Hello, the Post.
Monday, November 13th, 1995
Somebody mentioned to me that I should use this web page for more blatantly commercial pursuits, and, in truth, it’s this time of year when freelance bums like myself begin to worry whether there’ll be any work next year. But I’m kind of concerned about going completely commercial with this place. Positively Atlanta Georgia is, at best, a recreational therapy for me (I recommend it to you as well), and it’s kind of fun to sit down every so often and jot down whatever elbows its way into my overcrowded consciousness.
Besides, I hope you realize that the examples on this site are in fact things I do for a living, and if you need your television station or cable network redesigned, fancy 3d animation for whatever purpose, a beautiful cover done for your next CD release, publications, corporate identity projects, menus, yes, web pages, and the like…drop me an email or give me a call at (404) 876-1414. End of commercial.
The picture at the top of this page is Sammy and our niece Brigid at the North Georgia State Fair last month, which was a dazzling display of the..um..er..unique folk culture of the rural south. What I mean by that is, um, they’ve got this one carny attraction that is basically a 8 foot in diameter, multicolored roulette wheel with holes drilled just inside the perimeter. Matching colors on the railings along the sides of the tent. The suckers put their quarters down on the colors. The wheel spins, and a live rat, gerbil, or guinea pig is tossed onto the wheel, where, terrified, it scurries for and crashes down into one of the holes. Yikes. Man oh man. Actually, this ‘attraction’ is so popular at this fair there are three of them. (and you wonder why I spend a lot of my time safely inside Interstate 285.)
Actually, the other lasting image from that fair was the sight of the dozens of recreational vehicles parked off to one side–the homes on wheels of the carnys–many with Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) dishes mounted on top. They may be roughing it, but they can watch The Golf Channel.
Well, I’m delighted that my college newspaper, The Post is now on the net…or at least it seems so sporadically. The DNS server that I use half the time will allow me to visit ‘http://thepost.baker.ohiou.edu‘ and half the time claims it has no idea who or where that is. Ah, technology. Former The Post bigshot D. Wade McDaniel set me an email recently with an example of the quality of reporting that comes out of our old college paper. (I’ll spare you, but the headline was ‘Portable Ash Trays Could Get Butts Off Ground, Out of Drains’) The question for folks 20 years or so down the pike from those days is: "Were we really that much more substantive back then?" Well, sometimes, but sometimes not. During my tenure, The Post at its best did a great job of covering regional sories like a United Mine Workers’ strike that kept thousands off their jobs and a paralyzingly cold winter (I believe this was winter 1977-78) that threatened the lives of rural Ohioans and made getting anything anywhere quite a challenge. Of course, the paper also ran junk like columns on why it’s hard for someone to get up in the morning. Uh, wait, I wrote that one. Speaking of former The Post bigshots (The Post style was always to call the paper The Post, not the OU Post or anything like that)…there actually were a few people who came out of that substance-abusing crucible of student journalism who were able make a real name for themselves. I smile when I see Sports Illustrated reporter Peter King on television pontificating on football (a Postie from my years there), I’m proud to see Clarence Page unraveling politics on the Not-MacNeil-But-Lehrer NewsHour (a Postie from before my time), and I scream in abject horror when Joe Eszterhas is able to get untold millions for crappy screenplays running the emotional gamut from Flashdance to Showgirls (which is to say, running nowhere at all.) Another former Postie, circa 1973, sad to say. There are others, from notable to notorious, and maybe we should talk about them some other time.
It’s been more than a month since Hurricane Opal came screaming through north Georgia, and there are still trees down all over the place. We’ve also had a couple of blustery storms since (it’s been a rainy, windy fall), and trees have given up the ghost then as well. It’s creating a sort of gun-shy-ness about the weather around here…or maybe I’m just projecting my own fears on the populace in general. After having a tree bisect our home (in 1991), I don’t like seeing the oaks in our back yard swaying to any kind of beat.
