Goodbye Yahoo eGroups -- Hello All-Digital AM Radio

One of my electric Jack O' Lanterns this Halloween.

Here in my corner of the PNW (the Pacific Northwest), we have seen Summer end, and Fall get into full gear. The hills are pleasantly covered in various shades of yellow and orange -- nothing like the Fall colors one sees Back East, but still nice. Halloween came and went -- I had two sets of trick-or-treaters, which was a pleasant surprise. I wore my mask, and poured out the candy bars (from the bags they came in -- I cut a hole in the corner so the candy bars would fall out) into the trick-or-treaters' sacks.

I wish there had been more of them, as it's a great way to interact with neighbors (the parents always come around with the kids -- I give them candy too). But it was the corona version of Halloween, and understandable.

Two of my Jack O' Lanterns from last year, Halloween 2019, both of them electric. Looking back through my folder, I didn't really take that many photos this year, including Halloween. It was easy to find these pics from last year for that reason.

I had my electric pumpkins out; the rest of my Halloween decorations -- save for two scary looking 'pumpkin monsters' -- stayed in the closet.

Life has been plodding along otherwise. I still play slide guitar daily, and I still have been working on fiction writing at night.

I haven't been DXing MW much, as it hasn't been that great. Shortwave, of course, has been basically dead for the past three years or more. It makes me yearn for 2011 and 2012 when it was still viable, but there ya go. Poor propagation, and the aging-out of technology, do not make for a lively SW band.

Radio forums have been a little less active, causing some to fold -- as I'll cover later in this post.

There have been some layoffs in radio lately, due to business factors as well as corona-related financial issues, but the biggest 'news' in radio lately concerns HD RADIO.

ALL DIGITAL RADIO ON THE US AM BAND -- Too Little, Too Late?

The FCC, the United States' governmental entity that supervises radio broadcasting, recently authorized AM / MW radio stations in the US to go all-digital, if they so choose.

The radio forum universe has been abuzz about this 'all-HD' thing for the last couple years -- the period of time that the FCC has been internally debating the idea of letting stations choose to go all digital or not.

A lot of MW radio enthusiasts, and MW DXers (like myself) have followed the idea with interest. I got my first, used, Sony HD radio in 2017 (I have a blog post on that radio: https://interrocknation.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-sony-xdr-s10hdip-hd-radio-new-thrift.html), and HD on AM sounded great on it. Sadly, the two local stations which were HD (via IBOC, a hybrid digital mode that allowed for analog AM to be broadcast along with a digital signal) dropped their HD about three or four months later when they each were sold to new owners.

A lot of MW DXers, of course, hated IBOC. It never bothered me any. I have found that local 50 KW AM radio stations wipe out adjacent channels with analog splash just as much as IBOC wiped out adjacent channels with HD buzz. But MW DXers tend to be a cantankerous lot. A lot of them seem to pray for a 'thinning out' of the AM band, i.e., they actually hope that more stations go off the air, as if that is a good thing.

I find that kind of hope ridiculous. All one has to to is tune across the SW broadcast bands these days to see how awesome it isn't when a broadcast band is 'thinned out'. Right now, I can switch on my SW radios and tune the 31 meter and 49 meter bands -- which even at the beginning of the 2010's, were packed with signals -- and hear next to nothing.

A couple of happy pumpkins carved and set out by a neighbor who lives maybe a block or two away from me, along with a safety line with treats hanging from it. Very few neighbors this year had any Halloween decorations out at all when compared to previous years. Corona really shook up the holiday, as it's done to the rest of the holidays. A few houses had 'safe' trick or treating -- they strung up bags of candy on a line, like in this picture, for the passing trick or treaters to grab safely. A couple had large bowls of candy out front of their yard somewhere, which was a nice gesture to the kids.

That said, the same curmudgeons are now complaining about this new FCC ruling, as if it is going to 'ruin AM radio' -- which it won't.

First off, not all AM stations will go all digital. In fact, I would be surprised if even ten stations nationwide go all digital. Right now, there are very few AM stations using IBOC -- I think KSL 1160 in Salt Lake City is still IBOC-HD, and there may be another station in Portland, Oregon (KKPZ 1330) that is IBOC. I don't know of any others that are in the NW quadrant of the US. Most turned their HD off when the equipment broke down.

Even FM stations are switching off their HD. Local rocker KISW had an awesome HD2 that was called "Metal Militia". It's been off for almost a month, and was switched off for a couple weeks some time last year. HD isn't really the moneymaker that it was envisioned to be when it was devised in the early 2000's. It was a great idea, but wasn't marketed well.

So that brings us to the FCC's decision: what will it do, really?

It will allow the 10-15 AM stations nationwide that may want to use digital to go all-digital if and when they believe it feasible to do so. By the end of the 2030's, most AM stations will probably be off the air, because they won't have an audience, and they won't otherwise be making enough money to keep the power on. Revenues have been dropping radio-wide, both AM and FM, since 2005, and that trend may not improve.

All that said, there may be some few holdouts that can keep an audience via HD over the air. After all, there are ethnic programming stations in every major market that still make enough money in 2020 to stay on the air now, just broadcasting in AM analog. Who knows how the marketplace may go in 15 or 20 years? Internet costs may go up for some reason we don't foresee presently. Or, on the other side of the coin, it may become cheaper and more dependable, and replace all over-the-air broadcasting completely. 

The fact is, we just don't know.

And finally, as long as there is an AM band, there will be analog AM stations on the air, if only because the technology is tried and true, and there will always be millions of AM analog radios in America to listen to them with.

I see the option for stations to go digital as a win-win. If a station wants to do it because they think they can make money at it, let them. Most stations won't use that option.

As for MW DXing, all-digital doesn't splash outside the channel as much as IBOC did. And, like I said above, 50 KW splatter pretty much kills DX on adjacent channels -- even a local 5 KW station (KVI 570) kills 560 and 580 most of the time. I can't see how an HD AM station is going to have any more negative an effect. A lot of DX radios are fairly narrow banded -- my PR-D5 being an example of this, which is around 4 kHz bandwidth or so. There are other Sangeans that cut down the bandwidth even further, to 2 kHz or less.

As long as there is an AM band, there will be something left to DX.

GOODBYE YAHOO eGroups -- ANOTHER RADIO HOBBY RESOURCE DISAPPEARS :-(

I recently learned that Yahoo eGroups are set to disappear this coming December. 

The news brings a bit of remorse, and a lot of sadness. Yahoo eGroups were a terrific resource for radio hobbyists, and other hobbyists as well. Now they will soon be gone completely -- consigned to that vast storehouse we call "memories", as well as the Web Archive, along with Excite, Tell-Them-Now dot com, various rock band websites, and a host of other internet staples that have either completely altered themselves, or otherwise disappeared over the years.

When I first discovered the World Wide Web in the late 1990's, Yahoo was the new, go-to place. By the middle of the next decade (the 2000s), I was on Yahoo daily. I even used their personals / dating site for a while. A lot of people did.

Their news feed was quite good, which it still is today (after a period where it seemed to be dominated by infotainment). Their email was good, they had a search engine that was popular, and their eGroups were some of the first forums that were widely used by hobbyists during the Web era (there, of course, have been hobby forums as long as there has been an internet). Yahoo's eGroups were very popular, and very informative, too.

There were eGroups for every kind of radio or radio hobby out there -- Medium Wave DXing, Shortwave listening, Utility DXing, and eGroups for Sangean, Sony, Realistic, Panasonic, GE Superadios, Ultralight Radio DXing -- you name it: if there was a radio brand or hobby, there was a Yahoo eGroup dedicated to it!

And the people who frequented these eGroups were often experts on the radios or aspects of the radio hobby the eGroup catered to. I was a member of the Yaesu FRG-7 eGroup and there were people there who knew these radios inside and out. The 'files' sections of the eGroups had pictures and schematics and all sorts of information to help guys fix or modify their radios.

I frequented their Sangean, Radio Shack, Panasonic, Superadio, Yaesu, Shortwave, MW DX, and Ultralight DX eGroups, as well as a few other hobby ones not related to radio. There was frequent activity on those groups, too -- usually there were new posts daily. I probably still have some pics of my radios on a couple of those eGroups.

I also was on a railroad eGroup, a guitar eGroup, and a clawhammer / mountain banjo eGroup. There were rock band eGroups -- I was a member of the Screaming Jets' one. Most of the eGroups were easy to join.

In fact, I loved using Yahoo -- but that was before they went purple a few years ago. 

Somehow there was a change made, where everything was now a default purple color. That, in itself, was no big deal, but all those radio eGroups were hard to figure out all of a sudden -- it was hard to find the new postings, if there were any, and -- if memory serves -- just as hard to post something. Moderators complained that they couldn't post a banner with a radio or logo anymore. If your browser wasn't a brand new version, you'd also have trouble navigating and using the groups.

In the next few months, a lot of the radio guys left the radio eGroups because they were so hard to use, and because they were getting less activity. 

It wasn't too long after Yahoo 'went purple' that I also stopped going to the eGroups. It wasn't because I didn't want to. It was just so difficult to use. Then I noticed that whatever activity the eGroups had was now dropping like a rock. First, there was no longer any new activity on the GE Superadio eGroup, the Panasonic eGroup, the DX-398 eGroup (which, I think soon closed), and the other eGroups had less and less activity. You'd log in and see the last post was months previous, which is never a good sign for a hobby forum.

And now the eGroups are disappearing into the ether... Hopefully, they will still be accessible via the web Archive, as there was good information on most of them

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT.

I'll miss Yahoo eGroups, for sentimental reasons, as well as some practical ones. There really aren't many -- if any -- forums dedicated to just a particular brand of radio, or a particular musical instrument (clawhammer mountain banjo, for example). EGroups provided such hobbyists an easy-to-obtain, easy-to-set-up, and easy-to-use platform for communication.,

There is an old adage in the US: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I surely wish more big companies would adhere to that message.

CORONA RE-DUX :-(

A Coronavirus warning sign from April of this year. The local County took it upon itself to literally close an outdoor trail miles from the nearest city where few people (maybe 100 a day, if that) aside from a handful of locals actually use it. This sign, and this order, didn't last long. 

As I finish this post, corona is beginning to slam the US and other parts of the world with a 'second wave'. Fortunately, the disease is no longer causing mass panic (at least here in the PNW US); people are cautious and hunkered down, but not frozen in fear. And at least in my area of the US the hospitals and other health resources are up to the task of dealing with it.

Thanksgiving was a non-starter here. I had a can of chili and a couple eggs. The extended family decided against having the usual dinner, which was understandable. There were undoubtedly some people who had normal Thanksgivings, but most people kept to their own, or simply discarded the holiday as I did.

Christmas and New Year's will undoubtedly be more of the same. If the new vaccine works, perhaps things will change.

I hope that all of my readers stay safe. I may have another post before mid-December or so.

Peace.

Three cheery faced Jack O' Lanterns from last year again, one electric (on the right) and two which I carved (on the left). This was about a week after Halloween, so the two carved pumpkins were starting to droop, as they will when they wear out. Even though this was in 2019, it is quite a fitting symbol for 2020.

CC 11-11-2020 and 11-29-2020 

NOVEMBER 22nd -- And the Death of JFK

 

Yesterday was, in a sense, a national holiday here in the US. Not an official one, by any means, nor was it commemorated widely. But to many of us who were alive on that foreboding afternoon of November 22nd, 1963 it still probably felt like a type of memorial day. 

I remember vividly that afternoon. I had just started grade school, and at the time I loved going to school. I got along with all of my classmates, and it was fun learning to read, and life itself was a new adventure.

It was late that moderately grey morning that we were in class, and the school secretary walked in to the room. She was visibly upset about something. She said something to our teacher, Mrs. Shull, and then left. Mrs. Shull suddenly looked upset. Then she announced to the class that President Kennedy had been shot.

Immediately, school was dismissed. Many of us in the school bus, riding home early that day, knew something was haywire -- it was not normal news for the President to be shot. But back then politics weren't on the front burner amongst kids the way they are apparently placed there now. All we knew was that the big man in the White House was shot and his life was in danger. I don't recollect much more about the bus ride aside from that.

My mom at the time was a housewife, so she was already home. My dad worked at Boeing. He came home early.

As soon as dad was home we turned on the TV. We were glued to the coverage, which -- although not live in the sense of today's instant news cycle -- it was still actually live coverage via satellite, which was unusual back then. At first, they were talking about President Kennedy being taken to the hospital, and his being operated on by doctors. Things seemed hopeful.

About an hour or so later came the final announcement: President Kennedy was dead.

It was the first time in my life that I felt this clearly palpable emotion of severe loss -- that I had absolutely no control over the destiny of a person close to me, or someone I looked up to.

My dad and mom were nearly in tears. It was the first time I felt that sock in the gut that one gets if a death occurs to a close person, or someone in the family. I realise that to many of my readers, this may seem unbelievable, as the President is just a politician, albeit a powerful one. But this death was palpable to many Americans -- JFK was more than just a politician to us. He was someone we looked up to.

And it was especially so to a second grade kid who had not previously experienced serious loss.

See, President Kennedy was more than a President. He was a hero in a sense. He was the big guy, the guy who ran the country. My family revered him. My great-aunt used to pride herself in combing my hair so that it would look "just like President Kennedy". Looking back at pictures of me when I was a kid, she was right -- it did look like his hair at the time.

It may have been because my grandma and great-aunt, both of whom were elderly, were Catholics, and a lot of Catholics looked up to President Kennedy because he was the first Catholic president. Or it may have been because they voted for him. But there is no doubt that John F. Kennedy had charisma, and that he was well liked by many. 

Besides, he had two little kids, who at the time were my age, and they were all such a happy looking family. The news outlets of the day -- which were less openly biased than they are now -- didn't call the White House "Camelot" for nothing.

It is somewhat ironic that within four months of JFK's death, the Beatles appeared in America, their happy, bouncy, exciting music almost being a medicine for the depression. Obviously, their music couldn't cure all the ills. 

All that seems distant now, but every November 22nd, I still remember. The photograph at the top of this article was a jar-candle, which I had set atop my mailbox post as a sort of memorial the evening of November 22nd, probably in 2013 or 2014. At the time I had lost a calico cat, from old age. It was a horrible time emotionally as it was. 

RIP PUDGE THE CAT

This November, I lost another cat. I don't want to go into any of the details, but it hasn't been an easy time.

I can't put out the jar-candle anymore, in my cat's memory, or JFK's, for that matter -- I am not sure where the jar went, and there no longer is a post to place it on, as the mailbox was run over by a truck about a year after I had placed the jar-candle on it. This blog post will have to suffice, I guess.

November is turning into a blah month. Here in Seattle it is raining, as it has been doing all month long. Coronavirus is kicking in again, causing people to cancel one of our major holidays, Thanksgiving. It also looks like Christmas will be cancelled, as well as New Year's.

I keep up my own thoughts by writing, and playing slide guitar. It is my own form of maintaining sanity. I realise that I have no control over a lot of things -- just as the second grade version of me could not keep President Kennedy alive, I can not keep a cat alive, or stop a virus so that life can go back to 'normal', whatever that really is. There are certain things that are beyond our control. Who needs holidays, anyway? In the big picture, it's just another day.

With this, I'll close this note and post it. I have another post I wrote up on the 11th that will be posted here as soon as I work up a couple photographs for it, which are all it really needed to finish it.

Until then, Peace to all, and stay safe.

C.C. 11-23-2020

...And More of Our Heroes Pass: Eddie Van Halen dies at 65

I usually check into Facebook once a day. I try to avoid most of the politics, which I generally keep to a minimum in life in general, for a bunch of reasons -- but FB is a great way to keep track of my friends.

And this evening when I checked my FB feed I got a shocker. It was in a post made by one of my guitar heroes, Billy Duffy (of The Cult): Eddie Van Halen passed away yesterday, after a long battle with throat cancer.

Eddie Van Halen's passing hits me on a couple levels. On one level, he was an awe inspiring guitar player. I think of all the guitarists out there -- especially rock guitarists -- and he was the apex of the craft, the absolute master. Of course, when talking about guitarists, it's all apples and oranges: I'm sure that BB King aficionados would say I'm wrong in what I just said, but all that aside, I think there is no doubt that when the first Van Halen album came out in 1978 it was more of a game changer than any previous rock band's efforts, just on the guitar work alone.

On another level, Eddie's passing hits me closer to home, as my father passed away after a short fight with lung cancer in August of 1984 (he obviously had it longer than the three months he fought it). 

Cancer is a horrible killer. They say much of it is preventable -- hopefully much of it is. But sometimes it hits people without warning. Dad smoked, so I suppose he loaded the dice in the wrong direction. Of course, his generation, that served in World War Two, weren't aware of connections between smoking and cancer. Either way, it's a horrible punch in the gut to see your family member die from it, and my heart goes out to Eddie's son and wife and his brother and the rest of his family.

One thing we can learn from Eddie Van Halen is persistence, and the art of honing your craft. It's said that he was constantly practicing on his guitar. I've seen interviews with him where he was noodling on one of his Franken-strats while either talking to an interviewer, or others in the band were talking to an interviewer, with Eddie just doing his thing -- playing guitar, even unamplified, with a smile on his face.

It's like he always wanted to have a guitar in his hand, and he loved practicing. He took it that seriously. It's one of the things that made him good -- he loved to practice.

I have been playing guitar for over 35 years and can say that only recently have I loved actually practicing. The rest of the time I was just going through chord work, getting good at rhythm... With lead licks I would work at it, but looking back I didn't work on it enough. I wasn't really practicing methodically and lick for lick with an intensity the way Eddie Van Halen did, or Eric Clapton apparently did -- going over each and every movement until it was perfect. It's one takeaway from Eddie's craft -- he worked and worked and worked and worked and worked to get it right.

And he did. :-)

He also was one of the rock guitarists who built his own guitar from parts, and changed music with it. Before Eddie Van Halen came on the scene, guitar players would buy guitar after guitar (unless they got lucky and found one that spoke to them) until they got the right one. Sometimes they would modify them (Eric Clapton took the pickup covers off of his Les Paul; Mick Ronson sanded the face of his Les Paul Custom) -- but Eddie took them all a step further: he literally built his main guitar, just before Van Halen recorded their first album. And it was his chief guitar for 20 years.

Eddie Van Halen playing his 'Frankenstrat' in the 1980's, after he repainted it.

As for his greater legacy, I'll sum up how I found Van Halen, and how I think their music changed rock and roll:

I still remember the first time I heard Van Halen. It was a late night at the student newspaper at a local college, and one of the guys, the chief editor TM Sell, had a boombox (this was before boomboxes were common, actually), playing FM. I think the station was KLAY Tacoma (who dropped rock years ago).

While we were editing and working on stories this spacey guitar sound came out of the boombox's speakers -- we thought it might be Montrose, or something similar, as KLAY played a lot of stuff that the Seattle stations didn't play. It turned out the song was "Atomic Punk", by Van Halen.:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_qwtPLiy6o

This was when the first Van Halen album was out in the stores, but no one had really heard it yet. The band looked like a cross between Aerosmith and a punk band (the stripes on Eddie's guitar), just going by the cover alone. After hearing Atomic Punk, of course, I went out and got the album. Once I heard Eruption I knew that the way we looked at rock guitar had changed. 

I never saw VH play live, unfortunately, except on the 'Tube, which rules for that. 

I still think they were probably one of the best live acts historically: the amount of sound they got, and the upbeat, have-fun attitude. And the guitar, of course.  

All one has to do is pull up the 'Largo' show on the 'Tube, and you get an in-your-face treat of the best rock America had to offer the world in the 1970's and 1980's. Tight drumming; awe inspiring rock guitar; thumping, tight rhythmed bass; a singer who loved to entertain; and all around fun!

For anyone interested in how rock reached an apex when Van Halen ruled the airwaves, this vid of the entire Largo concert is worth checking out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV1jp-0Ydqo

Like probably everyone, I'm saddened by Eddie's passing. 

To me, it's similar to when when Chris Cornell died, except of course the circumstances are different. Even so, when one of your heroes passes, it's never a good feeling. It reminds me that we have to value every day above ground. Life is precious. 

Rest In Peace, Eddie. You gave us an earful of awesome guitar work and many, many cool songs, and inspired nearly any guy or girl who picked up a guitar. 

Eddie playing his Frankenstrat when it was still white and black... the guitar that changed rock music.

JOHNNY NASH, THE SINGER WHO BROUGHT REGGAE TO AMERICA

On a related note, American soul, pop, and reggae singer Johnny Nash died earlier today. 

American R&B and reggae-pop singer Johnny Nash

I first heard Johnny Nash when he had his hit "I Can See Clearly Now", and I got the album, and loved it. It was my introduction to reggae.

It turns out that Johnny Nash was the first singer to bring reggae music to American pop, as his hit "Hold Me Tight" pre-dated Desmond Dekker's "Israelites" by at least a couple months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x79a2qB5L-Q

2020 has been a pretty sucky year. I don't like seeing years that way, but they do tend to be either good years, poor ones, or just neutral. 1982-1986 were good years for me. So was 1991 and 1992. I especially miss the years 2000-2002, for a bunch of reasons. 2012 had its highlights, as did 2014. A lot of them are related to music, other years just reflect points in my life that bring better memories than others.

2020? The jury has already reached a verdict on this one. If we get to 2021 without more tragedies and bad news, I'll be happy.

Still Alive And Well

Sammy the Cat.

The title of this post is actually the name of an album by famous 1970's blues and slide guitarist Johnny Winter, but the phrase seems to fit my blog right now... I've been absent from blogging for a while due to life getting in the way. And Johnny Winter comes to mind because I've been boning up on slide guitar over the past several months, especially when work was shut down and there wasn't much else to do because of the coronavirus.

That aside, I have had about three new blog posts in the works, but two of them require sound files, and transferring sound from my Tascam digital recorder to my computer is a more complicated process than it should be (the input doesn't work the way it is supposed to work), hence the delays in getting anything useful onto my blog.

Also, I haven't really been doing much photography lately. I know that in the past I had solstice pics up nearly every June 21st or so, but this year I didn't bother taking the pics. I've been taking care of a sick relative, and it's taken up a bit of my time lately, and a lot of time I'm just too tired to take my camera and go take pictures.

Here in Seattle we're still dealing with the coronavirus, just as the rest of the world is dealing with it. We also had some protests and riots about 3 weeks ago over the George Floyd killing, but luckily none of the violence occurred anywhere near my suburb. Our state is slowly opening up for business, but it is not certain that it will stay that way.

The weather is nice outside during the day, but I really haven't been able to get out and enjoy it much. My radio hobby is mostly non-existent.

I still listen to MW at night most nights, as I still do my creative writing. Most of my listening is to the Sikh music I hear on KVRI 1600, a MW station about 100 km / 90 miles north of here. I didn't know it was Sikh prayer music until I had a chance to talk to a very pretty Sikh nurse who told me what sort of music it was when we had a conversation about it. She apparently listens to similar music online.

All that said, Summer is upon us, and before long it will be Fall, and it's very odd because on sports radio there really is no talk about actual games and performances -- all of our sports leagues are on hold because of the coronavirus. I don't follow baseball much, but I do like to listen to football games on the radio and they're not really sure we'll have an NFL football season this year.

Anyway, I do monitor my blog at least 2-3 times a week, and finally learned how to reply to comments and have the replies actually post, which is nice, because when a reader takes time to comment I like to let them know I actually read the comment or question.

I hope all of you who read my blog are doing well, and stay safe. Hopefully I will have some new posts later on this month, or early next month.

Peace.

CC 6-26-2020

PANIC in Corona World

As I write this, I share the experience of millions of other Americans, and millions of others in the world (Europe and India, much of Canada, and parts of other countries like Australia and New Zealand). I am stuck in lockdown.

We can still shop for groceries, and a few other necessities, but most of us in Washington State have been told to "Stay Home, Stay Healthy". In essence, we all are under a form of quarantine.

Social Distancing, they call it.

When I first hear of this COVID-19 Coronavirus, I was like probably most of the rest of you -- a bit apprehensive, but there was so little knowledge of the virus, and so little indication that it would spread across the world in the way that it did, and as fast as it did, that a total lockdown like I am experiencing today seemed a world away.

In fact, up until now, things like virus-related national emergencies, quarantines and lockdowns were the thing of disaster movies like I Am Legend, 28 Days Later and World War Z. 

Now, lockdown is reality.

No, there isn't a total curfew, and no, there is no martial law -- Thank God. But it's a scary new world we live in.

And the scariest thing for me right now isn't the fear of catching the virus -- I am in good health, and I have had the flu before in my life, so I know what it does. I also take my supplements -- so although I realise that does not make me bullet-proof, at least my chances are good enough there is no reason to live in fear.

What scares me more is the panic. That is so much like what I've seen in every disaster movie from War Of The Worlds to 2012 to Miracle Mile to The Day After to most of the other movies I mentioned above. Then you have the fact that "social distancing" -- keeping people apart from each other to keep the virus from spreading -- is so much like what happened in M. Night Shyamalyan's movie The Happening. The panic, the apprehension, and the fear are the scariest things about coronavirus for probably most of us. For those who have lost family members, of course, it is much, much worse.

Over the past week and a half I experienced some of that panic. My local Walmart store is usually packed, and usually very, very busy. Wednesday night of last week I went in, and it was like a ghost town. There were few people, and the parking lot was spare.

Aside from those two factors, things seemed normal, except when I went to the paper goods aisle, as I had heard there was a run on toilet paper at stores, and I was curious as to whether Walmart had any.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the entire paper goods section -- about 100-120 feet long (30-40 meters) -- completely empty, aside from five or six freshly supplied and unopened cases of what appeared to be paper towels.

OK, I thought to myself. I guess people are afraid of running out of toilet paper and paper towels.

Then I went to the canned goods section. A huge swath of it was empty -- devoid of cans. That never happens.

That really scared me. Food shortages are the stuff of disaster movies to most Americans. Here was the definite evidence of panic.

The local supermarket was nearly devoid of paper goods, hand cleaners (and any other anti-viral or anti-bacterial body or hand wash, including liquid dish soap). There also was a run on eggs right after our governor declared the lockdown.

This past week the stores are stocked, but hand cleaner, toilet paper, and paper towels are generally missing. At the local Safeway I went to the paper goods aisle a couple days ago. A young couple were standing nearby. We were shaking our heads at the massive, empty shelves. The couple looked at me, and I looked at them.

"Panic," I said. It was the only word that needed to be said, and really -- it was the only word that described everything we were seeing. The couple agreed.

Another sign that we live in crazy times.

All is not lost, however. This Coronavirus crisis has sort of brought people together. When I was in Walmart a second time, Friday of last week, the initial shock of virus deaths had passed and people realised they had to live life, but live it a new way. I went into the bathroom and when I was done, I was washing my hands a long time, as authorities say we should. A guy next to me was also washing his -- and he was taking a long time, too -- much longer than any of us would have done before the Coronavirus crisis.

"Twenty seconds!" I joked. He smiled.

"If you hum Happy Birthday twice over in your head, that's twenty seconds," he said.

It was a pleasant interchange between human beings -- we were all in this debacle together.

Along with the run on toilet paper, paper towels, canned vegetables and eggs, there was a run on pain killers like aspirin and paracetamol. Why? Because. People were afraid that they would not be able to get the things they need, and when one is in pain, they need pain killers.

I then went through the store to get some things. It was pleasantly packed with shoppers, although people were keeping distance from each other, and there were a handful of people wearing masks. I had to pick up a prescription for a relative and in the line at the pharmacy I struck up a conversation with another guy who was also waiting to get his prescription. We had a nice chat. We both agreed that this coronavirus crisis was a wake up call to society -- pandemics can and do happen. Just because it's the 21st Century doesn't mean it can't happen.

Before the state lockdown kicked in at 6 p.m. Wednesday, I did some shopping before a lot of the local stores closed. Our governor in Washington State has mandated this lockdown, statewide, for two weeks. Only grocery stores and a few other stores (like drug stores) will be open. Everyone else is to stay home. This lockdown is a first in the history of the State of Washington, which was established as a state in 1889.

I went by the bank, as I had to make a deposit. When I got to my car a blonde woman pulled up, and she went up to the ATM machine. When she walked back I opened my window and shook my bottle of disinfectant.

"Need some?" I said.

She smiled. "I'm fine! I keep some in my car, too!"

Once again, it was a pleasant exchange between two strangers, both of whom share a common problem: fear of catching the coronavirus.

How about some Easter bunnies to lighten your day? Will things be halfway normal by then? Who knows?

I think that no matter which way this pandemic goes, life won't be the same. People will be forced to realise that they must wash their hands, and they have to be careful when touching things like ATM machine and debit/credit keypads, touchscreens, and the like. People have to wash their hands when they're done in the bathroom. The US government -- and probably other governments, too -- need to have systems in place to deal with pandemics.

Hopefully, this panic, fear, and apprehension many of us feel will fade as life returns to normalcy.

I really feel for the people in Europe, which has been extremely hard-hit. Over here in the US, news from Europe is scarce -- barely covered in the national news networks. But I'm aware that Europe is getting slammed. I have some friends over there -- in Scandinavia as well as Germany and Central Europe, and I really feel for them and their countries. I hope that they are able to contain this virus so that fewer people get sick and die.

My thoughts are with you, Europe. May we all come out of this pandemic healthier, a bit wiser, more prepared for such pandemics, and optimistic about the future. As American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1932, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Super sized stuffed animals, hopefully to make some children somewhere happy.

In other life, the vestige of the normal one, I've been creative writing and practicing slide guitar. The weather here is typical for Spring: between 38-60F (4-12C) and partly sunny, with a lot of rain, too. I have still been riding my ten-speed bicycle on the local trail, about a 5 mile trip (6-7 km) total -- which I usually take during night or early morning. The last couple mornings I have started to hear the frogs.

I listen to my MW radio nightly, although I don't DX much -- conditions haven't been all that exciting, and I haven't done much more than listen to South Asian music on KVRI 1600, a 'border blaster' station about 100 air miles north of here. Early mornings they play a lot of cool music, which a woman from India told me is Sikh prayer music apparently.

Aside from all that, life goes on, as much as it can. The news is full of coronavirus stories, and unfortunately on social media things get a bit too political about it for my taste. I don't think anyone in any government (Federal, state, or local) really expected something like this to happen. If they did, they would have been prepared. The only ones who were trying to tell us that it could really happen apparently was Hollywood.

Either way, I hope this finds all of my readers healthy and safe, and particularly my readers in Europe, which really has gotten hit hard.

Until next time, Peace.

CC -- 3-26 and 3-29-2020

THE SLOW DEATH OF RADIO

The radio is on -- but is it real or AI? Today it's not much of an issue -- 10 years from now, who knows? Pic from 2016. The station I was listening to when I snapped the pic was KBRE 1660 AM Merced, a rocker from Central California.

As many of my readers probably understand, radio has always been a part of my life. I write about radios, radio listening, long-distance radio listening ('DXing'), and the like. I worked in radio for much of my life. When I was a kid I dreamed of being a DJ, which I was for about a month and a half.

Just a couple weeks ago -- in mid- to late-January -- the radio industry saw a shakeup that may still have yet to finish: the largest radio company in the US laid off about 10% of its employees, including DJ's and sports announcers at highly rated radio stations. The company in question, IHeartMedia (formerly known as Clear Channel radio corporation), owns 850 stations nationwide. They are one of several large conglomerates that influence the rest of the industry, if only because of their large imprint on it.

In their announcement, in which they referred to the laying off of employees as a "displacement", the IHeart company referred to changes in the media and radio landscape, and how they had to adjust to such changes. They are going to concentrate more of their efforts in digital media (i.e., online delivery, and the use of AI and other computerized technologies in running their network of radio stations). They plan on centralizing their operations, using digital delivery from central sources to their stations in various cities across the U.S.

In radio circles, the layoffs were referred to as a "bloodbath", and I suppose if you were one of those laid off, it indeed was. It's like the old adage -- when your neighbor loses his or her job, it's a recession, but when you yourself lose a job, it's a depression.

As I follow several radio industry web forums, some of the quotes from laid off staff were seemingly boilerplate ("Looking forwards to new possibilities"), and others were almost heartwrenching -- written by people who had been living out their dream, even if they weren't making lots of money.

The idea of being behind a microphone and reaching out to thousands of people while playing music was a dream job that was suddenly shattered due to a corporate decision to replace them with automated, AI generated music and voice tracking.

I myself worked in radio for 20 years. I got my first internship in radio in Fall of 1987, after which I did a three year stint at Seattle's KCMU, the station that first played Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, and numerous other grunge era bands. Then I worked at a company that serviced over 1200 radio stations with music -- on tape, CD, and computer hard drive. By the time I was laid off (due to corporate centralization) in December 2006 we were preparing to deliver music online.

I understand the pain of many of those who were laid off. Also, I understand the fears of those who have said that they don't think they will work in radio again. I know that I didn't.

That said, as a bystander in the industry, I worry that what was once a thriving medium is slowly fading in importance. See, the unstated facts behind these job cuts in radio are that revenues nationwide just aren't happening. The radio industry took in $20 billion in the early 20th Century. This past year the entire industry took in $12 billion, and that number is apparently dropping.

Even since 2000, radio's revenues have dropped, as have the number of listeners, and the amount of time listeners actually listen to radio.

For years, I heard radio experts state that radio is fine, it "still reaches 93% of America", yada yada. But since the IHeart situation cropped up, the reality is finally being revealed: that those "93%" do not listen to radio as much as they used to.... That the younger, "money demos" do not listen to radio as much as the over-45's who advertisers are apparently loathe to reach... That clusters of stations in some large US cities pull in half the revenue they took in in the year 2005.

In San Diego, for example, a radio company sold several stations (including AM talker KFMB 760) to another media company. They then laid off a lot of staff. It turns out that one of the problems with San Diego radio was that in 2005 the market combined took in $220 million. Last year all those stations only took in $141 million. Undoubtedly that drop in revenue in just 15 years affected the value of KFMB and the other stations in its cluster.

You can read about it here:
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2020/jan/28/ticker-look-san-diego-radio-casualty-list/#

The problem with radio is complex -- consolidation (thanks to the Telecom Act of 1996) didn't help things much, for example. But it's not the main problem. Some guys say "homogenized radio" and "too many commercials", or "not enough DJ's" are the problem. But those issues, while they may have some merit, aren't the problem. Revenue is the problem. Advertisers (the large ad agencies, in particular -- at least according to some radio industry veterans online) do not support radio the way they used to. And advertising is the mother's milk of radio. Without that money coming in, the lights are going to go off.

And this revenue problem may be tied to the rise of the internet. Advertising dollars can go elsewhere, and if radio is losing listeners to online streaming and other media choices, radio appears less valuable to advertisers.

Either way, what we are seeing, with the layoffs, the revenue drops, the frenzy of automation, and the reduction in listeners, is the Slow Death Of Radio.

Although it pains me to see the industry dying, and it's painful to hear the testimonies of people in small and medium sized markets who got laid off, and had their dreams crushed, Radio -- after all -- is a business. The stations can't run on air. It takes money to make it all work, and succeed.

Even though radio media giants like IHeart have made some questionable decisions in the past, they are feeling the revenue pinch just like smaller stations nationwide are undoubtedly seeing. Combine that with the drive to make a profit, you get layoffs, more consolidation, more computers replacing people, more AI, more centralized operations. Eventually, some believe, radio will all be online, and by 2050 there may be no stations on the airwaves.

It's very sad for someone who grew up with the medium, and lived and worked in it for a 20 year swath.

If anything, it makes me appreciate the fact that when I switch on any of my radios, I'm actually hearing something coming out of the speaker -- be it sports, news, talk, or music. I'm certain that radio will still exist in some form during the rest of my stay here on this Earth. But it won't be the same. It really isn't the same now.

Tonight I'll fire up my Panasonic RF-B45 -- a terrific MW performer, probably my best -- and tune it to 760 KHz. Most nights I hear at least a whisper of San Diego's KFMB, and sometimes it comes in loud enough to kill the splash from 750 KXTG Portland and local 770 KTTH.

San Diego holds a place in my heart, albeit a bittersweet one: My dad was ill at UCSD Hospital there in 1984, and he also died there.

But while visiting the area to see him before he passed, I got a taste of the SoCal experience. Seeing the surfer dudes out on Mission Beach. The women wearing makeup at the beach (something one never saw here in Seattle at the time). The bright, balmy sunshine. Ice plants. An overall atmosphere of happiness. Sometimes when I hear KFMB phasing and wafting over those thousand miles of ether those memories come back -- of a sunny place, where all seems OK.

Of course, that may not be the reality -- after all, I don't live there. But it's usually in the back of my mind when I hear a lot of the SoCal stations on my radio, including the few I've heard from San Diego.

Some day the MW band will be nothing but static. I know that some of my DXer friends are inadvertently hoping for this: they say "the band needs thinning out." With this round of layoffs, cuts in revenue, and with AM stations cutting power and even going off the air, those who wish for "the band to be thinned out" are apparently starting to get their wish.

As for me, I'm just going to continue to listen as I have in the past, glad that there is something to listen to. There is nothing I can do to turn back the clock to 2005, or earlier. Life goes on. You learn to count your blessings.

= = = = = =

MEANWHILE, IN THE REAL, NON-RADIO WORLD... SLIDE GUITAR
In non-radio related things, life had been fairly standard since my last post here on my blog. I notice that the Blogger comment function is now working better -- I can reply back to those who take the time to comment about my posts. I do appreciate comments from readers, and try to reply when I can.

I have been aiming to finish a couple older posts that I never published. They will come later this year.

My main guitar, which I set up for Open-G and stability back in 1996 or so. Ironically, at the same time I had inadvertently set it up as a perfect vehicle for slide guitar playing.

I have been creative writing, working at my job, and also playing a lot of slide guitar, something I started learning in earnest in 2011 or so, and since then I've been trying to improve at it and build on my library of standby riffs -- relearning old lead riffs of mine, listening to slide guitarists like Mick Taylor (and non-sliders like Alvin Lee and Eric Clapton). In December I had an opportunity to try out for a local band, which was a fun experience. In the meantime, I have started recording my own stuff again, and some of my newer songs will have slide guitar on them, as I stopped playing lead, for the most part, in 1990.

For those interested, a large swath of my music is on my Soundcloud, ChrisCampbellRock. On my Soundcloud are excerpts from all of my four demo CDs, and a few tracks that didn't make it to any of them. There's rock, pop-rock and acoustic stuff, a little bit for everybody. Here is the link:

https://soundcloud.com/chriscampbellrock

All of them should be available for downloading.

Until later, my friends, happy 2020. I hope this new decade is even better than the last one.
C.C.
February 2nd, 2020

UFO's in Fact and Fiction

I always have had an interest in UFO's.

I'm not sure how much I actually believe in them, but the first book I ever bought was about UFO's, and I found the subject fascinating.

Over the years my opinion about UFO's and UFO occupants has changed from thinking that they may actually be extraterrestrial in origin to believing that they are more paranormal in nature.

One of the books I recently re-read, Jacques Vallee's "Messengers Of Deception", hints that this paranormal nature of UFO's and UFO phenomena may indeed be the case. Vallee is one of the preeminent UFOlogists -- in fact, he was the template for one of the characters in the famous movie "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind". Vallee believes that UFO's are paranormal in nature -- he even equates them to fairies in one of his books "Passport To Magonia". He doesn't say that UFO aliens are fairies, but he talks about the similarities in the way such beings appear and disappear, the similarities in the way they treat humans, and the like.

In "Messengers Of Deception", Vallee suggests that the entire UFO phenomenon is rife with deception: it's possible that the US government is involved, using the phenomenon as a form of disinformation; the UFO occupants -- if they indeed come from other planets -- seem also to be agents of disinformation. In "Revelations", one of Vallee's later books, Vallee hints that such famous UFO incidents as the one in Bentwaters, UK, during the 1980's was possibly a military disinformation scheme.

In his series of books, Vallee takes apart the UFO phenomenon bit by bit, and much of the UFO phenomenon simply does not add up unless it is supernatural in character. If anyone wants to read his books on UFO's, "Messengers Of Deception" is probably the best one to start with. His book "Revelations" is also very good. It has a section on the way that the human mind can easily be fooled into believing something is fact, when it probably isn't. Vallee, who was one of the first scientists to look into the UFO phenomenon during the 1960's, is a skeptic, but he isn't a UFO debunker. The phenomenon is very real -- but it's defining what it actually is that is the problem.

"Messengers Of Deception", originally published in 1979, unfortunately does not seem to be available in eBook form, but is available in paper book form on Amazon for various prices. Apparently Vallee's eBook "Dimensions" covers much of the same material.

Over this summer I read two other books -- and part of a third -- that dealt with the UFO phenomena.

"Area 51" by Robert Doherty is a fast paced fiction book -- an easy read that is based on the idea that the U.S. government discovered an alien mothership buried deep in a mountainside in Nevada, and the mothership could possibly destroy much of the Earth. Naturally, the main character -- an ex Special Forces dude -- tries to save the day. "Area 51" being just the first of a series of books, I don't know whether the ex Special Forces dude ultimately saves the Earth from blowing up or not (the end of the book leaves you hanging on that point). But as Doherty is on the fifth or sixth book of the series, so it seems like the ex Special Forces dude probably did. :-)

Like the other books in Doherty's "Area 51" series, "Area 51" is available online in eBook form.

Another book I recently read (re-read, actually) was a book I found at a thrift store in the early 2000's: "Genesis", by W. A. Harbinson. From the cover and the title you wouldn't think the book was a fascinating story about Nazi UFO's and Nazi bases in Antarctica -- but that's what the book's storyline is about: an American scientist from the 1890's manages to work with Goddard, and then the Nazis, and then the U.S. government after WW2 is over -- he invented the airships seen in American skies in the 1890's, and then much later on he helped the Nazis invent the flying saucer. Then the technology was brought to the U.S. after the war.  Meanwhile, the Nazis escape to a secret base in Antarctica.... you get the idea.

It's a well-written book, and the most fascinating part of it is the 13 page appendix at the end of the book, where the author informs the reader of the facts behind the book:  the Nazis were indeed working on a flying saucer, and there is evidence that some of them tried to escape to Antarctica -- although it's possible they actually were headed to Argentina, where many were found years later. There are some strange stories about massed U.S. forces heading for Antarctica after World War Two was over. There, of course, are enough strange facts about U.S. secret programs to form the basis for hundreds of conspiratorial books, but the facts that Harbinson used for "Genesis" are quite telling.

Harbinson has several books out that continue the "Genesis" story, including the pictured "Inception: Projekt Saucer", which continues the "Genesis" story. Most of Harbinson's series are available on Amazon in eBook form. I'm trying to finish his second book,  "Projekt Saucer", as I write this. Both "Genesis" and "Inception: Projekt Saucer" are available for sale online in eBook form.

Another book that I'm including in this post is one that I read a long time ago, called "Above Top Secret" (the book pictured at top of this blog post), by Timothy Good, a British journalist and writer. If there is one book about the UFO subject that doesn't do much speculation, but just gives the facts as we know them, this book is IT. It has government documents, news stories, and well documented accounts included that make you wonder about what really is going on with the UK and US governments and UFO's. The most fascinating story is one where a family suffered radiation poisoning as they drove near a UFO that was flaming through the Texas sky. The UFO, which appeared to be malfunctioning, was under the escort of several US military Chinook helicopters.

Good has written several books since this one -- and I have one of them, "Alien Contact" -- but I think this "Above Top Secret" is his best work. "Alien Contact" goes further into the UFO phenomenon than "Above Top Secret" -- both books include illustrations and photocopies of excised U.S. government documents -- making for fascinating reading.

Unfortunately, neither "Above Top Secret" nor its sequel "Alien Contact" are apparently available in eBook form -- but they are available online in used paperback.

I'm not a voracious reader like some people, but I do read a lot. Mostly what I read is non-fiction -- a fiction book really has to be fast paced and full of action and interesting storylines to keep my attention. Or, if it has some historical significance, I'll read it. Right now I'm trying to finish "Growth of The Soil / Markens Grøde" by Norwegian author Knut Hamsun. It's a fascinating book about pioneers in the northern part of Norway. The book has an incredible amount of heart in it -- both in the writing style, and the characters.

Aside from Hamsun and a few books on the Irish fairy faith (notably three books by Irish fairy expert and PhD Bob Curran), most of what I've read since the summer has been books like the ones in this post.

I'm not a paranormal nut, but UFO's (and other paranormal subjects) often make for impressive fiction. If you're interested in reading fiction that has a lot of cool conspiratorial UFO stuff thrown in, the fiction books pictured in this post are all good. And if you want a good take on what UFO's really seem to be about, then Good's "Above Top Secret" and Vallee's "Messengers Of Deception" are excellent books that don't go way out into the ozone like some UFO books do.