Consider This

By LC Van Savage

“The race is not (always) to the swift,” the Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 9:11, “nor the battle to the strong.” I can relate to that, yes I can—well, at least to the race/swift part. I’m not real strong and I definitely don’t do battles.

You see, I began my "career" in TV and yes, Radio, at NYU in 1958 because I wanted to be Barbara Walters although she hadn’t been invented yet. That was it, my life career choice and I spent wonderful times running around NYC making films and coming back to the school to edit them—with a razor and a spool of the tape or film upon which I’d shot my immortal scenes. It was heaven; I had to act, write scripts, learn how to film, interview on TV and radio, be a disc jockey, do commercials and in fact, do it all. That was it for me. My choice was made and I was on my way.

But enter Mongo and the dream went on hold because I wanted instead to run off with him, one of the maybe only intelligent decisions of my entire life. And so we raised our sons, and have had an amazing and very good life together. I watched Barbara W. rise through the ranks and we all know where she is today and what she’s done and where she’s gone and the fabulous people she’s interviewed. Jealous? Moi? Sure. Bet on it. But she didn’t get to have Mongo and three remarkable sons the way I did. Nyaa Nyaa Babba Wawa.

So back to that race/swift thing; it seems that now, fifty years later, I’m finally getting my dream and here it is. Beginning at its earliest stages, I became involved with a terrific couple who filmed and produced a TV show with me that appeared on 50+ public access stations around Maine, some other New England states, a couple of states out west and three countries in Europe. It was called “LC & CO.” Eventually it evolved, and now this couple, Director Dave Wilkinson, Producer Marilyn Taylor and I are the creators and custodians of a TV show called "incredibleMAINE." We work with a small but dedicated crew, Ramone Hanley-Warren of Edgecomb, Richard Wenzel of Phippsburg and Steve Conicelli of Topsham and the show is about, you guessed it, our incredible state of Maine. "incredibleMAINE" got noticed by MPBN and they have given us a weekly time slot; the first time a show has ever gone directly from cable access TV to MPBN. The contract has been signed and our show will be seen on every Saturday at 10:30 AM on MPBN, starting on November 3rd. Please watch weekly and email me with your opinions. I’m of course hoping they’ll be good, but gosh, no pressure even though a bad review will assuredly wreck my 50 year old dream. But hey, really, do what you think is right.

Marilyn and Dave are real pros with long CVs in the business and they make the work hard, enjoyable and professional while giving enormous thought to all details during the shooting and editing. The results are shows that flow smoothly, full of entertainment, action, information and all that is good about our great state of Maine. We all click well together, we are friends, we hardly ever brawl and the synergy is astonishing. I’m really and most truly very lucky.

We call it “hybrid” TV because it’s part magazine format, part documentary format , part Music TV, and all great if I may be unabashedly immodest. We want to tell the world what most Mainers already know; that our state is chockablock full of incredibly good stuff, incredibly great art, incredibly fabulous architecture, incredible people with incredible stories to tell, incredible history, incredibly creative human beings, incredibly beautiful scenery, and of course, incredible, "incredibleMAINE!"

I get to host this show while everyone else does all the hard work; scripting, taping, editing, composing and playing all the music, the latter all from Dave (with his band "Sounds Incredible") and who is a terrific musician in his own right. I mean what could be better?

Well, OK, money would be good. MPBN won’t pay us because we produce our own show, and so it is now our responsibility to find underwriters, so if you know of any who seem eager to part with some cash, get in touch. This is the one part of Public Broadcasting about which I’m not terribly thrilled, but we’ll raise the money. Why not? We’ve come this far so we’ll bring it on home!

To quote producer Marilyn Taylor, “'incredibleMAINE' celebrates the great state of Maine as well as the New England traditions of resourcefulness, integrity and humor. These are characteristics,” she continues, “with which any organization or company would be proud to be associated. Our show will be an excellent ambassador for the state.”

And so it shall. But that’s easy because Maine has so much to offer and give, to show and to teach, and now we at “incredibleMAINE” are getting the chance to document all that on our shows on MPBN, Saturdays at 10:30 A. M. “incredibleMAINE” is informative and fun and very funny I think, serious when it has to be, absurd when it can be, comical when we can get away with it, and always entertaining.

And best of all I get to have my dream finally come true. Retire? Fiddlefaddle. From what? For what? Nah. This is it folks. I’m finally doing what I always wanted to do. I may be firmly ensconced in the amazing world of geezerdom, and my own personal race may not have been swift, but at long last, it’s been won. And it was quite well worth the wait.