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After these last few days of sick news and sad memories, I feel like changing the mood.

I was recalling the week this came out and the next day I drove down to my nearby "Peaches" record store (in Denver). They only had about 6 copies left and I bought them all - giving them away to friends over the next few days.

Remember and Enjoy.

09/12/25 05:00 PM

#16172

I think that's Dan Akroyd in the back row next to Harrry Belafonte.

And I read somewhere that the entire group made it clear that they did not want Prince in on this recording.

09/12/25 05:18 PM

#16173

John Jackson

Below is something written today by Cal Newport, a grade school/high school friend of one my sons. Cal also worked for me one summer when he was in college. He went on to get his PhD in computer science and he is now a professor at Georgetown where he does research on esoteric computer science topics (which I don’t begin to understand).

Despite his computer science credentials he has a contrarian side – for the past dozen years he has written prolifically (five books) encouraging his readers to decouple themselves from their devices and social media. He also writes for The New Yorker on the same subject.

There’s a certain irony in my posting this critique of social media on a social media site (and I can't exempt myself entirely from the points he's making), but I don’t think sites like our humble Watterson Forum were uppermost in Cal's mind when he wrote this:

On Charlie Kirk and Saving Civil Society

Many of you have been asking me about the assassination of the conservative commentator Charlie Kirk earlier this week during a campus event at Utah Valley University. At the time of this writing, little is yet known about the shooter’s motives, but there have been enough cases of political violence over the past year that I think I can say what I’m about to with conviction…

Those of us who study online culture like to use the phrase, “Twitter is not real life.” But as we saw yet again this week, when the digital discourses fostered on services like Twitter (and Bluesky, and TikTok) do intersect with the real world, whether they originate from the left or the right, the results are often horrific.

This should tell us all we need to know about these platforms: they are toxic and dehumanizing. They are responsible, as much as any other force, for the unravelling of civil society that seems to be accelerating.

We know these platforms are bad for us, so why are they still so widely used? They tell a compelling story: that all of your frantic tapping and swiping makes you a key part of a political revolution, or a fearless investigator, or a righteous protestor – that when you’re online, you’re someone important, doing important things during an important time.

But this, for the most part, is an illusion. In reality, you’re toiling anonymously in an attention factory, while billionaire overseers mock your efforts and celebrate their growing net worths.

After troubling national events, there’s often a public conversation about the appropriate way to respond. Here’s one option to consider: Quit using these social platforms. Find other ways to keep up with the news, or spread ideas, or be entertained. Be a responsible grown-up who does useful things; someone who serves real people in the real world.

To save civil society, we need to end our decade-long experiment with global social platforms. We tried them. They became dark and awful. It’s time to move on.

Enough is enough.

09/12/25 06:19 PM

#16174

Jeanine Eilers (Decker)

Thank you, John.

09/12/25 07:02 PM

#16175

Joseph Gentilini

Wise thoughts, John. Thanks. Joe

09/12/25 07:09 PM

#16176

Well said. Amen.

I realize he is talking to the millions of people (especially younger) who hang on their tablets all day and get nothing else done but count "hits" or "likes".

but an afterthought occurs to me. I live alone, where everyone in my lovely quiet litle neighborhood is gone until after work hours - and thansk to my accident, I no longer work. It is so easy to reach in my pocket and grab my phone to see the latest news (and Bronco scores). This Forum - with friends I know - and an adult attitude is often my safest "escape" from utter boredom.

Still, I agree we would all be better off if we could just pick up a book, or walk next door to be "present" to a real live neighbor.

09/12/25 07:53 PM

#16177

Communication

The "art" of verbal communication - actual talking - is being lost, overtaken by emails and texting. Cellphones are probably more often used for those kind of interpersonal contracts than are the spoken word. That can be a good way to discuss topics with groups, such as this Forum, but vocal talking to individuals, especially family, seems to becoming less common. And yes, I am also guilty of that more often than I like to think.

At least even Spock used a "mind meld" at times🤔.

Jim

09/13/25 11:16 AM

#16178

LOL Jim: if we are bad at verbal communication imagine what slackers we are as writers.

Don't look to me as a role model. Poking through old papers I found my first grade report card. I went to grade school at the Immaculate Conception parish grade school on east north broadway.

I see now that I got my worst grades - a succession of C's - in the subject that would eventually become my vocation and my life's work: Writing.

My grade school teacher was Ruth Ertel, a perky redhead who lived straight across the street from I/C and who became close friends with my mom via summers when they would loll about on the lawn surrounding that huge Olympic swimming pool complex on Indianola in clintonville, south of watterson high.

Anybody else out there remember Olympic?

I may have mentioned before that I lived close enough to hear the hourly announcement that was broadcast over a loudspeaker and reverberated across that broad, multi-pool complex.

It wasn't exactly Mayberry but looking back I'm grateful for how that bedroom window overlooking our big shady clintonville backyard was close enough to olympic swimming pool complex that I could hear, over the p.a., the hourly announcement for kids to clear the pool and take a break for safety reasons - and so grownups could enjoy the water for a few peaceful minutes. I heard that announcement so many times I still have it in my memory: "it is now time for the xxx o'clock break. let's have everyone out of the water. parents and adults are invited to swim during the break."

09/13/25 11:55 AM

#16179

Mike,

I think we all who were raised in Clintonvillle remember Olympic pool and summers so many of us spent there.

Years ago it was torn down, filled in and is now the Deco Apartment complex, sort of an "upscale-looking" building, across from Brevoort Park between Indianola and the railroad tracks.

Jim

09/13/25 12:08 PM

#16180

wow. I haven't kept track, Jim.

That makes me sad. but of course that huge chunk of clintonville real estate was like a gold mine just sitting there to be pounced upon.

It was such a rich communal hub, Olympic.I was on the swim team and my mom relaxed on the lawns surrounding the pools summer afternoons with an assortment of housewives including ruth ertel, my first grade teacher at immaculate conception grade school on east north broadway. The swimming pool complex was essentially in my backyard; think i've mentioned before I could hear the pa announcement and the happy screams from kids in the pool if the wind was right. (There were also fall saturdays when, if the wind was right, I could hear, from another direction,,the roar of the crowd at ohio stadium during football games from my home on east north broadway)

We're so isolated as a society, I think - at least the shoulder-to-shoulder version of it that we experienced.

I alway say I grew up in the middle of the miiddle of the middle, clintonville being in the middle of columbus which is in the middle of ohio which is in the middle of the midwest.

But I don't want to oversimplify. Or paint the past with overly nostalgic strokes.

I do miss Columbus. We were lucky to have grown up in that town. I moved away from columbus but only geographically. Forever nurtured and shaped by having osu in one direction, olympic swimming pool complex in clintonville in another, immaculate conception parish church and grade school just a few blocks away -- That communal orientation resides with me still, no matter where I may be geographically.

As the saying goes, I never really left my home town and my home town never really left me. Columbus gave me a cultural nurturing that helped to set me up for a rich life and a great career. OSU is in my blood.

We're all of us lucky souls. When I hear someone talk about an unsetted or un-fullfillng past of theirs, geographically or otherwise, it reminds me of the good fortune we all share. I never argue with people on the rare occasions when I hear people run down Columbus. I just smile, inwardly, and with gratitude for memories like going to the osu natatorium weeknights and swimming in that indoor pool complex at osu - and getting white castles on the way home, wet hair near frozen atop my head as we dashed to the car.

Sure felt la-tee-dah to me as a kid.

09/13/25 03:02 PM

#16181

Though I grew up in the northern reaches of that same Clintonville (Beechwold would be more accurate), Olympic pool was only a rare occasion for us. My Mom did not care for the place. We belonged to a pool at a place called "Glengary" somewhere to our north east. I cannot even recall exactly where - maybe somewhere out off of Morse Road, or further?

* If anybody can also recall this place, clue me in as to where it was located.

But I had the good fortune of having the neighborhood gathering place in my own front yard. It was quie large and once my dad cut down a favorite little hawthorne or ironwood tree, it gave us a wide open football field about 20 by 30 yards - between two driveways that formed our "end zones" or "foul lines".

And on that short stretch of Yaronia Drive (the Overbrook addresses were only those houses far back of the street like ours) lived about 10 guys, all within about two years of my age. There was baseball and football all the time - (and some evening hide-and-seek with the girls included).

And Dad put up a really nice basketball backboard down in the wide part of the drive way.

I didn't realize how special this was until I was grown up and moved away. It was wonderful!

One of my best memories was my 16th birthday party - (in March of '64 ?). I got to invite a small army of buddies - Tom Litzinger, Kevin Ryan, John Jackson, Joe Royce, Tom McKeon, Steve Hodges, Mike Haggerty. (I might be leaving someone out?)

I would give anything to find an old photo of 6 of us forming a human pyramid (3 kneeling on the bottom and me on the top. It lasted about 3 seconds before it all collapsed in laughter.

Later that night a few stayed late and we watched Ohio State loose to Cinincinnati in the NCAA finals- bummer!

09/13/25 11:21 PM

#16182

Mike McL

To see what is occupying the old Olympic pool area type in to a search engine:

The Deco zip code 43214

Jim

09/14/25 07:03 PM

#16183

wow, jim. I can't say I like what they've done to the place. it's really gone downhill. no cabanas. no diving boards. no snack bar. no baby pool.

I notice I wasn't on your birthday party guest list dave, and I am retroactively sulking.

and, finally, in other discouraging news:

Further evidence that we’re living in a bizarro world, where wrong is right and down is up, came in a recent Pew Research Center survey.

It found a shockingly large number of Americans don’t strongly believe journalists should hold public figures accountable, by calling out false and misleading information.

Did they skip civics and history lessons?

Are people so fatigued by awful national and global news, they don’t care anymore?

Or maybe this is just what it’s like in countries that let their local, independent news ecosystems wither away.

More than 70 million Americans live in news deserts, with little to no local journalism. Many remaining news outlets are threadbare, milked dry by distant corporate owners or beaten down by economic disruption.

We read less and spend more time in social media and streaming video bubbles. Only 17% of Americans pay for news subscriptions, instead of scrounging for free stuff online.

09/14/25 10:38 PM

#16184

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

my man

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ipx-b9h10IQ

09/15/25 10:10 AM

#16185

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BLwmkvuKz/?mibextid=wwXIfr

09/15/25 12:00 PM

#16186

thanks mm1. sorry u missed it.

wish i'd been there,too.

In other news:

The rich get richer.

09/15/25 11:21 PM

#16187

Joseph D. McCarthy

Dr. Jim. Finaly got around to responding to your question from long, long ago i a galaxy far away. But first a preeface.

We arrived home Saturday evening, about 4:30 P.M. PST, to Califonia from a decent trip to Columbus. I unloaded the four thousand bags from the SUV. On one trip carrying two suitcases to the front door, which is up two steps from the sidewalk I mistepped and fell backwards landing on my head. Continued unloading till I had finished unloading the four thousannd some items. It was then that my wife noticed blood running down across my face. Went inside and washed it, but it continued.

Drove to the nearest ER.Waited till they called my name and a very nice doctor asked what happened. I told him and he asked when was my last Tetnus shot. When I told him he adminstered the shot. Then he proceded to put a gauze covering over my head held with velcro (you know wat I mean). Then sent me back to the waiting room till they came to take me for a CAT scan. Then wheeled me back to the waiting room. After twenty hours, actually 30 minutesa different doctor came out to inform me that my brain showed no signs of damage; to which I asked if they were right and did they find something in my head.

Now to answer your question from a milleneum ago. Don't be a ##@@## and carry two suitcases and try to leap up two steps.

09/16/25 12:30 AM

#16188

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Joe McC.,

Glad you got home safely. Unfortunately, most accidents occur close to home.

As Dirty Harry once said " A man's got to know his limits." Your limit is obviously ONE suitcase!

Seriously, good choice to go and be checked out with a head trauma injury. Just be aware of any changes for a while after the trauma.

Jim

09/16/25 10:37 AM

#16189

https://firstthings.com/he-died-with-a-microphone-in-his-hand/

09/16/25 01:01 PM

#16190

Remembering Bob

(almost a fixture in my mind)

Who didn't love "The Sting", Or "Butch and Sundance"?

"Barefoot in the Park" was an awful lot of fun, and "Three Days of the Condor" was one of the best spy thrillers I ever saw.

But a film that still touches my heart was "The Way We Were" with Barbara Streisand.

Almost forgot Out of Africa and The Horse Wisperer

09/16/25 02:33 PM

#16191

And how could I forget he directed "Ordinary People"?

09/17/25 01:13 PM

#16192

John Maxwell

My wife Betsy, met Redford at Sundance at a leadership conference her group had booked there one year. She walked into one of the meeting rooms she mistakenly assumed was her group's hospitality. She got a drink and a cheese plate etc. and started looking for familiar faces. When all of sudden Robert Redford walks up to her and asks, "What group are you with?" She tells him and he escorts her to the windows and points to a building and tells her "I think that is you group there. Embarrassed, she thanked him and as she left, he apologized and assured her that there would be better signage.

09/17/25 01:23 PM

#16193

John Maxwell

Personally, I believed Redford was a true leader. What he assembled in Utah, the Sundance Festivals advanced Independant film by leaps and bounds and created a new way movies and new filmmakers could be seen. His success demonstrated how life can be exactly as it should be. By setting a shining example of how life should be. Many young directors got their first best break at Sundance and gone on to great success. Tarantino is a good example of the successes of Sundance. Great job Mr. Redford!

09/17/25 01:24 PM

#16194

I'll bet she won't forget that little act of kindness.

09/17/25 02:27 PM

#16195