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Saturday, July 26, 2008
Spelunking
During the summer around here, people try to pack an entire year's worth of activities into three months. It's as if there's a mad rush to make up for the months that were wet and grey. We can partake in festivals, concerts, and parades. Of course, all sorts of outdoor activities are on offer. Finally, let's not forget it's the summer blockbuster movie season too.At the moment there are all sorts films playing that we'd like to see. Of course there are a number, we could care less about. Here's what's playing at Silvercity Coquitlam today.
I think we'll probably try to put on funny glasses. I'm ready for some mindless movie-going fun.
Putting in my DVD copy of the Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) will not be able to get me ready for modern special effects. There were no computer graphics during the year I was born. However, if today's Brendan Fraser version doesn't have goose named Gertrude, I'll be disappointed.
Labels: movies
Friday, July 25, 2008
The Ink Stops Flowing
I probably shouldn't be bothered at all. I have not picked up a copy of the Argus-Champion in over twenty years. It was just the small-town newspaper we used to read when I was a youngster. If I remember correctly, that was when it was still published in Newport, NH and arrived every Wednesday.
As a kid it seemed a little magical though. One could contact the Argus staff and have real items put to print. There was someone to call if one had Sunapee News. Then as surely as the sun always rises, in the upcoming issue, the item would appear. It may have been only as significant as the car wash a school class was putting on to make some cash.
I don't to wax philosophical but I can say that decades before the Internet, it provided me with the first concrete proof that words and pictures could affect a lot of people. Books, of course, could be read by many, but the Argus-Champion was read by the neighbours! The newspaper would even publish something written by high school students as an editorial. That, somehow, made it all the more important to me.
When I first went overseas, writing to the editor seems a suitable way of sharing with the community. There are a lot of people to whom I wouldn't actually write a personal letter; yet, I sometimes wanted to share something with the larger audience of readers. The Argus served that function. Even most of a lifetime later, I've referenced personal impacts of things in the Argus in my eJournal and images.
1) 100th Birthday of a Relative - 1960's
2) Relative Dies at 102 - 1960's
3) Church Painting - Picture of Me - 1960's
4) Review of our Senior Class Play - 1977
5) A Letter to Editor - 1987
The following article was published in the Concord Monitor on July 20, 2008. It made me a little sad when I caught it under a Google News customized category. It seemed as if part of my own history had disappeared.
As a kid it seemed a little magical though. One could contact the Argus staff and have real items put to print. There was someone to call if one had Sunapee News. Then as surely as the sun always rises, in the upcoming issue, the item would appear. It may have been only as significant as the car wash a school class was putting on to make some cash.
I don't to wax philosophical but I can say that decades before the Internet, it provided me with the first concrete proof that words and pictures could affect a lot of people. Books, of course, could be read by many, but the Argus-Champion was read by the neighbours! The newspaper would even publish something written by high school students as an editorial. That, somehow, made it all the more important to me.
When I first went overseas, writing to the editor seems a suitable way of sharing with the community. There are a lot of people to whom I wouldn't actually write a personal letter; yet, I sometimes wanted to share something with the larger audience of readers. The Argus served that function. Even most of a lifetime later, I've referenced personal impacts of things in the Argus in my eJournal and images.
The following article was published in the Concord Monitor on July 20, 2008. It made me a little sad when I caught it under a Google News customized category. It seemed as if part of my own history had disappeared.
In Sunapee region, a voice is silenced
Death of a newspaper leaves a hole hard to fill
By Mike Pride
Monitor columnist
------------------------
July 20, 2008 - 12:00 am
When a newspaper dies, a community loses its voice. It loses the mirror in which it examined its best features and its worst. It loses the bulletin board for news of a neighbor's death or a schoolgirl's scholarship. It loses its watchdog, the reporters who kept tabs on town hall, the school board, local elections.
When a newspaper dies, a community becomes less of a community. It suffers a blow from which it is difficult to recover.
Last week, when the Argus-Champion announced that it was going under, I felt that blow as both a journalist and a member of the community. This is the 11th summer that I have lived in a pond-side camp in Goshen, which is about 10 miles from Newport, the Argus's original base. I have relied on the paper for many things, though not as many as full-time residents have.
When I moved to New Hampshire in 1978, one of the first journalists I met was Ed DeCourcy, then the editor of the Argus. Ed was a robust, good-natured man with a signature bow tie and a fierce devotion to community journalism. He was also living proof of the value of journalistic independence.
Once, when some advertisers threatened to boycott the paper after the Argus endorsed a candidate they opposed, Ed wrote: "A publication that would surrender to any financial pressure, however great or small, to espouse a cause in which it did not believe, to remain silent on an issue about which it had convictions, to withhold legitimate news, or to publish material that had no news value, is not a newspaper. It is a prostitute."
Ed left the Argus's editor's chair more than a quarter-century ago and died in 2005 at the age of 93. It is a tribute to him and his paper that old-time Argus readers mentioned him by name as news of the paper's closing spread.
The Argus changed after Ed's day. It expanded its base into wealthier towns, including Sunapee and New London, and moved its office out of Newport. Some Newport residents rued the loss of hometown identity, but the Argus still paid close attention to their town. On this week's front page, near the note about the paper's demise, the lead story recounted the celebration of Andrea Thorpe's 20th anniversary as town librarian.
Tying towns together
The broadened readership area tended to tie disparate communities together. Almost every town had a weekly columnist who kept track of everything from birthdays to charity book sales to Old Home Day preparations. But the paper was small enough that you could easily scan all the town columns to keep up with the news.
Its pages were full of useful news. In either an ad or the news columns, the Argus informed readers when Bartlett's was opening for blueberrying and what band was playing at the Anchorage. It acted as a Fourth of July planning guide for fireworks lovers willing to rove from town to town.
Like all good weeklies, it covered milestones - graduations, anniversaries, obituaries. It told parents when to register the kids for Little League or kindergarten. And it had an old-fashioned sports page that took all local athletics and athletes seriously.
The Argus retained a good eye for the minutia that inquiring minds wanted to know. Readers could tsk-tsk about the motorist nabbed doing 93 on I-89 in Sutton. Before the real estate market went bust, they could find out what outrageous price someone had just paid for the neighbor's house.
Readers could also depend on the paper for a sense of continuity. Roger Small's weekly column sampled back issues of the Argus. Small might report on Teddy Roosevelt's visit to Newport. Or, as he did in an item picked up this week from 1908, he might write: "The rumor that Chester Hopkins, the Boston boy, had the measles was unfounded, as he only had prickly heat."
The heart of the Argus remained its focus on town affairs, civic and communal. It was primarily a newspaper, whether it was covering the opening of a general store, an arrest in a local robbery or a dispute over an out-of-town developer's lavish designs. The Argus gave you the feeling that its reporters were everywhere at once.
Losing money
The note from Publisher Harvey D. Hill announcing the paper's closing was terse. We're sorry, but the paper is losing money and we're closing it, he wrote. He mentioned the trends that are affecting newspapers everywhere: "We see more and more of our readers and advertisers migrating to the internet."
This is no doubt true, but Argus readers - people who care about their communities - are about to lose something the internet cannot replace. Heck, in Goshen, if there's a way to get high-speed internet, I haven't found it. Even where it is available, it offers nothing to rival the Argus as a local newspaper.
Through more than a century and a half, the Argus has been a reliable source of the most important information in the daily lives of its readers. It has been the tie that binds diverse towns into a community. In a chaotic world, it has kept people with common interests on the same page and provided them with a free forum to sound off about public issues.
These are the sad facts behind the shocked expressions I saw as people around here heard that the Argus was going under. As much as these readers might have complained about the local paper over the years, they know that life won't be the same without it. Its closing is a tragic loss.
Labels: New Hampshire, Sunapee
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Columbia Street: 1932 and 2008
Okay, I've invented a new hobby. First, I'll find a photo on the New Westminster Public Library's Historical Photo Database. Then, I'll see if I can find the location. Third, I'll try to shoot a digital image of the same scene. Lastly, I'll edit and post them.
Today, I walked down to the west end of Columbia. The city of New Westminster is in the midst of a project that has added angled, back-in parking and cut most of the street back to two lanes. I'm a bit disappointed in the lost opportunities to add a lot more green area and trees. We lost the chance to make Columbia Street a real showcase for street planning. Alas, it's a chance that won't be revisited for another twenty or thirty years.
I should probably admit Columbia Street already looks better than it ever has. I certainly favour the photo taken today over the one taken in 1932!
Labels: New Westminster, Then and Now Images
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
No Noise Makers
There is no celebration today. It's not a very special birthday this time around as the year ends in a nine. That's okay as all the candles needed might set off a fire alarm or something. I still wouldn't mind a hat though.
Labels: New Hampshire, scanned, Sunapee
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Marketing Oneself
I'm relishing a stolen moment to start today's entry. It's just about break time and my students are now finishing up a writing assignment at their tables. Making a cohesive paragraph from a simple flowchart seems to be taking them longer than I had anticipated. Not having taught this level for a few years, I find most activities take a little longer than I plan.
I look forward to moving to our next topic after the break. We will discuss résumés. My résumé is another example of a document that has been modified dozens and dozens of times over the years. It's rather intriguing to guess about the number of different keyboards which have had a hand in creating it.
My résumé is hardly a textbook example. For one thing, it's two pages long and thus, breaks one of the cardinal rules that many folks have. Also, an increasing amount of my distant past no longer merits inclusion; however, it'd be pretty tough for me to decide which parts of my past to erase. Furthermore, the two-column format is rather look-at-me-ish and almost as annoying as trying to read one printed on canary-yellow paper. It even contains a few non-standard sections due to the fact I am primarily interested in working with English as a Second Language students.
I suppose it really doesn't matter as I don't intend on sending out any copies of my résumé in the foreseeable future. Even if I were job hunting, I'd rather be hired by someone who had the wherewithal to check my main website for information.
I look forward to moving to our next topic after the break. We will discuss résumés. My résumé is another example of a document that has been modified dozens and dozens of times over the years. It's rather intriguing to guess about the number of different keyboards which have had a hand in creating it.
My résumé is hardly a textbook example. For one thing, it's two pages long and thus, breaks one of the cardinal rules that many folks have. Also, an increasing amount of my distant past no longer merits inclusion; however, it'd be pretty tough for me to decide which parts of my past to erase. Furthermore, the two-column format is rather look-at-me-ish and almost as annoying as trying to read one printed on canary-yellow paper. It even contains a few non-standard sections due to the fact I am primarily interested in working with English as a Second Language students. I suppose it really doesn't matter as I don't intend on sending out any copies of my résumé in the foreseeable future. Even if I were job hunting, I'd rather be hired by someone who had the wherewithal to check my main website for information.
Labels: BCIT
Monday, July 21, 2008
Well Wired
In a one-bedroom apartment, space is usually at a premium. In a way, the lack of storage esures that I don't collect too much junk. Still, nestled next to the Christmas decorations, between some spare light bulbs and extra sleeping bags, is a box full of wires, cables, and adapters.
I do my very best to keep the collection contained in a fairly small box. Once in a while I clean out the types of components I think I will no longer need, but somehow the box always seems full. You'd think after I threw away the 25-ft, male-to-female 15-pin, computer serial cable, I'd have had extra room. Getting rid of something or another simply doesn't seem to create much more room though. I'm pretty confident that there's no connector sex going on in there leading to cable offspring. Come to think of it, it is pretty dark and private in that closet!
Making matters worse, I seldom have the heart to actually get rid of much of the content. The junk, ahem treasure, is not all related to computers either. For example, there have been various ways of connecting televisions to other things over the years. So, I have old coaxal antenna wire, RCA video and audio wires, s-video connector wires, and even a spare HDMI cable. There are also some weird British connectors and this is only the TV stuff.
The strangest thing is, when I do actually part with some antiquated wire or connector, I have a nearly immediate need for one. Oh, damn I must make another trip up to The Source! No time to blog now. I must go pick up an extra toslink cable for my new digital optical switch that came in the mail today ...
I do my very best to keep the collection contained in a fairly small box. Once in a while I clean out the types of components I think I will no longer need, but somehow the box always seems full. You'd think after I threw away the 25-ft, male-to-female 15-pin, computer serial cable, I'd have had extra room. Getting rid of something or another simply doesn't seem to create much more room though. I'm pretty confident that there's no connector sex going on in there leading to cable offspring. Come to think of it, it is pretty dark and private in that closet!
Making matters worse, I seldom have the heart to actually get rid of much of the content. The junk, ahem treasure, is not all related to computers either. For example, there have been various ways of connecting televisions to other things over the years. So, I have old coaxal antenna wire, RCA video and audio wires, s-video connector wires, and even a spare HDMI cable. There are also some weird British connectors and this is only the TV stuff.
The strangest thing is, when I do actually part with some antiquated wire or connector, I have a nearly immediate need for one. Oh, damn I must make another trip up to The Source! No time to blog now. I must go pick up an extra toslink cable for my new digital optical switch that came in the mail today ...
Labels: technology
Sunday, July 20, 2008
I Won't Run Away with It
I might have seen some Eastern block circus performers at National Day celebrations in Bahrain, but I am pretty sure I've never actually been under the big top.
The Cirque de Soleil performers are not sticking around Vancouver for my birthday; in fact, their last two shows of the season take place today. So, we decided if we were going to hit Corteo while it is still around, we'd better get right to it! We have seats for 1:00 pm.
Labels: Vancouver
Locate additional information at the my eJournal and images blog site.