Well, at least unemployment is at an all-time low, I say. Yes, counter the complainants, that’s because no one wants to work.

What’s puzzling is the judgmental tone used. As if everyone SHOULD want to work. And who are “they,” this apocryphal class of people who should be wanting to work but don’t?

Often, young people are blamed, but from what I can see, most young people do work, from necessity.

I am also puzzled by the idea that slogging away at any kind of work at all is considered virtuous. Who thought this up? Probably some aristocrats with a large contingent of serfs on their hands. Hey, you, if you’re just shuffling about over there, how about doing something with these sheep? They’re all over the place, disturbing my wife’s drinks party. Speaking of which, lug that cask of mead up to the garden. All right then, roll it, if you think that’s easier. Lazy bums.

Really what’s happening is that the workforce is getting smaller. During the last few years, the Baby Boom has been retiring or dying off. There used to be a lot of us, beginning in 1946, after the veterans came home from World War II. The oldest living boomers are now 78, the youngest about 60.

Television became popular in American homes when I was about 3. The westerns we watched as children featured a lot of shooting and fisticuffs. Guns were the thing. So much so that in suburban yards across America at any time of day children could be observed falling onto the grass clutching their hearts, yelling, “Aaaah, you got me!”

Odd, when you think about it, because the television script writers were probably not pugilists or gunslingers themselves.

“The Rifleman,” starring Chuck Connors, is a case in point. The show, which ran from 1958-1963, has been described as a series of morality plays in which a rancher in New Mexico’s old West brings up his son while defending law and order with his trusty souped-up rapid-fire Winchester.

As Chuck Connors later put it, “There was a lot of violence on ‘The Rifleman.’ We once figured out that I killed on the average of two and a half people per show.”

I watched ‘The Rifleman’ every Sunday night at Grandma’s house for years and I can’t recall him ever being being called to account by the law. He wasn’t even a lawman, just, supposedly, a peaceful rancher dad.

Naturally, McCain would prefer to settle these issues that come up so often out West in a nonviolent way, but somehow bad guys continually force his hand, and he has to blow them away.

Someone compiled a video on YouTube and counted them all. Lucas McCain killed 120 men before he was himself shot and killed. I guess that ended the series. It didn’t occur to me until lately that Lucas McCain was a psychopath and that his son, Mark (played by Johnny Crawford), must have been traumatized by witnessing so many murders.

I am now a fan of “Midsomer Murders,” a British murder mystery series which began in 1997. It is obviously not American. You can tell right away because the actors have British accents, except for the ones using annoying fake American accents to impersonate Americans. Also, even though many, many people are murdered in Midsomer, usually several per show, very few are gunfire victims.

You know a person is about to be dispatched when he or she looks around apprehensively and asks “Who’s there?” The murderer nevertheless catches the victim by surprise nine times out of ten, generally by a method involving clubbing over the head or stabbing with some imaginative choice of blades, although poison or fire may be employed in some cases, and one sees the occasional drownings, falls and death by crushing with heavy machines or furniture as well.

Lots of screaming. Why do only women scream when confronted with dead bodies? Men never do. Women always do, and they put their fists up to their mouths. If this is cultural, how do men and women learn this behavior? Why are there so many murders in the seemingly idyllic countryside of Midsomer County? Midsomer Barrow, Midsomer Worthy, Midsomer mallow, Midsomer Wellow, Badger’s Drift and Causton are but a few of Midsomer’s picturesque villages.

Well, back to work. Have a good week!

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(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the Lake Placid News for more than 20 years.)