Presenters at this year’s conference include: Adam Curry, Dave Winer, Steve Gillmor, Steve Rubel, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter, John Battelle, Dan Gillmor, and others. Okay, this is the kind of stuff that interests me. If sitting in a conference room for three days listening to people talk about blogging and podasting and RSS and shit like that doesn’t sound like any fun to you… you can start to understand why your idea of a vacation doesn’t make me clap my little hands.
Category Archives: Personal History
Mase becomes Mays
A year ago I posted a photo of a gravestone that I assumed belonged to a distant relative. I was puzzeled by the different spelling (Mase). A few days ago I received an email with some answers. Some distant relative was browsing the web and came across smays.com and discovered the photo (his grandparents). He provided all kinds of names and relationships and a little info regarding the name change.
Only Joseph and one of his brothers for some reason chose the Mays spelling, and of Joseph and Nancy’s children only Vernon and one of his brothers chose to revert to Mase.
Cousin (?) Vernon put me in touch with another relative who has been researching all of this for 30 years and she provided images from an old family bible that has entries dating back to 1825. I’ve never been into family history but can see how this might get a little addictive. And what will genealogy be like 100 years from now with all these blogs out there (here).
KBOA listener remembers
Yesterday’s post about the percentage of people who say they “love” over-the-air radio (19%) has been stuck in my head. I’m sure there are lots of people who dearly love their local station but do they (can they) love it like we used to?
“I listened to KBOA on the farm in Arkansas. My grandfather bought me a transistor radio when they were first available as pocket size. They were very expensive and would use up a battery in no time. KBOA was the main choice in the cotton fields when we would chop cotton. Everyone chopped with me so they could listen. My dad demanded that I chop cotton very fast, so everyone would work hard to keep up!” — Larry Jones, Kennett, MO
In all fairness, radio in the late 40’s and 50’s was pretty much the only game in town so perhaps loyalty was easier to come by. Do I love my satellite radio? I do. Do I love my little mp3 player (not an iPod)? I love the idea of being able to easily record and listen on the go. Do I love any of our local radio stations? … I’m thinking, I’m thinking!
First trip to the beach
I believe this photo was taken at Hammonasset Beach in Connecticut. But Mother’s Day always brings this image to mind.
Practical Living Will
I, Steve Mays, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by any artificial means. Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of peckerhead politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.
If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a cold beer, it should be presumed that I won’t do so ever again. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day. Under no circumstances shall the members of the Legislature enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren’t in a permanent coma and who nonetheless may be in need of nourishment.
Under no circumstances shall any politicians butt into this case. I don’t care how many fundamentalist votes they’re trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else’s life and leave me alone to die in peace. I couldn’t care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don’t know these people, and I certainly haven’t authorized them to preach and/or crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own damn business,too.
If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.
— Author unknown
1953: HIgh school basketball team photos
I was only five but remember some of the big events of that year. The first tests of the Salk polio vaccine; Dwight Eisenhower was in the White House (with Dick Nixon); Edmund Hillary (and his Sherpa guide) were the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest; Patti Page was singing "How Much Is That Doggie In the Window?" on the radio; and the best movie of the year was From Here to Eternity. And the median family income was $4,242. (Okay, I looked that shit up)
I thought a little context might help you appreciate these photographs of some high school basketball teams from southeast Missouri. Holcomb Boys; Hornersville Girls; Steele Girls #1 and Steele Girls #2. The photos were taken by Johnny Mack Reeder, the news director at Kennett radio station KBOA. Email me if you can identify any of these folks and I’ll update the captions. Makes me want to watch Hoosiers one more time.
If you can ID any of the players (for any of the photos), please use comments link below.
KBOA Trivia Bowl
Some Canadian guys developed the concept for Trivial Pursuit in 1979 and released the board game two years later and the game’s popularity peaked in 1984. But we had been playing trivia on the air at KBOA for a number of years by then and it was about as much fun as anything I ever did on the air. While cleaning out a closet this afternoon, I found a tape of a show (first half-hour) we did in May of 1981.
[Download/listen]. Team members: John Robison, Jeff Wheeler and Tom Colvin. Good friends, then and now.
“Telemarketing Wiz”
This is a true story although I have changed the names to protect the innocent and the clueless.
A couple of months ago, a friend (I’ll call him Ishmael) started a blog called “Telemarketing Wiz” and began posting all kinds of interesting stuff about telemarketing. He started hearing from others in the telemarketing business and people started linking to his blog. He got a little buzz going. Not a raging wildfire, but a little brush fire. Google “telemarketing” and his blog is #3 in the results.
One day recently, Ishmael has a meeting with someone at a publication called “Telemarketing.” (Remember, all of the names have been changed. This has nothing to do with telemarketing) The Telemarketing executive tells Ishmael they are not happy with him using the name “telemarketing” and they’d really like for him to stop. They even offered him a few worthless incentives.
Ishmael was shocked and said he’d think about it but wasn’t inclined to change the name of his blog. There were dozens of companies using the term “telemarketing”… why was the Big Publication concerned about him? Could it be that Big Publication was getting tired of hearing about Telemarketing Wiz?
Legal issues aside, this is a nice example of cluelessness on the part of MSM. I suggested to Ishmael that he change the name of his blog to “TelemarketingSucks.com,” but he’s more of a grown-up than I.
Would it have made more sense for Big Publisher to say, “We’ve noticed what you’re doing and think it’s pretty exciting. We’d like to hire you to blog for our publication.”
I’m sure that Telemarketing is a very good publication. Maybe the best. With lots of talented writers and editors and advertisers and big building with a nice lobby. A great place to read about telemarketing. But not the only place.
If Ishmael was writing a little paper newletter and mailing to a few hundred people, Big Publisher probably wouldn’t care what he called it. But the web is national. It’s global. Anybody can play. It’s no longer about who can come up with a few hundred thousand (million?)dollars to start a magazine. One guy, with a computer, and a head full of good ideas can get in the game. It’s a new day.
Wire Service
In 1972, radio station KBOA had a little closet in the newsroom that housed two teletype machines. One for the Associated Press and one for the National Weather Service. These typewriter-like printers spewed out line after line of news, sports, weather… everything a radio station might ever want to pass on to its audience. They were loud and smelly and mechanical and the ground through box after box of paper and ribbons. I remember a tractor trailer pulling up to the station every few months to drop off dozens of boxes of each. It was –for all practical purposes– the radio station’s only source for news outside the local community. If someone forgot to feed the beast a new box of paper… or the paper jammed overnight… or the printer ribbon broke… no news. And if the damned thing just broke, you were probably miles from a technician that knew how to fix it.
I was reminded of those primitive days by a visit from old friend David Gerstmann, founder of WireReady. I met David at an NAB meeting in Boston back in 1991 or ’92. David had just graduated from Tufts University and was exhibiting at the show. He had written an inexpensive software program that could run on the personal computers that were coming into use. Instead of grinding through all of that paper and ribbon, his software could capture and store the information and you just printed out the stories you wanted. Not just from one wire service, but from as many as you had. An amazing idea at the time.
WireReady could also do some word processing tricks that radio news guys found handy. It was affordable, easy to use, ran on the piece-of-shit computer that trickled down to the newsroom and David gave great customer support. He sold a boat-load of WireReady systems and –over the years– introduced new features (networking, digital audio editing, etc).
For a long time, Associated Press and United Press International (UPI) were pretty much the the only sources for world and national news. Not technically a monopoly but they had broadcasters by the balls and they squeezed hard and long. It was a tightly controlled information pipeline but –thanks to the Internet– those days are gone forever. RIP.
Disclosure: The company I work for operates a sort of “poor man’s wire service” (sorry, David) called Learfield Data. It exists today, in part, because broadcasters wanted alternatives to the Big Wire Services of yore.
Mel’s Country Cafe
I eat breakfast two or three times a week at Mel’s Country Cafe. Nothing fancy about Mel’s and the menu never changes. It’s the kind of place where you can get mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans and a piece of banana cream pie. (If you’re from Kennett, think Palace Cafe or McCormick’s)
And you can have a cigarette with your meal at Mel’s. And lots of folks do. They made the back room smoke-free a few years ago but you have to walk through a cloud of smoke to get there and back through it when you’re done.
When I walked into Mel’s on Tuesday, one of the servers informed me that the smaller room in back is now the smoking room and the larger, front room is smoke free. Whoa. I took a seat and looked around and noticed most of the same faces, sitting in their usual places. All the smokers sitting in the smoke-free room.
I asked my server how the new policy was going over. “Not so good,” he admitted. “A couple of them have gone back to the smoking room long enough to have a cigarette, and then came back to their usual spot.”
I grew up in a smoking family. I understand smokers and the power of their addiction. I’ve known smokers that would get a divorce or quit a good job rather than give up the habit. Family members who no longer speak as a result of long-ago arguments about smoking. These are the same people that stand hunched in the freezing rain to get their fix. What force could make them stop smoking long enough to have some ham and eggs? And it hit me.
Routine. It would be more shocking to their nicotine-soaked nerve endings to sit in a different chair…at a different table…IN A DIFFERENT ROOM! I’m told this is a common phenomenon among regular church goers who have their regular pew. We dedicate this song to all the men and women jonesing through breakfast at Mel’s.