when I was on my lunch hour. My very demanding boss, Ruth Z Deming, gave me time off for an hour, and what better way to spend it than watching TV shows from my youth.

Producer of Robin Hood is a woman named Hannah Weinstein. An American journalist and political activist, she moved to London to avoid the anti-communist persecution and McCarthyism rampant in the US. She became a television producer and brought the once-popular but now waning-in-popularity Richard Greene a second chance to become a big star.

The series was a huge hit. Weinstein (1911-84) hired dozens of blacklisted American writers who ghost-wrote for the show. No wonder it was so good! All these writers, banished in their own countries by the hysteria of the day, had a second chance to do what they loved most: write!

My friend Ron Abrams took this serious shot of me when we went to Morris Arboretum a few years ago. He took lots of photos and gave them to me. I've used them ever since as postcards. In this case, I tucked one in the birthday envelope to my friend who is fainting away at The Artman Home.

I think, boys and girls, I'll go up and read the new selection for my library book club: Jacob's Room by VA Woolf.

I engage in such compartmentalization that I neglected to mention I finished another short story I've been working on for two days. I write myself notes such as:

show a bit more of his character in the beginning - what does he like, what's in in his BR.

Forgot to do dat. Tomro's anudder day and Helen and Larry are skiing in Boulder.