Category Archives: Friends

Pictures from home

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Regular readers will know that I grew up in Kennett, Missouri, and lived there until 1984. A great place to be from, if you catch my drift. The landscape is so flat you can see the curve of the earth. And the crop chemicals made for spectacular sunsets. But I never thought of the area as beautiful… until I stumbled across some photos by mshhoward. It appears he has enhanced the images a bit but I could be wrong on that. Doesn’t matter. They’re really striking.

I’ve emailed asking for an interview to find out more about the photographer and his work. Watch this space.

Mayor’s blog

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Let’s say you’re the mayor of a medium sized town in the midwest and you’re excited about work getting started on a new federal courthouse project in your city. You send a little press release to the local radio and TV stations and the daily newspaper, hoping they might shoot some video or stills of the big cranes or have you on the morning show to talk about what this means for the community.

You might get a mention but not much more. Let’s face it, your new courthouse has limited interest. So you take your Flip video camera out to the site and put a couple of minutes on your blog. And you do this for anything you think the people in your town might care about. How long before your blog becomes a regular stop for those interested in local news? Cost? Virtually zero.

I helped my friend John get started blogging but he’s figuring out the video and YouTube thing. And in all fairness, the local media might have done stories on this. But I can understand if they didn’t. I made similar decisions back in the day. After all, there was only 24 hours of airtime. You had to go with what appealed to the largest number of people. Now you can appeal to literally everybody.

You could have a local government page; a local sports page; a local church news page; a local education page… you get the idea. Provide the hosting; tools and training and use your medium to promote them all.

This is happening all over the country and it will continue. Because people like John have news they want to share and there’s just no more friction.

Thanksgiving with Henry

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DALLAS, TX: Becky is making her mother’s chestnut stuffing recipe.  She had Chris scoring the chestnuts before roasting (actually baking).  Chris cut his thumb (as it turns out not seriously).  Then Becky over roasts the chestnuts so when she takes them out of the oven, one explodes into her eye while she’s holding the hot pan (no permanent damage to the eye).  I tried to take the pan from her but the rag I have doesn’t completely cover the pan, so I burned my finger. My finger still hurts.  This better be good dressing is all I can say.  We miss you here. — Barb

Henry and Lorna invited me to join them and their family for dinner. All the TG basics, topped of with Lorna’s special pecan-with-just-a-little-rum pie. Yum. It was a very pro-Obama crowd so there were toasts to the new president. Sammy and Pete were clearly thankful to be part of the Domke family. Here’s Petey in post-dinner repose.

Henry’s blog as book

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Some months ago I mentioned to Henry that he could have his blog printed as a book. He checked out a few services, pulled out some of his favorite posts and had them crank out a hard-cover book. I think they even have a name for this, “vanity press.”

I was impressed by the quality of the paper, binding, etc. The only thing that prevents me from doing one of these is having to select the posts. I’m all about digital and online and all that but I do love the smell and feel of books and it would be fun to have one on the shelf that I wrote.

Tree House III

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SawdustfaceA beautiful Saturday on a perfect Ocotober day. Henry and his band of merry tree house architects and slave laborers invited me to join them to help record the event. But everywhere you looked there were MacBooks and iPhones and keeping a steady stream of images, video and blog posts flowing. The crew would stop from time to time to actaully work on the tree house.

Late in the day I found myself 30 feet up on the “bird’s nest” platform with Bernard, my hands scant inches from his roarting chainsaw. My mind constanly evaluating which parts of my clothing would make the best tournequet. And if I fell, should I try to land on my feet on one of the other team members.

It’s Sunday and work has resumed. Another perfect fall day.

Box Turtle

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We see lots of adult Box Turtles in our neighborhood but rarely (never?) see the babies. Rick Thom –long time employee of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources– lives just down the hill from us and called a couple of days ago to report finding one of the little guys. Video runs 3 1/2 min.