Oh, YES! I think that was a much better series. She was absolutely brilliant. And someone has uploaded the whole thing. Ep. 1, part 1

What you see is what you can expect from rapist Hollywood directors, William’s Refrigerating Cash fund. Clinton’s sexual harassment, Obama’s golf vacations while laughing at US casualties in Afghanistan, and so on and so forth.

Under the guise of “streamlining” the appointment process, this Chuck Schumer-sponsored usurpation of power would remove the “advise and consent” function of the Senate for over 200 presidential appointments.

Therefore seriously weakening (even further) the system of Checks and Balances and putting the presidency on steroids.

See the Heritage Foundation’s alarming report here: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/04/Speed-Up-Nominations-and-Confirmations-but-Do-Not-Enact-S-679

This has been going on quietly while the Public are distracted by bread and circuses/Bin Liner’s demise. And it may well pass: it has support from people like Lamar Alexander and Scott Brown. Bad enough that Oboner has appointed so many CZARS, now this.

Took me about 10 minutes of “I, Claudius” before I had to turn it off for its nails-on-chalkboard effect.

Heh–one of my ancestors, who lived in the eighteenth century and died around 1790, was described as living to the age of 78 with a full head of hair and “every tooth in his head white and sound.”

I had been considering Netflixing “The Tudors,” but after your description, I’m thinking, “Why bother?” I’ll check out the BBC series you mentioned instead–thanks for the rec.

As for bathing… well, yes, by Tudor times people were getting rather nervous about bathing, mostly because the London city water supplies were getting pretty bad. Ditto the idea that fresh air through an open window could make you sick — if you lived in London in the Renaissance, yup it could. But “not bathing” at the public bathhouses anymore didn’t mean that people didn’t wash themselves, or take the Renaissance equivalent of a sponge bath. Soap recipes were a great preoccupation of Tudor and Elizabethan women.

The Irish of the time, of course, never gave up bathing daily or more often still, but they had much better water and every peasant had his own sauna-size bathhouse out back, pften dug out of the hill or in a little shed.

I agree that the clear skin is unlikely, given the court staying up so late; but again, a rich person is a person who gets decent nutrition during childhood, and girls don’t lose their beauty in a day.

Masterpiece Theater has always been a favorite of mine and is one of the few reasons I’d hate to see PBS go.

Have recently seen the new “Jane Eyre” movie that came out and loved it. The leads are great. Might even see it again.