While the concept of viewing a fixed image dates back to Aristotle, and there is some disagreement among scholars as to who should be credited for being the first to recognize the practice of saving someone’s image, finding the person responsible for making the first commercial camera is a whole lot easier.
Updated:
May 14
Like many of you, I watched the tragic events unfold last week in Boston. And like many of you, I struggled to grasp how anyone could justify such a heinous and deliberate act of violence.
They are almost as easy to find as grocery stores and say they’re just waiting to help people who’ve overextended themselves.
I can still sing almost all the lyrics every time I tune in to XM Radio Channel 6, home of the music upon which I was raised: the songs of the 1960s.
I think about it every time I’m caught by the light at Market and Central as I stare at the side of what is now Carpenters Local 372. The old painted signage on the bricks tells me a different story. Once upon a time, it was The Holiday House, an enterprise of Weixelbaum Brothers Company that sold postcards, novelties and specialty advertising.
Monday, I ran into my pal Glenn Bertling, who was taking a peek at the sports page to catch up on the NCAA Tournament, a national obsession that makes its way into the lives of millions who couldn’t name one starter on most of the teams.
When it comes to one of our state’s Buckeye treasures, James Thurber's writing and cartoons certainly made a lot of people laugh. One story in particular proves what you intend to do often gets sidetracked and pleasant surprises can result.
Once upon a time, men like the real-life versions of Jeremiah Johnson took pride in being 100 percent self-sufficient. Need a place to live? Fell some trees, and build a log cabin. Hungry? Kill a grizz. Got a toothache? Grab some pliers, yank out the offending molar, swish some whiskey around in your mouth, swallow it and get on with your day. That’s the way America was built, right?
Of course, because of one particular holiday, some months seem far more memorable that others.
Time, the presentation does not alter. Every minute is 60 seconds, every hour sixty minutes and — unless we’re talking about those leap years — every day, 24 hours.
Out of, say, the last eight days, how many have been really good ones?
In late December, while, like many of you, I had some real anxiety over the ramifications of that fiscal cliff thing, I also was reading those end-of-the-year reviews that are a staple of newspapers during the run up to New Year’s. Of course, one of these reviews was the 2012 necrology, a review of those who passed away so copious that my hometown paper had to split it into two days.
Recently, while watching the local news, I saw a story about NASCAR’s Bobby Labonte, who was making an appearance in our area for a meet-and-greet and autograph session. While watching, I saw a-close up of the driver signing some 8X10 glossies with a Sharpie. And, while the name was boldly written, it also bore little resemblance to the twelve letters that comprise his name.
As the Wednesday guy, I’m often last to the dance when it comes to writing about current events. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as if the most compelling stories occur during the week.
For the second time in my life, a very nice young fella called me to ask a certain question about a certain young lady of whom I am quite fond. And, by doing so, he did his part to keep a very old and valued tradition alive. While some would say that the custom of asking a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage is antiquated and hearkens back to a time when women were treated as chattel, I disagree.
I tend to stay in the previous year’s mode for at least a couple weeks each January, which is about the same time it takes for me to write checks with the correct year on them.
Generally, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to commencement addresses delivered by big shots to legions of fresh-faced graduates. To be honest, as far as my 1973 graduation from Miami University, frankly, I don’t even know if my fellow Redskins and I had anyone deliver an address back in those pre-Red Hawk days. Seems to me that it would have been part of that day’s ceremony, but for the life of me, if there were someone, I don’t know who it was nor do I remember any profundities that may have been articulated on that very warm June day, a day that, admittedly, wouldn’t have been quite so uncomfortable had I not misbehaved to the extent that I did the previous evening.
As I come up on the last five days of the only year I’ll ever be 61, I always spend a little time taking inventory of what I’ve received and what I still feel I need on this day after Christmas.
Friday was about as perfect of a day weather-wise as anyone who calls Ohio home could ever expect just a couple of weeks before Christmas. Brilliant sunshine shone down on the bone-dry asphalt of Interstate 75 with an outside temperature, according to my car gauge, of 52 degrees.
In 1962, I was 11 years old and in my sixth-grade prime as far as rewriting the class-clown record books within the sandstone walls of St. Charles Elementary. And, as I sat in the epicenter of that building, the cafeteria, where my pals and I ate off green trays Mondays through Fridays and launched Catholic Youth Organizatioin basketballs on Saturdays, the conversation in our bastion of lower learning was generally about sports.
After spotting a vacancy sign and pulling in, I made my way inside and saw him sitting in the corner easy chair, walking stick in hand, and gazing through the diamond-shaped panes of the front window at the steady stream of traffic on White Mountain Highway in North Conway, N.H. I nodded, he acknowledging in like fashion, as I turned my attention to the lady behind the registration counter at Junge’s Motel.
Recently, while fiddling around on my iPad and knocking off a burger at a Red Robin off Polaris Parkway in Columbus, I came across a couple of pretty disturbing pictures.
I saw a bumper sticker a while back while waiting out a light on Market Street, and the message was about as succinct and cynical as it gets. The sticker read, “People suck.” Well, for whoever pulled the backing off and decided to display such an uplifting thought, I guess, Thanksgiving Day is just not all that big a deal.
The headline in the Burlington Free Press instantly grabbed my attention as I ate breakfast last month in Stowe, Vt., before heading out to get the gondola lift up Mount Mansfield. Across the top of Section B1 of its Oct. 10 edition, it read, “College’s oxen soon to be on the menu.”
That sigh of relief you hear is mine, a guy pretty fed up with talk of super PACs and, of course, talk from those trying to get my vote. And despite the fact that, like Christmas decorations left up long after New Year’s Day, the signs for candidates will remain planted in the ground for several more weeks, this political season is over.
While, certainly, when it comes to ranking holidays, Halloween hasn’t really nudged Thanksgiving or Christmas out of the way, there’s no question it is indeed relevant. As a matter of fact, according to the folks who study our economy, what we spend on Halloween will again this year top the $7 billion mark, which is exceeded only by Christmas when it comes to holidays that move the money needle.
During my teaching days in St. Marys, I always wondered had my life taken a different career path, how I’d have done as far as being able to put bread regularly on the table for myself and those with whom I lived.
If someone were to ask you whether you’re smarter than your phone, and the year was, say, 1965 or so, no doubt, you’d give them a “duh” look while digging your finger into the holes of one of those rotary beauties that attached itself to the wall with that pigtail cord.
For those of you who remember your war flicks, you’ll, no doubt, recall “Tora, Tora, Tora,” the 1970 film that dramatizes the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, certainly one of our country’s seminal moments. In Japanese, the word “tora” means tiger, which was used as the code word for attack.
Of course, one of life’s blessings as we age is watching those whom we raised raise their own families and experience the same moments we remember so very well, not because they happened last week but because the mind has convinced us they have. If you don’t know what this means, you’re not old enough yet.
In my typical week, when it comes to mail service, I receive between 15 and 20 solicitations for money from organizations that are both pretty well-known, such as The American Heart Association, and the not so common, such as the ones I receive from American Indians trying to fund their schools.
For those of you who know me well, you realize my firm conviction that, when it comes to the greatest sitcoms of all time, the discussion begins and ends with "Seinfeld," the ultimate show about nothing.
In nonmetro areas such as ours, there are certainly benefits. Among the myriad benefits, we in our little slice of the Midwest can hop in our cars and pretty much get with celerity to our destinations without sitting in gridlock, the way that Chicagoans often do, say, on the Dan Ryan Expressway, or Los Angelinos do on the perennially bottlenecked 405.
For those of us who have experienced the world of playgrounds and now can only yearn for those moments of youthful unbridled joy from so long ago, we remember the game.
As each year’s educational cycle begins, I always spend some time thinking about my own school beginnings. You see, as a former educator who logged 32 years in the classroom, I had a lot of school beginnings, from kindergarten through graduate school before those 32 years seated at the big desk. But the school beginnings I remember the most are the ones from my early days as an elementary school pupil, and they are beginnings when my parents certainly played co-starring roles.
I was disappointed to read that Don Stratton will no longer be writing his Friday column. Certainly, as a former police officer who once upon a time was helpful when I worked as a supervisor in Lima’s Parks and Recreation Department whenever I asked him to send a policeman to one of our playgrounds as a guest speaker, I felt Stratton had a lot to say in his columns, especially about his experiences in the department.
Now that we’re done arguing over whether NBC made the right decisions as to what it showed during prime time for the 30th Olympiad in modern times, I’d like to add my own postscripts as to my most memorable losers and winners before the countdown begins to the, no doubt, profligate opening ceremonies in 2016 at the Summer Games of Rio de Janeiro.
About a month ago, many of us got a lesson about who’s really in charge when it comes to our immediate fates, and for those of you who know a little bit about America’s literary heritage, it’s the central theme of a lot of Jack London’s stories.
By John Grindrod
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