brianrogers's posterous

Seventy-five years ago yesterday, on May 6, 1937, the German airship Hindenburg blew up; and, as it fell in flames, electronic journalism took a giant leap upward.

Herbert Morrison, a 31-year-old radio reporter from station WLS in Chicago, had traveled to Lakehurst, New Jersey, along with engineer Charles Nehlsen, to record a description of the zeppelin's arrival from Frankfort, Germany.

The ship had already made ten successful round trips and the arrival was expected to be routine.

The reporter and his engineer were there, not to broadcast the mooring live, but to send a recording back to Chicago to test the feasibility of transcribing an event for future broadcast. As well, they thought the sound of a blimp docking might be an interesting addition to their sound effects library.

But the mooring suddenly went terribly awry as flames leapt from the zeppelin's tail section and licked their way quickly forward.

“It’s burning, bursting into flames and is falling on the mooring mast and all the folks,” screamed Morrison into his microphone. “This is one of the worst catastrophes in the world. Oh, the humanity and all the passengers.”

The National Broadcasting Corporation, the network with which WLS was affiliated, broke its rule against using prerecorded transcriptions on the air and later fed Herbert Morrison’s eye-witness report to a fascinated nation.

That report, with the frenzy and emotion it portrayed, became a classic. I have a recording of it in my audio library. The terror conveyed still spans years and miles, and I feel it whenever I hear it.

Morrison and WGN showed that radio, and later television and the Internet, could credibly and effectively report an event simultaneously with its occurrence.

How often do computer experts advise us to change our on-line passwords? Once a month? Oftener?

How frequently do we actually do it?

I can’t answer for anybody but myself. And my answer is: NOT OFTEN ENOUGH!!!

My main concern about passwords had been that they be easy for me to remember, not that they change frequently.

The fallacy of this practice hit home on a recent Saturday morning when I got on line and saw I had 30 incoming e-mails that hadn’t been there the night before. Ninety-five percent were messages stating that something I’d sent was undeliverable. I hadn’t sent that many e-mails in a week much less overnight.

One of the incoming e-mails was from the company that hosts this blog. Apparently our e-mail account had been hijacked and whatever had been sent in my name had been posted on the blog. I clicked on it and discovered I appeared to have sent a link from a company that tells everyone reading their site how wonderful it is to type for people at home and make lots and lots of money.

Even while wearing jammies and bunny slippers, I suppose.

I’ve tried typing at home for lawyers, realtors, architects, students, etc., and I didn’t make lots and lots of money. Never!

I found out first hand what can happen when one doesn’t take proper precautions with one’s e-mail account. I had to write to everybody in our address book, including editors at the publications I write for, to tell them to disregard anything from me purporting to advocate a type-at-home scheme.

I changed my password and don’t leave myself signed on now when I shut down the computer. 

I have to sign on every time I want to check my e-mail. But a few extra keystrokes more than pay for not being hacked again any time soon.

And I’m already planning my next password. It’ll be a doozy!

My wife thinks I write too much about my physical ailments.

So, if this post suddenly disappears, it’s because she snuck up behind me while I was typing and poured a can of non-diet pop over my keyboard. (An IT guy at a place I worked told me that’s about the worst thing you can do to a computer. That’s why a lot of companies won’t let their employees bring drinks to their desks). Sugar and liquid are apparently a lethal combination to e-stuff.

Anyhow, one afternoon last week part of my mouth felt sore; and I did a little exploration with a finger tip and ... what the ... ?

There was a bump--painful to the touch--about the size of a marble cut in half on the roof of my mouth alongside my upper right teeth. Hate when that happens!

I knew what it was because I’ve had ‘em before. Can you spell “abscess” boys and girls? I know how to spell it because my spell check kept reacting to the way I was spelling it. All the ways I was spelling it.

I knew better than to “wait and see if it goes away;” because I knew that, without treatment, it wouldn’t. My dentist referred me to the endodontists (guys that drain abscesses and perform root canals), in Dearborn where I’ve been before. My chart there is so big they sent for a fork lift to fetch it down off its shelf.

Anyhow, without going into too much detail, as I write this, I have two sutures holding together the incision where the doctor opened the abscess, and root canals in the three roots of the affected tooth.

The tooth had an old crown on it which became leaky and allowed bacteria to enter and travel through the tooth and up a root which is embedded in the hard palate. As a matter of fact, it’s called the “palatal” root. The abscess formed at its tip.

As is often said, “it only hurts for a little while.” And if I keep my mouth shut it doesn’t hurt at all.

Maybe that’ll keep me out of trouble.

At least until my mouth heals.

Whether you call it “Administrative Professionals’ Day” or “Secretaries’ Day,” today is the day on which we honor office support staff, regardless of their titles or duties.

In my five years as an office “temp,” working for doctors, lawyers, architects and salespeople, and another ten or so doing lawyers’ word processing, I saw the day celebrated in a variety of ways.

Some bosses took their secretaries to fancy restaurants that had white linen tablecloths and waitstaff that wore bow ties and shined shoes. Others bought flowers for their support people. When I worked in a real estate firm one year, I found a bouquet of blue fringed white carnations (I think that’s what they were) on my desk when I came in. Other secretaries got pink-toned flowers.

But there are so many ways bosses can show appreciation to their support people that have nothing to do with flowers or food.

When I worked for somebody, I liked to know where they were and how they could be reached during the work day. Emergencies arose or somebody else in the firm might just want to ask a question. The secretary was the one who got the flak for not knowing where the person was.

Secretaries like to know what work might be coming up, so they can prepare and schedule. That’s especially true when a support person might work for more than one boss and have to coordinate multiple parties’ work and meet multiple production deadlines.

Once I actually had two people standing behind my desk arguing about whose document I would type first. I didn’t like it. It raised my anxiety level unnecessarily.

There are lots of ways bosses can show their secretaries they value and care about them.

But, today, and other days as well, a free meal can’t hurt.

Saturday morning my wife and I sat eating breakfast and discussing that most older adults now--male or female--drive cars.

When we were young, that wasn’t true. My wife’s mother never did learn to drive; she thought driving was the husband's job. My mother was taught to drive in later life by my father. He also taught me to drive when I was a teenager.

I loved my father dearly. But when he was teaching someone to operate his car he became a different person. The words “ogre” and “monster” come to mind.

Once, when he was teaching my mother to drive, I looked out our front window and saw her walking down the sidewalk looking straight ahead. My father, with the driver’s side window rolled down, was pleading with her to get back in the car. I pretended I hadn’t viewed their little scene, and it was never mentioned.

But, whatever happened, mom was really, really p....d!

“I’m sure glad I didn’t have to teach our kids to drive,” I told my wife over my cereal bowl. “But I don’t think I would have gotten as nasty as my dad did teaching me and my mother.”

“Don’t bet on it,” was her response. “What do you think you were like when you were teaching me to use the computer?”

Today marks the 70th anniversary of one of World War II’s pivotal events: the bombing of Japan that became known as “Jimmy Doolittle’s Tokyo Raid.”

After the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the desire to “hit back at the Japs” was huge. James Doolittle, a 45-year-old Lieutenant Colonel, in what was then called the Army Air Corps, was given charge of leading 16 B-25 bombers from the deck of the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier, and dropping bombs on Japan.

In 1941, that idea bordered on the preposterous. At 45, Doolittle was considered by some Washington brass to be too old for such a task. And B-25’s were medium bombers, not the smaller fighters or pursuit planes that usually operated from aircraft carriers. And they were way, way too big to return to a carrier and land on its deck.

For weeks prior to the B-25’s being hoisted aboard the Hornet at Alameda Naval Air Station in California, the pilots practiced in secret at Eglin Field, Florida, trying to get the planes off the ground in 750 feet or less of runway, about the distance they’d have available to get airborne from the carrier deck.

The plan called for the bombers to launch April 19, 1942, when they would be about 400 miles from Tokyo. But, fearing they’d been spotted by a Japanese patrol boat a day earlier, the planes took off from the Hornet on April 18, when they were still 650 miles away.

After a four-hour flight, the B-25’s arrived over Tokyo and Yokohama about 12:30 p.m., local time. They bombed factories, a steelworks, an oil refinery. 

The damage to Tokyo and environs wasn’t great, but the bombing gave an enormous boost to American morale at a time it was desperately needed.

The Japanese military leaders, who had promised their people that no US bombs would ever fall on Japan, were greatly embarrassed and “lost much face.”

Most of the planes, low on fuel, made emergency landings in China.

Doolittle was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and promoted to the rank of brigadier general.

Four days of remembrance are planned this week at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton, Ohio. The five surviving crew members--all in their 90’s now-- will toast the 75 who have passed.

General Doolittle passed away in 1993.

Photo: B-25 bombers on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet

After church on Easter afternoon, my wife, Clara, and I merged onto I-94 and headed for dinner with our daughter and her family in Ann Arbor. When we passed under the blue football arches at Telegraph, I started looking for airplanes because I knew we were nearing Metro Airport.

Clara was driving. I also look for airplanes when I’m driving but more so when Clara’s at the wheel.

We were in the middle lane going the speed limit when Clara mentioned that wind was making the car hard to control. Then, suddenly, we heard a roaring sound that made me think a badly soundproofed motorcycle was trying to pass. 

I looked. No motorcycle.

“I have to get off the road,” she said. “I can’t control it.”

She found an open spot in the right lane and we eased across it onto the shoulder which, fortunately, was wide enough.

We got out and found the left front tire a twisted mass of stinking shredded rubber.

But there was good news: Clara had her cell phone.

Bad news too: it was dead.

I got the little donut spare and jack out of the trunk and tried to change the tire myself all the time being scared by traffic whizzing by so close to my backside. And my stiff knees and back made it impossible to get into a proper position.

Soon a policeman will come along and help us, I kept thinking. Didn’t happen. At least a half hour went by as I struggled.

But then, a voice: “Do you folks need some help?”

A man had gotten out of a black Chevy Cobalt and was walking back toward us. He had long hair and wore a scuffed leather jacket.

“Oh, do we ever,” I said, and before I knew it, he’d slithered part way under the car and was jacking it up. 

When the spare was on we both offered him money but he refused it. “I like to help people when I can,” he said.

I wonder if he knew he was an answer to prayer.

Florence, our nine-year-old neighbor girl, was crying. Her usually neat blond hair was matted, and tears slid from her blue eyes down onto a red face.

She came over to our car as we pulled into the driveway, and my mother rolled down the passenger side front window. “Florence,” she said, “what is it?”

“President Roosevelt died,” said Florence. “They just said so on the radio. He was in Georgia.”

I was seven that April 12 of 1945. My parents talked often of President Roosevelt, and he seemed a larger-than-life father figure to a nation at war. World War II in Europe was nearing its end but who knew what would happen in the Pacific.

The nation was in shock!

A scant 18 years later we would lose another president under different circumstances, but the sharp uncertainties of “what will happen now?” and “what do we do now?” were similar.

Harry Truman? Who’s that?

My family subscribed to The Detroit Times then. It ceased publication 50 years ago, but shortly after Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death it printed a full-page black-trimmed photo of him. It was suggested readers clip the photos and hang them in their front windows in tribute.

Ours had become quite yellowed before we took it down.

Mike Wallace was best known for his work on the CBS Sunday evening news magazine Sixty Minutes, but his electronic journalism roots extend to Michigan and the radio broadcasting of the early 1940’s. Oldradioshows.org had a tribute to him on their Web site this morning.

Born in Brookine, Massachusetts, in 1918, Wallace graduated from the University of Michigan in 1939. While in Ann Arbor he was a student reporter at the Michigan Daily. Other than an appearance on a quiz show, Information Please, while a student at U of M, Wallace’s first radio job was as a staff announcer and newscaster at station WOOD in Grand Rapids.

In 1940 he went to work at WXYZ in Detroit, the incubator for such nationally acclaimed radio dramas as The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet. Wallace announced for The Green Hornet and another show, Ned Jordan, Secret Agent. WXYZ is the ancestor of present-day WXYT, The Ticket.

Following World War II service as a Navy communications officer, Mike Wallace settled in Chicago where he landed announcing jobs for shows like Sky King and Curtain Time. He even had a professional wrestling announcing gig.

In the 1950’s, Wallace’s journalism efforts turned more and more to TV. Probably everyone knows now that Mike Wallace died last Saturday, April 7.

Photo: oldradioshows.org photo of Mike Wallace before a CBS Radio microphone

I have just this week entered what I hope will become my second latch-hook rug making period. The first was over 30 years ago and culminated in the world map rug in the photo.

Earlier I’d made the animals rug for my wife.

I started producing rugs and wall hangings with latch-hooks following a visit to a school that had a class producing such items when I was a speech therapist in the Melvindale-Northern Allen Park School District. I watched students working on their rugs and saw a display of finished work.

It was fascinating to watch pictures and designs appear by tying little scraps of colored yarn onto a mesh fabric screen.

The very next weekend saw me going to a craft shop to get a rug making kit for myself.

Over the next three years I made about 25 rugs and wall hangings as gifts for family members and as donations to church fund raisers.

Then, while hooking the world map rug, I got so sick of latch-hooking I didn’t care if I ever again picked up a latch-hook. Or even saw one.

My wife, after the project had been idle for several months, worked on part of it herself. Her piano students even offered to work on it when they came for lessons.

I hadn’t thought much about rug hooking until last week when I realized that, since arthritis and other problems have reduced my physical activity, I needed a sedentary hobby other than sitting in front of a computer all day. I thought again of rug hooking and my wife made a trip that very day to a craft shop from which she’d clipped a coupon.

I’m about half way through a wall hanging of an eagle. I’ll post a photo when it’s done.