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NOVEMBER
30, 2022
SOLAR PANELS AND A ROSETTE
Ohio's
Union County is home to some 990 farmers and about 241,000 acres of
crop land, worth an average of $7,272 per acre.
I
grew up in Richwood in the northern part of the county, an area
where solar panels are planned for some of those fields.
These
renewable-energy projects will bring in revenue, so the county has
approved them. But they'll also remove acreage from
agricultural production, so not all farmers like the idea. |
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Several
residents last month asked the county commissioners to reconsider
their vote in favor of one solar project's PILOT agreement, according
to Michael Williamson of the Marysville Journal-Tribune.
The citizens alleged that the information surrounding the
financial benefits to the area wasn't accurate and should be looked
at again.
Debbie
Krieg, a resident in the North Union School District, joined the
meeting virtually and asked the commissioners if a potential decline
in enrollment at North Union was factored into their decisions.
Did you factor in, when you were considering the impacts on the
schools, any concerns about declining enrollment in the North Union
School District in light of the aggressive solar development up here,
in that you're looking to fund a certain school population
today? Krieg asked. Are you factoring in potential
declines in that, as more and more acres are consumed by panels?
What
makes you think, commissioners wondered, that families will be
moving away? Commissioner Dave Burke said that on several
occasions, the county met with school district officials who
predicted enrollment would maintain or grow at its present
rate. ...There was no discussion about a decrease in
enrollment. Nevertheless, the commissioners did
reconsider the measure and approved it again. No votes were
changed. Burke remarked, Certainly I hope this is the
last time we ever have to vote on any of these.
In
other news, a marketing campaign for the Ohio Department of Health
wants to counter the perception that people in rural communities
can't go anywhere without a car or truck. Richwood is an
ideal place to show that, they declared, and promotional photos
were taken in September showing folks happily walking and biking
around town.
Now
Richwood pavements are being repaired, as the voters on November 8
approved an additional five-year, 3-mill levy for that purpose by a
margin of 342-287. And the village could be getting an
additional sidewalk.
At
the top of this image is downtown, and in the lower left corner is
my former home the house on the eastern outskirts where I
lived when I was a student at Richwood High School, the former site
of which I've labeled with an orange RHS.
It
seemed ridiculous to drive my car a couple of blocks to school, so
often I'd walk to school along Ohio Route 47. But for the first
600 feet, if cars were coming, I'd have to cut through people's
lawns. There were no sidewalks that far out of town.
Nowadays,
notes Mayor Scott Jerew, many people buy food not by walking
downtown but by walking to the dollar stores that have sprung up
across from my former home.
There's
a proposal to make that journey less hazardous. Ally Lanasa
wrote in the Richwood Gazette in October, The
five-foot-wide concrete path, which is to be named the Rosette Way to
Healthy Food, will ensure residents can safely access healthier food
options as well as provide a designated space for exercise. |
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I
haven't seen the plans; I assume they involve extending the Blagrove
Street sidewalk by 600 feet, as indicated by the yellow line.
There are utility poles and a gas line and a ditch along that
path. The cost of the project has risen to at least $65,000;
the village has committed $10,000 and applied for a Transportation
Alternatives Program (TAP) grant, while the Central Ohio Rural
Planning Organization (CORPO) is trying to secure funding to cover
the additional $34,400 consulting fee.
On
the other hand, if healthy exercise is a goal, I suppose they could
follow the green arrow instead and cut through the woods. That
would make the walk twice as long.
NOVE MBER
28, 2022
I'VE LOST A THIRD OF ME
Are
you still stuffed from last week's dulcem Thanksgiving feast?
Not as stuffed as I was on this week eleven years ago, when I weighed 257
pounds! My BMI in 2011 was an obese 39.1.
The
following year, and again this year, I noticed that for some reason
I didn't have as much appetite. Also, because of a slightly
high blood-glucose level, this year I also cut back on carbs.
Now
I'm down to 170 pounds, with a BMI of a merely
overweight 27.4. I'm told that normal
(the green range) is 18.5 to 24.9, so I'm getting there.
NOVEMBER
26, 2012
PRIMITIVE GRAPHICS
My
specialty, TV graphics, has come a long way since this contest that
aired exactly 50 years ago tonight. It was a CBS celebrity game
show called Stump the Stars.
In
a game of charades, Ross Martin tried to communicate a joke to his
teammates. The text crawled across the bottom of the screen,
pulled in front of a camera by a stagehand.
Ross
had a limited number of seconds, so above the crawl was a timer
whose digits rolled past like an odometer. |

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After
each round, the graphics camera showed us a scoreboard on which
names and times hung from little hooks.
Let
me show you another example from the early days of television.
You
know, some say the crawl became a permanent feature of television
news after 9/11/2001. But news crawls have been around from the
beginning. Check out the kinescope
of the very first Today show on NBC, January 14, 1952. |
The
program that morning showed off the new TV technology, when it
worked, by going live to such sites as the Pentagon parking lot and
Chicagos Loop to watch people arriving for work.
But
for part of the three hours, hosted by communicator Dave
Garroway, the latest headlines were typed onto a long strip of
paper. This ticker tape was then formed into an endless loop,
attached to a drum, slowly spun past a camera, and inserted into the
bottom of the screen. |
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I
recall watching a long-ago telecast of the National Invitational
Tournament. It was about 1959. An announcer stood in a
room off the basketball court at the old Madison Square Garden, and
beside him was a blackboard that he used to explain the NIT bracket.
I
recall reporting the local election returns on cable TV in Marion,
Ohio. It was about 1973. For each race, I held up a piece
of poster board with the names of the candidates and their pictures,
which I had cut out of the local newspaper. This card had
windows to reveal another card behind it, on which Id written
the latest vote totals in Magic Marker.
Nowadays,
of course, all such graphics are computer-generated.
NOVEMBER
22, 2022 
A
DULCEM JOURNALIST
It's
time to prepare a good old-fashioned vegetarian Thanksgiving feast. |
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We'll
have sweet potatoes and fried cornmeal mush with hot tea, and
pumpkin pie for dessert. It'll be dulcem! (That's from
the Latin dulce meaning sweet.)
But
first things first. As Pittsburgh songwriter Stephen Foster
wrote in 1850, we must begin by redding up the kitchen and firing up
the wood-burning stove.
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Nelly
Bly! Nelly Bly! Bring the broom along.
We'll
sweep the kitchen clean, my dear, and have a little song.
Poke
the wood, my lady love, and make the fire burn,
And
while I take the banjo down, just give the mush a turn.
Hi,
Nelly! Ho, Nelly! Listen, love, to me;
I'll
sing for you, play for you, a dulcem melody. |
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~ |
~ |
~ |
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Nelly
Bly! Nelly Bly! Never, never sigh.
Never
bring a teardrop to the corner of your eye,
For
the pie is made of pumpkins and the mush is made of corn,
And
there's corn and pumpkins plenty, love, a-lyin' in the barn.
Hi,
Nelly! Ho, Nelly! Listen, love, to me;
I'll
sing for you, play for you, a dulcem melody. |
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~ |
~ |
~ |
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Nelly
Bly has a voice like the turtle dove.
I
hear it in the meadow and I hear it in the grove.
Nelly
Bly has a heart warm as a cup of tea
And
bigger than the sweet potato down in Tennessee.
Hi,
Nelly! Ho, Nelly! Listen, love, to me;
I'll
sing for you, play for you, a dulcem melody. |
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Old
Steve thought his fictional Nelly was great. The way she
walks, she lifts her foot and then she brings it down. And when
it lights, there's music there in that part of the town.
The song
became a hit.
Three
decades later, a newspaperman named George Madden, editor of the Pittsburgh
Dispatch, wrote an editorial entitled What Girls Are Good
For. In it he declared that women's work
ought to be nothing more than bearing children and keeping
house. If they absolutely had to get a job, they should
only work in feminine professions such as nursing and teaching.
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This
incensed an 18-year-old girl named Elizabeth Cochran, who had grown
up 15 miles east of where I live now. She wrote a
rebuttal. It so impressed Mr. Madden that he hired her as a reporter!
But
journalism was hardly a feminine profession, so it was assumed that
Elizabeth would need to shield herself behind a pen name. The
editor dubbed her Nellie Bly.
Nellie
didn't want to describe society and fashion. Instead, she
became a foreign correspondent in Mexico, then moved to New York and
became an investigative reporter in 1887. She went undercover
as a patient at a lunatic asylum so that she could write a New
York World exposé on the horrific conditions there.
In
1889, at her suggestion, the newspaper sent her around the world in
a record 72 days to better the fictional standard from Jules Verne's novel. |
After
her industrialist husband died, she ran his factory, inventing an
improved milk can and possibly the 55-gallon drum. She provided
her workers with an on-site doctor, day care, and a bowling
alley. But a manager's embezzlement ruined the business in
1913, so the next year she went off to Europe and became the world's
first female war correspondent.
Now
Nellie Bly, world traveler and breaker of glass ceilings, has been
given the great honor of joining the statuary hall at the Pittsburgh
International Airport. It's located at the top of the
escalators as arriving passengers exit the airside terminal.
The
escalators' other two statues also celebrate local heroes. In
the center there's George Washington, who on December 29, 1753,
tumbled into one of the three rivers while scouting the area.
And on the left is Franco Harris, who on December 23, 1972, made an
immaculate reception at Three Rivers Stadium, enabling
the Steelers to defeat the Raiders coached by one Mr. Madden. A
different Madden this time. |
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NOVEMBER
19, 2022 
TOURING
THE NEW HOUSE
Thirty-some
years ago, I worked on University of Pittsburgh sports telecasts
from Trees Hall (upper left on this map), Fitzgerald Field House (in
red), and Pitt Stadium (the large ellipse in the center). We
broadcast technicians parked our cars in the large lot (OC) at the
top of the hill.
But
then they tore down the antiquated stadium and erected the Petersen
Events Center inside its elliptical footprint, leaving a grassy lawn
beside it for future development. |
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Twenty
years ago, when Pitt's basketball team moved across Sutherland Drive
from the old Field House to the new Pete, only a few
arrangements had been made for broadcast television. Each time
a network wanted to televise a game, they'd have to rent at least one
mobile control unit which would drive most of the way up the hill and
park in the loading dock (the green L) next to the building.
We'd have to carry cameras inside and string cables to connect everything.
We
broadcast technicians were supposed to continue using the OC parking
lot, but now it was ten stories higher than the mobile unit.
Eventually I became a senior citizen with difficulty walking down the
rather steep hill and later walking back up. So I cheated:
I got permission to park right beside the truck!
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Before
that, I sometimes parked in the O'Hara Garage (OH). Taking a
ticket upon entering, I usually wouldn't have to pay when I was ready
to depart at 11:00 pm. The game had been over for an hour,
everyone else was gone, and the exit gate had been left in the up position.
I
would not be able to park in that garage today, because ground has
been broken to replace it with a $255 million Campus Recreation and
Wellness Center (concept rendering on the left). |
Anyway,
back in 2002 we broadcast technicians were invited to tour the new
Petersen Events Center in advance of the first telecast. We
needed to find out where we should go and what we'd be dealing
with. Most of our regular crew couldn't make it that day, however.
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Therefore,
I posted what I'd learned online and emailed the link to my friends
at the Pittsburgh Crewing Company. My pictures, including
updated comments, are this month's 100 Moons article.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And
now for The Rest of the Story.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
In
2018, anticipating the launch of the ACC Network, the university
opened a $12 million Broadcast Production Facility inside the
building, including three control rooms and multiple editing suites.
I
never got to use it. For my last couple of years as a
freelance graphics operator before I retired, the non-ACC networks I
worked for continued to park their mobile units in the loading
dock. We truck people were allowed to venture inside briefly
for our pregame crew meal.
Then
last week the Property & Facilities Committee approved plans for
a $240 million athletic center with training and sports medicine
facilities for 16 of Pitt's 19 athletic programs. A 3,000-seat
arena is included, so sports like wrestling and volleyball will no
longer have to make do with the 71-year-old Field House.
Victory Heights will be built on the lawn next to the
Pete and will have camera cables leading to those new control
rooms. But when it's finished, I'm afraid I won't be among the
technicians taking the tour. |

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NOVEMBER
16, 2022
GET OVER THIS HUMP |
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Professor
PZ Myers complains about the midpoint of his week, a day when he
always has to work. You know what else is annoying about Wednesday?
We
get three- and even four-day weekends now and then. Which
workdays get wiped out? Usually a Monday or a Friday, or even a
Thursday (Thanksgiving) or a Tuesday (fall break).
But
Wednesdays are always inviolate, standing alone and untouched.

Today
is the Day of 8 Billion. According to United Nations
estimates, the world's population will reach that number at 9:00 ET
this morning.
(People,
be not proud. There are 20,000,000,000,000,000 ants on
the planet, or 2.5 million of those insects for every one of us.)
Although
humanity experienced slow and gradual population growth for
millennia, we added a billion people from 1998 to 2010 and another
billion in the next 12 years. We can't keep this up
forever. Our next billion is expected to require 15 years, a
sign that the overall growth rate of the global population is decreasing.

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One
guess is that we'll reach our maximum about 60 years from now with
10.4 billion, marked by the red star. |
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Why
is the rate slowing? This
article from an Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary
offers some answers, including projections about the year 2050.
Which eight countries (in green) will contribute more than half the
world's population increase between now and then? Which
countries (in purple) will actually lose population? |
NOVEMBER
13, 2022
CONSIDER WHAT STATS MEAN
A
recent article bemoaned NFL football nowadays. The first
statistic: Scoring is down, from 2.48 offensive
touchdowns a game in 2021 to 2.31 now.
But
how big a difference is that, really? Multiply by seven for
the seven typical September and October games, in which there must
have been 17 offensive touchdowns last year compared to 16 this
year. One measly TD in two months? Could we really tell
the difference?
In
the wider world, numbers like crime statistics are cited to make a
point. Take a moment to see how they fit into the big picture.
NOVEMBER
10, 2022
VETERANS' DAY EVE
On
this date in 1938, Americans listening to their radios heard a
dramatic orchestral fanfare, followed by the familiar voice of Kate Smith.
And
now, she said, it's going to be my great, very
great privilege to sing for you a song that's never been sung
before. By anybody!
She
praised it as a song that will never die.
And
it indeed still lives today, because the composer had wisely
replaced his original rhyme for the words my home, sweet home.
The
rhyme had been The
Gold Fields out in Nome. |
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NOVEMBER
8, 2022
NO SCHOOL FOR THE NEXT TWO MONTHS
During
America's bicentennial in 1976, November 8 was a dark day in my old
home town of Richwood, Ohio. Not only was it the onset of the
Ohio's coldest winter ever recorded, but because local conservatives
refused to pay any more taxes for public education, the school doors
would be shut until 1977.
I
didn't experience the crisis in person, because I had relocated to
Pennsylvania a couple of years before. I did witness events
being canceled because of the frigid temperatures and a shortage of
natural gas.
This
century, however, Richwood newspaper articles have filled me in on
the North
Union Crisis of 1976
and how a civic-minded minority joined together the following spring
to accomplish a task that the majority of their neighbors had
neglected. Their financial support of key school functions
continues to the present day.
NOVEMBER
6, 2022
SYNCHRONIZE WATCHES!
My
computer knows the date and time. So do my cell phone and my
cable box. But, due to retirement and social isolation, my mind
sometimes loses track. Therefore I need to consult many other
devices that sometimes require manual resetting.
One
that doesn't is a travel alarm which receives official radio signals
from the government to stay accurate within a second. Last
night I checked it against my faithful Casio digital watch, except I
set the watch forward 23 hours because daylight time was about to
expire in favor of standard time.
Then
I used the watch to reset more than a dozen other timepieces in
various rooms. Some are ordinary clocks, while others are built
into devices like the DVR recorder and the microwave oven (both of
which tend to run slow). One is a digital watch with a broken
strap; I set it to run 30 minutes fast so that its beep chimes the half-hour.
I even have two clocks in my car, because the illuminated one in the
dashboard is hard to read if the sun is shining on it. |
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Other
folks have different routines. Perhaps you're a stickler for
staying up in order to fall back exactly at 2:00:00 a.m., as required
by law. However, that's unlikely unless you're a professional
in charge of a ladder and a public timepiece. When I was a
professional overseeing an automated TV channel, I made the change in
advance.
Kristin
Easter in Bellevue, Washington, is more typical. Quoted by the New
York Times yesterday, Kristin said she doesn't change her clocks
until she happens upon an hour on Sunday she'd like back, most
of the time waiting until 11 a.m., then deciding that an hour of
coffee, muffins and the paper would be great to repeat.
Marcy
Albin from Santa Fe, N.M., concurred. Have your book
ready, a beverage of choice, read for an hour, stretch, turn the
clocks back and read for another. Heaven! |
In
my case, after resetting the clock time the next step was something
I do every morning: reset the calendar date, in
quintuplicate. One calendar magnet: move from Saturday/5 to
Sunday/6. Two prisms on shelves: rotate from Sat to Sun.
Two other sets of blocks: rotate to read 06.
The
final task was to change the daily hue, from blue (which in my chromatology
denotes Saturday) to white (which denotes Sunday). Five devices
cried out for recoloring, including the backgrounds for my TV's
captioning and my computer's desktop. Now my little world
should be able to keep me oriented for another day!

Speaking
of standard time and daylight time, by the way, to adjust our lives
to the sun I have Three
Alternate Proposals
of decreasing practicality.
NOVEMBER
3, 2022
HOT GIRL
Back
in my day, when I was a DJ on the ten-watt campus station WOBC-FM,
we played all kinds of music from classical to jazz to folk to pop
hits (the top 88.7). We subscribed to Billboard
magazine and kept an eye on its Hot 100 list.

The
most famous version of that list dated to the week ending April 4,
1964, shown above. The early Beatles claimed all of the top
five spots and a dozen of the Hot 100 (including numbers 31, 41, 46,
58, 65, 68, and 79).
Of
course, music has changed a lot in the intervening decades.
It
was nevertheless quite an achievement when, for the week ending last
Thursday, Taylor Swift became the first artist to claim every one
of the top 10 slots. All the songs are from her new 13-track album Midnights.
I
AM IN SHAMBLES, she exclaimed on Twitter. |
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NOVEMBER
2, 2022
IT'S ALL THEIR FAULT
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John
Winsor has noted recently, A preacher can rile up his flock by
claiming that a recent natural disaster is God's punishment
for the misdeeds of a particular group of sinners. This is
emotionally gratifying for his parishioners because somebody else has
incurred God's wrath. It incites bigotry by contrasting
us with them. It enhances church
attendance. And it increases the preacher's revenue, because he
purportedly needs more resources to combat the forces of evil. |
Ten
years and two days ago this is a Flashback of sorts I
wrote about blaming climate disasters on something that most
parishioners don't like (same-sex marriage) instead of blaming
something they do like (burning fossil fuels). |
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Still,
some ignore repeated warnings and persist in building Houses
on Sand.
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