Saturday, November 08, 2003
TV - YESTERDAY
There was some debate years ago as to the eventual shape of TV pictures? Many contended they should be round since the tubes generating those images was oval shaped at that time.
The first television pictures I saw were round and when the rectangular pictures came along the round-ites complained about the bottom, top and both sides of the picture were being chopped off. They felt cheated, but not for long because when more manufacturers changed to rectanglar types, they went along with the change. I sometimes felt like I was looking down an open manhole.
The smaller screens were called, logically enough, "sardine " can screens. Early TV studio construction had a number of them. The first one I recall seeing were installed in business locations, used just as radio had been used to attract customers into the store. TV set proved to be a real boon to one second-rate restaurant on a hill outside of our town. I remember how two of the men's civic clubs shifted their dinner meetings from downtown to the place where they could watch TV.
ZENITH was oval-minded and kept them longer than the others, as I remember, and RCA pushed the "square picture tube". I remember one little old lady calling our radio station to inquire if she could buy a round one or a square one. She would accept our word as final, adding that years before, we had helped her choose her first radio. One of our enginners had gone to her home to install it. "He tuned it to your station," she told us,"and it's been right there ever since. I never had it changed." She wanted to make sure we could do the same favor when she got her TV set.
Another incident which comes to mind when I rethink the early days of TV, had to do with the actual construction of "ours"when we got a license to build. The tower was six miles or so from the studios-to-be and had to be more or less self-contained and self-sustaining year round. A narrow road that was little better than a trail and it curved and twisted up totghe site on far side of the mountain. The crew hired to dig a water well had it pre-arranged that they would not work one week during hunting Season. They had to go the the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennesee to hunt bear. They came back bearing no bear and when they went up on the mountain Monday morning all their fine, new leather straps and belts on their drilling rig had been gnawed to nothingness by the local bear population.
Bear stories were plentiful when talking about that transmitter site. One night an engineer was sleepily seated at his conole hovering over the program in progress when a tremendous clatter jolted him awake and ready for sure disaster. The cooling system for the transmitter site consisted of a large fan mounted in the wall of the metal building. It was covered on both sides with heavy-duty ratwire screen material to keep out birds, leaves, and small critters. That night a curious bear had reared up on his hind feet to peer into the room to see what was going on in there. He rested his two front paws on the ratwire screen, which, in turn, was pressed against the whirring blades. That made a special noise, you might guess. The engineer was awakened from his half-sleep and was amazed as the bear simply stood there, as if wondering how in the world the two-legged things stand it in there with all that noise! After a time, he tired and withdrew his paws from the screen and went off into the woods, no doubt, to recount his views as to what those strange man-creatures were up to now up there on the mountain top.
A.L.M. November 7, 2003 [c465wds]
Friday, November 07, 2003
DON'T JUST SIT THERE!
This week, you can be sure that almost any people you hear complaining loudly about the political situation are people who did not vote on Election Day just a few days ago.
They are already out there.
This week, you can be sure that almost any people you hear complaining loudly about the political situation are people who did not vote on Election Day just a few days ago.
Poll official here in my local area, report that the number of voters who actually too slightly lower than the last time around. It was forty-there percent of eligible voters who actually showed up on chad-punching day earlier this week. There were forty-six percent last time around. That's not too much, of course.
Several factors enter into any consideration of what causes this obvious lack of interest in civic duties and obligations.
One favorite is the weather. This is variable, of course, but the weather for the moist recent election day herein our area was perfect. No heavy rains, high winds, snow or heat waves to handicap voters on their way to the polls.
Some revert back to the "my Grandmother died," excuse which used to work if someone wanted to go to the ball game instead of to work. It is amazing how important, how urgent, everyday routine procedures can become on election day.
We also must realize that not everyone is alert to the fact that we, as citizens, have to have some idea of what is happening. The simple reality is that when "Civics" was lumped into "Social Studies"in our educaional system, we lost our link to the legislative phase of world affairs. Manyof young, who are becoming older people, are not even aware of who is running for what office or why. New recruits are added annually to this expanding segment . This increase of informational idiocy decreases voting percentages more and more.
Election site workers also tell me of another rather new cause of voting laxity.
The lists of person eligible to vote have been increased by the addition of voters from new and easier ways in which one might register to vote. These "quickie" newcomers, I am told, seem to be not voting at all. They can, if they wish to do so, but, thus far, their performance has been on the sad side.
I'm asking 57% of you – what was your excuse?
A.L.M. November 6, 2003 [c384wds]
Thursday, November 06, 2003
COMMON SENSE
CBS-TV is undergoing a time of distress at the moment, since it announced it would not air the forthcoming special dealing the Reagan years, except next year sometime on “Showtime” to a rather limited “pay to see” audience.
The CBS-TV people finally came to realize that the film was a becoming something quite different from that originally planned. Advance clips showed it had become a critical analysis of the Reagan family. The allegations are now being made that Conservative “pressures”. Charges growing out of circulation of the advance clip showings also accuse the producers of creating incidents and creating fictional dialog to sustain such insertion of sections of truth untrammeled.
It is unfortunate that CBS-TV kept their heads in the silicon sands so long and refused to be aware of what was being done in their name. The day it was announced who would play the role of Ronald Regan was sufficient warning for most of us, but not the officials at CBS-TV. Trust is not one of the natural elements to be found in such agreements of things yet to be done.
Years from now there may well be some reason for such a critical work, but right now while the former President - of necessity to focal point of the story – lives in continued misery due to his debilitating illness. Out of respect for the man, and for his family, one would think critics might exercises a bit of common sense and keep much of their feelings away from public view.
Sadly we can cite incidents in the past when we have bad-mouthed our Presidents, but that is no excuse for doing it again. Give them fifty years or so, I'd say. Dorothy Parker often gets the blame but I think it was one the Longworth girls who said of President Calvin Coolidge that “he had been schooled by old maid aunts and weaned on sour pickles.” Or, when rumor spread that the Coolidge was dead, one of them quipped:”How can they tell?”
We can make fun of our Presidents when they are a generation removed, but not while still among us.
The fault in the current situation is not with CBS-TV, but with the producers of the bio-flick mini-series planned to create a Regan to fit their warped views. Common sense will prevail, I believe, in spite of the fact that much of the media is condemning CBS-TV for giving way to what they call “conservative pressures”. It may be wise for us to keep a watchful and fine-tuned, listening ear focused on any media members who attempt to make the wrongdoers look good.
A.L.M. November 5, 2003 [c455wds]
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
LIBERTY - WHAT IS IT?
It seems to me that right now is a rather poor time for us to be considering what we mean by "liberty."
By this time we should certainty know precisely what we mean by "liberty" in both a political and social sense. This is a time when we are engaged in military campaigns which urge other nations to follow our example. This is a time when we are actually forming government structures to set up free, democratic governments based on liberty and understanding, and it seems unwise to question the basic premise of our own beliefs.
Yet, as I read today's news, I find individuls and groups who are critical of the present administration's handling of internal and external affairs. Some of those fault-finding schemes strike at the fundamental concept of "Liberty", itself.
Louis D. Brandeis, as a former Supreme Court Jusitice, said in the year 1928: "Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... they valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty." Then, in 1932, speaking of that same liberty, Justice Brandeis added: "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
In their eagerness to present themselves in an engaging light before voters, some aspirants for the presidential role have made statements concerning the conduct of the war which qualify them for Brandeis' classification of those set forth with plenty of zeal but with little real understanding.
These individals and groups currently attempting to say that the war is futile and our handing of it muddled, should also remind themselves of the words by a man who led us in time of a previous war. "Therefore"...he concluded after much discussion on the state of liberty in the our land," the only sure bulwark to contining liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people." The iniitals which accompany that statement are "F.D.R."
Abraham Lincoln, another wartime president, commented: "The world has never had a good definition of liberty and the American people are now much in want of one. We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not mean the same thing."
Some citizens are voicing negative feelings today with "much zeal, well-meaning," in their view, but with little real understanding."
A.L.M. Nov. 4, 2003 [c430wds]
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
AN UNLIKELY TWOSOME
Now that the Civil War has ended in most of the nation it is considered reasonably safe to point out how much alike the two leaders of that time appear to have been.
They even looked alike. Find two pictures of them in similar poses and place Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis side-by-side. Notice how the general cut of the profiles resemble each other. How could they be more alike? The features are much the same, with Lincoln's a bit larger, rougher, perhaps, and his hair darker and more unruly than that of Jefferson Davis. Much depends on what type of beards, whiskers and hair-dos the two were wearing at that time. Lincoln's eyes would seem to appear darker, deeper more contemplative.
It would have been oddity enough with them just looking alike, but historians note more and more how much they were like each other in many ways. They seemed to echo each other, at times. Both were avid readers and we have stories of the young Lincoln reading books by candlelight or beside the fireplace. Young cadet Davis, at West Point, studied his books after by the glow of embers in the fireplace.
Both men liked Shakesepare, both read the English Romantic poets and each of them - and their wives read Scott and Burns. Both men where well school in the regular reading of the Holy Bible, as well. Both seemed to have a hunger for books.
Yes, it is true that Jefferson Davis did not suffer the rough frontier lifestyle that Abraham Lincon had to endure but they met with like troubles at other points in their lives.
Both of them like hunting and fishing and, when the opportunity came to them they participated in sports including boxing, wrestling and racing and other favorites of their time. Seldom do we find bookworms who are that active in sports.
In 1815 a young girl by the name of Ann Rutledge ,age 22, blue eyes, a sunburst of bright hair, sickened and died of typhoid fever at her home in New Salem, Illinois. Abe Lincoln was grief-stricken at her death. The very next month in that same year of 1835, Sarah Knox Taylor Davis – his wife of about ninety-days - died of either typhoid fever or some form of maleria.
When Lincoln married and Davis re-married they both had Episcopal ministers , they both served in wars against Black Hawk. Jefferson Davis, was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate and he took his seat on August 10, 1847, the very same day Abrahan Lincoiln took his seat in the House.
Even their warime exeriences seem to have been alike in many way, with each have close calls with death in combat situations. Both lost young sons while their fathers served as President – each of his own nation. Little Willie Lincoln, sickened and died in February of 1862 when the Lincoln's living in the White House. Five-year old Joseph Davis, fell tdo his death from an upper floor widow at the Executive Mansion of the Confederary while Mrs. Davis was having lunch with her husband in his office.
Some have tried to see sameness in the two wives as well, but that is not as evident They both died on the 16th of the month. Both lived 17-years after their husbands,. but in different years. Mrs. Lincoln in July 20, 1882 and Mrs. Davis lived until October 20, 1906.
I have often wondered if those two women saw the likenesses of their respective Presidential husbands.
A.L.M. November 3, 2003 [c601wds]
Monday, November 03, 2003
IT DOES HAPPEN
Regardless of what occupational field you have been pasturing in over the years, you must have noticed from time-to-time that the grass does, indeed, seem to grow greener and taller on the other side of the fence.
In some cases it may be real, but it may also be an illusion founded in the fact that there are fewer occupants feeding on the forage over there. Changing location is not always a sound idea.
I have a sterling example in mind, as I issue a note of caution.
I worked for a little over three years with a man we shall call "Bud". Actually, we called him "Uncle Bud", for the simple reason that he was a bit older than any of us. Bud had actully been on the staff of twenty-eight radio stations in his careening career. Two of his locations had been "home" for a little over one week; several more were month- ong stays. The fact that he had been so many places came to light when he celebrated the longest residence of his career in radio on his second anniversary with us.
I came to know Uncle Bud quite well during that long stay. He had a varied background in just about every phase of radio broadcasting in the 1930's in to the leading edge of the '50's. Well, not engineering. He stayed clear of that end of the business, but had been an announcer in the days when everything was live. He had a dry sense of humor about him. He was a natty dresser and he had a natural gift of gab, and all of that lured him into better money as a time salesman. He remembered the "good ole days" of radio and fashionied much his life after a program you will not recall named "Tony Won's Scrap Book, I think. Uncle Bud wrote verse he called "poetry". He had three volumes of his verses printed in hard cover editions, and one of the first things he sold as a time saleman, was himself reading his verse over soft music. The move-again mania began the first Christmas after he and his wife were married. She always gave him a year's subscription to BROADCASTING magazine without ever realizing that she had opened the gate once more. Uncle Bud turned to the back of the book each week - to the "Help Wanted" columns and wallowed in green pasture lures until one of them got the better of him.
They hit the road again!
A.L.M. November 2, 2003 [c-438wds]
Sunday, November 02, 2003
PRESENT DAY MIRACLES
Some real miracles have been worked in our time.
I have witnessed one dealing with a specific form of human suffering which no longer exists but which is very real a part of my memories of childhood years.
I have seen it all come to pass in my own time, and I marvel, often, at the sheer simplicity of the treatment which brought about this change for so many long-suffering men and women.
You may not be aware of the physical condition of people having extended goiters. The neck tissues became swollen in a large sac which hang down very much like the wattle growth under the head of some fowl.
In 1922, of course, it was known what caused goiters and also how to treat them as well. But such medical knowledge , if it had reached the moutains just a few hundred miles west of Norfolk, Virginia, was not speedily accepted as being truth. I knew scores of men and women - in my memory more women than men, who had the malady and before too many years I realized I didn't see much of it any more.
Swiss scientist discovered that the thyroid gland contained iodine. In 1905 David Marine concluded that the goiter conditon could be ovecome by providing the thyroid with needed iodine. He noticed that many residents of the Great Lakes area had numeous goiters and he found the soils of the Lakes region did not contain the tiny amount of iodine needed to prevent such malfunctons. David Marine is, generally, credited with the idea of adding a touch of iodine to the ordianry persons use of table salt. In 1923 the United States and Switzerland started using iodized salt.
The mountain folk of Southwestern Virginia, in the l920's seldom, if ever, ate sea foods from the ocean. They had fish, of course, from rivers and lakes but not from salt water sources. The fact that refrigation on our railroads had only begun could have been a major influence in preventing movement of seafoods the hinterlands.
You seldom encounter goiter growths today. It is still a problem in central Africa and other remote areas. Think about the progress which has been made and be thankful goiters they been eliminated among us. Think too, of how there may well be realtively simple solutions to many of our other problems if we can bring ourselves to accept Truth when it is presented to us.
A.L.M. November 1, 2003 [c419wds]
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