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David Mitchell

Tim,

What's not to watch?

Unless - oh yea, we said we were staying of politics. I'll sned you a comment on private email.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Frank Ganley

This is a test, will it bother anyone with a comment about the video of MM . Amazing grace almost always makes me well up but to hear these soldiers harmonize with such precision amazing, and who can object to God bless America. I hope everyones breakfast is still good and hope this makes it all the way to the forum

Michael McLeod

I seem to be doing a lot of this lately.

http://www.orlandomagazine.com/Blogs/Metropoly/July-2018/Goodbye-Gorgeous/

Michael McLeod

Larry: Very impressed with your continuity and discipline. Wish I had that. A very good quality for you as an artist in particular and a human being in general.

Mark Schweickart

Mike -- Another "gorgeous" piece of writng you did there, "of course you did."  It is so good we can even forgive you for photo-bombing yourself into the article. Did you? "Of course you did." But seriously, excellent obit - capturing her sense of style, generosity, toughness, quirkiness, humor, and  history -- all in a few short paragraphs. Did I mention "heartfelt"? That probably came through the most--how she touched you personally.

Jeanine Eilers (Decker)

Outstanding obit, Mike.  She would be so pleased.  Icons seldom know how they touch others.

Michael McLeod

She was also extremely involved in womens issues.  I should have got that in the story. All the pallbearers were women. 

James Hamilton, M. D.

Sheila McCarthy (Gardner)

Mike: That was lovely. What a blessing to have known her so well and enjoyed her remarkable life. I can't tell you how many times at our community newspaper that I would be handling obituaries only to learn too late that someone was a former Ziegfeld girl or played professional sports in the '50s... Carpe diem, friend...

David Mitchell

Wow Mike! 

I have to tell you what I just told my oldest daughter the other day - after she had just received another "rejection" from a publisher on one of her articles. 

"You write because it's a part of who you are."  I'd say that applies to you too - in spades!

Michael McLeod

thanks all and thanks dave.tell your daughter if every sentence is an excrutiating labor of love that's all she needs to join the club.  laid up with a cold now, finally getting the chance and binging the k burns vietnam series 

David Mitchell

Mike, I think I've got this "writing bug" too.  Had it ever since I can remember. Grew up with both parents as great story tellers - from their own lives growing up. Wish I had more time to devote to it.

(also think that's why I love a great movie - I mean the kind with an actual plot and some acting. I love a good story. The "story" in your articles is so well crafted - same with some of Mark's stuff - and Tim - and Jack's "Tales from a rooftop". And Jim's stories from a country operating room. 

Get well.

* Speaking of writing "craftsmanship", didn't I hear somewhere a few years back that our own Sheila McCarthy Gardener won the award for Best Small Town Newspaper Editor in America ? Yup, I'm pretty sure I heard that somewhere.

Did I hear that right Sheila?

p.s. Mike, love to share some thoughts on that K. Burns series with you off the Forum sometime.

Michael McLeod

deal, dave

Mark Schweickart

I know we talked a bit last month about RFK when we passed the 50th anniversary of his death on June 6th, but if you don't mind I would like to add this tribute to him. A little late, I realize, but yesterday, I finally got around to adding some stills to a song a I wrote way back when, which meant I could put it up on YouTube, and which meant I could thereby inflict this on you, my captive audience.

This song began with the idea of questioning the concept that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants who have preceded us. But as the song unfolded, and the RFK section kicked in, it shifted to the conclusion that this is indeed true, especially with him. 

Sheila McCarthy (Gardner)

Dave: Let's clear this up lest we are accused of faking the news..... although there were days I believed myself to be the best newspaper editor in America, no such award. After I retired in 2014, the Nevada Press Association awarded me outstanding journalist, figuring, I guess, that they best get to it while I was still around... I was very honored to receive it. You can read the details in our very own Class Showcase if you scroll down far enough...  Cheers!

David Mitchell

Sheila,

Thank you. I stand corrected.

At least I finally got you to fess up to something about your accomplishments.

(my intention in the first place - LOL)

--------

Just went back and read the "Showcase"  (which I never knew existed - hello! )

I especailly like the compliment about ".....and her horse sense is off the charts."

So Sheila, why don't you please run for President? I don't care which party. A little "horse sense" would be like a breath of fresh air coming from inside the "beltway". I'll be your campaign manager here in Bluffton. We can throw a great big oyster roast down by the river and you can give us your common sense platform. I find the combination of May River Oysters and common sense to be intoxicating. 

Donna Kelley (Velazquez)

Great song, Mark. Thanks for sharing. 

So much talent in this group.

Janie Albright (Blank)

Mark, enjoyed your song. Just posted it to the Class Showcase Page. We could use more material for that for sure. 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

If you live in or around Cbus you have a grand opportunity to bring some nostalgia into your home as well benefit the BWHS Theatre Department

1963 Bishop Watterson High School maple gymnasium floor segments - all sizes

1963 Bishop Watterson High School maple gymnasium floor segments. Name your price - All proceeds go to the BWHS Theatre Department.

Segments range from 2 to 20 feet in length, and 2 to 4 feet in width.

Contact lizodorisio@gmail.com to schedule your pick up! Must retrieve by July 23, 2018.

David Mitchell

Mary Margaret,

They ought to give it to our class. Remember during our first few months of our freshman year, WE had to go out canvassing neighborhoods one night (2 guys and 2 girls to a car with one parent driving) to raise money for that very same floor. If I recall correctly, the guys on the teams did not have to go, but once it was finished, only the athletes and the gym classes were allowed to use it. 

I forget who's mom drove our foursome - just above Graceland on the west side of High Street. I was paired with Toni - excuse me - Antonia Borean while Gene Rodgers and Debbie Alexander were the other team.

And BTW - anybody recall the dark brown tile floor that it was before? A bit slippery for our grade school basketball games.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mark Schweickart

Janie -- Thanks for liking the song I posted yesterday and for putting it on the Showcase page, which I had pretty much forgotten existed. However, when I clicked on it, I saw that this Showcase page still has the problem I think we discussed earlier, which is that another of my songs, that is at the very bottom of the page, immediately comes on. I am sure this must be rather disorienting for anyone clicking on the page, because they will not know what or where this sound is coming from and how to turn it off. I think you said previously you did not know how to fix this. My suggestion is that since that previous song, The Flip Side, has been up for many years now, let's just remove it from the Showcase.

And if would like a replacement song for the Showcase, here is another that you might like, at least I hope you will. It might especially appeal to any Civil War buffs lurking in our midst.

Here's a note that goes with the song:

It’s been over 150 years since the Civil War, but some things just don’t go away. I found myself thinking about what it might have been like to have been an ordinary soldier, wondering what his point of view may have been, and how to express it in a song. I took the melody and chorus from John Brown’s Body which had been a marching song for Union soldiers before it morphed into The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and which then later transitioned into the labor union anthem Solidarity Forever, and, since then, into a thousand school-yard parodies. So I figured one more variation couldn’t hurt. I used the original lyrics from the marching song for the chorus, and added verses to express what a lonely foot soldier from the North might have been feeling as he passed by a lovely Southern girl on his march deeper and deeper into the South.

Michael McLeod

Whoa. Really imaginative concept Mark, and a great premise. Wierdly enough it is now glued together in my psyche with an image of a gi talking to a beautiful young vietnamese girl in a rice field with a water buffalo in the  background in the Ken Burns Vietnam doc I'm finally watching. Which has become the third leg in a kind of "our time" trilogy that I have more or less stumbled into this summer break, the other two being "Won't You Be My Neighbor" and "RBG."

I find my antiquated definition of courage being belately expanded to include a tiny, bespectacled lady who helped lead the way, damn near singlehandedly, for women's rights, particularly in the workplace. And a softspoken man in a button-up sweater and sneakers whom I remember mocking. I see him now in a different light for how intensely committed he was to children, and how he stood up to those who didn't understand how much he worried about the messages they absorbed from mass media. It's that deeply rooted, unwavering commitment -- and a clue about its roots -- that makes me recommend that one, really, even more highly than the other two. I mentioned it before and was surprised not to get any reaction. And it's unlike me to nag. But you're cheating yourself of something very, very valuable if you don't see it. If I may be so bold.

As for the Vietnam doc --- still processing. I will be a different person by the time I work my way through the series.  Struck by ugly parallels, lessons yet unlearned, the dangers of being naive, and the wish that human beings would just read Greek tragedies instead of playing them out in real life, again and again and again. 

David Mitchell

Mark,

As I listen to your Civil War video a thought runs through my head not so much about the music, but about photos, and the odd relationship between photography and war - somethig I had never though about much before. Many of your photos are, I believe, some of the famous photos of Matthew Brady, who captured so much of the stark carnage from those battefields. 

There are so many famous scenes that would never have been observed visually without these men and their early cameras. I am thinking of some of the horrifying images the world has looked at beginning with the Crimena War - the first war to be photographed. There is some dispute as to who the first photos of that war were taken by. 

And of course, we grew up with Hollywood's patriotic use of film during WW2.

And when Vietnam came, it came rushing into every American iving room via the 6:00 news.

But still photos seem to carry a more lasting impact. Some of the more memorable still photos would be the famous "falling Soldier" taken by a man named Capa in the Spanish Civil War about 1936 - a striking image of a soldier as he is nocked back by the impact of a bullet and tossing his rifle off to his side!

And our generation could never forget the famous "Saigon Street Execution" taken by an American photgrapher named Adams. Tha photo, by the way, has several photos before and after which are not often seen, and a story that completely changes the point of view of the observer from a cold blooded murder, to something quite different.

I'm speaking of the shot of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan walking up to a captured prisoner on the streets of Saigon and shooting Nguyen Van Lem in the side of the head - so brutal we were all shocked and disgusted. Interestingly, on deeper investigation one learns that General Loan's men had just captured Viet Cong Captain Nguyen Van Lem after a morning man hunt for him during which Captain Lem had himself just executed 37 people, including 7 Saigon policemen, a couple of Americans, and several children of said policemen. All this as an undercover Viet Cong Captain during the "Tet Offfensive".  A very differnt image!

As Photography is so relatively new to mankind, one wonders how Photography has affected War and the Politics of War. Or even beyong War - society in general with the use of Photo Journalism - - such as Dorothea Lange's searing images of the "Dust Bowl" in the great depression.

Just rambling here. Never gave this much thought before.