Saturday, August 19, 2006
STATEMENTI don’t know where this terse statement came from or where it should be going. I found it among a varied select of printed materials which had been accumulated by Amateur Radio Operator WA4MTP over the years and passed along to KA4WSI. I don’t think the sentiment expressed by the statement, necessarily, applies to amateur radio. I can think of score of situations where such an announcement might have been fitting. I have seen others I have liked: “If you're so damned smart; why ain't you rich!?” That was in a doctor's office. Another – in the Parts Department of a large plant manufacturing heating and air-conditioning units. Roped securely, a bright, canvas banner read:. “NOTICE: Hang on to anything you bought with you! If lost here it would take YEARS to find it!” Here is the rather odd notice as printed in quarter-inch caps with India Ink – black: WE, THE WILLING, LED BY THE UNKNOWING, ARE DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE UNGRATEFUL. WE HAVE DONE SO MUCH FOR SO LONG WITH SO LITTLE. WE ARE NOW QUALIFIED TO DO ANYTHING WITH NOTHING. Where can you imagine such a statement to have been posted .....and why? Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-19-06 [c211wds]
Friday, August 18, 2006
FREEDOMS APLENTY Some people who are critical of our way of living can often be heard to say we have far too many freedoms. It makes a measure of good sense, too, when they point to individuals – even to whole groups of non-thinking persons who enjoy freedom without realizing how costly they can be. Just let anyone try to eliminate any of our choice freedoms and you, too, will be ready to raise the royal roof, wouldn't you? Then, while we will not accept any changes in our many of our established freedoms we don't always objects other more subtle ways of controlling how we use the freedoms we have. They are called rules and regulations and they are given to fits of yeast-like proliferation quite frequently. You can drive whatever make of car you can afford to own, rent or acquire by other means, bu be sure you have a permit which allows to drive it. Connecticutt started the driver license in 1907 and it caught on. Work anywhere you like, but the last time I looked, the Labor Department listed over three hundred and fifty occupations that are now licensed by state authorities and there are five hundred more jobs from which you may choose freely which require only a certificate or registration. Connecticut restricted automobile speed limits to 12 m.p.h. in the cities and 15 m.p.h. in the country. By 1973 President Nixon asked us to travel at no more than 55 m.p.h. on our national highways. In 1919 Oregon adopted a gasoline tax and ten years later all the states found out about it within the next decade. The first federal gasoline tax was set up in 1932. The tax was set at less than one cent per gallon and i too has been noted for its steady growth. When our federal income tax was established in 1913 the “normal tax” one per cent our freedoms were not harmed even though tax rate ran up that first year to 7 per cent on larger incomes. Fewer than one half of one per-cent of the population of the nation had to pay any tax at all. That one, too, has shown a somewhat rapid rate of growth. I think most of us can see and even know from personal experiences - how the rules and regulations we make in order to bring proper order and discipline the exercise of our treasury of freedoms. We have yet to learn how to pass this vital bit of information along to those we are seeking to lead to freedom. Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-18-06 [c447wds]
Thursday, August 17, 2006
RAP! Give me two small sticks and a hollow log and I can turn out better end results than this unmitigated imitation musical manure being passed off today as being primitive, soul-tempered “rap”! It is not rap! It is not music! I find I must stretch my definition of what is meant by just the use of the word ”rap” in any attempt to qualify the current flow of noisy sequences being exhausted forth over an unknowing audience existing in a low-lying sea of fake fog. Turn the dry ice machines and fans off, please. Let's try to make some sense of the present epidemic of cacophony - which shows that I have, at least, been near a musical dictionary and may have some idea of what mankind, in general, might have become familiar with that which may be called “music.” I can accept the idea that rhythm alone can be musical. Certainly savages of musical expression depended on the repetion of sounds and a person ”composing” with such materials that he might keep records in patterned forms so he could repeat them as needed. The least complicated situations demand the most precise of terms be used. No doubt some performers hit upon some exact rhythm forms, but the vast output of so-called “rap” depend on repetition of the same. Good rap requires precise rhythm; approximations will not do. Do you remember type of song we did some years ago which we called “The Talkin' Blues” I think? Those songs killed themselves off by insisting on always staying the same. Rap, I fear, is doing the same thing but in a different way: by imitating things it has never been. To me “rap” was real a one time, I think. It faded quickly. Some think it starved to death, and find very few seem to miss it. For myself I'd have to say I'm rather glad that I was ''out” when rap was “in.” Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-17-06 [c344wds]
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
N OT MY FAVORITE
I have found that most people I know gave up reading the Obituary column in their local newspaper some years ago.
They, at one time, used to “check it out” as a routine of getting ready to go to work. Someone, at least, glanced at the list our local paper ran in the lower, left-hand corner of the front page. Names appearing on that list could modify our work day. We followed that pattern for many years – into our fifties, perhaps, but then got out of the habit of doing so, when we came to feel that people were not dying off as fas as they had been previously. The truth came quickly. The harsh reality was that “our old crowd out there” was getting scarce. Many of us could imagine our own names being set type in type for the list and we made jokes about it. “If you see my name there some morning...give me a call...I want to be among the first to know about it.”
Later, at my age, for instance, one begins to read the obits again but this
time for the rest of the family. It is interesting to mention a name and to watch and hear young people talk – often for the first time - talk about someone they “knew. They have to find out how to speak of former friends in past tense terms. One does not lose closeness quickly.
For a time such remembered bits are usually serious references to the persons capabilities and as we come to realize more and more what is or her life meant in ours we tend to lighten upon somewhat and see their lives in a larger framework. This entire piece came this morning because I read a well-done obituary in the Harrisonburg Daily “News-Record” honoring a man - a husband and a father – whom I did not know, but wish now I had done so.
It was an average obituary in many ways – not overdone, not too long yet detailed enough to show he was a man respected by his peers; a hunter, fisherman, gardener, a member of four social and religious groups. He was a WW II veteran who worked in the nation's largest shipyard. He was born in Mowers, WV in 1924. He is buried at Yorktown, Va.
One line, inserted just before the closing lines of information about ceremony times and places – almost as if it originated as a last-minute after-thought which ought to be there.
It read: “We shall miss his stubborn streak and his ability to make us laugh.”
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-16-06 [c451wds]
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
TOTALED ABC- TV has reached a new depth on the way to absolute ruin! They have announced that the worst Trash TV producer of the our time – Jerry Springer - is to be a regular participant on the third season of their highly successful show “Dancing With The Stars” starting September 12 with a big, two hour opening show. Why would they do such a thing! Jerry has been busy in recent months in England were he recently attended the premiere of his all-new and nasty musical production modestly titled “Jerry Springer The Opera.” With a score written by Brit composer Richard Thomas and a cast headed by Michael Brandon in the role of Jerry Springer – lauded at length and loudly in the English tabloids as “America's leading TV personality.” It completed a theater tour of leading area theaters. It played most places in a lackluster tour of two audiences - patient potential porn-watchers inside the theaters and crowds of protesters outside in the street.. We have talked at disgusting lengths about this musical work long ago, and fully expected to see it hit Broadway perhaps this fall or winter season. I did not anticipate it sneaking into our TV sets as it is now doing. The show – like so many of our worthy ones ,“Dancing With the Stars” is a state-side version of the successful British TV series “Strictly Come Dancing”. It is obvious that Springers “handlers” (the term “agents” sounds too proper) must be getting America ready for musical invasion upcoming. An “uncut DVD version” starring David Soul of the London musical is already being huckstered on the Internet. It runs five hours and ten minutes, too. Understand all three of the past judges will be back on the upcoming dance competitions show: Len Goodman, Carrie Ann Unabated and Bruno Tonioli. None of them could be be classed as shrinking violets. They say what they think. One of them is an Englishman you will recall. And the experienced emcee of the lot faces a real challenge as well. Tom Bergenon did well on “Hollywood Squares” you certainly must remember but in recent seasons he seems to have been assigned to crotch and cleavage videotaped stuff from the mails. He did very well on the “Dancing With...” is past season. Some people are going to plan to watch Jerry Springer dance starting September 12th , primarily because we will get a chance to vote against him. Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-15-06 [c421wds]
Monday, August 14, 2006
TRUCE Do you believe the truce we have this morning this morning in Lebanon will “take hold” and actually stop the fighting for a time? You are expected to “take sides”. Speak up. Part of our being American is to insist on our being honest about our feelings concerning such matters which do so much to determine our future way of life. I was thinking even down to these words how silly it must seem to many people that I, one old man among millions of people, a non-person really. Who cares what he thinks? Who gives a hollow hoot in Hell what he feels to be “right” or “wrong” about an event happening half-way around this whirling world? It is the overall accumulation of what each and everyone of us professes to be which comes to typify what world citizens that Americans are or ought to be. We are worthy of seeming to be an example unto others only insofar as we respect ourselves. Your feelings about how well this temporary truce between the factions immediately associated with it – the Hezbollah militia and Israel – are surface aspects of the problem but the real cause of it all - Syria, Iran and Lebanon. We all know that to be true, yet we hesitate to accuse them and be said to be causing an even widen conflict which already has a name – The Third World War. In the judgment we make we, perhaps unconsciously, include such added information. We are honest with ourselves which leads to accuracy however unpleasant it may prove to be. A great deal of serious effort has formed basic elements of this latest truce effort. Diplomatic skills of the finest caliber have been widely used. Only time will tell if it was he real thing. State your opinion and stand by it as long as you know it to be valid. Very often, what you think is the real you. What you say determines what others think you are. Speak up. Be real. Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-14-06 [c351wds]
Sunday, August 13, 2006
D OUBLE TROUBLE
Two terms trouble me without end in the news accounts these days. They bother me, I think because I retain a bit of doubt concerning my actual understanding of each of them. Other people, when they are discussing the day's news can make the item come alive by dropping a casual, confident reference to “pre-emptive invasion” or the possibility of “eminent domain” be used to someone's advantage!
The are both militant terms, you see, and when used must be said with clarity and asserted assurances of proper back-up information being available if needed.
“Eminent domain” sounds so “legalese”, doesn't it? It's complete ,too... as if there might be nothing beyond it in human intelligence. But, far too often when practiced it strikes me as being unfair to someone. The element of personal gain seems to occur far too often in discussions about specific cases. The complainer must have some claim of an error being made – primarily that private gain question – or objections may not be so numerous. When a city government takes over a property owned by an individual and gives it to a new set of owners – a corporation - who will pay more taxes than they received from the individual owner - something is wrong, very wrong.
As long as such a law in valid in federal, state and local governments and boards, directors, fire company reps, school boards, charity groups and others. We are going to continue to have such laxity until such time as we can get some sane rules of equity and common decency. I agree a project for the common good can be delayed of forestalled entirely by his stubborn refusal to sell. Here must be a better way of dealing with such a community clod than engaging in that which appears to be legalized theft.
As for the other term I worry about: “Pre-emptive invasion”...
It's popular right now since the Iraqi war is said to have been one such example....a “pre-emptive war, invasion, attack...etc”. My difficulty begins when I find the Iraqi leaders calling their actions, which invited the war, “pre-emptive” as well. All sides of anything can't be the cause of each other, or can they?
If that be the case the already cumbersome United Nations to be enlarged by adding a new Department of Definitions to tell us what we really mean when we say something. Anything.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-13-06 [c416wds]
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