Forty! Forty wonderful Years! ha ha ha ha! (thunder, etc)

Some time in 2009, Sesame Street will have completed forty years since its debut in 1969. When I first arrived in this wonderful country, the first television show I watched regularly was Sesame Street. (I could never figure out the schedules of the other shows, because I didn't know that daytime shows were at the same hour each day, and night time shows were just once a week. I felt really stupid once that was made clear. Then, of course, I needed to figure what went on on the weekend.)

I knew all the characters on Sesame Street, and would talk back to the screen, etc. It was a little black and white set, which we had bought second hand for about fifty dollars, and we mostly watched Sesame Street and reruns of Monty Python. It was dismaying to learn, much later, that all the shows were actually in color.

I loved some of the music. Joan Baez sang, Pete Seeger, John Denver (or was that only on the Muppet Show?), the Carpenters, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and of course, the regulars. I could do without Big Bird's singing, but everybody else was pretty good. I particularly liked a bunch of tiny bugs called, I think, the Twiddlebugs. They were the best! And of course, Cookie Monster was a great personality. I even enjoyed the kids who were featured there. The creator of the show is Joan Ganz Cooney (wish I had three names like that), who was featured on Morning Edition a few mornings ago, and who declared that the biggest break the show got was when Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, signed on for Sesame Street. Three of the signature characters (I pick these out only because I know who plays them) on the show were Big Bird (Carol Spinney), Ernie (Jim Henson himself) and Bert (Frank Oz). Frank Oz also played Grover Monster. Other brilliantly lovable muppet characters were The Count, Guy Smiley, and the famous Kermit D. Frog, of Sesame Street News. And let's not forget the singing Marshall and his horse.

By now, of course, the format of Sesame Street is well known. With acceptance has also come a degree of jadedness. Education-phobic children, and the adults who supervise them prefer other shows similar to Sesame Street in terms of their entertainment value, but without the educational component. Perhaps also the values adopted by Sesame Street are a lot more kinder and gentler than suits the popular taste! Still, Sesame Street has continued to more than keep up the same level of creativity, which should bring it great accolades in this anniversary year. I imagine Ms Cooney has been as surprised and pleased as anyone else at the critical and ratings successes Sesame Street has enjoyed over the years. Even if it seems, in retrospect, as though Sesame Street did the obvious things in the obvious way, at the time they were done, their level of innovation was unbelievable. The Sesame Street team, and all its collaborators deserve a great deal of credit for one of the most brilliant and timely inventions of the twentieth century, the fusion of make-believe and reality in a friendly urban setting, that turned a smile towards pre-schoolers when they most needed it. Three hearty cheers!

Archimedes, wondering if you'd be interested in buying a letter S?