Detecting Hope: "There is a Yes"

Last night I re-watched the third and last season (2017) of Detectorists (BBC article), one of my favorite creations of all time. Have you seen it?
It's like a smart friend who lets you discover a solution yourself.
The solutions––and the problems––in the show are real, but in miniature, mostly, like the things the characters uncover with their metal detectors--old buttons and ring pulls. They're so well and lovingly presented, it's like looking into a dollhouse and marveling at the perfection.

Like so:
Mackenzie Crook, the show's writer and director, plays Andy, a (temporarily? former) archaeologist. Andy is working day labor, and one day he is assigned to spray weed killer alongside a highway.
He fills the spray containers for himself and his coworker with water, then picks up the bottle of chemical he's supposed to add to the water. We see the industrial label--(I thought of the report on factory deaths from Dow herbicide I'd linked to the other day)--and . . . he simply doesn't add it.
He and his coworker go and water the roadside all day.

Later, Andy rescues a hedgehog from the road.
His coworker asks, "Is that a porcupine?"

Andy looks shocked. "No, mate, it's a hedgehog."

"I thought hedgehogs were flat."

"If they're run over, they're flat. When they're alive, they're spherical."

[Oh--I found this--21 seconds on youtube. Most of the show's humor is gentle, but this made me laugh out loud.]

Bigger issues are presented too, but it's mostly at the level of our hobbies. And it's all gold.

I. Andy's Hat

An unimportant detail jumped out at me this time:
the little castle insignia on the cap Andy always wears.

BELOW: You can see the logo on Andy's cap, right. On the left is his co-detectorist, Lance (Toby Jones).

I recognized it because the other day, Helen, my coworker who sorts clothes, had handed me an old felt hat with the same insignia. She'd asked if I'd like it for my Cool Old Books & Things section, which I did. It's a bit bashed and faded, so normally it'd go into baling, but she loves worn, old things and knows I do too.

The name on the inside band: Goorin Bros. I looked them up.
Cassel Goorin began selling custom hats from a horse-drawn cart in Pittsburgh in 1895. The castle is a play on his name. Now they've got a vintage but hip vibe--they make a pork pie hat like Walter White's of Breaking Bad.
Andy's is a brown cotton private cadet hat--doesn't look like Goorin carries them anymore, but I found them online for around $30.

Our felt fedora sells new for $150–.
I priced it five.
I hadn't put it out when I left on Monday--I've been home since, because of the terrible air quality. When I go in today, I'll see if it fits and keep it if it does. (And post a photo.)

II. "There is a Yes"

I'm sitting outside this morning-- the air quality is better, but still "unhealthy for sensitive groups". But after two days inside, I'm choosing to breathe the bad air.
This is irrational. I know it, and I do it anyway, because I'm tired of being cooped up.

My behavior reminds me of an ongoing question of mine--a real question, not a rhetorical one:
Why do people who think we're doomed choose to have babies?

If you have any thoughts or can answer for yourself, I'd be genuinely interested.
One woman I know who has three children--grown now--told me she'd chosen to have the third in defiance of how bad things are in the world. It was an act of hope, she said, in the face of her own despair.

I admired her hope, but I was a little baffled about her reasoning.
I didn't push her further, (I didn't want to imply I think it's wrong to have children), but I mean. . .
I see how having a third baby gave her hope, but it's her child who has to live on into the blighted future...
Also, she and her husband already had reproduced themselves with their first two children--weren't they enough of a YES in the world?

Speaking of a Yes in the world, another famous person to whom I felt some connection has died. You maybe saw, Julian Sands's body was found finally--he'd disappeared while hiking in winter.

George Emerson, dead.

George was a life force. But actually, in A Room with a View--one of my favorite movies (1985)––it's George's father, Mr Emerson, who talks about hope. Mr Emerson asks Lucy (Helena Bonham Carter), the girl George loves:

"Make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes."

I loved the happy ending of Room, but as an older person, I rather doubt Lucy and George were going to happy. (Though happier than the protagonist of Maurice was going to be... Talk about a preposterous ending.)

In this article from the British Library I see that I'm not the only one to wonder about E. M. Forster's endings:

"Questions have been raised about Forster’s ability to produce satisfying endings to his books.
In a journal entry of May 1917 his contemporary Katherine Mansfield did not mince her words when she voiced her frustration about this aspect of his writing:
‘E M Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He’s a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm?
Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea.’"'

Mr Emerson hints at that too. He talks in grand terms, but at the end of the novel, he observes,

"We can help one another but little."

Which brings me back to the littleness of Detectorists. We can help one another "but little", but that little is not nothing.

[SPOILER]

At the end of Detectorists, Andy and Lance manage to save a tree from being cut down, by putting up a bat box. This calls in the Bat Action Team, who have the power to halt tree cuttings.
The field where the tree grows is still lost to a solar power company, but the tree remains.
A nice, realistic little Yes.

And then, from the realm of fairy tales, Mr Crook grants Andy and Lance their just deserts, delivered by way of the tree's magpies.

______________________

I've gone back indoors now.

Here're sketches from Day 2 of my 1st Camino, July 8, 2001. I was already suffering painful blisters.
Marz never got any blisters in 2011, I hope she's not getting them this time either!