I remember children
Feeding flocks of pigeons
I remember sunshine, and you were mine… Sunday will never be the same.
Gene Pistilli and Terry Cashman via Spanky And our gang
A great big honkin’, “Hey, ho, let’s go” to all of our friends! It’s mt58, your (occasionally) intrepid tnocs.com host, proudly presenting your Friday Wrap-Up.
Mercifully, this is my last week of sky travel for a little while. These trips have been really busy, and I guess even kind of fun, but I sure can’t wait to get back to home base. It’s funny how it’s those mundane, little, everyday things that you miss, like going out for a long walk, cooking your own supper, and just generally lazing about. And, natch, hanging out with your best bud.
So, please pardon me for a sec whilst I search for a certain slobbered-up tennis ball. In the meantime have a look-see at some elegant bullet points:
• We had another week of great participation, with ever-increasing viewers, members, and general traffic.
• The comment sections are gettin’ busy:
For obvious reasons, I’ve always wanted the comments to be a vibrant and relevant part of the site. So this was pretty great: we actually saw several upvote counts hit double digits! It might not seem like a big deal… but for a brand new place, this is a cool little metric. I’m kind of psyched.
• And thanks to you all, we’re ever-so-slightly trending on – wait for it – wait for it: Duck Duck Go !
I’m really not sure what to do now.
Any expected Pete Davidson jokes aside, thanks for the social media shoutouts that many of you provided this week. Any mentions about tnocs.com in such places are greatly appreciated, as it helps immensely to bring new traffic and new users to the site.
If any of you are Twitter users, a “follow” connection would be most appreciated. Be sure to check us out at Elon’sLatestWhim.com – sorry, make that: https://twitter.com/tnocsc
And as always, enjoy using the comment section below all weekend for your conversational pleasure. The “The Weekend Files” space is your verbal sandbox. Chatter away.
But first… the cool stuff that you may have missed this week…
This Past Week’s New Articles
We all run into lots of good folks for whom music is unimportant, trivial, and just plain not-on-the-radar.
But then sometimes, we get to meet the polar opposite. Enter Contributing author JJ Live At Leeds who is passionate, eloquent, and a thoughtful soul, and was kind enough to take us along on his personal journey with the sonic arts.
He described the fascinating ways of how music has weaved in and out of his life in an instant-classic long-form piece. It all makes me want to go and try to find a certain used-vinyl shop in Ashington. Thanks and well done, good sir. We’ll leave it to another of our chart mavens to sum it all up:
Contributing author and wildly-experienced world traveller thegue had a funny tale to tell about meeting a musical hero. Setting a good example for, oh, let’s say, the entire human race, our man refused to gush, fawn, or go all paparazzi on the person. In case you haven’t had the chance to read the article, we won’t reveal the name of the star in Marc’s tale of intreague.
Get it?
Did you see that?
Intreague?
See, the author’s name is “thegue” so I spelled it –
Contributing Author – hang on – make that, Very Dependable Contributing Author dutchg8r gave us a fun and engaging listicle about perfection. These types of lists are always so much fun to read and to debate. It’s likely a great example of random probability and statistics, in that for every, “Wow, I never considered that one,” there’s a “YES. 100%. YOU GET ME.”
i loved the list and the rationale behind each thoughtful choice. Good on you, good friend, for yet another wonderful Dutch treat.
(By the way: this would make for a great occasional series. If anyone wants to do the call-and response thing to dutchg8r ‘s piece? Let’s hear your Perfect Record List. Hit me up at: submisssions@tnocs.com)
But like so many things from the UK, it is kind of cool.
And in a literal breath of fresh air, Contributing Author cstolliver provided a delightful photo essay, direct from his backyard.
Think about it: we’ve been inundated with bad news about so many things for what seems like forever. Why wouldn’t any normal person need a break? It was indeed a nice little respite, a chance to experience a little calm from within the maelstrom. A nice person, talking about the plants in their garden. That’s it. And it was great.
We enjoyed the simple pleasure of looking at and learning about some nice greenery. Big thanks Chuck. Please tell your hubby that a totally random internet stranger says, “Good on you.”
Site Stuff:
- How’m I doin? Is the site loading and responding fast enough? Any major fails? Looking good on desktop, tablet, and mobile? Please let me know what you like, hate or would like to see for your best viewing experience. Feedback is appreciated and respected.
- Answering a question about article view counts: For the most accurate results (updated every 5 minutes), please make sure that you are logged in. (Being logged in also lets you upvote and comment.)
- Want to see your byline Up Front? So do we! Please write for us! Old comment section veterans and newcomers are all welcome to join in the reverie.
We want to hear what’s on your mind. If you have an idea or just want to chat about stuff, PM me anytime at submissions@tnocs.com .
• Any suggestions for channels? Content? Cool features? General mayhem?
I want this to be your place. Tell me how to make it better.
Thank you so much for your support and kind comments about the site. I’m impossibly lucky to be able to hang with all of you. Have a great weekend, please be careful, take good care of yourselves and each other…
.. and good on you all.
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This morning, I find myself with a gorgeous view of the Gulf Of Mexico. It’s great having friends who willingly pay inordinate amounts of money for two weeks in a condo overlooking the sea, and let us stay with them for free. We’re here for another night, then go to see other friends inland. What a life I lead!
The best part is there’s only been one text message from the office all week.
Specific to Virgindog, and generically to all: are you able to avoid office email and other comms on nights, weekends, and other off-time? I recently had a challenging experience with this, and I’m trying to respectfully draw a line in the sand. So far, mixed results.
Thankfully, my job doesn’t require anything of me aside from the 40 hours a week I’m parked at my desk at home… Sorry to hear about your ordeal, mt!
Generally, yes, but no sooner did I say that I only got one text message than three phone calls come in. This was a little annoying because I made a point to document this particular process and went over it with my co-worker before I left, and he still did things in the wrong order. He’s such a gutbucket.
I am lucky in that my office frowns upon email and calls after 5 and on the weekends. Still, when the files get heavy, that self-starting/take intiaitve/work hard to keep food on the table ethos takes over and I check on my own accord. If it takes no more than 2 mins to respond, I will. If not, I’ll add it to tomorrow’s to-do list.
It has been a challenge to draw the line in the sand since we started working from home, especially with the work laptop is just in the other room.
I am generally able to do so. My boss knows to call me, and I know to pick up, if it’s an emergency and I’m needed (e.g., a student or teacher dies, or something of that level of urgency that simply cannot wait until Monday to know). Otherwise, I do often in the fall have to do work from home (those rec letters don’t write themselves) but I only check email late Sunday night for the weekly set-up from the principal.
There’s no avoiding it on weekday nights. Email alerts stay on and my work phone rings to my actual phone. Same for weekends, though we usually don’t get much traffic beyond a help call on a Saturday, but we try to split these up among our team. But on vacation days I’m adamant about turning all notifications and ring-throughs off and tell my team they’ll have to call me direct to reach me and even then I can’t promise I’ll pick up. Pre-pandemic, our work hours were fairly strict. With working from home, they’re extremely fluid so setting that boundary is all I got. I joked a lot in the last two years when vacation meant turning off notifications and staying home, but that psychic weight off was still valuable.
It’s off to the middle of West Texas to help my mom move into her new, smaller, cheaper house. Dad left us last June and also left things such that mom was unable to afford living in the house they shared. (As a financial planner, my dad came from the “Jesus will probably return before we need to worry about any of this” school of economics.) It’s been a pins-and-needles few months but the contract seems to have been signed and debts paid. Now it’s just a matter of getting her sorted.
That is a lot to handle.
And it’s always hard when you reach that tipping point, from where your parents go from looking out for you, to the opposite.It’s often an abrupt transition and tends to hit you suddenly and hard.
But Good on you, Bayouradio, for working it through. Tell Mama that a bunch of friends of yours say, “Happy Mother’s Day!”
Thanks much, friend!
Good on you for helping your mother. As mt58 noted, the role reversal itself is a challenge. Enjoy the weekend and Happy Mother’s Day to yours.
Best of luck to your mom in her new home. Thank you for being there for her. Safe travels.
Thank you all for these very kind notes. This community is amazing and these were lovely to see throughout this busy but good weekend. All but one sibling was there and it was the longest time we’ve all been together since dad’s funeral. So, even with the added sweat (108 degrees on Saturday!), we had a lot of laughs. Mom loves her new house and this will definitely be a more livable, secure place for her to spend whatever time she has left. It’s a huge relief for everyone. We’ll inter dad’s ashes in a few weeks, but this really felt like the closing of that chapter.
Glad to hear the weekend was productive bayouradio, and provided a healthy serving of soul food to all of you.
Family trip to London last week brought an intersection with the mothership. Went to Mary Poppins the Musical; 10 out of 10, magical for all the family and surprised me by not just being a retread of the film – the section featuring my favourite song Step In Time surpassed all my expectations. Anyway, playing the Bird Woman, seven shows a week at the grand old age of 89 is #1 alumni Petula Clark. Her voice is sounding weathered but strong, a bit of a croak to start off with but holding up well for her age. Sterling effort Petula.
Thank you for the encouraging Petula news!
I love a big-reveal-surprise. Here’s a favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItVEhL-T7qQ
Mt58, to answer your questions above.
I think you are doing a great job. Thank you for making this happen.
FYI: I am on the Brave browser right now and everything is functioning properly.
Hey, mMaj7,
Thank you for the kind words, and the Brave functionality report. I’d not yet had feedback on that particular browser, so that’s great news.
We’re all very glad to see you here, and hope that you are OK. Thanks for keeping us good company!
I’ll add my ups on this too. The site works great for me on desktop and phone. So much smoother for me than the Mothership actually.
Oh! I love the idea of rotating contributions from folks on what they would classify as their Perfect Songs, mt!!! Let everyone have a chance to play Contributing Author at least once, that’d be so awesome.
Agreed! It would be such a great opportunity for new contributors.
What say you, prospective authors? Who’s up for it?
I’d be up for this I think. I’ve been thinking of some possible pieces but that could be a fun one. Also had the thought of doing a thing called The Song of
theMy Year to talk about the biggest song of a given year but contrast it with the one I actually listened to the most. Thought about it for a while but the recent slate of 90s hits has revived the idea.Whatever the topic: would love to see a Bayouradio byline on the Up Front Today section.
Anytime that you or anyone wants to get something published, hit me up at:
submissions@tnocs.com. Easy as that!
Something odd happened to me today. Driving through Homosassa Springs (near the Florida Gulf coast), and I’m scanning through the car radio for clear stations. The tuner stops at 93.9, playing “Blinded By the Light”, and I’m thinking this is odd that I’ve never heard anything on this frequency in this area. In fact, the country station in Ocala (93.7) is usually strong enough that it would override anything that close on the dial. The song ends, and a liner comes on that says something like “Big 93-9, Corpus Christi’s classic hits!” At this point I’m thinking I misheard it, since that’s on the complete opposite side of the Gulf of Mexico, so as “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” begins I’m scrambling to be ready to start recording on my phone once the song is over, hoping for confirmation. Lo and behold, jock comes on and back announces the song going into a stopset: “Corpus Christi’s classic hits, Big 93-9…” By this point, the reception is starting to get staticy, and before the first commercial is over I’ve lost the signal. Couple hours later driving back through, I try to find it again but all I can get is the local station at 93.7.
So… has anybody ever had something like this happen? I mean I know sometimes you can pick up long distance AM stations late at night when atmospheric conditions are right (or at least you used to back in AM’s heyday), but an FM station in the middle of the day??
This has happened to me very rarely, and it is a real treat. It’s little jarring, because you think, “wait a minute, what am I doing in West Virginia? I thought I was home?“
These twilight-zone radio listening occurrences are called “tropos” and “e-skips.”
They are pretty rare, but a lot of fun when you catch one.
Here’s more information:
https://www.northpine.com/blog/2020/06/18/tropo-or-e-skip-nows-the-time-to-listen-for-distant-fm-signals/
Awesome mt! Glad to know it’s a real thing and I wasn’t witness to a wormhole or something. Also, thanks for an unintended laugh I got from the aircheck example in the article you linked to. Not often you hear this:
“Skeet skeet skeet skeet skeet… Coming up, the Rascals and Aretha Franklin!… Skeet skeet skeet…”
https://youtu.be/Zmvt7yFTtt8
That is a fantastic article mt, thank you, total nerd-out reading!
But, it does make sense based on what I learned at a previous job, when I was doing aerial imagery studies worldwide and wondered wtf these massive drive-in theater looking outposts were in some truly remote areas of the world…
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Tropospheric_scatter
Fantastic find!
These are the kinds of articles that I love to devour. It’s all very interesting stuff.
Regrettably, I usually understand only a percentage of what they are talking about. And this is completely my own fault. I should’ve tried harder and paid better attention, back in the days when I was in school. But I was too busy listening to music and being preoccupied with a whole lot of the wrong things.
It would be great to go back and have a do over. I was such a gutbucket.
Oh snap, I forgot about the vocab challenge… Um, here’s one of James Brown’s final recordings, called “Gut Bucket” (does it count if it’s two words?):
https://youtu.be/aew0gb1jFdo
We will send this to committee for a ruling. But in my opinion, it counts. You found an actual song!
This is the kind of gift from the heavens that makes this place great. I love strange radio phenomena and hearing stations you otherwise shouldn’t be hearing is right at the top. Even with the scientific explanation, it feels mysterious in the moment.
I was about to reference a long-distance AM catch (not dedication; sorry Casey!) but you covered it.
Oh, heck with it: in Montreal for a wedding in 1994. Would sneak outside to listen to the play-by-play coverage of the Rangers-Devils game out of 660FAN.
Also, first night I crashed a wedding.
Ha! Better a wedding than a funeral like on Friends, lol.
I remember being so incensed having to endure Joe Buck’s play by play during the Phillies post season run in 1993, I tried finding anyone else on the radio broadcasting their games and leave the TV on mute. So I’m scrolling through the dial, and lo and behold I hear Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn talking (they were the Phil’s broadcast team for decades). I literally screamed at the radio – no WAY! – in total disbelief since I was standing in my dorm room in FLORIDA! It wasn’t a relay broadcast, I was managing to get the Philly AM station (confirmed when they would do a station identification) they were on all the way in FL. Unreal. And of all the times for the conditions to be just right! I didn’t touch that radio for 2 weeks, all kinds of antenna extensions draped all over it….
You know, you seem to have quite a few wedding tales, thegue; I sense an ongoing series here….!
As any of the teachers on this site know, the last month or so of school is probably the hardest there are so many things going on.
The seniors just want to get out and start their new journeys, the juniors and sophs are taking their AP tests 9usually 3-4 hours long, the frosh just want out period, spring sports are wrapping up their championships and the faculty and staff are wondering where did the year go?
Mt58, you’ve done a fantastic job getting this site up and running and it’s so nice to hear from all the usual suspects.
With more time coming up, I hope to be a regular and have some articles I would love to submit when I have more time.
Happy mothers day to you and all.
Hey, DF,
Thanks so much for the kind words. I know everyone of the group would love to hear from you via an article. You have so many great stories, and it would be terrific to hear from you.
Thanks for all you do, and thanks to all of the teachers out there who help the students be the best that they can be. In these times, the younger folks need as much support as they can get, and they are fortunate to have people like you and all of our dedicated educators on the job, ready to help.
Have a great end-of-year.
We will be looking for your byline!
As a member of school support staff, I know what you’re talking about. We stand with you all the way. (But if you ask for a rush job on a Friday afternoon, your ears will be burning.)
Absolutely. I hope to become much more active after May.