AM Radio is the Best, weekly column 21 May 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

21 May 2023

 

AM Radio is the Best

 

Some car manufacturers are making a short-sighted and even dangerous decision to stop including AM radios in new cars. Besides being a dependable source of entertainment, AM radio is an essential part of all local, state, and federal emergency systems [Electric cars are ditching AM radio — a critical safety tool (axios.com)].

 

Those of us of a certain age (cough) remember when cars and trucks usually didn’t have a radio, and those that did featured a rudimentary tube setup that offered only AM tuning. The on/off/volume switch was on the left of a dial lit only by a dim grain-of-wheat incandescent bulb and the tuner was on the right.

 

Because of the radio tubes the set took some time to warm up and the gadget required so much electrical energy that playing it with the car switched off was not a good idea.

 

If the rig were especially fancy there were five square plastic buttons connected to a complex assemblage of little wires and pulleys for setting five stations. To set a station you turned the dial to it and then pulled a button and pushed it back in.  When you later pushed the button, which required some force, the complicated system moved the dial at least close to the station setting, which was good enough.

 

This sounds awkward but a positive was that you didn’t have to take your eyes off the road at all to fine-tune the station. In a modern car there is a manual on how to program the “entertainment system,” so unless you’re Sheldon Cooper almost anything you need to do to the radio should take place while parked in the driveway.

 

Soon enough car radios were fitted with both AM and FM stations, and a simple switch allowed you instant access to either mode. I never understood the difference between AM (Amplitude Modulation) and FM (Frequency Modulation). My big brother, who was so cool that his record player at home was a HiFi (High Fidelity) explained the difference while cruisin’ along and checking his ducktail in the mirror, but the lesson didn’t stick.

 

Neither did the ducktail; my father ordered it shorn. What a square, eh?

 

This Ford Galaxie 500 cruise down Amnesia Lane has been fun, but is AM radio, a century-old technology, still useful in our day of complex sound systems?

 

Oh, yes. The relative simplicity of AM technology means that it is more likely to work in marginal conditions. If one tower fails the listener can tune to another station on another tower for weather reports and emergency news. The frailties of systems that require satellite access are well-known to us all, and although the sound is great when it works, you have to pay a fee. AM remains free.

 

AM radio provides a free alternative to the expensive subscription systems and is an essential part of this nation’s emergency services. Auto manufacturers who fail to install AM radios in their new cars are not putting the safety of their customers first.

 

-30-

Meteorologists of Existential Doom - weekly column

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Meteorologists of Existential Doom

 

Is that mysterious rustling in the bushes outside your window at night a meteorologist gone rogue and lusting for human blood?

 

Meteorologists are now said to be part of the Illuminati Globalist Banker Lizard People Masonic Vatican Planet X plot to depress, suppress, and oppress us (Meteorologists are the new targets in global social media misinformation - ABC News).

 

Do meteorologists indulge in weird rituals in secret tunnels beneath Hobby Lobby?

 

An increasingly fashionable conspiracy theory (it’s on the InterGossip so it must be true) maintains that meteorologists manipulate weather data for nefarious purposes and can even change the weather at the command of their mysterious masters.

 

No one seems to have a reason as to why a scientist would destroy his or her own credibility and career to do such a silly thing as lie about a thermometer reading.

 

And as for changing the weather, is there an app for that? Apple or Microsoft? Could the local weather guy give us some cool weekends this summer?

 

There are narratives of the sort of people whose screens are super-glued to their wrists threatening weather people for their good work in reporting the weather.

 

This is as, well, stupid as blaming a journalist for the bank robbery he merely reports.

 

Journalists have always been threatened by private and public interests. President Lincoln had a few editors jailed and that jumped-up little corporal Napoleon had at least one shot, but it takes the uber-progress of the 21^st century to threaten someone with violence for examining raw weather data from all over the world and then concluding the strong possibility of rain tomorrow.

 

Summer air is dank with humidity, and the times seem dank with hateful conspiracy theories based on nothing more than gossip so fatuous that it would embarrass a 17^th century Wallachian peasant to repeat it. We should do better.

 

In the meantime, beware of meteorologists, especially during a full moon.

 

If you stay late at work walk with a friend to the parking lot and remember that there might be a meteorologist lurking in your car’s back seat.

 

And have you heard about the new cop show? Live: Cops on Patrol Against Organized Meteorologists.

 

And watch the skies. Watch the skies!

 

-30-

 

If a Bee Stings Me - rhyming couplet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

If a Bee Stings Me

 

If a bee stings me, pity the poor bee

If a wasp stings me, then pity me!

"A World of Light and Love" - weekly column 7 May 2023

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

 

“A World of Light and Love”

 

This past weekend was laden with possibilities for joy and exercise and merriment with friends: Cinco de Mayo (okay, probably not a big occasion in France), watching the first coronation of a British king since 1937 and of any British monarch since 1953, attending softball games, baseball games, picnics, high school proms and after-parties, digging in the garden, and ordinary family gatherings.

 

And why do old folks slam dominoes down so loudly?

 

These happy occasions are celebrated by us when we think of others instead of ourselves. We don’t want to be the King of Great Britain but we do want him to be “happy and glorious.” We want our kids to win their games and, more than that, build themselves physically and ethically. We host a picnic and hope that we have served something everyone wants. We take snapshots of our graduating seniors and share in their hopes and dreams. We sit in lawn chairs and talk about old times while the little children chase lightnin’ bugs in the gathering dusk. Yes, we enjoy these celebrations of innocence but most of our delight is in giving moments of joy to others.

 

Some, however, find this difficult. Problems obtain in everyone’s life: disappointments in relationships or career, jealousies, resentments, waking up at 0200 replaying in one’s mind the things that appear to have gone wrong during the day.

 

There’s an old saying that when things are bad the most courageous thing you do each morning is to get up out of bed and face the day. Most people in the worst of times manage to do so.

 

Tragically, some don’t. The false images of success beamed at us through advertisements and popular entertainment, the cycles of hate blaring from talk shows, the politicization even of weather and health care – all these external drag-downs are difficult to resist.

 

And we are left wondering why a trip to the mall for a new swimsuit and maybe a set of beach towels arouses murderous hatred in some twisted soul. We wonder why an after-prom party involves a casualty list instead of a guest list. We wonder why folks waiting for a city bus are targeted for death. We wonder why a male – one could hardly refer to him as a man – shoots a small child.

 

C. S. Lewis, in his A Preface to Paradise Lost, reminds us of the pointlessness of Satan’s rebellion against God, and of our own potential for rebelling against God by focusing on ourselves:

 

No one had in fact done anything to Satan…In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige. (P. 96)

 

-30-

 

A Dream About Birdcage Walk - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Hellopoetry.com

 

A Dream About Birdcage Walk

 

In the perfection of an impossibility

I was tagging along behind Margaret Thatcher

And Saint Thomas More; they were speaking

Of great and transcendent ideas

 

I asked them if we could go to Victoria Station

And look at the trains