Debut Blog Post on the TU.

[stephendare]

http://jacksonville.com/interact/blog/stephendare/2009-04-30/a_debut

One supposes that some sort of introductory article is in order to explain the sudden appearance, Nova like, of my presence here on Jacksonville.com.


No stranger to the Times Union am I.  In fact, in reviewing the garish internal filmstrips of my teenaged memories, it seems that I was practically born at the building and nursed Romulus (or Mowgli) like at the breasts of the great beast.  Or maybe I just had a whole lot of guidance and comfort from the likes of Ann Hyman and Cynthia Parks.

I First wandered into the Newsroom in 1986? in connection with a story about Camp Tracy, where my friend, Dorothy Boyette was languishing in a state of near child slavery, toiling in the Collard Green Patch of the youth camp.  Before the year was up, I would be there more frequently in defense of my principal at Douglas Anderson School of the Art, Mary Frances Whittaker.  Since then Ive dogged the steps of the paper like Inspector Javert.

Back in the days where there were actually two papers emanating from the nest, (Can anyone imagine the sepia toned era that needed two publications made out of paper to report on the various goings on of Baptists and the pursuit of Fried Chicken?)  The Jacksonville Journal and the Times Union.

Our Household at the Beaches took the Jacksonville Journal rather than the TU.  My Papa and Li'l Mama for some reason preferred the defunct sister paper to the one that survived.  They also voted for Nixon, didnt think that the Beatles were really going amount to much in the long run, andfirmly believed that one day, Buddy Holly would be remembered as the true father of Rock and Roll.

At our Pentecostal church, my maternal grandfather (as Papa was in actuality) was certainly not alone in the persisting opinion that long hair and men's fashion that strayed too far from the legendary axis that ran from Old Spice to Aqua Velva (for friskier nights) was a French plot to sissify and eventually homosexualize the American Male in order to make the eventual Soviet Conquest of America easier if not more likely.

His wife, (my Li'l Mama) spent her spare hours with newfangled kitchen contraptions and cook books, watching PTL while  pursuing the holy grail of technology at the time ---- The Digital Calculator (by Texas Instruments) and untangling the mysteries of the "microwave" oven.  In retrospect, I realize now that the little woman was something of a paleo 'techie'.  Impenetrably difficult to operate machinery filled her life and created a certain amount of overflow between it and her other main interest:  The Scripture.

When the instructions booklets on the Pong game, the "Cable' TV and the various generations of "Microwaves' failed to glean anything useful, it was invariably time to call in backup:  The Holy Ghost.  My Li'l Mama was able to successfully identify and rebuke literally thousands of seperate foul spirits confounding the appliances brought into her home by the ungodly sciences of the 70s, and I speculate that more than fifty percent of the time this was a lot more effective than the actual printed instructions.

In this, I suspect, she might have been on to something, and a bit of a pioneer.

We had neighbors who took both papers.  The Caines, for example.  Every day, twice a day, Mr. Caine would emerge from his ranch style home, trundle down the driveway and stand like a forgotten Lieutenant of WW2 waiting for the paper to arrive with as much menace and martial attitude as the old guy could muster.  Which was a lot.

Some years before, there had been a newspaper thief in the neighborhood.  Caine had been the victim.  This crime had been repeatedly perpetrated on our outraged neighbor until he was stung to action.  It had resulted in the shooting of a large newsprint starved dog with an air rifle.  The dog (which belonged to a neighbor) had escaped with both his life and a small metal pellet embedded painfully in his posterior, but sans newspaper.  But something about the fact that the dog's owner had been strangely furtive about the whole matter and surreptitiously present had raised Caine's suspicions.  Hence the twice daily vigil.

On the few days occasions that our family had dined with the Caine's, the house had gone cosmically silent and all motion ground to a sudden stop at the national news hour.  While Walter Cronkite was talking, no sounds nor talking was permitted except during the commercial breaks.

Caine was serious about his news.

I suppose nothing has changed at all in the world in the intervening years.  The intrinsic useability of technology has lost none of its diabolism, the world is still full of cranks who are immovably convinced that their crackpot political theory is nevertheless, God's own truth, and I myself have become the resolute, bloodyminded newsjunkie, hanging around for up to the second updates about people I will never meet and events I wouldnt go to if I was on fire and they were being held underwater.

The very few things that have actually improved are pretty negligible at best.  As I was explaining to Mike Tolbert the other day, (yes get used to gratuitous namedropping, its part of my pompous appeal): The Internet is just like CB Radio.   But with pictures.

I suppose its less likely that some random mutt will steal my morning news fix.

But like my Li'l Mama, I find myself speaking in tongues as a response to technology as often as not.

[Charles Hunter]

Heh, that was worth a chuckle, stephen, maybe your "fan" meant that we "jaxoutlouders" were the "leftest" as in "the most to the left" of all those commie-pinko blogger who live in mommie's basement.

"Stevie"