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The sun returns
Mar. 21st, 2010 09:09 pmTook till this afternoon, but the sun came out and melted all the snow, or nearly so. Only well shaded places still have remnants. We're supposed to be headed back into the 50s each day this week, thank goodness.
Packaged up Aero's little postcard painting and it's ready to mail in the morning, so that's taken care of. Next up will be one of two favorite images of our two geldings that I've had in mind to turn into paintings for a while.
I think this is likely to be a hectic week with people missing at work again, including the boss herself. I'm not particularly looking forward to it.
Today's "writer's block" question over on LJ asked what the earliest news media event you can remember was. Several people pointed to Sputnik (1957) or the JFK assassination (1963) but my memory extends a bit farther, to 1956. In July of that year two ocean liners collided in the Atlantic, off the coast of Massachusetts, and I remember the coverage in considerable detail. The SS Andrea Doria, owned by the Italian Line, capsized and sank a short time after the collision. The SS Stockholm, Swedish owned, went on to port under its own power. It was huge news, largely because almost all the passengers and crew survived, despite the sinking. The numbers could have been worse than the Titanic, but better communications and navigation (including radar) made it possible for other ships to reach the scene soon enough to rescue nearly everyone aboard the crippled ship. I believe the death toll was well under 100, most of whom were killed or severely injured in the actual collision. The photos of the damaged ships, including the Andrea Doria as it sank, were in newspapers and magazines and made quite a horror story that was hard to look away from (or forget, evidently.)
I was reminded of the incident regularly through the years after, because my parents discovered at that time that I was already able to read on my own. I had only finished half of kindergarten at the time, but they caught me reading the newspaper aloud to my younger brother. They and my grandmother, who lived just a few houses up the street, had read to us daily for several years by then, but they didn't realize that I had put together the reading and the words in the familiar books they read over and over and actually developed rudimentary reading skills. I'm sure the basic alphabet stuff from school contributed as well.
Packaged up Aero's little postcard painting and it's ready to mail in the morning, so that's taken care of. Next up will be one of two favorite images of our two geldings that I've had in mind to turn into paintings for a while.
I think this is likely to be a hectic week with people missing at work again, including the boss herself. I'm not particularly looking forward to it.
Today's "writer's block" question over on LJ asked what the earliest news media event you can remember was. Several people pointed to Sputnik (1957) or the JFK assassination (1963) but my memory extends a bit farther, to 1956. In July of that year two ocean liners collided in the Atlantic, off the coast of Massachusetts, and I remember the coverage in considerable detail. The SS Andrea Doria, owned by the Italian Line, capsized and sank a short time after the collision. The SS Stockholm, Swedish owned, went on to port under its own power. It was huge news, largely because almost all the passengers and crew survived, despite the sinking. The numbers could have been worse than the Titanic, but better communications and navigation (including radar) made it possible for other ships to reach the scene soon enough to rescue nearly everyone aboard the crippled ship. I believe the death toll was well under 100, most of whom were killed or severely injured in the actual collision. The photos of the damaged ships, including the Andrea Doria as it sank, were in newspapers and magazines and made quite a horror story that was hard to look away from (or forget, evidently.)
I was reminded of the incident regularly through the years after, because my parents discovered at that time that I was already able to read on my own. I had only finished half of kindergarten at the time, but they caught me reading the newspaper aloud to my younger brother. They and my grandmother, who lived just a few houses up the street, had read to us daily for several years by then, but they didn't realize that I had put together the reading and the words in the familiar books they read over and over and actually developed rudimentary reading skills. I'm sure the basic alphabet stuff from school contributed as well.
