I have never communicated through semaphore flag — I didn't get that far in Scouting. But if the need arose, through some improbable chain of events, and I found myself on a hilltop, using two flags to spell out a message to another hilltop, I imagine, in our era of Apple Watch phones and Find My Friends, I would find that very satisfying. Score one for old school.
So while the president's inspirational pre-battle speech in "Independence Day" is stirring, the moment in the movie that I truly savor is when the world is assembling against the alien onslaught, and you briefly see a bank of Morse code operators, clicking away their dots and dashes. As the son of a radio operator, I have to love that.
When technology fails, the old ways bail them out. For instance, Saturday morning, Facebook served up a story written for Sports Illustrated, on how cowboy star Roy Rogers midwifed sports marketing. I was always proud of that story —the sort of oddball take I like to do on popular subjects — and it seemed doubly apt now, with the Bears and Packers in the wildcard game Saturday night (a game we watched. "Let's be part of the zeitgeist" my wife had suggested. Very exciting. “Who would think that watching football would be so much fun?” she marveled afterward). The Sun-Times ran a story mentioning how merchandise related to the Bears, the most popular team in the country, is flying off the shelves.
So while the president's inspirational pre-battle speech in "Independence Day" is stirring, the moment in the movie that I truly savor is when the world is assembling against the alien onslaught, and you briefly see a bank of Morse code operators, clicking away their dots and dashes. As the son of a radio operator, I have to love that.
When technology fails, the old ways bail them out. For instance, Saturday morning, Facebook served up a story written for Sports Illustrated, on how cowboy star Roy Rogers midwifed sports marketing. I was always proud of that story —the sort of oddball take I like to do on popular subjects — and it seemed doubly apt now, with the Bears and Packers in the wildcard game Saturday night (a game we watched. "Let's be part of the zeitgeist" my wife had suggested. Very exciting. “Who would think that watching football would be so much fun?” she marveled afterward). The Sun-Times ran a story mentioning how merchandise related to the Bears, the most popular team in the country, is flying off the shelves.
Sports Illustrated paid for the Roy Rogers story so, rather than post the whole thing and steal their clicks —I'm not AI — I posted the first half, with a link to the rest.
Only Sports Illustrated went out of business in early 2024, and whatever it costs to keep their archive online proved not worth the bother and expense. There is something called "SI Vault" but I can't tell if that's working either.
All was not lost, however. In the closet of my office are a pair of very low tech, four drawer Hon filing cabinets. Under "S" I quickly located a manilla file labeled "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED" and there was a copy of the issue, July 27, 1998, with Mark O'Meara, "The Unlikely Champion" on the cover. A photocopy of the story. And a copy of the 1960 Sun-Times article, "There's gold in the sidelines" that sent me down this particular rabbit hole.
Plus my contract with Sports Illustrated: $1,500. That wouldn't be a bad fee now, provided you could find a magazine to pay it, which you couldn't. Imagine how that felt in 1998.
I could have found some program to grab the text off the story and put it into useable form. But I'd have to track that app down and figure it out, and it took less than 10 minutes for me to type the second half of the story in, keeping with our old school theme.
When I was done, I returned the pages to their folder and refiled them in the S section. You never know when it might come in handy again.
Only Sports Illustrated went out of business in early 2024, and whatever it costs to keep their archive online proved not worth the bother and expense. There is something called "SI Vault" but I can't tell if that's working either.
All was not lost, however. In the closet of my office are a pair of very low tech, four drawer Hon filing cabinets. Under "S" I quickly located a manilla file labeled "SPORTS ILLUSTRATED" and there was a copy of the issue, July 27, 1998, with Mark O'Meara, "The Unlikely Champion" on the cover. A photocopy of the story. And a copy of the 1960 Sun-Times article, "There's gold in the sidelines" that sent me down this particular rabbit hole.
Plus my contract with Sports Illustrated: $1,500. That wouldn't be a bad fee now, provided you could find a magazine to pay it, which you couldn't. Imagine how that felt in 1998.
I could have found some program to grab the text off the story and put it into useable form. But I'd have to track that app down and figure it out, and it took less than 10 minutes for me to type the second half of the story in, keeping with our old school theme.
When I was done, I returned the pages to their folder and refiled them in the S section. You never know when it might come in handy again.
Well the Bears pulled it off again with another nail biter.
ReplyDeleteMonty Python did snippets of "Whuthering Heights" in semaphore and "Julius Caesar" on an Aldis lamp. Probably not accurately, but it was cute.
ReplyDeletedid you enjoy the game?
ReplyDeleteThe second quarter got boring, and I played hooky the third quarter, watching an episode of "Victoria" instead. But we returned for the last 10 minutes, and found that thoroughly entertaining.
DeleteI have my mother’s certicate of completion of Palmer Method framed over my dresser. Going on 100 years old.
DeleteWhen the grid goes down, we'll all have to relearn Palmer Method with charred twigs and our scout skills will be our savior.
ReplyDeleteAh, “Independence Day.” We we’re heading across the parking lot to the theater as the previous crowd was letting out. Someone yelled, “How was the movie? “ An exiting patron yelled back the best six-word review I ever heard: “Good effects. Great explosions! Limp plot.“
ReplyDelete