Orson's War

One of my writing students wrote a story about a time when he was a boy (in 1938) and a panicked neighbor knocked on his family's door announcing that something bad was happening, that they needed to turn (the radio) from NBC to CBS. They all stood there shocked as what they thought was a news broadcast told of an alien invasion from Mars. Well, you've probably already heard this story, and I had too, but there's something truly gripping about a first hand account of a solid 20 minutes of peering out a living room window with sheer dread while hearing news of Martians walking around the USA and while one's mother, with shaking hands, tries to preoccupy with piano lessons. It's also amazing how few years have really passed since then but quite enough that we would never mistake that kind of theater for news today.  This student, however, was an intelligent, upstanding future Naval midshipman. It just so happens that in 1938 we knew virtually nothing about Mars...except for one scientist who had recently brought the Martian canals into focus on his state-of-the-art telescope, which totally got the imaginations going. Between this and other feared (German) invasions, the stage was set.

I had to take a listen to the original radio show. The "this is only theater" part at the very beginning was easy to miss. (And 90% of radio listeners tuned into the comedy show on the other channel at the beginning of the hour anyhow.) If you have a little time I highly suggest this awesome piece of theatre. If you can imagine the context (1938) and listen as an eleven-year-old boy (or girl), you'll see that's it's pretty incredible. I actually found the first fifteen minutes to be the scariest (very left to your own imagination) though most people in 1938 didn't tune in until after this point. Here's the first 7:40. You can find the rest right here on youtube or on Internet Archives. (This one includes a 2 min intro by Orson Wells from a re-broadcast.)

Here is a new photo collection that I recently acquired. It's called "Variations on sharing recently purchased handmade skirts over e-mail." I think they will look stunning with thick black matting.

Today, for THIS, I slammed on my breaks, did a u-turn, put my shoes back on, and jumped out of my car to deeply admire. Yes, she is for sale. Yes, it would break the bank just to keep her gassed. Yes I have a birthday. I also have Christmas.

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I must have a short attention span. (There's really no question about it.) But how often are the commercials more captivating than the actual programming? At least on the 14 channels at the gym. So often there is more creativity packed into 30-60 second spots than in anything else on the tube. I love this one:

I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

Good boy.

Max is always willing to be my subject when I don't feel like blogging.

Today I heard "knock, knock, knock, knock" near my back door but not on my back door. I looked out the window. No one was there. Then, "knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock." Closer to the side window that time. "Knock, knock knock knock, knock knock, knock, knock." What the...? I went outside (this is always the part of the scary movie when you're yelling at the screen that the person is the biggest dip you've ever seen. WHY would they follow that noise?). But thankfully this was no scary movie. It was a woodpecker! I thought he was pretty neat and I wanted to be hospitable but, in fairness, he was eating my house. Or, rather, the bugs in the wood of my house (awesome). "Hey!" I said. And he flew away.

P.S. I didn't get a photo but this is what he looked like.