Each time I get to talk to Dean Butler, I learn something new about America’s history and culture. Independent thinkers will always find the most suitable and advanced path in their approach to the new world. Butler writes and thinks with his heart, although he leads with an efficient type of thinking. I found it interesting that during our conversation, he said he didn’t believe in past lives, although he had completely found a soul group called the cast of the Little House on the Prairie. Not only did he just work intrinsically with the cast members, but it’s years later, he is still connected to the show. He has written a book, Prairie Man, Little House Life and Beyond, and is around to be involved in the future of Little House as it reboots onto Netflix. He is connected to NBC, Peacock, and CoziTV, the people who air the show. It seems that his involvement with the show goes beyond the normal television run, and all souls involved, save for the ones who have crossed over, can still be felt. Michael London is clearly on the other side, and his ideas and will to have this show a lifetime experience for all people are immensely connected to this present life; isn’t that a past life connection of sorts? Everyone, including Butler, has forever been immersed in the name and its memories and connected to the deceased Laura Ingalls, the writer of the book, who has now become a part of historical television programming. Connections to her ideas and legacy are past-life connections. The memories are still moving and living, breathing through the mouths and bodies of others who exist in the land of the living. We see them in the present time as cast members, who in this case carry on the will of the creative deceased. Butler has owned all of the rooted history in Landon’s mind, and how it came to be that he used these gifts to create such a show from the Ingalls series. There could never be enough history of the old. The old set the stage for the new and has been tried and proven. Television programming, as Butler put it, is an entirely different game now, and the networks appeal to what the audience wants to see. When I think of those outside of Hollywood who believe that the powers that be would dare allow Hollywood to die are sadly mistaken. Hollywood will always live on, through YouTube, Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, Peacock, Pluto, and Tubi. Why would Hollywood not be etched in the minds of those who breathe it, live it, and love it? Through the many platforms that it has helped to launch, and to those who respect the gam, when a Dean Butler can live to tell a story of people who we would only wish to brush against, those who are made of star quality, carries a glam all of its own. Some are born as stars, and it can be seen and felt even as they are children, and some go on to become stars. The Lena Hornes, Hattie McDaniels, Dorothy Dandridge, Anthony Quinn, Yul Bryner, to the Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitts, Jason Stratham, Robert DeNiro’s, Al Pacino’s, and the Sidney Poitier, Chadwick Boseman, Angela Bassetts, Chiwetel Ejiofor, I mean the list is vast and long. Little House on the Prairie marked us, branded us, hooked us on public television, and hooked us on the memory of the mind of Laura Ingalls. This little prairie house came into many big homes and inspired other shows. All In the Family, The Cosby Show, infected us with the purpose and how family, no matter what, sticks together. We have had The Ozzie and Harriet Show, My Three Sons, Dennis the Menace, Leave It to Beaver, and The Andy Griffith Show; these shows, in their own way, spawned Little House On The Prairie. Television programming is as diverse as the global audience that it now serves. If we can strectch our minds a bit and remove the labels of race, culture, class and entitlement, and just be people, Little House on the Prairie, like any family was focused on the basics of the family structure, father, mother, significant partners and others, children, the neighborhood, whatever that neighborhood might be, and how are we all going to continue to eat, sleep, cry, love, laugh and thrive together?
