Christmas on TV back in the 60s

 

You know that during every holiday season will be commercials which you grow to hate. I will admit often using the remote when one comes on. But that is not where I am going.

This morning I saw a Fed-Ex commercial-- harried man rushes into the office and asks if they will deliver, grabs a box and throws in a handful of pens.

I got to thinking of how that concept fell short.

It would have been different back in the 1960s, years of my youth.

Exact same situation, frenzied holiday shopper rushes into same Fed-Ex office and if he did the same thing, a genial older white man behind the counter would chuckle, and pour out the ink pens, and grab a handful of the candy canes, and they would share a wincing smile. Fade to logo...and out.

From where would such an idea like that just pop in my head? Years of the Dick Van Dyke Show where Rob worked at a fictitious TV Program as one of the writers. Each week, they came up with zany comedy routines for the front-man. There was no shock value, no ridicule necessary to be the funniest thing we had seen.

In the case of Fed-Ex commercial, it mocks the frenzied man where the 60s style leaves you with a warm feeling. It would be a favorite instead of annoyance to be avoided.

Biggie Smalls give advice on saving Miss Liberty, an analogy.

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December 4th -- I heard on “NOW With Alex Wagner” Ari Melber mentioning Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls' “Ten Crack Commandments” and I give mad props to Biggie, greatest rapper.

It hit me that the United States Government is like a crack addict, never satisfied.

A crack addict told me that there is only a high, but no satisfaction in crack. My, my—sounds like Washington Fiscal Cliff negotiations. I quote the lyrics to see the similarities.

“ Number four: know you heard this before
Never get high, on your own supply
Number five: never sell no crack where you rest at
I don't care if they want a ounce, tell em bounce”

I decided to highlight the quote from Melber and I deleted the rest, concerned that my blog would need a “Parental Advisory” label. You can see the lyrics if you are interested:

http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/biggie-smalls-lyrics/ten-crack-commandments-lyrics.html

“Uhh”

Our government has an appetite for revenue, so skid loads of Dollars can be delivered to Opium warlords in the Afghan capitol, and other important duties as the World's Largest debtor nation. Fiscal cliff-diving would be like “chippin' a ho” meaning- you got a phat rock and you got a ho who will literally do anything for another sliver of crack.

While the GOP keep bringing the Ryan-Romney budget ideas to the table, President Obama just says “NO”.

If we can remember how we got in this situation.

President Clinton left the White House with a surplus of cash, and then the GOP didn't bother to fund two wars, and a Rx bill for seniors. Oh, by the way they crashed the economy while the top percentile of wealth went through the roof.

This is when the Government was rolling in supply, but instead of handling business, it developed a taste for the product, and got hooked on the stuff.

Revenues in the form of debt from China, not taxes from the top percentile fed a habit until we, as a nation were selling our ass on the street for a chip, a brief respite from the withdrawal.

All the credit cards were maxed out, you sold your furniture, and then the lights went out, the locks were changed.

That is when President Obama got a hold of her.

The good news, she is on the road to recovery, one day at a time. The GOP fat cats are the pimps, way pissed off that Miss Liberty's money-maker is living in a half-way house, and isn't buying your game anymore.

President Obama is the rehab counselor, and is guarding the door to protect his patient.

Pimps live off others' toil. The whole world of a pimp is The Game. Sound familiar.

Take it for what it's worth, if Doctor Obama can help this woman recover, she will be proud to stand in New York harbor for years to come. Miss Liberty is doing quite well, Thank You.

I re-member the good ol' days with the AP

My friend, AP Staff Photographer Chuck Burton posted on his status that his Canon 70-200 zoom lens, stopped working an hour before tonight's Bobcats basketball game. It got me thinking about my years with the Associated Press, when I was covering the Indiana University Hoosiers, back in 1975-76.

We shot black and white images and made prints. The AP had furnished the Bloomington photographer with an ancient drum transmitter. It was either a Model 300 or it was number 300. It had a heavy power supply that ran on tubes, and the basic technology was current by 1870's standards for “facsimile transmissions by rotary drum”. We had a dedicated phone network, and you had to holler into a handset when you heard the droning signal stop, to offer your picture up. You had to establish a reputation with the picture editors at the hub, which in our case was Chicago. They would schedule you into the queue.

We would shoot the first half of the games at Assembly Hall, rush back to the darkroom,process the film, edit the negatives, and make a print just as fast as possible. Then you typed a caption on to paper which had glue on the back. You could actually transmit a wet print, stretched around drum with the caption attached by the glue.

After the Hoosiers started winning consistently, we developed a rapport with the editors as we shouted a basic description of picture and we waited for them to tell us to “go ahead, final”  when we hit the transmission button and a small white light would start recording the image, line for line, and sending it as a tone over the phone network. The folks in Chicago would route it to the interested papers, say in Iowa and Indiana when the Big-Ten season began. A really good basketball picture would be routed to New York to “go around” meaning all AP member papers received the image.

That was some heady stuff for a second year Journalism student.

Well to bring this thought around to a conclusion, we got a reputation for great basketball pictures of the Nation's Best basketball team with Bobby Knight's antics a bonus. Because the Hoosiers were number one, our pictures all went around. We had students like myself, and Donald Winslow, and Shawn Spence all shooting the best pictures of the best team. Before long, all we had to say was “Bloomington split New York” and desk editor would reply, “Go ahead, Final Bloomington, give us your two best early” We rarely sent more than two pictures anyway.

It wasn't long till we started printing on RC paper, which like a piece of plastic, and the AP had embarked on the “Laserphoto” period. This new machine didn't smell like an electric train on Christmas morning, like our old drum when it was hot enough to keep pizza warm. This new slick technology was State of the Art. That was what we used until negative transmitters came on board in the 1980's, which begot Digital Camera Systems in the early 1990s. And with these new fangled cameras came new technology based on secure Internet networks. Gone were the two-wire phone hook-ups, and now we are broadband.

My most recent employer, Reuters sent me a $25,000 Leafax color negative transmitter during the Clinton administration, and now it is a lead weight in my living room. We had already started using a Phoenix One system, and later laptops replaced the one-off technology of the Phoenix.

So Chuck, I feel for you without the zoom tonight, but at least your fingernails are not stained with Dektol and you won't smell like fixer tonight. Maybe a good cigar, but no fixer.

(This blog is dedicated to my mentors, the late Jim Schweiker of United Press International, and my boss at the AP, Indianapolis Staffer Chuck Robinson to whom I owe a great debt.)

Why Hillary will be your next President.

I just saw a video clip of Benjamin Netanyahu and Tony Blair basically saying we have not heard the last of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sure sounded like a cow bell, possibly the first one of the 2016 Democratic Presidential campaign.

Three facts: She received more votes in 2008 than Obama; she has first class Foreign policy experience, compared to any GOP challenger; and third, she is a Woman.

She is a woman like Golda Meier, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, or Angela Merkel who have paved the way in leadership as Heads of State. Israel, Great Britain, India, and Germany all trusted their government to a woman. Now American voters can ask themselves, “Who do the Republicans have, male or female who can beat Hillary in 2016?”

Hillary also has Bill. Still the most popular President in U.S. History, who happens to also be a World leader through his global iniative.

And finally, she has the Machine. In four years President Barack Obama built an election machine, the likes of which Tammany Hall only dreamed of. They registered more Democrats, and got more Democrats to vote, using a core constituency of minorities and women (who are by census a majority of the population). Obama could concede the white men, and for the most part did, and win. That machine will not be going anywhere, they are already doing routine maintenance of the computer data bases, and just looking for the next attempt by the GOP to steal elections.

Hillary is running. Make no mistake, the 2016 race is underway.

Now let's discuss her VP choices. One woman stands ready, Congresswomen Debbie Wasserman Schultz leads the DNC, and she is from South Florida. She brings the Jewish vote. Plus there is no young men waiting in the wings that could run with Hillary. She must pick a woman.

So there, Grand Old Party-- who could you nominate to beat this ticket? You have two years to find your next Mitt Romney.

Why not get the chip?

Why not get a chip?

Have you noticed the new television ads for Lifelock brand identity theft? Why if I had assets, it would pretty darned scary that bad people would steal my identity. But as long as you use a credit card or debit card in any commerce, these nefarious thieves are lurking everywhere.

The point is obvious. You need a little security in an insecure world. 

Would it not be better to get the chip? I bet your pet has a chip, and that is a relief if Fido goes on an independent mission. Positive biometric identification prevent “identity theft”, fail safe.

At least that is how they will sell you on the idea. 

Many Christians will fear that this is the “mark of the beast” from Revelations. Nothing could be further from the Truth. There is not any reason to fear a world where you could be positively identified.

Finger printing became a science at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and many of us are fingerprinted. 

Was the ink “The Mark of the Beast”? Your are already “on file” attached to your social security number, your driver's license number, and the medical record number that is a path to every procedure you have on file.

Why a RFID chip? Cannot be stolen, and cannot buy nor sell without it.

Mark my word. The same people who will line up in cold weather to get a $150 flat screen, will line up begging to get chipped, after the food lines require positive identification.

December 2, 2012

Election 2012: Un-Mitt-igated Mendacity

Election 2012: Un-Mitt-igated Mendacity

Today is election day in the United States, and sometime in the coming weeks we will find out who will remain President, and who will have lost the election by trying to re-gift America with Bush era fiscal policies which brought us to the brink of total financial meltdown.

The most interesting shift in power will be in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats will gain on their 51 vote majority. Women indeed did remember in November. With the occupant of the White House for the next four years likely to appoint two or three Supreme Court Associate Justices, women who value the gains made for the past 30 years, since Roe v. Wade, don't trust the Right-Wing nut faction of the Republican party. VP candidate Paul Ryan, who is among the 435 Members of Congress facing re-election tonight.

Although approval ratings of the Congress were under double digits, they traditionally win re-election as a matter of fact. I hope that all of the Obstructionists who swept into town in 2010, will return to civilian lives. I cannot deny that I voted for Larry Kissell, a blue-dog Dem from the NC 8th District, because his opponent Richard Hudson leads his web page with a 2nd Amendment plea.

His website quotes his major disqualification for office, in my humble opinion-

“SALISBURY – Just six days away from the 2012 general election, the latest Tea Party Express bus tour rolled into Rowan County to rally support for conservative candidates. Richard Hudson, Republican candidate for North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District, arrived in the bus Wednesday morning at the front of the Republican Party headquarters in Salisbury. He [...]”

Tea-bagger equals Obstruction.

Kissell didn't support Affordable Health Care, and as a result his money came from The NRA, instead of national Democratic Party. It is the question of the least offensive choice. My district only includes a small urban section of Charlotte and then meanders east along US 74 through turkey and watermelon country. God, Guns, and such.

Not that living in a World Class single-name city like Charlotte affords me a more erudite opinion. The hard working country folks are from whence I came, but Kissell is not my idea of Progressive. His opponent is not my cup of tea, either.

With that said, a few Women Senators from formerly GOP held seats can make a huge difference both up-ticket and in the dysfunctional Congressional situation. How will they affect Obama's chances in a close race? Women are organizers and hard workers.

My favorite band, the Grateful Dead toured for 30 years singing, “Women R Smarter”. Efforts by the likes of Todd Akin, Richard Murdock and Paul Ryan to re-define an embryo as a “person” served to galvanize a sleeping lioness.

Why "peculiar"?

 

 

 This is the dictionary definition

 pe·cu·liar/pəˈkyo͞olyər/

pe·cu·liar

 [pi-kyool-yer] 

adjective

1.

strange; odd: peculiar happenings.

2.

uncommon; unusual: the peculiar hobby of stuffing and mounting bats.

3.

distinctive in nature or character from others.

4.

belonging characteristically (usually followed by to ): an expression peculiar to Canadians.

5.

belonging exclusively to some person, group, or thing: the peculiar properties of a drug.

Just thought would look better than mind bending diatribe about geeks.

Darn Internet

This darn Internet has taken over my life.

I have re-connected with friends from 30 years ago. I messed around and put up a PROFILE on some "free" personals site, and now I have 135 women that winked at me. Of course you pay to see these gems of womanly beauty and that's the rub.

I don't like the idea of paying to meet someone. It just goes afoul of my old school hippy philosophy of free love. And all that. Hmm the spell check doesn't know about hippy as a word.

That's what I am talking about. This Internet thing doesn't appreciate it's own roots, among hippies that turned into yuppie white trash because they worked on computers. Years ago I met some hackers--by that I mean computer geeks, gurus and other deities in the Hacker domain.

I didn't understand much of what they told me but I knew by the smell, they  were good old Grateful Dead followers, and nothing says "hippies" more than the combination of "Smell" and the Dead in a sentence. These folks took baths, and would not mean to imply anything of the sort, but Deadheads have an ambiance that crosses between Patchouli incense and fresh pine cones.

Anyhow, I don't think any of the Hackers I met turned to Yuppie While Trash, but some did.

My mind is wandering. My Oh My it must have been the Roses.

Until I get an idea to write some more....
 

Incredible mentor passes

 I wondered why I had not heard from her- a phone call every few weeks, and emails.
Only upon getting on to the Internet, and did a search, I found her obituary from April.

I told her last year that my best description of her is now her epitaph.

Dr. Priscilla R. Crawford PhD--  "Before Rush could call her a Feminazi  Dr. Pat Crawford was writing the coda of today's women."

When I met her, she was one of the nation's most sought out speakers on Women's Issues. Her intensive workshops were scheduled and sold-out by an army of women that followed her rise.

Later, she would counsel World leaders from Beijing to Moscow. Captains of Fortune 500 companies literally had her on speed dial.

I counted her among my best friends.


 http://www.lauckfuneralhome.com/obits/obituary.php?id=169484

Life in a wheelchair

It was a 17 month reprieve from daily bandage changes, constant pain and difficulty walking. Since the removal of my toes on the left foot, a short stay in a nursing home, my life returned to normal. Then I noticed a splash of blood on a bathroom rug, and the most recent bout with disease resumed where it left off.

I cleaned and bandaged the wound, as a practiced ritual of the past seven years; I knew the drill to not allow a foot wound to get infected. All was well, and what was the quarter-sized hole was small as a pea.

I made my final visit to the foot clinic only to see my life change 180 degrees.

My smallest toe on the right foot had gangrene, a black spot was found between the toes, and I was admitted for what I thought would have been a small, almost routine procedure. I opted for another trans-met amputation (all toes) since they were looking at taking two and the other three were worthless. The surgery was scheduled and I assumed I would spend a week or so in a rehab and be back to work for the balance of the NBA season, and my career as a photojournalist for Reuters. Wrong.

The nursing home that I was sent to was filthy. Black mold stained the shower room in a place of suspended animation that was best described as the entrance of Hell, or the waiting room for Heaven.

I became infected with MRSA, an antibiotic resistant form of staph. Then spent 21 days hospital stay getting three bags of expensive drug that was the only known treatment for the deadly infection direct into my system through a Pick line- a mainline into a large blood vessel. At the end, I was sent back to the same nursing home.

Needless to say, this was not a good idea and within a short time, I was re-infected and this time the price was higher than five toes.

This time, I got to the hospital on day three of the critical first three days of infection in the life of a diabetic. Infections feed on the sugar rich blood. The staff in Hell refused treatment even though I pointed out the obvious symptoms each day.

The verdict was that the leg would be amputated 15 centimeters below my knee.

I agreed with the young Doctor’s opinion that with the infection in the bone, we could still save the knee.

I was now disabled.

I spent one year in a better nursing home. I left to live in a rental duplex on Social Security and Food stamps, barely able to survive on the stipend. But, I was no longer in a nursing home.

After a year, I wanted a life back, and started to go back to school. Then I posted a resume on the career center website, and responded to an advertised position. I was called on Friday, interviews on Wednesday and started to work the following Monday. It was a good four months of being back in the real world.

And that company laid me off, the week after Christmas, whilst I was still in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.

A heart procedure in August resulted in partial paralysis of my right shoulder. This is Rhabdo. Whilst on the table for nine hours, an enzyme started eating muscle tissue and if not discovered would result in kidney failure- All for nothing. A great doctor, Dr. Lane Jacobs noticed the cola colored urine and started pushing Bicarbonate into my IV to neutralize the  effects. After rehabilitation I can again use my arms.

Fortunately, the implantation of a bi-ventricular pacemaker, and an ablation made me totally dependent on a tiny computer chip in my chest. My heart beats 70 times a minute, as regular as a computer clock. My cardiologist,  Dr. Lazlo Littman, said my congestive heart failure has been resolved by the regular beat.

But, that does not mean a return to normalcy quite yet.

The Ortho doctors have had three whacks at the residual portion of my right leg. The darn thing will not heal well enough to wear my carbon fiber and titanium leg. I have a new appreciation of being dependent on a wheelchair. I watched Oscar running on two prosthetic legs in the Olympics.

I believe he wears the Otto Bock Cheetah legs. I want a bumper sticker for wheel chair that says, “My other leg is a Cheetah”

Life on Holt Street

It is almost hilarious if it were not be the state of our economy.

Petty details of a fourth of million or a million as a cutoff for a tax hike, as if that is of any consequence to the person who rents a babies’ social security number from a mother whose “season” is tax-time.

I was a white man living in a rental property in what Realtors would call a Transitional Neighborhood.

For those who can understand- that is Yuppie Speak for an upside-down house across the street from Fred Sanford’s duplex, complete with pit bull on a chain and frequent socializing.

Junk vehicles, frequent loud parties and mud were across the street from the monthly mortgage payment on a upside-down house on a street that has gas lights in every yard.

That was your dream home, and you chose to buy.

So begins the story of “Life on Holt Street”.

I was not the buyer, nor the developer who was completing a spec house on the street with gas lights.

I was the neighbor of “Fred” -a registered sex offender, man who spent 28 years in Raleigh’s State Owned Hotel for double homicide, and a self proclaimed King of his domain. That included having the pit bull named Roscoe to my back steps, my water hose filling his washing machine (always a cold wash).

I tried to fit in, pay the proper respect to His Excellency, and the court which became fast friends as neighbors, even letting him use my Lincoln, since I was not able to drive.

He has since been returned the Big House for another 10 year stretch.

.

My second attempt

Well, I guess I will get back in the swing of things. Let's give this another swat.

This was piece I wrote back when they were talking about charging an American soldier with Capital Murder in a small massacre of Afghan citizens- Many fewer than My Lai, or the fire bombing of Dresden.

Today I met a man. An American hero, I noticed while having lunch. He was in his 80’s and proudly wore a hat bearing the B-17 Flying Fortress.

I asked him if he flew over Germany and he said 44 missions.  I thanked him for his service, and told him how much I appreciated the sacrifice he made during World War II. I said it must have been both terrifying and exciting and we began a conversation.

He and his crew had one real close call, his plane sputtered, out of fuel as in landed at the 100^th Bomber Group field at the white cliffs of Dover.

He recounted one mission when his primary target, the submarine pens near Kiel was shrouded in fog, his secondary target also under low hanging clouds, so he made the call to drop their load of bombs over Poland before returning to England. As they flew over the occupied countryside, they saw a prison camp and they unloaded on the gates and fences. He said they were so low they could see the prisoners fleeing their Nazi captors, smiling and waving up at the American planes.

My father was a veteran of that war and might have repaired the radio of this man’s plane. We never talked about the war before he died at 59, back in 1982.

Years ago, I regularly photographed an annual “Last Man” lunch for veterans of World War I. Each year they met at a Gaston County Fish Camp, to see their fellow Doughboys, vowing to meet until the Last Man was standing. They have now passed. Veterans, like the man I met today are dying as the years pass.

I felt tears in my eyes as this man talked to me and munched on his sandwich.

A few years ago I lost a dear friend, a retired U.S. Army Ranger, and Special Operations Sergeant who was also part of the Green Berets. Exact details of his operations are still classified, but he told me, “If you saw it on CNN, I had been on the ground for at least three months prior.” He refused to watch the film “Blackhawk Down”, he was in Somalia at the time, and he had trained and served with Rangers killed that day. He had suffered a few “traumatic brain Injuries” during his career.

He died from his injuries, long after he retired.

Today, the story of the American accused of murder in the deaths of 16 civilians in Afghanistan, and I am reminded of Lt. Calley and My Lai.  I am also reminded of Capt. Willard and Col. Kurtz in the epic Viet Nam war film “Apocalypse Now”. To charge a soldier with murder in this insane 10-year war should jolt Washington out of the cloud of “Political Correctness” and call these brave men and women home.

The Veteran’s Administration needs to gear-up for the Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury cases that will follow.

Three men, each called by the government to do a job.  

A hero who survived the Luftwaffe 44 times over Germany, a Green Beret U.S. Army Ranger who did the dirty work under the cover of secrecy, and an injured veteran of four tours of duty that went out of control in a Stone Age world that we have been trying to bring into the 21^st century for over 10 years.

Accusing him of murder, like Willard’s mission to “Terminate Col. Kurtz, with extreme prejudice”, begs the question of just how upside-down our world has become.

I watch with utter amazement at the Internet. I remember when there was no Windows or GUIs, all text line...and we liked it!

Then an addiction like the Internet cost real money, services charged your phone bill by the minute, and the modems were dial-up.

Now the porno pop-ups and the selection of bizarre choices for free will surely bring the end to civility as we once knew it.

All  of this was predicted by a man called Kortron, from his hand-built log home of the side of a mountain here in North Carolina. I met him in a e-mail chain about UFOs, and became aquainted.

He insisted that he was the Commander of a star ship, and his physical body had been taken over by alien energy. He is dead now, passed away from this plane of reality.

There are too many stories about those halcyon days of "X-files" and Art Bell overnight on the am radio dial.

We all had it figured out, and only awaited our fate, knowing that the Truth was Out There.

I had an optical drive given to me after it was left behind at a business. We figured out why- the optical disc it wrote to was about $400, and held almost as much data as a current DVD.

The Commander was happy, because he could finally get the whole archive of his files in one place. I doubt if a current generation of machines could even recover those files today. And then I see a closeout of 4 Gigabyte thumb drives for $4 each.

The Aliens, who secretly work with the shadow government and are aligned with the Fifth Reich Nazis, still have not executed the plan to enslave Hu-Mans. All is right with the world today, and as for the Mayan Prophecy of doom for December 21, 2012-- I have canned peaches that will still be serviceable food well into 2014.

I trusted the Commander on his grim predictions of the Apocalypse, but if the Mayan were such good prophets, why didn't they see the Spanish enslaving them.