Category Archives: blogs
OK… next step.They are going to get me ready for surgery.
Hope this doesn’t take long…. I don’t really want to be knocked out for a long time. It’s my right brain that this tumor is on and I hope when they take it out I’ll still have mind enough to do this blog…an activity I am unusually fond of.
I guess I’ll be signing off now. I’ll try to get back up tomorrow or Sunday. – Bill
Packing for the hospital…
I have to get to my daughter’s house before 10 AM with all my clothes and meds packed to get down to Georgetown to the hotel by the hospital. I’ll bring my laptop and hopefully I can review the news or arts events and have another post for my friends later.
My thoughts are all tied up with this brain surgery and I’m not even exploring the Susan Rice SOS nomination… something I would ordinarily be dwelling on. Or Netanyahu‘s new attack on Gaza which is likely to bring us even farther into Middle East hostilities. You’ll have to trot around to the sites I regularly quote to keep up with everything.
Soooo…Have a nice day and occasionally think of me. -Bill
Related articles
- Israeli military, Gaza militants trade fire (sfgate.com)
- Israel aircraft strike Gaza Strip; Netanyahu warns of major confrontation (vindy.com)
- Israel strike on Gaza sets stage for new phase of long running conflict (telegraph.co.uk)
- US defends Israeli attacks on Gaza at emergency UN meeting (dawn.com)
- 3D camera for brain surgery a big leap forward (thestar.com)
Just finished my MRI…
Elly and Cassandra say I had a seizure going into the test… apparently I was “babbling”…but I don’t remember it. I was under the MRI’s spell for about an hour. Now we are having dinner and getting ready to drive back home.
They have added 2 more doctors appointments in Hagerstown tomorrow. There goes my last day off. I’ll be glad when the brain surgery is all over with this weekend.
Posting from my iPhone is a new experience for me. These fat fingers on a teensy keyboard really means not much writing. Sorry.
Down at Georgetown having lunch before tests…
Georgetown Hospital
If you ever have to do something at Georgetown University Hospital, let me recommend a wonderful on-campus restaurant, Empire and Company, a great classic buffet with a side pizza parlor.
We arrived an hour and a half early leaving time for my wife, daughter and me to have lunch and discuss this afternoon’s tests and what we are required to bring with us. I’ll do a blood test just before we go over and see if I need any insulin before the tests.
I’d like to thank all of you e-mailers and commentators and friends for contacting me and wishing me well and praying for me (can you believe it, an old, publicly avowed atheist like me?). I probably won’t be back to this until much later tonite or tomorrow morning, my last day at home this week. I’ll be back with a report on what’s going on.
Meanwhile, General Petraeus may be off the news and we can get back on to the economy.
Related articles
- Expert: Petraeus Scandal Revelations ‘Damaging Politically’ to the FBI (voicerussia.com)
- Bono To Deliver Keynote Address on Social Movement at Georgetown Monday (washington.cbslocal.com)
The questions you ask yourself…
I’m discovering as I face brain surgery and it’s unknown consequences that I find myself asking questions about what I have and have not accomplished over the last 66 or so years. It’s not a pleasant experience, btw, only one that makes me realize how many things I REALLY wanted to do which will probably never be realized. I guess, however, that this is common to just about everyone.
(Sorry… this is much longer than I expected and it will not hurt my feelings if you sign out right now, – Bill)
Starting with the basics:
- I have a wonderful wife who is taking care of me when she also maintains a full time teaching job that keeps us supported and in our mandatory health insurance mode.
- I have three impressive and incredible grown children, Cassandra, Penny and Will (who we call Buddy… I don’t know where “Will” came from), and four wonderful grandsons, 3 in Maryland and one in Connecticut. (Allow me to say while I’m in this particular note about how lucky I am to have my son-in-law Matthew Corrigan in Connecticut who has made sure Cassandra could be down here with me during all of this.)
- I set out many years ago for a life in the Arts, something I really discovered while a prep-school student at Tabor Academy in Marion, MA. Between painting and sculpture creation under Lou LaVoie, drama and theatre discoveries under Tom Weisshaus, ending as President of the Drama Club where i acted, but didn’t do much in tech theatre, I was poised to take off when I headed for The School Of Speech/Theatre Department at Northwestern University in 1964.
And just what did I do that I remember proudly?:
- After I discovered systems analysis through an amazing engineer, art collector and professor, Dr. Gustave J. Rath, I created my first small theatre company, Systems Theatre, which applied this amazing intellectual technology to performance creation. Our first major production was an adaptation of Frank Zappa’s “Lumpy Gravy” which eventually played Chicago’s Performing Warehouse between sets by the two great bluesmen B.B. King and Albert King (who I got to give a ride home to later… wow!) When I ended up in NYC in 1971 I restarted Systems Theatre with some of the same people who were with me at Northwestern
- There were a couple of plays that we did at Theatre at St. Clement’s, one of the really great off-off Broadway locations in the city. Well reviewed, well attended and most important to me was my adaptation of Thomas Merton’s “Original Child Bomb” which had gothic-y chants composed by a wonderful musician, Ed Roberts, who I had met when teaching for a year at Tabor. Ed and I went on to do several shows together… at St. Clement’s and other places. My greatest pride came in a project we did a little later:
- Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark”, an opera for children, was presented at the Whitney
The Whitney
Museum of American Art, thanks to a contact I made with one of the most influential people in my life and someone who I am so proud to call a friend today, Berta Walker. Berta was working as the Administrative Assistant to Steve Weil at the Whitney and was looking for children’s programming. Ed and I suggested doing “Snark” which we had just started working on and now we had a reason for pushing through. We opened to great reception at the Whitney and, a little bit later on, Berta and I produced it for a few weekends at a little theater on the East Side of Manhattan. Following that, it was taken to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, a major museum which had been started by Berta’s grandfather, where it was also successful.
- My friend and former Northwestern student John Driver, who played the original Bellman in “Snark” had been writing a musical based on Samurai warrior Mushami called “Ride The Wind” with
pretty much of a rock ‘n roll score and martial arts based choreography. This was during the time that “Kung Fu” was a big television show, and we thought we were really on something here, so Berta and I decided to produce it (the company we created was called Snarkophilus Productions after our big success). We started out aiming for Off-Broadway, but then the Bijou Theater, a little house at the end of Shubert Alley, became available and we booked it. We were now a Broadway show… albeit a very small one. My set design professor, Sam Ball, agreed to do the sets, which were built by Northwestern students and which I brought to New York driving a truck across country. A number of the actors who auditioned were folks I had known from the New Theatre Workshop, a small non-profit group which acted as a try-out location for new plays that writers were working on. I was their stage electrician for a year before they tore the theater down to build the CitiPlace Center on 57th Street.
- Unfortunately, “Ride The Winds” didn’t pass the New York Times test and I was no longer a Broadway producer.
- I had to work, so I took a job as Administrator of the Jamaica Arts Center in Queens, where I structured classes, set up concerts, scheduled movies and ran the books. It was there I met Elly, my current wife, who I hired to teach Photography in the class size darkroom I had built in the Center’s basement (I took up photography, too… something I really loved.) Eddy came down and we did a little revival of “Snark” in Jamaica for the kids in Queens. When I was hired later on by The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, by their Board President (you can probably see this coming… it was Berta Walker), Elly came with me and we settled in on lower Cape Cod. I helped the
Work Center fund raise, grow and prosper over three years, then spent another three years on it’s Board. Elly and I however, moved down to the mid-Cape where we started a business that would keep us in debt and development for the next decade: Our photo studio, Photography Associates of New England Inc., and U-Design, Inc.
- The appearance of the Apple Macintosh computer, the laser printer, a piece of software called Aldus PageMaker and things like scanners, modems, etc., inspired us to set up a rental-area business where folks would come in, rent space in a booth, and lay out, with our help, their ads and brochures. After a couple of years, we moved it to Hartford, CT… back in my home state. At one point we had U-Designs in three cities in CT (that was a mistake!) and we started doing more jobs for clients ourselves rather than booth rentals. We worked with major and minor companies, lots of non-profits, plus we offered desktop publishing classes. At one time we had a dozen or so employees. During this time I did no theatre, maybe a little painting, but not much (Elly was our painter and her work was wonderful.) While in Marlborough, however, I was recruited to be a Justice of the Peace, where I married several couples (I specialized in non-believers who I
thought should have a person of their own.) I did start designing computer fonts at this time… still do it, especially my “picture fonts” which have been used on this blog many times. U-Design Type Foundry has attracted hundreds of buyers, for which I have great appreciation.
More recent years… “Things fall apart, the center does not hold” – TS Eliot.
- We had built a passive solar house in Marlborough, CT, where we moved so Buddy could go to school there and we could lead the suburban life (eventually, we moved the last vestige of U-Design to Marlborough where it finally ended up in our house until it died.) I started going out and getting jobs as an Information Technologist at some larger companies, finally ending up at Computer Sciences Corporation, where I spent five working years. For most of that I was commuting to the Maryland-DC area every week to do a major piece of work for the Internal Revenue Service with a bunch of my colleagues. I made more money here than I ever had before. When my whole department was laid off after three years I even got six months of part-time work for the IRS itself to finish some of the project stuff.
- Elly and I sold the Marlborough house and bought a historic co-op space in Old Greenbelt, MD, where I was still doing CSC work. Eventually, when there was no more work and a guy in his late fifties had a hard time finding IT jobs when the market was stuffed with lower earning young guys. I had to take early retirement which, thanks to CSC’s salary, brought me a higher Social Security than I had expected. Elly took a teaching job in Graphic Design at Hagerstown Community College in Hagerstown, MD, and we eventually moved to
Ride The Winds
Hagerstown, then Shepherdstown (our favorite) and now Harper’s Ferry. While I was living in Greenbelt, I got involved with two community theatres, the Laurel Mill Playhouse and the Greenbelt Arts Center. Amazingly enough, with the entrance to all of this I made by meeting Linda Bartash, I directed several plays and musicals. The highlight of these was a revival of “Ride The Winds” which I got John Driver to rewrite the second act for. It was well-reviewed in the Washington Post and local papers and I breathed a sight of final relief. I also, amid all the shows I did, had a really good production of that unusual musical “Urinetown” at Greenbelt, also a success.
- I got involved with a new Community Theater in Shepherdstown, The Full Circle Theater, where I
The Hunting of the Snark, in Shepherdstown
became the House Electrician and ran lights on a bunch of shows, And then, can you believe it, I go to to do a revival of “The Hunting of the Snark” and Eddy, who was
then living in Pennsylvania, came down from time to time to help my friend and music director, Ruth Raubertas, get our favorite opera for kids off the ground. Everyone seemed to like it, but this was my last chance to direct anything and I sank into an ongoing depression hoping I would get to do it again some day. I don’t think, now, that it will happen. I have to say, though, that I made a great friend of John Case who played the Butcher in that last production. John had a weekday morning radio show on WSCH 89.7FM on Shepherd 
University’s radio station and originally he invited me on for an interview and eventually I was on every Friday, which John started promoting as “The Bill and John Show.” I guess I did OK, since a few months later the station manager, Todd Cottgreave, gave me a show of my own on Saturday mornings which I called “Talk To Me” and which I made into a call-in production. I think the radio shows really saved my intelligence and ability to carry on while under depression.
So those are things I’ve been thinking about. What I haven’t discussed here is this blog, which is the major occupation of an old, retired guy’s day. I hope I can keep it going for years (as you can see, I love to talk)… if it has to cease, however, someone will put up a final post.
Time to feed the dogs.
Related articles
- My daughter, Cassandra, has come down from Connecticut and is helping my wife coordinate all the brain surgery problems… (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
- Looks like I’m on a revised schedule and a doctor change for brain surgery… (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
- Perforated Skulls From Middle Ages Found in Spain (history.com)
A quote for the week – I can hardly believe someone would say this…
This is a quote that was published today by Buck Banks in Pensito Review. It was headed “Now This Guy Is A Sore Loser!”
Eric Dondero
“All family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt…. I strongly urge all other libertarians to do the same. Are you married to someone who voted for Obama, have a girlfriend who voted ‘O’. Divorce them. Break up with them without haste. Vow not to attend family functions, Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas for example, if there will be any family members in attendance who are Democrats.”
— Former Ron Paul aide Eric Dondero, asserting that the only recourse to President Obama’s re-election is “outright revolt” and therefore is launching a “personal boycott” of Democrats.
Eric Dondero blogs at LibertarianRepublican.net.
I am impressed with how much difference can be read into the American psyche. What is wrong with these people? What good is a country where everyone believes the exact same things? How woud progress ever happen? Who would have invented the goddam lightbulb?
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My daughter, Cassandra, has come down from Connecticut and is helping my wife coordinate all the brain surgery problems…
I don’t know what I would do if I were on my own, here, dealing with doctors changing schedules without giving us warning, accidentally taking medications that should have been discontinued before certain tests, getting up at 5:00 every morning to get into three or four appointments which don’t seem to get us anywhere.
The newest big problem is reports we have gotten from friends, employees of the hospital and others, where we have been told that the particular hospital we were going to have the surgery in is not one ANY of them would use. Isn’t that thrilling?
Now we are in a holding position. We haven’t cancelled the now set Monday surgery or anything, but tomorrow we are interviewing another practice at a much better hospital with a much better reputation and this may stop everything and set up a new schedule.
Cassandra
Fortunately for me, my daughter Cassandra Corrigan who is a private school Senior Database Administrator in Connecticut (Loomis, Chaffee School), took off from work, drove down here to West Virginia, and has been coordinating with my wife on getting all the papers ready, information on MRIs and other tests that have been collected in the last couple of weeks to bring to Ge0rgetown, down near DC, for the new practice interviews. We will be making a new decision after that, so surgery will most likely be postponed some more.
I am so impressed with Cassandra… my first-born, a fine wife and mother and a brilliant woman. I taught her to use her first computer and now she outshines and outperforms me in all things technical. Wow! And she and my two other kids (can you still call them kids after they are older, married and out of the house?), my Mother, My sister and so many friends have been so concerned that the phone doesn’t seem to stop ringing with folks wanting to know what’s happening.
Cassandra is just doing a spectacular job of getting me organized with all of this. I don’t know what I’ll do when she goes back up to the snow.
We’ve spent this morning and into the afternoon tracking down test reports from four doctors’ offices and we had a new blood test at a lab… and Elly got to go to work and teach her classes while my daughter brought me from office to office. I’m so glad Elly got to go to work today… she’s been giving up so much of her time for me, and when you are in a one-income household, the thought of impacting that one income is awesome.
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A day of celebration underscored by personal madness…
AT 4:30 this morning when I posted Obama‘s win I had had 2 1/2 hours of sleep and needed to be up by five to drive to Hagerstown for the first of five different scheduled lab visits, Doctor conferences, and tests based on the notion that I’d be in surgery with my little brain on Friday.
Then, in the middle of all this, as my wife and I went from office to office (I had fasted for close to 11 hours because of one of the tests… so tired AND hungry) trying to get our neurosurgeon on the telephone to find out the results of yesterday’s testing, we were told the surgery would be moved to Monday from Friday!
Well, you’ve never heard anyone yell as loudly into a cell phone as Elly did to one of the front desk ladies at the Doctors‘ office who informed us of this unannounced time change. You have to understand, she takes time off from her work at the College to take me to these appointments and she manages our schedules and expenses, and she expects that professionals follow professional guidelines and maintain their schedules. They don’t.
There is a chance that they may not be able to do the surgery Monday, either, or that my wife will insist that we find another doctor (my daughters, I think, agree with that, too… I’m to worn out and dizzy to even think about it now. I’ll do what they say.)
So, if there is no surgery Friday, we will probably be headed to Georgetown ( 2 hours away) to 
interview another neurological practice. If that does happen, I’ll probably be able to do my Saturday morning radio show on WSHC.
There is Joy In Mudville, though… Mighty Mitty has struck out. If you heard that snivelling concession speech he made (gracefulness is not a Republican skill) at 1:30 in the morning, then you have an idea of what kind of president he would have made.
Now we still have the House of Representatives with a big margin for the Repubs and John Boehner which will let them trample the legislation we need for the economy, for single payer healthcare, for rebuilding our country and for getting out of all this war. I’m afraid it will be a difficult 4 years. Our support for the president will help get things done.
It will be one of the functions of this blog as long as I can keep it going.
– Bill
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- Getting this election over with is becoming an evening of sheer misery… (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
- Finding something to do to keep from going mad! (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
- The Republican John Boehner Beats Obama to Backing A Grand Bargain (arshadparvez.wordpress.com)
Getting this election over with is becoming an evening of sheer misery…
It’s not enough that I am going in for tests before my Friday brain surgery at 6:30 AM tomorrow and go through four different doctors and three tests by 2:30 PM…just getting my mind in the mood for that doesn’t let me bond with the TV pundits who are arguing out the campaign results they can’t really call.
Thinking about how miserable it would be if Romney won, but that is not nearly as bad as thinking about how graceless in their concessions the losers will be if Obama and the Democratic Congressional candidates win. Nobody seems to really be trying to tie the country together and make us the 
UNITED states that we have to become.
BTW, I want to really think the hundreds of you who have wished me well by e-mail, in Facebook, and those of you who have commented on this blog. I never really knew how many of you visit the LobsterScope and it’s daily changing graphic background and what my daughter calls the rantings of an old man. I hope I’ll be back at full speed next week some time, but it will be hard to keep it up now through the weekend. Don’t be surprised if a day has no or only one post… and don’t plan on anything Friday or Saturday.
Those of you who listen to me on the radio at WSHC 89.7 Shepherdstown, either locally or on the worldwide live feed at http://897wshc.org , won’t hear me this weekend. I got friends and fellows to cover my time on the air and I thank all of them.
If you are in a state that has late polls open and you haven’t voted yet, get out there and do it. People have died for your right to vote!
Bye now… Bill.
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- Sacred Text Describes Successful Brain Surgery in Ancient Tibet (history.com)
- One year since my brain surgery (abelsmomfight.blogspot.com)
Tomorrow is Election Day… so where do the swing state polls stand today?
This will probably be the last time I put these up. Now it’s your turn. Make sure to get out and vote and hopefully our man will win.
Here are the latest polls from the battleground states:
Florida: Romney 52%, Obama 47% (InsiderAdvantage)
Florida: Obama 50%, Romney 49% (Public Policy Polling)
Florida: Romney 50%, Obama 48% (Pulse Opinion Research)
North Carolina: Obama 49%, Romney 49% (Public Policy Polling)
Ohio: Obama 48%, Romney 46% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Pennsylvania: Obama 49%, Romney 46% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Virginia: Obama 48%, Romney 47% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Virginia: Obama 49%, Romney 48% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Wisconsin: Obama 49%, Romney 48% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Looks like Florida is the one to keep an eye on. While Romney leads in 2 out of three polls, this is a REAL swing state that could go either way. I’m not sure the tie in North Carolina really goes to Obama. Nate seems to think it will.
This morning’s Nate Silver‘s poll roundup in Five Thirty Eight is strongly in favor of Obama:
Nate Silver is giving the Election to Obama.
Here are the Real Clear Politics Polls for today:
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Our first view of what’s coming with the storm…
Elly’s job at Hagerstown Community College is off for two days as HCC has announced closing due to the approach of Sandy.
The rain has already started here this morning and we are soon expecting the wind.
Hope you are all keeping an eye out if you are in the storm track and please take care of yourselves. here’s a chance that we’ll lose power and the blog will be down, but as long as I can I’ll keep it up.
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If you plan on copying posts from this blog for use on other sites…
So many people re-use the things I publish (which is something, for the most part, that I appreciate) that I thought some understanding of copyright rules are in order. I have therefore put the link to my Creative Commons License on the title bar so you can review those rules. – Bill
Some words about this blog and me…
I often get e-mail from folks out there in the web world who want to know about Under The LobsterScope and why 
I keep it going and put a major part of each day into it. It is for that reason that I’ve decided to say a few things that will clarify my relationship with UTL and, perhaps, encourage you to get involved as a commentor.
I started this blog through another editing site, Blogspot, during the 2004 presidential election year. I did several thousand entries over five years or so and then something happened. For some reason, someone got into my blog at Blogspot and did some fairly confusing stuff leaving it impossible for me to post on. I cancelled my relationship with Blogspot and over 4000 posts ago I started UTL up again through WordPress where it remains today.
While I was interested in electoral politics (originally in Maryland before my wife and I moved to West Virginia), my biggest interest at the time – and even now, a little – was in theatre directing. I got to do a couple of musicals and some plays at local community theatres and spent a lot of time attending theatre events (one of the reasons we moved to the Shepherdstown, WV, area was to be closer to the Contemporary American Theater Festival which we attend every year.
I also have a great interest in the visual arts… Elly’s background is as a painter and visual artist. That means heading off to galleries locally, in DC and other places. Add to the visual stuff an interest in music and poetry and dance. The arts in general are very important parts of my life.
As to politics, during the past couple of years beginning with the election of Barack Obama, I have become more and more an active Democrat and have felt it is my obligation, since this is a published item read by thousands of people a week, to expose the really awful things Republicans and extreme conservatives are trying to pull off.
Several of you have also noted that I often expose dangerous things being done by religious organizations. As you probably know I am a non-believer… an atheist, a humanist… and cannot understand how people with developed intellectual capacity can believe this stuff. I have no problem exposing things that might make readers see what I see. I am, however, as opposed to pushing my atheism on others as I am of them pushing their religious beliefs on me.
Now that my current age and health keeps me in the house most of the days of the week, I have much time to read other web sites, magazines and other publications, many of which I quote or comment on in the blog. On an average day I do at least 5 posts.
I have established some regular features in this blog that I hope you enjoy. Cartoon(s) of the Week is the one people think of first when I talk about regular features. I have been interested in editorial cartoons for many years. During the current election I have regularly been posting poll results which I see by the search term roundups many of you are looking for. And, of course, there is my regular posting of celebrity obituaries.
If there is any kind of post I do that you would like to see become a regular feature, just let me know and it’s likely to happen.
– Bill
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Here’s a sign of the new embodiment of journalism…
Newsweek will discontinue it’s printed edition with the December 31st Issue. All of Newsweek’s information and branded publications will be on line after that, making it the leading news publication to make its entire presence on the web.
The all digital format is being adopted after more than 80 years in print. Newsweek Global, as the all-digital publication will be named, will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. It will be a paid subscription site (like the NY Times) and will be available on both tablets and the Web, with select content available on its current bl9g, The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast, which depends on Newsweek’s editorial content, now attracts more than 15 million visitors a month.
Tina Brown is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast and Newsweek. Baba Shetty is CEO of The Newsweek Daily Beast Co.
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- Newsweek ending print edition, job cuts expected (miamiherald.com)
- Big news on the publishing front: Newsweek is going all-digital, two years after its merger with The Daily Beast. (shortformblog.com)
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I REALLY need your help to continue the blog…
…and, of course, I have a free gift for donations of $5.00 or more…
…you get my popular picture font:“Bill’s Victorian Ornaments”
These images created from traditional and period sources are very usable at any size in designs and publications. The font comes for Mac and PC, and I usually sell it for $29.95. It’s my way of saying “Thank You” to offer it to $5 or more donors. Believe me, October is becoming a low income month and I HAVE to get some contributions to keep going.
So many of you have been following this blog since 2004 that I feel we’ve built a huge web community.
I have enjoyed bringing you the Cartoon(s) of the Week, the Quotes, the Political and Arts News, the Blogrolls of the best sites in America and beyond… They are all a joy to put together. Often we get the breaking political stories before you see them anywhere else. And our wide open communication channels with readers can’t be beat. I offer your participation at all times and appreciate the hundreds of subscribers who sign up every year.
Without YOUR help to keep it going, I’m in big trouble. I’m hoping you will make a small contribution, by 
PayPal or credit/debit card, in support of Under The LobsterScope. You’d be amazed at how much $5.00 can do to help me bring more and more to these pages. And it is probably the LOWEST annual subscription fee you will make to any publication… interactive or not. I often receive larger contributions and I certainly appreciate those.
Remember, for a contribution of $5.00 (or MORE) you will receive a copy of my Picture Font, Bill’s Victorian Ornaments and the knowledge that this blog will continue onward.
I should note that even a donation of $1.00 gets my thanks and helps to keep this blog going. By clicking on the DONATE button below, you tell me that Under The LobsterScope makes a difference in your time on the web.
Thanks,
– Bill T.
Thanks for your contribution, Joe Bratcher
My thanks to
Joe Bratcher for donating to Under The LobsterScope. Thanks, Joe .
Watch your e-mail, your Bill’s Victorian Ornaments font is on the way!
– Bill
If you’d like to help us out at Under The LobsterScope (and we hope you will), go HERE.
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My great thanks to Sheila Vertino for contributing to the blog…
My thanks to
Sheila Vertino for donating to Under The LobsterScope. Thanks, Sheila .
Watch your e-mail, your Bill’s Victorian Ornaments font is on the way!
– Bill
If you’d like to help us out at Under The LobsterScope (and we hope you will), go HERE.
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I REALLY need your help to continue the blog…
…and, of course, I have a free gift for donations of $5.00 or more…
…you get my popular picture font:“Bill’s Victorian Ornaments” These images created from traditional and period sources are very usable at any size in designs and publications. The font comes for Mac and PC, and I usually sell it for $29.95. It’s my way of saying “Thank You” to offer it to $5 or more donors. Believe me, October is becoming a low income month and I HAVE to get some contributions to keep going.
So many of you have been following this blog since 2004 that I feel we’ve built a huge web community.
I have enjoyed bringing you the Cartoon(s) of the Week, the Quotes, the Political and Arts News, the Blogrolls of the best sites in America and beyond… They are all a joy to put together. Often we get the breaking political stories before you see them anywhere else. And our wide open communication channels with readers can’t be beat. I offer your participation at all times and appreciate the hundreds of subscribers who sign up every year.
Without YOUR help to keep it going, I’m in big trouble. I’m hoping you will make a small contribution, by PayPal or credit/debit card, in support of Under The LobsterScope. You’d be amazed at how much $5.00 can do to help me bring more and more to these pages. And it is probably the LOWEST annual subscription fee you will make to any publication… interactive or not. I often receive larger contributions and I certainly appreciate those.
Remember, for a contribution of $5.00 (or MORE) you will receive a copy of my Picture Font, Bill’s Victorian Ornaments and the knowledge that this blog will continue onward.
I should note that even a donation of $1.00 gets my thanks and helps to keep this blog going. By clicking on the DONATE button below, you tell me that Under The LobsterScope makes a difference in your time on the web.
Thanks,
– Bill T.
Related articles
- My great thanks to José Moreno for contributing to the blog… (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
Ex-Lax for Mitt
I’m passing this on from walthe310 at Bell Book Candle:
Mitt‘s lies are full of S—T.
That is a characterization of the content of his speeches, not of his person. To dramatize how Obama supporters view Mitt’s words, I propose that each of us mail a sample of Ex-Lax or equal to Mitt at this address:
Romney for President
P. O. Box 149756
Boston, Massachusetts 02114-9756If you agree that this a good idea, please reblog this message so that as many people as possible see it.
What a good idea! The press is being informed about this and the more who participate, the more fun we will all have. At the same time, make a cash equivalent donation to Obama’s campaign at www.barackobama.com.
When you send Mitt his present, write “EX-LAX for Mitt” on the outside of the package so that even if they don’t open it at the Romney campaign they will know what it is. 🙂
Related articles
- Ex-Lax for Mitt (bell-book-candle.com)
- Ex-Lax for Mitt (theobamacrat.com)
- Mitt Romney Is No Match For… Mitt Romney! (perezhilton.com)
- Lyin Mitt Is Still UnFitt (theobamacrat.com)
- Why Romney Avoids Massachusetts (drudge.com)
- Mitt Romney: From The People Who Brought You The Iraq War (thedailybanter.com)
Finding something to do to keep from going mad!
I’ve had a bad day today… physically tripped up by a small seizure while I was doing dishes and an afternoon of trying to stay awake. This is, unfortunately, what life has become… I can’t drive (by law…until I’ve gone a year without a seizure as certified by a doctor) and, since Elly works (which I can’t do outside of the house), I bounce off 
the walls and am bombarded by televised boredom. If it were not for my laptop and the internet I might as well be in a coma.
So I guess I’m going to start writing something outside of my blog. There is a joy in constructing ideas out of words which I am beginning to look forward to each morning. What I do with what I write is not apparent right now, but I expect it will be realized sooner or later.
I’m tending toward creating a radio drama that I might be able to add to my Saturday show at WSHC, or do with John on the Friday morning show. I’ve been researching radio scripts from the 30s and 40s and I find them fascinating. Some are funny, some are adventures, all of them are strongly character-based since there is little opportunity for scenery (other than sound effects) in radio work.
When I get something finished I’ll let you know.
Related articles
- TT: When radio wasn’t (artsjournal.com)
- Lean & Hungry Theater to Perform and Record Radio Drama Version of The Winter’s Tale, December 4 and 5 (prweb.com)
My great thanks to José Moreno for contributing to the blog…
My thanks to
José Moreno for last night’s donation to Under The LobsterScope. Thanks, José . I think you are our first member from Mexico.
Watch your e-mail, your Bill’s Victorian Ornaments font is on the way!
– Bill
If you’d like to help us out at Under The LobsterScope (and we hope you will), go HERE.
Keeping this blog going requires your help…
…and I will give you a free gift if you make a donation of $5.00 or more…
…you get my popular picture font:“Bill’s Victorian Ornaments” These images created from traditional and period sources are very usable at any size in designs and publications. The font comes for Mac and PC, and I usually sell it for $29.95. It’s my way of saying “Thank You” to offer it to $5 or more donors.
So many of you have been following this blog since 2004 that I feel like a member of a huge web community.
I have enjoyed bringing you the Cartoon(s) of the Week, the Quotes, the Political and Arts News, the Blogrolls of the best sites in America and beyond… They are all a joy to put together. Often we get the breaking political stories before you see them anywhere else. And our wide open communication channels with readers can’t be beat. I offer your participation at all times and appreciate the hundreds of subscribers who sign up every year.
I really need YOUR help to keep it going. I’m hoping you will make a small contribution, by PayPal or credit/debit card, in support of Under The LobsterScope. You’d be amazed at how much $5.00 can do to help me bring more and more to these pages. And it is probably the LOWEST annual subscription fee you will make to any publication… interactive or not. I often receive larger contributions and I certainly appreciate those.
Remember, for a contribution of $5.00 (or MORE) you will receive a copy of my Picture Font, Bill’s Victorian Ornaments and the knowledge that this blog will continue onward.
I should note that even a donation of $1.00 gets my thanks and helps to keep this blog going. By clicking on the DONATE button below, you tell me that Under The LobsterScope makes a difference in your time on the web.
Thanks,
– Bill T.
Related articles
- Font, TypeFace, TypeStyle, Typefamily, FontType? Whatever. (imjustcreative.com)
- Thanks to Mary Ellen Heinemann and beverle bloch for their contributions to this blog… (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
Foreign Facts ( I was led into this from Dave Barry’s Blog)
One in three busy Brits believe it’s acceptable to answer a mobile phone call during sex, it has been revealed.
Read the whole article HERE.
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- Smartphones To Become Largest Segment Of Mobile Phone Market In 2013 – HIS (misco.co.uk)
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- MI5 agent Dr. Barrie Trower: dangerous radiation everywhere (msarroub.wordpress.com)
My radio show is short and earlier today…
Shepherd University is loaded with alumni this weekend and there is a home football game which is covered on WSHC starting at 11 AM. That means that my show, Talk To Me, is only 1 hour long and starts at 10 AM.
I’m putting my short list of songs on my playlist now and that will keep me from blog posting until I’m back home after 10 AM.
If you want to listen at 10, but are outside of the fifty mile or so tuning radius for 89.7, you can listen live on the WSHC web site:
http://897wshc.org. When you get there, click on “Listen Live”.
Related articles
- Why do we do what we do? (profkevinwilliams.com)
- Oct. 10 Senate debate in Wheeling is canceled (wvgazette.com)
- Back on the radio this morning… I’m so glad! (underthelobsterscope.wordpress.com)
Salon is having a limerick contest…
Five rhyming lines might be the ideal way to describe Mitt Romney’s ill-starred campaign fundraiser in Florida. If you can put a limerick together, you can enter Salon’s contest.
Here are a couple of competitors:
At a meeting in Boca Raton,
Mitt Romney was filmed by a phone
Limerick King Edward Lear
as he quipped to his host,
“Through this race I would coast,
If I just had a darker skin tone.”
This man of the uppermost class,
Who hopes to gain critical mass,
Leaves nothing to chance, sir,
But pulls every answer
Reliably out of his ass.
Send your entries to limericks@salon.com. The deadline is 5 p.m. ET on Sunday. Please include your name and hometown. Good luck!
Related articles
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- Limerick contest winners (salon.com)
- Write us your best political limerick | Open thread (guardian.co.uk)
- More on Limericks (poetic-muselings.net)
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