August 4, 2009, 6:25 pm
Ken Burns' mega-docs have spawned a star or two. Shelby Foote rose from obscurity after his bravura performance on The Civil War. Buck O'Neil, a pretty darn good baseball player in the Negro Leagues and the first African American major-league coach, found the greatest stardom of his life after being a major voice on Baseball.
Now comes Shelton Johnson, a wonderfully astute park ranger who sounds as if he would be just as at home on a college campus as he is on the back trails of Yosemite National Park, where he has been stationed for 15 years. Quick on his feet, too.
Somebody asked about the notoriously low pay of park rangers.
"I was called to this work, and it had nothing to do with financial recompense of any kind," Johnson said. "People bandy about the expression within the parks that we are paid in sunsets. I think with inflation, I need sunrise, and I need moonrise as well. But for me, in my purposes, it's been adequate for 22 years. More than adequate."
*Inquirer
television critic Jonathan Storm is reporting this week from the
television critics' press tour in Pasadena, Calif. These items
originally appeared on his blog, "Eye of the Storm," at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/storm.
