A Crummy Commercial

Remember the book:  Homer Price ? : https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/06/homer-price.html There was a sequel by author McCloskey:  Centerburg Tales I can't remember if I read this one as a kid - but it's a fun book - and it has those amazing drawings by author McCloskey.  The book has many of the characters from Homer Price but adds new kooky ones like the fanciful Grampa Hercules and the crusty Dulcy Dooner.  A wonderful collection of stories about people in the fictional Centerburg. One radio related story, the gang in Uncle Ulysses' lunchroom encounters a huckster named Professor Atmos P.H. Ear.  He sells them all cans of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO which is sorta like MSG in cooking except that EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO works on everything :) this sounds like every preamp I've ever tried with a radio :) Freddy is raising one eyebrow No murders, nothing serious, just silly, I love it !  Yes, I am still 12 years old inside. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/h...

Henry Reed, Inc. is a kids book from 1958, written by Keith Robertson and illustrated by Robert McCloskey.    https://archive.org/details/henryreedinc00keit The McCloskey drawings are what make the book for me.  Mentioned him previously: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2024/06/homer-price.html I am pretty sure I read Henry Reed, Inc. in the 6th grade.  But maybe it was a similar book - I remember it because we had to do drawings with our book reports and mine was of a runaway balloon that had to be shot down like the one in Henry Reed, Inc. : It's a fun book - I noticed two items that would have passed me by in 1966-67, first sunspots: Since the book was written near the greatest sunspot peak in the radio era but I was just into radio at that point and hadn't known that.  Anyway it must have been the thing to blame everything on sunspots in the late 1950s. The second item was this: I remember hearing Jean Shepherd voice the same opinion so I don't know if it was c...

It happens: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/byte-magazine-artist-robert-tinney-who-illustrated-the-birth-of-pcs-dies-at-78/ I didn't know Robert Tinney had a site with posters: https://tinney.net/product/1776 I *think* this is the cover of the first issue of Byte that I ever bought: I probably got it at Amateur Electronic Supply ?  Not sure on that. Unfortunately this is what the BYTE covers turned into after a while: I guess you can't blame them, editors are wordsmiths not artists.  They see a blank space and want to fill it with words (in sans serif type yet).  QST covers aren't quite the same since full color and large format, my own corny sunset cover: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/09/go-back-50-years.html Byte kinda degenerated from a hobby magazine into yet another corporate rag - I suppose that's where the money was, at least for a while.   I used to enjoy fooling with computers - now they are just another appliance. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY...

While reading the book: Bomb Shelter: Love, Time and Other Explosives by Mary Laura Philpott, she mentions this poem: the poem the mention of the poem by author Philpott source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43118/for-the-anniversary-of- And now in turn that idea has been planted in my brain as well !  But luckily with my always unreliable memory it will probably flee.  Hopefully no fine days will be darkened by the thought that this might be the same calendar day that I finally die. But I guess that's the idea of art, specifically poetry/song to make an indelible impression on the brain.  So now I've been infected with a concept but time will only tell if it takes hold. The Cathedral by Rodin was also mentioned in the book: source:  https://rodinmuseum.org/collection/object/103413 Of course I associate Rodin with The Thinker , which then leads to Dobie Gillis : 360p, sorry video quality mavens At the start of each show, Dobie would speak directly to the a...

I saw this picture (reversed black to white) on Farcebook: from the second issue of Electronics magazine, May 1930 source: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Electronics/30s/Electronics-1930-05.pdf And this Westinghouse version, too: These thermionic trees remind me of my childhood.  The Sunday Milwaukee Journal had an outdoor section which often featured a painting by Mel Kishner.  The fall/winter landscapes would often have detailed stylized trees like this one: Homecoming This was so frequent that if anyone in my family saw a similar tree IRL or a photo or a piece of artwork they would simply remark: "Kishner"   :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

I was reading this article on the IEEE Spectrum site: https://spectrum.ieee.org/lunar-telescope mentioning putting a radio telescope on the far side of the Moon where it is shielded from human created RF.  Arthur C. Clarke mentioned this idea in this 1961 article in Harper's Magazine on page 61: https://archive.org/details/sim_harpers-magazine_1961-12_223_1339/page/60/mode/2up?view=theater The Spectrum article mentions that the radio astronomers are concerned about keeping the far side RF quiet due to a possible constellation of new communications satellites around the Moon. But of course the thing that I noticed was the pictures :)  Whenever I see these detailed renderings I think of the Chesley Bonestell paintings from the "golden age" of science fiction like this cover: The Fireman, aka Fahrenheit 451, the painting is unrelated, of a rocket ship on Mars being tied down source: https://archive.org/details/Galaxy_v01n05_1951-02   Bonestell wasn't much for scantily c...

. the professor with his wife in the background I was watching the Antiques Roadshow Extraordinary Finds episode: source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbSQlEggkcA I do remember that 1/2 million dollar table. Watching made me wonder about some of the art work that the folks collected.  One item is a self portrait by a somewhat famous artist (at least in the Milwaukee Wisconsin area) of the 20th century: Robert Von Neumann I remember my Mom (she studied with Professor von Neumann) saying a few things about the portrait: 1) he painted it in 15 minutes 2) the eyes follow you everywhere 3) the professor wanted to buy the portrait back from the folks but they kept it As far as comment 1, did he really paint it in 15 minutes or did it take 80 years ? (or whatever age he was at the time :) Here's my one story about the von Neumanns. The von Neumanns lived in a nearby suburb, Glendale Wisconsin, on the Milwaukee river.  One time in the 1960s or 1970s the von Neumanns came over to o...

source: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10206080043095636&set=a.1384116358475 This is a piece of  satirical artwork done by Cris Shapan on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/cris.shapan This struck me for two reasons:   1) my grade school, Maple Dale in Fox Point, WI, had excellent hot lunches.  The ladies knew how to turn that USDA surplus stuff into very tasty meals.  I particularly remember the hot dogs wrapped in a slice of buttered bread and then baked on a tray.  Also the Thanksgiving meals with turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy and especially the stuffing which was served using an ice-cream scoop :)  Can't forget the sweet potatoes with the little marshmallows on top either !  A friend of mine has tried to re-create the pizza-burgers from Maple Dale but only with limited success.   And the 2 cent milks in little half-pint cartons to wash it all down, yum !  So I never had a lunch box as a kid. 2) I remember goin...

"Time for Reflection" by Christoph Niemann, cover of the July 25,2022 New Yorker When I saw this cover painting I thought of Morse Code during a contest on a horizontal waterfall display.  But the artist probably didn't :) Possibly an idea though for waterfall displays:  make the signals on closer frequencies (to the dial reading) larger than the farther away signals ? All I know is that water is hard for an artist to represent accurately, even someone like Winslow Homer could have trouble Breezing Up (a fair wind) by Winslow Homer 2nd half of the year resolution:  more fiction, more art - less non-fiction, fewer schematics :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm