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Margaret (Babb) Martinez, 1957-2022
We all have our little superstitions, though many do not like to admit it. I have my own, including never wishing a friend a happy birthday on their Facebook page because it seems that every time I do, that person passes away. While it isn’t true, it has happened enough times and registered so plainly…
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Ernie’s Advice is Crap!
“Write drunk, edit sober” is a maxim attributed to Ernest Hemingway. It may work well in fiction writing, but not for historical news articles. Even though I took cold medicine before bedtime, I still could not sleep. What it did do was leave me feeling intoxicated and desirous for something to do. I decided to…
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My Cousin Elmo says, “I ate two popsicles yesterday and ended up with forty dollars in lumber.”
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Twice Shushed
So ill was I that I thought I was going to die, but it did not prevent me from dreaming or, at the very least, hallucinating. The two I recall most emphatically involved God or a being I believe is God. I have flown in my dreams for years, sometimes high, sometimes low to the…
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Do Your Homework Before Hand
Hired to take photographs of a Venezuelan military review earlier this century and fresh out of adventures, I took the assignment. As the parade moved down the open court, passing the cheering crowds, I had a surreal moment of being pulled back through time. It was like watching an old Movie Tone newsreel, and I…
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My Cousin Elmo says, “Gas prices are going up faster than a Biden vote at 2 a.m.”
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We Are Being Lied Too, Again
The same media that controlled the narrative of a pandemic is also using the same tactics to frighten us when it comes to Ukraine and Russia. Vladimir Putin is trying to halt a neo-Nazi movement ensconced in the Ukraine government while protecting the citizenry of two self-declared independent regions. One sentence. In 2008, Russia recognized…
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Grand Marshal, Almost
It is not every day that the swing-shift announcer gets asked to be the Grand Marshal for Independence Day. So I jumped at the offer. It was early Friday evening, and I went to find my contact. That person turned out to be a rather wonderful-looking and wonderfully built rancher woman. She showed me where…
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When the Laughter Can’t Be Heard
Many people, including, and most especially including Program Directors, do not know how often we overnight jocks get a call from a celebrity appearing in town. It happened to me many times, and sometimes they were very memorable. One such was the Sunday morning ring-up I got from Richard Colangelo, a comedian appearing at Sammy’s…
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Bohemian
It was midsummer, and I’d been at the radio station for about five months. It was the first station to hire me since my moving to Nevada, and I was happy to be doing the graveyard shift on the weekends. That evening, I decided to wear my Birkenstocks, an old pair of OD green jungle…