A Limerick, How to Do Email "Right," the Fat Man on TV and Classical South Florida

My pleas for reader contributions have borne fruit!  Two such pieces are included in this posting, which I hope is a harbinger of things to come.  Also, I want to apologize to our non-Floridian readers for the piece I have posted regarding Classical South Florida since readers outside of Palm Beach County might not have much interest in it.  Enough of the blog's followers, however, are local ... so I included it.  

But let's start off with a bit of doggerel which should take you back to Paris in the 1920s; you know the place.  The Owen Wilson character in Woody Allen's recent "Midnight in Paris" took you there. 

Jack Lippman 

 

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A Limerick

I came across this hilarious limerick while reading the latest biography of Gertrude Stein, a favorite subject of mine (Paris in the twenties).   It was published anonymously in Time magazine on September 11, 1933, and elsewhere has been attributed to Ogden Nash.  It refers to Gertrude Stein's writings, abstract sculptor Jacob Epstein, and of course, Albert Einstein.

"I don't like the family Stein,

There is Gert, there is Ep, there is Ein:

Gert's poems are bunk,

Ep's statues are junk,

And nobody understands Ein"

Joan Ludman

 

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Can Classical South Florida Get Away With It?

My battle with Classical South Florida really started earlier this year when Congress was debating cuts in their support for National Public Radio.  I had been a big fan of WXEL, which played a lot of classical music, provided NPR news shows including Morning Edition and All Things Considered as well as offering local programming relevant to arts and music events in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast.  I even sent them an extra donation.  This all served to make me aware of how important WXEL and NPR were in my life

.

Well, WXEL is no more.  The station had been owned by Barry University in Miami which, for years, was trying to unload it.  They finally found a buyer in Classical South Florida, a Broward subsidiary of Minnesota-based American Public Media.  Classical South Florida had been broadcasting on several FM frequencies with a 24 hour classical music format serving Dade and Broward counties with a strong signal and Palm Beach County with a weak “translator” signal to which few people listened.  More expensive non-musical programming and local material were not issues for them since WXEL provided that in Palm Beach County and Miami’s WLRN, another NPR outlet, provided it south of Palm Beach County.

Despite strong efforts by Palm Beach County groups to maintain control of WXEL, Classical South Florida’s $3,500,000 offer for WXEL spoke louder and was approved in May of 2011 by both the Florida Department of Education which had provided funding for building WXEL’s Boynton Beach studios and the Federal Communications Commission.

It took a few months for Classical South Florida to make some changes, but as of now, here is where things stand.

WXEL’s old frequency, 90.7 FM, is occupied by Classical South Florida, broadcasting classical music 24 hours a day, with occasional exceptions for other NPR programming on weekends and a few local programs. The signal remains a strong one.  When tuned to it, a listener will periodically hear station breaks and "sponsor/supporter" announcements plugged into the programming identifying it as "Classical South Florida, 90.7 FM, serving Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast,” but then, the programming resumes with the musical content it transmits on all of its South Florida frequencies.

Actually, Classical South Florida has adopted new call letters to replace WXEL. The new call letters, WPBI-FM, while applicable to 90.7, are not mentioned on that frequency which is simply called Classical South Florida.  Non-musical NPR programming, however, has been moved to 101.9, the weak “translator” signal mentioned above which operates as WPBI-News 24 hours a day, barely managing to reach only a small portion of WXEL’s original listeners, although Classical South Florida has somewhat increased its power.  In effect, unless they choose to listen to WPBI-News on a car radio, where it can be received more easily, many Palm Beach County and Treasure coast listeners have been deprived of the non-musical and much of the local programming which WXEL had been providing, leaving them the alternatives of seeking out Morning Edition, for example, on more distant NPR stations such as WLRN in Miami or the NPR station in Fort Pierce, where local Palm Beach County programming is of course absent. (Classical South Florida’s web site, not ignoring this problem, offers the extreme alternatives of telling listeners to purchase an HD radio or going online to listen to 101.9.)

I wonder if the approval of the sale by the two government groups mentioned above was contingent on Classical South Florida’s agreeing to continue to provide non-musical and local programming, but without full realization of what a sham the “translator” transmitter at 101.9 actually was.

I have expressed my feelings on this situation to the three Congressmen representing the old WXEL listener area, Senator Nelson, the Palm Beach County Board of Commissioners Chairman and written yet unpublished letters to the Palm Beach Post and the Sun-Sentinel.   Outside of that, all I can do is wait until Classical South Florida comes around begging for money.  At that time, I will send them half of a check (not the part with the routing and account numbers)  and politely tell them that I will be glad to send them the rest of the check on the day that I can tune into 101.9 on a radio in my home.  I urge others to take this position as well.

JL

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That Fat Guy on TV

Have you seen that commercial on TV for an income tax service firm where this rather stout gentleman with a red beard offers his firm’s skills for those who have problems with the IRS?  One of the questions he poses asks the viewer if perhaps they haven’t filed tax returns over the past few years.  Later on in his pitch, he explains that his company has been helping “good people” like you for years.  Let me make it clear, folks, that while people who make a habit of not filing tax returns certainly may need the services of a good accountant, preferably a CPA, it is overly charitable to assume that they are “good people,” as this commercial does.  They’re tax evaders. And that, the last time I looked, was a crime if the IRS catches you at it.

(Incidentally, while checking the internet to see if I could come up with a good picture of the fat guy, I came across a lot of information leading me to recommend that if you have tax problems, avoid using any of the tax service firms you see advertised on TV.  Get yourself a good accountant locally.)

JL.


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And Here, Folks, courtesy of another of the 1940s pin-up girls of Alberto Vargas, is an interesting article on:

             

                   

How to Forward Emails Appropriately  

As Submitted to the blog by Suzanne Wertheim and originating with Dorothy Porterfeld, a member of The Computer Club, Inc., Sun City Center, Florida - www.scccomputerclub.org/ilonam1@ juno.com)

A computer expert received the following directly from a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send emails.   Please read the information below, even if you’re sure you already follow the proper procedures.

Do you really know how to forward emails? 50% of us do, 50% DO NOT.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail?

Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email addresses & names.  As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is

for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across his computer.  Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit.  That’s right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel!

How do you stop it?

Here are several easy steps:

  1. You MUST click the “Forward: button first and then you have the full editing  capabilities against the body and headers of the message.  When you forward an email, DELETE all the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That’s right, DELETE them.  Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second 

  2.   Whenever you send an email to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or  CC:    fields for adding email addresses.  Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the email addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own email address. If you don’t see your BCC: option, click on where it says To: and your address will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that’s it, it’s that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say “Undisclosed Recipients” in the TO: field of the people who receive it.      

  3.    Remove and “FW:” in the subject line. You can rename the subject if you   wish or even fix spelling.

  4.    ALWAYS hit your forward button from the actual email you are reading.  Ever get those emails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with information on it?  By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many emails just to see what you sent.

                    

  5. Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks    you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book.  The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and addresses.  FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because  of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein.  If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email addresses on a petition. (Actually, if you think about it, who’s supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? And don’t believe the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just ain’t so!)

6.  One of the main ones I dislike is the one that says something like, “Send this email to 10 people and you’ll see something great run across your screen.” Or, sometimes they’ll tease you by saying something really cute will happen. IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!!! (Trust me, I’m still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!)  I don’t let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed. (Could that be why I haven’t won the lottery??)

7. Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus alert, or some of the other ones  floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them.  Most of them are junk mail that’s been circling the net for YEARS!  Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes.com.

                           


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