When we last heard from him, boyhood friend Mike Neely was living the good life in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. But the last email address he used is bouncing. Mike, send me your current address. Joe Browning wants it, too. If anyone else has any contact info for Mike, please send it to me at stevemays at Hotmail.com.
Update: Joe Browning came up with Mike’s phone numbers and address. Won’t post them here but will provide upon request.
Charles Jolliff follows up on earlier post about Katrina refugees coming to Kennett:
I found out where Camp McClanahan is where the visitors from the south will be housed. I found the place just east of Friendship. It’s two miles from my house and I never knew of its’ existence. Go figure. I’m sure you know about it though, 25 cottages, a pool, baseball field, a small serenity pool, and auditorium and a few other buildings. I ran into a bunch (20-30) of people and –by luck– talked to the man in charge, Lance Davis, the Deputy Director of Emergency Management for Dunklin County.
Lance said that this complex was a designated Red Cross shelter. There are 25 cottages in the encampment and I went into one and saw a clean and cool place that had two shower areas and bunk beds. That building could sleep 15 easily in just this one place. Davis was expecting 60 people to arrive today, but they were re-routed to a more northern part of Missouri. I also heard from a friend that Benton MO (ten miles north of Sikeston) has already received some people. As of this moment (4:45 pm, Saturday), there are no folks staying at the complex. Davis feels that they will receive some folks on Monday, but more likely Tuesday. There will be medical personnel available to check on the health of those that arrive.
The phone number for the camp is 573-888-6130 if anyone wishes to donate anything, or wants to know what is needed.
Update: First refugees arrived in Kennett late Saturday afternoon. [DDD]
That’s the rumor (unconfirmed but good source) from Kennett. Happened Wednesday at undisclosed location. I could find nary a word on the net. Could it be you heard it here first?
The firm where Barb works had a fund-raiser today for the hurricane relief effort. Her boss, prominent attorney and fun guy Harvey Tettlebaum, agreed to wear a clown suit if they raised $2,400.
And everyone in my department at Learfield Communications received this email late this afternoon from our chief financial officer:
I’ve scheduled an off-site meeting the afternoon of September 14 at Clyde’s (our CEO) house. This is a very important meeting and I expect you all to attend if you can. We will watch the movie “Office Space” and drink beer. Please mark your calendars.
Chuck and Cindy Zimmerman (AgWired.com) are blogging the IFAJ (International Federation of Ag Journalists) Congress in Thun, Switzerland. If you need an example of how to effectively blog a conference or event…this is it. The folks at Pioneer Hi-Bred must agree since they’re sponsoring AgWired’s coverage. Frequent posts, photos and audio. I’ve been trying to imagine how a radio station (or network) or TV station or newspaper could provide better coverage but haven’t come up with anything.
“We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.”
— George Carlin rant on why the planet is fine
“RSS is just a little peep, a signal, a ping that comes from a favorite blog or site, telling your computer that it has been updated. If you have an RSS reader (and they’re free and easy, and two of the easiest live on the web so you don’t even have to install anything), whenever a blog is updated, it shows up in your reader and you can catch up on the news. If there’s nothing new, it doesn’t show up and you don’t have to waste time surfing around.”
— Seth Godin
Timothy Johnston was executed this morning at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri. It had been delayed by appeals based on the argument that Missouri’s method of execution (lethal injection) is cruel and unusual punishment. Johnston seemed intent to prove his defense was true as he writhed on the gurney for what seemed like a minute. But some witnesses thought he was moving before the first drug was administered.
If his death was painful, it couldn’t have been much worse than being beaten and kicked to death which is how Tim dispatched his wife back in 1989.
But let’s assume he did fake the pain, as it were. You’re just seconds from crossing over to The Other Side, hoping you know what awaits but no way to know for sure… and you pretend to be in agonizing pain to…what? Make some kind of political statement?! That takes some real focus.
And having one of the corrections officers lean over and whisper, “Dude, we didn’t give you the shot yet” …would take me out of character.
Today our farm network did a live webcast from the Nebraska State Fair. It was a 90 minute panel discussion on technology in agriculture and it was great radio. Except I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on the radio. Just our website. In fact, the last eight or ten ag events we’ve covered have not even been put up on our satellite channel and offered to our affiliated radio stations. We’d love it it they would air these long-form programs but program directors are less and less willing to air more than a short ag report in the middle of the day. And I’m not sure they’re wrong.
Are we (the network) wrong to produce this programming? We’re pretty sure Nebraska corn farmers are interested in anything having to do with ethanol. But if you’re the program director of a radio station in the middle of Nebraska, you ask yourself what percentage of my listeners want to listen to someone talk about corn for an hour. Wouldn’t our listeners rather hear some good country music?
Probably. But, as a former small-town program director, I’m convinced there is a “cool factor” at work here, too. It just isn’t cool to air all that farm stuff. Country music is cool. And everybody likes country music, the people in town and the people on the farm. It’s the safe call.
This is where we encounter the long tail of ag programming. While there may be only a few hundred people that care about the future of ethanol in Nebraska, they care very much. And it’s getting harder and harder for them to find in-depth, real-time programming on their local radio station. Enter the web with streaming audio and podcasts all the rest. You want an hour on sugar beets in southern Indiana? No problem, click here.
Radio stations could have it both ways. Put the longer, in-depth programming on their web site and promote same on the air. But radio station owners do not perceive the need. And they no logner have the staff to do much of anything “extra.” At the same time, their listeners are just a Google search away from that they want. And they don’t care too much about where they get it.
Once upon a time, the only place a farmer in Ogallala could get farm news and prices was on his local radio station. Advertisers who wanted to sell stuff to those farmers only had to advertise on that station. It was the natural order of things. The good old days.
Dear Red States:
We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us.
In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon,Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no
purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most
of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale,Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy b*****ds believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.
By the way, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.
Peace out,
Blue States