inthenews

Houston NFL

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I’ve always enjoyed sports.  Participating and watching.  Drama can be found in every step (and yet TNT “We Know Drama” doesn’t show sports).  I, of course, grew up loving the Columbia Blue “Love ya Blue” Houston Oilers. As I’ve aged, and the number of hours in a day seems continually less available, many of my … Read more

Summertime Music

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I was listening to NPR’s All Songs Considered and it reminded me of a particular summer and the music that came with it.  In 1986 I was a sophomore in college and took a job at Mo Ranch.  Which is past Hunt, Texas – which you might otherwise think was the last thing on Earth if you were driving off the end.

We had 16 or so summer staff living in one large cabin.  I was working maintenance, groundskeeping, and life guard.  The schedule was: wake up, eat breakfast, labor harder than i ever have (leaving me at 165 lbs.), lunch, half the time: labor in the afternoon, the other half life guard, dinner, kill 6 hours before midnight and bed time.  We had no chaperones or house rules, we were all college kids able to patrol ourselves.  Yes, I could write a whole book about that summer, pre WWW, pre cell phone.  But for now, just the music.

I often spent time in a truck with one of the regular maintenance workers, i forget his name. [Edit: after chatting with a friend from that summer, we’ve decided: Richard.]  He also often spent time in the evenings at the low water crossings with us.  Almost every night included lots of beer, sometimes with a claw foot bath tub full of ice.  Usually with us hanging out in the water.  (We ran the water moccasins out the first week.)  Infrequently, I and one or two others would end up at his house.  He had a single cassette tape that had two albums on in, depending on mood it was on one side or the other.

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Space Shuttle Era

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Today is the launch of the final mission of any of the space shuttles.

The first test launches occurred when I was in high school.  I loved space and space science.  I always dreamed of being the first computer programmer to live on the moon – someone would have to keep those things running.  I attended a 2-week summer “camp” that was space themed at Texas A&M, Galveston in high school.  I wanted to return the following year, but was too old having just graduated, so instead I was an intern on the same program I’d attended the year before.

June Scobee was the head of the program and I loved working with her.  She happened to be married to an astronaut, so we got a lot of great access to things going on at NASA JSC.  I had talks with June about her husband and her son (an air force pilot at the time). At the end of that program I helped June move stuff back to her place and met her husband Dick, and shared an iced tea with him on his back porch: casual, friendly, Houston warm.

shuttle launchI was almost always aware of when there was a shuttle launch.  In the early years of the program it would still be mentioned on the lead-up, and interrupt most television for the launch.  But six months later, in January of 1986, I was returning from a test a bit before noon.  This was a time before mobil phones or social networks.  I remember the post-test relief walking across a sunny campus back to my dorm.  I exited the elevator on my floor to the area that was the TV Lounge.

It took all of 10 seconds before “it blew up, the space shuttle blew up”.  Initially, I though he was confused.  Then I thought maybe it was a launch pad fire. I tried to get him to explain it; all he could say was “it blew up”.  I sat.  The sinking feeling was deep, waiting for the news people to figure out what they knew.  The tone of their voices told me it was bad. Then I back-calculated the launches and remembered this was Dick’s launch.  The sinking feeling got deeper.

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Is This Disaster Natural Enough For You?

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Last Friday I read an innocent enough tweet from @Slate: Tornado outbreak now the worst US natural disaster since Katrina:http://slate.me/m8ZWnN – Apr 29 2011 My first reaction was “wow, those tornados were nasty.”  Which is, i’m sure, how it was intended. Then I thought “worst? what are they using to determine badness?”  Of course, this … Read more

KTRU’s Passing Will Mark the End of the End

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Radio in Houston has been going downhill for decades.  And when I say radio, I mostly mean music radio.  I still use the radio to listen to news, or the odd Astros game (though I stopped tuning to 740 AM because I would find myself so disgusted by its content on off-sporting hours).

KTRU is the only radio station I will tune in to listen to music anymore.  It hasn’t been a lot of late, but it’s comfortable knowing it’s there.  Student run, student programmed, and with a huge broadcast area, I hope it’s a beacon to non-conformist youth throughout the region.

That will all change soon.  The news of University of Houston purchasing the transmitter from Rice University leaked out last week when UH had to approve the “up to $10M funding” to purchase it.  The actually sale cost has been reported as $9.5M.  You would have thought their would be an announcement or some discussion over on the Rice campus before this happened.  The lack of discussion about the decision is the biggest punch in the gut.

In a day, the Save KTRU site popped up, and today is their first protest.  I saw a lot of student protests at The University of Texas in the late 80’s, but I don’t remember any of them getting what they wanted.  I don’t think this sale will be stopped either.

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