Hi folks.
Dave Richards at WOON Radio in Woonsocket has an interesting offer for those of us "on the beach".
His words: " The premise is that there are radio veterans out there who love to do radio but don't have a ride. I'm offering any and all of them to come up to Woonsocket and play radio and have some fun, no obligation, as a gift to them in honor of their love of radio broadcasting. Either for "old time's sake" or to keep up their skills, or to make a new tape for job seeking, it doesn't matter to me what style of music they do, or if the do talk, so long as they use their inestimable talents in a tribute to the best that radio can be.
The usual precautions exist. Be professional, no bad language or libeling folks, but other than that, it's free form to either do what they always did, or do something they never did but always wanted to do. Bring your own tunes or use songs from our 8,500 cut system library. If they want to sell commercials and air them, fine, they keep all the money. There will also be WOON ROS spots that will air during the shows, three times each hour.
Each radio professional will be required to tell us in general terms what they plan to do, and to choose an available time slot. The amount of time in each slot will depend on how many people ask for time, but we'll start with the idea of two hour slots and work from there. First come, first served. Right now the times available are from 9am to 11pm Saturday July 5th and from right after the parade on Friday July 4th (about 12:30pm) to 6pm and from 7pm to 11pm Friday as well."
I'll add to that TV veterans who'd like a few hours to play professionally.
The phone number at WOON is 401 762-1240.
I'll be doing my part; hope to see and hear some of you.
Thought you might like to know what I was up to back on St. Patrick's Day. If you look closely, you'll see Jay Rogers in the second video clip. Sorry I can't seem to post the clip here, but here's the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InjkJ862x34
OK, not really. That was just my answer when someone called yesterday after hearing my voice to ask what's wrong. What the heck did he think was wrong? I didn't get a flu shot this year; and, whether that's the reason or not, I got hit. Pain and delirium for a week, cough and raspy voice for a week. I sound like a combination of Nelson Rockefeller, Edgar Buchanan, and George Burns (in other words, I sound like three dead guys).
I picked up this nice little bug in California. Sunny, warm, Southern California! I spent some time in Palm Springs and in San Diego, and I highly recommed both. I've fallen in love with the desert. It's DRY! I hate snow, ice and even rain, so the Coachella Valley may be in my future.
And San Diego is a beautiful city. I took a little tour of the harbor and got up close to the USS Midway AirCraft Carrier and Museum as well as ships like the USS Ronald Reagan.
And then when I got home, I got sick. Pretty good timing, isn't it?
As many folks know, part of my reporting career was spent in the air. For almost 9 years, I was in a fixed-wing Cessna airplane. 6 hours a day, 5 days a week....cramped, uncomfortable and noisy.
But I love to fly. So I was delighted when I received a gift certificate for a scenic tour over Newport in a helicopter. I'd never been in a helicopter, but last Saturday I got my chance.
Here's the link to some video I shot. I'm no Mark Zinni or Dan Haggerty, so sorry about the quality, but it's a nice look at one of the most beautiful areas of our state.
I was just getting ready for bed (at 8 PM, it's sad) and I was surfing to some of my favorite sites on the interweb, and thought I'd share some of them.
I've been drinking the Apple Kool-Aid for a couple of years now and I have a MacMini hooked up to my LCD TV, so watching internet video and podcasts is so easy. I've become addicted.
If you ever watched the old TechTv cable network, you probably know the name Leo Laporte. He's an old Rhode Islander (his mother and sister still live here) and he is probably my favorite 'Geek'. His podcasts can be found at twit.tv I never miss an episode of TWIT (This Week In Tech), The Daily Giz Wiz with Dick DeBartolo, Mac Break Weekly, and his radio show on the Premiere Radio Network that he puts up a few days later as a podcast.
Not to be missed is CNET's Buzz Out Loud, and John C. Dvorak's Cranky Geeks. Do a Google search.
Also check out Kevin Rose on Diggnation at Revision3.com
This is a lot of what I do when I'm not reporting on traffic or reading Mark Zinni's blog.
Nuns Leave Their Brains to ScienceLast Edited: Friday, 21 Dec 2007, 9:06 PM ESTCreated: Friday, 21 Dec 2007, 9:06 PM EST
Sister Albert Sheridan left along with Sister Antoine Daniel, Sister Kathleen Treanor, and Sister Janet Fitzgerald talk about thier lives Friday Nov. 2, 2007 in Wilton Conn. School Sisters of Notre Dame nuns granted a nervous young researcher's request to test them yearly, hoping to track the progression of Alzheimer's disease and other age-related brain disorders. (AP Photo/Douglas Healey).
By STEPHANIE REITZ
Associated Press Writer
WILTON, Conn. -- When Sister Kathleen Treanor's soul ascends to heaven, her brain will go to a less ethereal realm: a medical lab in Kentucky. Two decades ago, Sister Treanor and 677 other members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame granted a young researcher's request to test them each year in order to track the progression of Alzheimer's disease and other age-related brain disorders.
The 61 surviving nuns recently completed their last round of intellectual and physical tests for the Nun Study, one of the world's most comprehensive neurological research projects.
One final sacrifice remains: When they die, their brains will be taken for further study, joining a collection of hundreds of other brains donated by the the nuns who died before them.
Sister Treanor, a 93-year-old former school principal who is one of the last of the volunteers at a Wilton convent, looks at her participation as service, not sacrifice.
"I've tried to do good while I'm alive, and I liked the idea that I could do something good after death," she said.
With the modesty of their calling, the nuns attribute the study's success to researcher Dr. David Snowdon, downplaying their own countless hours of interviews and testing over the decades.
"I never minded having my brain checked out. It kept me out of trouble," said 96-year-old Sister Antoine Daniel.
Researchers say Snowdon's work already has produced interesting results, including a finding that people who challenge themselves intellectually can apparently delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms.
Snowdon's work also suggests that in people predisposed to Alzheimer's, a stroke or head trauma can speed the disease's progression -- an argument for wearing seat belts, helmets and other protective gear.
He also has researched the levels of folic acid in the blood of deceased nuns with and without dementia; why nuns with positive attitudes and creative verbal skills tend to live longer than their glass-half-empty peers; and other questions.
"We'll continue to learn from the sisters for many, many years to come," Snowdon said.
Snowdon was a nervous young epidemiology professor at the University of Minnesota when he approached the first group of nuns in 1986 at the School Sisters of Notre Dame order in Mankato, Minn.
Although Pope Pius XII had declared in 1956 that donating organs was acceptable in the Roman Catholic faith, asking nuns to leave their brains to science for post-mortem testing was a delicate task. That was especially true for Snowdon, who had attended Catholic school and still viewed nuns with a mix of reverence and intimidation.
Yet getting them to donate their brains was critical because the only indisputable diagnosis of Alzheimer's comes from examining a patient's brain after death.
"At that time, it was hard enough just to get families of Alzheimer's patients to agree to donate the brain of a loved one with the disease," he said. "What we found is that because the sisters had been teachers, they looked at this as a way to keep teaching even after they die."
Snowdon expanded his study over the years, recruiting more nuns at other School Sister convents nationwide and joining the University of Kentucky to devote himself fully to the project. By 1992, he was giving annual memory and cognitive tests to 678 nuns ranging in age from 75 to 102.
One reason the nuns are such a valuable research tool is that as members of the same religious order, they all had decades of similar medical treatment, diets, reproductive histories and preventive care. Almost nine out of 10 had been teachers.
In the general population, finding such a uniform pool of test subjects is difficult.
About half the nuns in the study developed Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia before they died, about similar to the general population.
"It's such a cool study. People who study aging love to have these longitudinal perspectives because we think the early life experiences probably do have an impact on exceptional longevity," said Dr. Thomas Perls, a Boston University professor and Alzheimer's specialist who directs the New England Centenarian Study, which focuses on people 100 and older.
Of the seven remaining Nun Study participants based at the Wilton convent, several still recall their first memories as toddlers, can recite lengthy poems they learned in elementary school or tell vivid stories of classes they taught at schools around the U.S.
The Connecticut sisters say that while God gets their souls when they die, they are comfortable -- comforted, even -- knowing Snowdon has dibs on their brains.
"I think of the overall picture of what good could come out of it," said Sister Alberta Sheridan, 92. As for the possibility of developing Alzheimer's, she is sanguine: "If it happens, it happens. It's part of God's plan."
My Aunt gets the last word!
And, hey, it's Alberta Sheridan, not Albert!! (Her real name's Claire anyway.)
