We’re Not as Connected

To put all of this into perspective, I remember watching when Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs shared hosting in this  time slot. 

I absolutely loved Jack Paar. He brought wit and sophistication, the sort you hoped was shared by the intellectually elite rubbing shoulders with the socially perfected at legendary cocktail parties.

Then came Johnny Carson.  While he was in New York his show had a sliver of the class he inherited from Jack Paar.  On top of that he layered his everyman identity endearing him across this wide country.

He carried his bonhomie to Burbank when he escaped west.  Skitch Henderson’s big band jazz with Doc Severinsen carried over to Doc leading the band.

For Thirty years we were connected.  The Iranian Hostage crisis took us to ABC for a while but we always returned to say good night to Johnny.  His last show was a monumental event. 

Leno is a nice guy.  He can be funny.  But the connection was lost when he took over the show.  For me it has felt like we’ve had a guest host for seventeen years.

It wasn’t all him.  The media changed, the watching habits changed and, oh yeah, cable TV and the Internet happened.  If we felt we needed a touch of New York humor, we could watch David Letterman.  We still can.

When Mr. Carson left we all knew he was going to be gone from the air.  He was burned out and ready to retire.  Like Steve Allen and Jack Paar, Leno is moving to another time slot. 

I gave it some thought.  Carson leaving was like a beloved national leader riding his horse into the sunset.  You knew the next time you saw him would be at his wake.

Leno leaving is like the last curtain on a Broadway show.  The curtain will rise on the next show, starting at the same time and in the same place.
-30- 

LiveJournal Tags: Leno

 

Related articles by Zemanta

• Leno brings standup show to Ontario (ctv.ca)
• O'Brien's Night 1: 'A Swirly Cone of Some Nerves' (nytimes.com)

An Unscheduled Saturday

Image by sgtret via Flickr

With all of the planners, events, reminders and scheduled entertainment now in our lives; when we came upon a Saturday with no events planned it seemed very odd.

It was as if we did something wrong, forgot something important, left something out.  All negative thing  these days.  It took a few moments to adjust.  But the Internet will not let us be unconnected, unscheduled, left out of the loop.

We took some of this time to look over Belltower News and noticed that the Share box in the right column had not been updated in quite a while.  Further investigation discovered the reason.

Feed Demon.  We had left Google Reader for for the RSS reader FeedDemon.  It is a great reader that defaults to the feeds from newsgator. When we clicked on the Share icon we thought it was automatically listing the link on Belltowernews.com.

Not so, we discovered.  Where it was sharing these great links will never be known.

We found Nick Bradbury added Google Reader to the supported feeds for FeedDemon.  This gave us the best of possible combinations.  A rare thing these days with all of the specialization.

Related articles by Zemanta

• FeedDemon Can Now Sync Google Reader to the Desktop (makeuseof.com)
• FeedDemon 3.0 Beta Syncs to Google Reader [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)

With that done, we can sit back and listen to Mr. Lambert on Play Classical UK using  Nexus Radio.

-30- 

LiveJournal Tags: FeedDemon,Google Reader

 

The Town Meeting Went Well

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I resisted the urge to speak until someone said “Vernal Pool.”  Without thinking I was to my feet saying the question had not been answered.

Then it was answered and I was done for the night.

When the budget was moved to a meeting in June, this years New England Town Meeting lost interest.

I am sure they kept the quorum for the rest of the street acceptances and revisions and spell checks, but I could not stay knowing I have to travel out of State tomorrow.

For the safety of all involved, I retired from the auditorium knowing I saw my civic duty and did it.
-30- 

LiveJournal Tags: Town Meeting

Live Writer and Posterous

Still Trying to get Posterous on Live Writer

You would see more Posterous entries if I could get this on LIVE Writer.  As it worked out, I posted the original using the email method, loaded Live Writer and reopened the current blog entries for editing.

-30-

Posted via email from grazing's posterous

LiveJournal Tags: Posterous

Hyperwords

Hyperwords is just about the most useful add-on to Firefox that I have seen in quite a while.  Most of the utilities that I have added over the past four years have either silently incorporated themselves into the browser’s basic function, or have been removed.

Hyperwords is an active add-on.  I translate, shop, instantly search, send to email, twitter, facebook, etc.  It will check the spelling, tell me how to pronounce something and, as if it didn’t do enough, convert currency.

What made me want to highlight it on Belltowernews.com was a conversation I had with an expatriate now living in Sweden.  He drifts back and forth from English to Swedish on Facebook.  On a whim, I used Hyperwords to see what he was saying.  It worked.

So, I wrote something in English, used Hyperwords to translate it and sent him the Wall-to-wall in Swedish. Bam!  He was sold.  I use the word sold figuratively because the add-on is free.

-30- 

LiveJournal Tags: Hyperwords

Town Meeting Tomorrow – Church Meeting Today

It’s meeting season in New England.  Everyone wants to get the business done before we all leave for balmier climes.

A decade and one half ago, I was fascinated by the pure, democratic process of the New England Town Meeting.  It had been memorialized by Norman Rockwell’s painting of the the rough hewn farmer wearing  his LL Bean blue and black checked shirt about to make a speech.

The late Tip O’Neil said that all politics were local.  This was about as local as it can get. 

Then I became deeply involved in the politics of the situation.  I learned the back story, the cliques, the ruling class of people who never missed a town meeting. 

This small percentage, who read the Town Administrators reports, who watched the Selectman’s meeting on the local Public Access cable station, these well informed individuals were making the decisions on how the town should be managed.

Until an “issue” arose.  Especially if it was a NIMBY issue.  Than the fly-by-night members of the Town Meeting would appear.  They certainly had the right, as registered voters, to come and have their say.

The wise Board of Selectman would recognize these issues and put them at the end of the warrant.  If they were going to fill the seat, they might as well do the work.

When I first attended these meetings, I was morally outraged by anyone who would move the question, effectively shutting down further debate.  I thought everyone should have their say.

Then, after a few years of hearing people speak just to hear their own voice, repeating issues and questions already handled and answered.  I might just have become the record holder on moving the question.

The New England Church meeting, attended by the same people who come well prepared for the Town Meeting, is the same in miniature.

The new roof, passed, the new boiler, passed, supporting important social issues, passed. What brand of coffee to use at the social hour after the service, one entire hour of a debate which includes South American Politics, global warning, quotes from Silent Spring and Atlas Shrugged sprinkled with a few war stories about how it was always done before.

Move the question! 

Thankfully the newcomers see the value of this parliamentarian lifeline, leave their moral indignation at home, and get us all out of there in time to attend tomorrow’s other meeting.

Welcome to New England.

-30- 

LiveJournal Tags: Town Meeting

Happy Mothers Day!

Image via Wikipedia

There are few spare moments between the breakfast my son made for his mother at 0600 and the dinner we plan to share with other mothers and their families.

In that spare time there are two ‘utilities’ I have started to use over the past few weeks worth mentioning.

Evernote is the first.  When we first started playing with it, I figured, as with most nice shiny things, it may last a day or two. 

Wrong on several counts with that guess.

It has become essential to my thought process because it has replaced the large portion of my brain where memory once lived.  It has also replaced the sticky notes that once decorated every dry surface on my desk and laptop.

Then there is Hyperwords.

This second, more recent of the two, was recommended in a tweet from @stephenfry.  In his message he said, “I don’t know how I lived without it.” Hyperbole was my second bad guess.

Especially when going over lists and comments left in several of the major languages, I have used Hyperwords to easily translate

to

translating is  one of the dozen or so selection that pop up by default when a word or phrase is highlighted.  The list disappears if you right click for the default menu.

It will define, search the engines as well as  Wikipedia and social sites, copy to notepad, and make tea. 

Okay, no  tea, but you need to visit their site to see what this jack of all trades add-on to Firefox, and soon Windows, can do for you.

-30- 

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hyperwords Hacks for Firefox (sciencetext.com)
• First Look: Moments (tuaw.com)

LiveJournal Tags: Hyperwords

Legacy of Laughter

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Dom Deluise recently died. 

That can be said to be sad, but he certainly left us a legacy of laughter. 

On the NBC Nightly News, shown through the Hulu portal, I found this clip: http://tr.im/CarsonNDD  of Dom Deluise and Johnny Carson.

Watch this all the way through - it gets funnier and funnier.

-30- 

LiveJournal Tags: Dom Deluise

H1N1, Where We Were Standing When We Heard

This is a photo I took to show the view from where we were standing when we heard the news that cases of the h1n1 Virus were found a few miles away.

The waiting room was an international petri dish.

It reflected in many ways, in modern dress, the crowds who once occupied Ellis Island, visible from where we stood.

They too were a petri dish, with public health officials waiting to shove tongue depressors into their throats.

No tongue depressors here.

The ferry upon which we sailed to Staten Island was fairly full.

They don't allow you to stay on board for the ride back. You need to leave and re-enter the terminal, so, it deposited us ashore directing us back around into Richmond County's St. George Terminal.

Just as we were settled back onto the same boat, with good perches for the photographers, we were told they were taking the boat out of service.

It was one more walk around where we joined the people gathered to take the next ferry. That’s when I took this snap. When the next ferry arrived from Manhattan, it spit out its human cargo, 2/3’s of which promptly walked around back into the terminal to join us.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

What should have been a pleasant sail across Upper New York Harbor, with promised views of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the churches of Brooklyn, turned into a dash for seats in the middle.

It was like riding on a wide body jet, in the center aisle.

When we spewed forth from the boat, I don’t know how many thousands of us, the crowd soon blended into the mass of tourists visiting lower Manhattan on this first really nice day of 2009.

If that many people suddenly showed up in our home town, it would be an event. Here they do it every half hour without a blip of notice.

LiveJournal Tags: Stane Island Ferry,Crowd,H1N1

-30-