Where Did the Bugs Go?

 I stopped watching TV back in the mid 70's when I began spending a lot of time in my "darkroom" developing film and printing pictures. Photography has always been a "close second" to radio as far as my hobbies are concerned.

One thing you can't do in a darkroom...is turn on a TV set.  If you do, the dark goes away.

Film, of course finally did go away, and so did my darkroom, but I never bothered to turn the TV set back on again. 

I've lived happily ever after since. So far, so good.

However, there is one downside: if  something happens that isn't mentioned on the radio or the Internet, then I know nothing about it.  For example,surely I'm not the only one who noticed that there were no bugs this summer. I'm talking about insects. Darned if I don't think I saw even one all summer!

I don't really miss them, but if I remember correctly, we were once taught that little creatures like Bees, butterflies, fireflies, mosquitoes and ticks are the small creatures that hold up entire ecosystems? 


We might really miss the those.

Bug scientists have noticed for years that the firefly population has declined, but they attribute this to the proliferation of more lights that disrupt their communication with other fireflies. But that is only a theory.

I don't have any idea, unless all the bugs, like more and more of our liberal friends are moving down to the Red States like North Carolina and unfortunately bringing their voting habits with them.
Let me know if they ( the bugs) showed up down there this summer.

-Ed

Albert Einstein once said: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination … no more men!” 

“If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.”

-Dr Jonas Salk

The Year of No Summer

That's what I tell my friends as I am well into my second week, of my second month of living with SHINGLES.

I hope you never get it, but statistics say that 20% of people who have ever had Chicken Pox will get it, usually when we get as old as we are.

Chicken Pox normally goes away in a couple of weeks, but it leaves a virus in you body that is just waiting to attack. Not much you can do about it, but getting early treatment often shortens its duration. It sometimes mimics a heart attack. Those were my first symptoms,  but my Cardiologist was absent from class the day they discussed that in Medical school, so it was left to my wife Linda to diagnose my problem.  Delayed treatment is probably what has caused my Shingles to last so long.

Enough about me.

There once was a worldwide Year of No Summer.  It was 1816.

I don't recall ever reading or even hearing about it until I started feeling sorry for myself and began looking for others whose summer was ruined by Shingles.

This is how Wikipedia describes it:

The Year Without a Summer was an agricultural disaster. Historian John D. Post has called this, "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world".^[5] The unusual climatic aberrations of 1816 had the greatest effect on most of New England, Atlantic Canada, and parts of western Europe. Typically, the late spring and summer of central and northern New England and southeastern Canada are relatively stable: temperatures (average of both day and night) average between about 68 and 77°F (20 and 25°C) and rarely fall below 41°F (5°C). Summer snow is an extreme rarity.

North America

In the spring and summer of 1816, a persistent "dry fog" was observed in parts of the eastern U.S. The fog reddened and dimmed the sunlight, such that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Neither wind nor rainfall dispersed the "fog". It has been characterized as a "stratospheric sulfate aerosol veil".^[6]

At higher elevations, where farming was problematic in good years, the cooler climate did not quite support agriculture. In May 1816,^[1] frost killed off most crops in the higher elevations of New England and New York. On June 4, frosts were reported as far south as northern Connecticut and the highlands of northwest New Jersey. ^[7] On June 6, snow fell in Albany, New York, and Dennysville, Maine.^[8]

Many commented on the phenomenon. Sarah Snell Bryant, of Cummington, Massachusetts, wrote in her diary, "Weather backward."^[9]

At the Church Family of Shakers in upstate New York, near New Lebanon, Nicholas Bennet wrote in May 1816, "all was froze" and the hills were "barren like winter." Temperatures went below freezing almost every day in May. The ground froze solid on June 9. On June 12, the Shakers had to replant crops destroyed by the cold. On July 7, it was so cold, everything had stopped growing. The Berkshire Hills had

frost again on August 23, as did much of the upper northeast .^[10]

A Massachusetts historian summed up the disaster: "Severe frosts occurred every month; June 7th and 8th snow fell, and it was so cold that crops were cut down, even freezing the roots .... In the early Autumn when corn was in the milk it was so thoroughly frozen that it never ripened and was scarcely worth harvesting. Breadstuffs were scarce and prices high and the poorer class of people were often in straits for want of food. It must be remembered that the granaries of the great west had not then been opened to us by railroad communication, and people were obliged to rely upon their own resources or upon others in their immediate locality."^[11]

Europe

Cool temperatures and heavy rains resulted in failed harvests in Britain and Ireland. Families in Wales travelled long distances as refugees, begging for food. Famine was prevalent in north and southwest Ireland, following the failure of wheat, oats, and potato harvests. In Germany, the crisis was severe; food prices rose sharply. With the cause of the problems unknown, people demonstrated in front of grain markets and bakeries, and later riots, arson, and looting took place in many European cities. It was the worst famine of 19th-century Europe.^[8][14]

Again, according to Wikipedia,

The crop failures of the "Year without a Summer" may have helped shape the settling of the "American Heartland", as many thousands of people (particularly farm families who were wiped out by the event) left New England for what is now western and central New York and the Midwest (then the Northwest Territory) in search of a more hospitable climate, richer soil, and better growing conditions.^[24]

According to historian L.D. Stillwell, Vermont alone experienced a drop between 10,000 and 15,000 people, erasing seven previous years of population growth.^[5] Among those who left Vermont were the family of Joseph Smith, who moved from Sharon, Vermont, to Palmyra, New York.^[25]This move precipitated the series of events that culminated in the publication of the Book of Mormon and the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.^[16]

In June 1816, "incessant rainfall" during that "wet, ungenial summer" forced Mary Shelley, John William Polidori, and their friends to stay indoors for much of their Swiss holiday. They decided to have a contest to see who could write the scariest story, leading Shelley to write Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus and Lord Byron to write "A Fragment", which Polidori later used as inspiration for The Vampyre^[26] — a precursor to Dracula. In addition, Lord Byron was inspired to write a poem, "Darkness", at the same time.

Darkness

BY LORD BYRON 

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,

And men forgot their passions in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts

Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:

Mount Tamboro Eruption

I believe the reason very few people have ever heard of the YEAR OF NO SUMMER is because for many years it was simply a WEATHER story.  It had to wait for fairly modern communications to learn that disastrous year was caused by the eruption of Mount Tamboro in Indonesia, the largest volcano eruption in recorded history. It killed over 90,000 people.

By the time the world found out, it was "old news."

I'm not trying to out scare any of those great story tellers of the 1800's but scientists who should know, say that Mount Tamboro could erupt again any day now.

It's already been rumbling for over a year.

-Ed 

Maverick

I was saddened by James Garner's death last week, although anyone who lives a life as successful and long as he did left "on quite a rush;" which is a card shark's term meaning running extremely lucky and winning a large proportion of hands.

Bret Maverick, the adroitly articulate card shark on Maverick is the way I remember him.  That show premiered on TV in September of 1957 nine months before I went to work for my first commercial TV station, WSOC-TV.  As I recall, it was the most popular non CBS show to ever compete with the Tiffany network up to that time.

By the summer of 1958, it had really begun to get high ratings and those of us at Charlotte's channel 9 were ecstatic to know that we finally might beat WBTV, the big boy on the block, in at least ONE time slot.

We were well aware that we were number two in town, not only the second TV station to go on the air (Channel 3 had been broadcasting since 1949. It was the 13th TV station in the entire USA at the time.) we also were affiliated with the number two (and 3) NETWORKS, NBC and ABC. There is a truism in TV that if you owned a CBS Television station in the 1950's and 60's...it was impossible not to become rich.

The building that now houses WSOC-TV was in the process of being built in the summer of 1958, so we broadcast our shows from the small transmitter building located in the Newell-Hickory Grove neighborhood, just outside Charlotte's northeastern city limits. Our one studio was less than the size of the average living room. All of our live shows came out of there, including Jimmy Kilgo's Saturday dance parties. In addition, all of our electronic equipment was also stuffed into that small building

So we were struggling. However, our management was eagerly looking forward to the next rating book to come out showing how strong that the Maverick time period was.  That would mean a lot of money for the station. Plus, psychologically, it would have been a big boost for us. Almost everyone who worked at the station were pros with the possible exception of members of the "floor crew," and these were "trainees," many of whom worked their way into full time positions.
However, as in any business, there were some "clunkers."

James Garner

It was just such a clunker who, on the first day of the rating period, accidentally spilled his soft drink into the main "switcher" and knocked the station off the air...for a week.
What a week to be off the air!

I'm not saying if that had not happened, Channel 9 would have overcome Channel 3's nine year "head start" and its CBS affiliation advantage but it sure would have felt good.

However, to quote Maverick himself,

''As my old pappy used to say,  Never cry over spilt milk. It could've been whiskey."

-Ed



*Actually, WSOC-TV was Charlotte's third television station, after WBTV (channel 3) and WAYS-TV (channel 36, which operated from 1954 to 1955); it was Charlotte's second station on the VHF band. 

FORWARD

This is my third and probably last book of little stories and adventures and what not that I remember from my long and happy life.

I came into this world in 1936, which means I was a "depression baby."  But both my parents, Walter Myers (he only had two names) and Bertha Jolly Myers had jobs.  Daddy was a stock broker for Abbott Proctor and Paine (worked earlier for Western Union, beginning as a telegram delivery boy, then taught himself Morse code and later worked there as a telegrapher).

My mother worked for Western Union becoming a "supervisor" and retiring  after 40 years. Her starting salary in the early 30's was $7 a week.

My sister Kathryn who was three years older than me was a teacher and retired from the Charlotte public school system. She could not have been a better sister, always supportive, encouraging and loving!

We were born in undoubtedly the best time and place in human history; Charlotte, NC, USA. We were too young to participate in the wars, following WW2 the peacetime economy was unparallelled and the greatest nation on  earth didn't begin to fall apart until, well, until Kak (the nickname I gave her the moment I stared talking which was probably when I was 2 years old.) and I also began falling apart because of old age.

When the time comes for me to go, please don't assume that I'm screaming and hollering and raising Hell because I'm not grateful for the most wonderful life anyone could have ever hoped for, but that I hate so bad to leave it...and especially my wonderful wife Linda and my wonderful children and grandchildren.

Ed Myers /aka Lee Shephard  July 18, 2014

When In Doubt...Rattle On

Let's face it. At our age, memory lapses are normal.

• Forgetting where you left things you use regularly, such as glasses or keys.
• Forgetting names of acquaintances or blocking one memory with a similar one, such as calling a grandson by your son’s name.
• Occasionally forgetting an appointment.
• Having trouble remembering what you’ve just read, or the details of a conversation.
• Walking into a room and forgetting why you entered.
• Becoming easily distracted.
• Not quite being able to retrieve information you have “on the tip of your tongue.

So relax forget about dementia.

But darn it, those brain burps sure are annoying.

What bothers me most is when I'm having a conversation with someone, or often a small group of people, and when it finally comes my turn ...and I'll all primed to make a powerful point....I suddenly forget what I was going to say. I draw a complete blank....and it usually takes a good long 15 or 20 seconds for the thought to come to me....

Well, if that ever happens to you....  instead of saying something like, pardon me, I'm having one of those "old codger moments"...my brain suddenly went completely blank......Or, even worse, allow the conversation to stop completely while you wait for your brain to get back into gear...

try an old radio announcer trick and ...vamp.

Ed and Barry calling UNC baseball game for WCHL

That's what we used to call it when were were describing something like a rain delay during a baseball game, or a parade or any live event that has moments when there's no action. Because the first thing you learn in radio is that silence is deadly. 

Perhaps that is also the best way to approach those brain freeze moments.

Try it. 

Next time it happens to you, instead of pausing to wait for the original thought to return...vamp:

 "It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs."

"The average life span of a major league baseball is 7 pitches."

"The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie" (Thus the name of the Don McLean Song)

"Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating."

"Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th"

"The Eisenhower Interstate Highway system requires that one mile in every 5 must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies"

By this time, your original thought will have returned and you can continue with your conversation.

But, you say, "What if I can't remember those facts?"

They are so "out in left field" that I can almost promise that you will remember at least 3 of them, probably more. And I'll prove it.

Right now...without looking...see how many you can remember?




See. I told you.

"Keep those cards and letters coming folks."

-Ed

Say Cheese

"Those who don't"

I came across this old picture on the Internet the other day and it got me thinking again about why people didn't smile in those old photographs of the late 1800's and early 1900's.  I always assumed  it was because of technology.  To properly expose the early film, you needed the shutter of the camera to stay open a fairly long time in order for enough light to make the image on the "slow" film.

The very first photograph  taken in 1826, View from the Window at Le Gras, took 8 hours to

World's first photograph 1826

expose. When Louis Daguerre introduced the daguerreotype in 1839, he managed to shave this time down to just 15 minutes. This was a revolutionary breakthrough for photography, but still not good enough for smile-friendly portraits.

For most of the studio photographic portraits of the early 1900's the camera shutter had to be held open for about 60 seconds or a little longer, and that's a long time to hold a smile.  Too long, the theory goes, to keep the lips from moving even slightly which would have caused a blur.

The solution it seemed was to NOT smile.

Mystery solved.

Mark Twain

But maybe not.  I think I can hold a smile for 60 secs. Others say they can
too.

So perhaps that wasn't the only reason. Bad teeth and the fact that having your portrait taken was considered a rather formal occasion have also been cited as causes for such serious poses.

That makes a lot of sense to me because if any of us were to go back in time I think the first thing we would notice about the people of the late 19th and early 20th centuries would be their rotten teeth.

Abe Lincoln

But Nicholas Jeeves, writing in the Public Domain Review has come up with a couple of different conclusions. He says that rotten teeth were so common back then that they weren't even noticed and certainly didn't detract from what was then considered "attractive."

We think of smiles as warm and friendly. But Jeeves points out that,

"By the 17th century in Europe it was a well-established fact that the only people who smiled broadly, in life and in art, were the poor, the lewd, the drunk, the innocent, and the entertainment."

Mark Twain once wrote that,  “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.”

Apparently, that mindset remained until the Kodak Brownie became popular.  The very first Brownie was manufactured in 1901. A popular story Explaining how Kodak got its name claims that it was named for the sound the Brownie made when the shutter was pushed. (Frankly it sounded more like "KaPlunk" to me, but no company named KaPlunk would have been the same.)  

But that story is not true. George Eastman, the founder himself said that he'd simply made it up.

"I always liked the letter "K." It seems a strong and incisive kind of letter. It became a question of trying a great number of combinations of letters starting and ending with the letter "K" and "Kodak" is the result."

The "Brownie" was named after cartoon characters drawn by Canadian Cartoonist Palmer Cox which featured little fairy like figures called "Brownies."  (Notice original Brownie Box above.)

Anyway, Kodak began advertising it's camera, which sold for $1 dollar, by showing happy

Picture from early Brownie ad

people taking pictures of other happy people smiling and having fun.  Gradually, the message got out that it was OK to smile in photographs. Besides, these were a different kind of photographs. They were informal photographs of ordinary people.They were "snapshots." 

By the mid-20th century, photography in general had become much faster, much cheaper, and much more casual. People were also taking better care of their teeth. Smiling became, not only accepted, but almost mandatory when posing before the now ubiquitous ( I love that word) Brownie. "Say Cheese" were the magic words that 97.5% of the time preceded the "KaPlunk" of millions of Brownies.

-Lee 

Time Machine

“How did it get so late so soon?” 
― Dr. Seuss

Elgin made in 1927

How I cherish this family heirloom. It was my father's watch. He purchased it in 1927 and probably pulled it out of his pocket to check the time at least 15 times a day for the rest of his life.  

It got him to the Church on time to marry my Mom.

It got him to work on time each day.

He kept checking it while waiting at Mercy Hospital for my sister Kathryn and then, me, to be born and finally 21 years later at that same hospital he checked it for the final time on Christmas Eve 1957.

Unfortunately, I don't believe I'll be able to pass on anything as personal and meaningful as that to my children.

Timex

My Timex just won't cut it.

The thought of wearing a wrist watch never even crossed my Dad's mind.  To him, and his generation, it would have been the equivalent of wearing a dress.  A wrist watch was something women wore.

It took a world war to change that attitude.

A great article in the June SMITHSONIAN magazine explains that,

WW1 Pilot

"... during World War I. Officers began using wristwatches to coordinate the new style of attack: opening with a barrage of gunfire to stun and destabilize the enemy, followed immediately by an onrush of soldiers.“You’d want the soldiers to be alert to the fact that the guns were about to stop, and be ready to spring,” says David Boettcher, a British horologist who has researched wartime watch-wearing. This required precise timing, and officers fumbling around in the dark for a pocket watch wouldn’t do. To make the wristwatches easily legible in battle, watchmakers fashioned them with large, round faces that had prominent dark numbers set off by a white porcelain backing and coated in radium that glowed brilliantly in the dark."

And Suddenly, wrist watches became Manly!

Men began to realize that it was difficult to reach into your pocket to check the time when you were "on the go," such as riding a bicycle, a horse or driving a car.  Besides, it was dangerous. Men might have figured this out earlier, but there was no TV back then of course, and radio PSAs (Public Service Announcements) had not been invented yet, so they had to figure it out on their own that ..."watching?"...or "timing?" while driving, or whatever some ad agency would have eventually called it, could be hazardous to their health.

PSAs on radio didn't exist until the government started selling War Bonds during WW2. 

By that time 90% of American men were wearing wrist watches. So no ad agency had to figure out a clever name for "pulling your watch out of your pocket."

Fashion Statement

Those watches of the early 1900's, like my Dads, did more than just tell time. They made a statement. As Alexis McCrossen of Southern Methodist University wrote, "You were a modern person, a timekeeping person, a regular person."  He pointed out that a 1913 Hamilton watch ad described the watch as a tool for moral improvement. "The Hamilton leads its owner to form desirable habits of promptness and precision."

A new word for a person like that found its way into the dicti0nary:  A "Stemwinder." someone who habitually wound his watch.

But Don't be surprised if before long watches start going back into pockets or maybe even drawers.

The battle for the prime techno real estate on the human body is heating up and the head ain't it.

Although,  people who wear a computer on their head

are also making a statement, which, in my opinion is "I am a freak!"

But mark my word, it won't be long before we'll be saying goodbye to the wristwatch and hello to some form of the computer whose first name will be wrist. 

-Ed