Gratifying Gossip and The Big House
I had two weekends of reunions in September, high school class then last weekend, college.
A highlight of HPHS class of 1962:
- I hung out with a woman I absolutely hadn’t seen in 60 years. She was always sweet, but now, she was smiley, bubbly and looked much less burdened (and younger) than most of the others. She knew stories about her best girlfriend (and mine) at the time that I had never heard.
She told me that over the years, she had gotten disillusioned with our old classmate whom she said treated everyone, “Friends and family who had been close to her as inferior. Well, she was an Italian princess, but we just didn’t think she’d believe it the rest of her life,” said her close pal for the first 18 years of their lives.
For quite a while, I thought it was just me who “wasn’t good enough for her.” We carry around unresolved stuff for decades, huh? Nice to get a bit of insight, even though it might take 60 years!
- The college weekend in Ann Arbor brought together 12 guys from California, New York Toledo, Detroit, and Chicago, all of us fraternity brothers in the same class. Last Saturday, we joined 110,000 others for a Michigan win in the Big House, ate, loosened up together, and hung out for ~40 hours.
I don’t want to get in trouble because they tell me they read the PY-O-MY Letter, but, it feels like some have aged quite well and others, not so much. Not in looks…but in how they’ve continued to challenge their minds. All are bright. All are successful, whatever that encompasses.
Of the dozen 78-year-olds, all except one other guy and I were “retired,” not “working” more than a day or two a week. I asked one friend who had been a successful San Francisco lawyer, “What do you do all day?”
He said, “I get up, have my coffee, do the Wordle, do some stuff online then it’s lunchtime. I don’t play golf. Nobody hassles me. I’m happy about it.”
I absolutely believe him. But I just can’t imagine being so cooled out as to not keep trying new things and meeting new people, especially younger ones.
For better and worse, while I absolutely had (and have) work I’ve always liked and mostly chose to do, many others had JOBS they went to 40-60 hours a week. I have always worked as much, but never had a life-long place, occupation, or institution I wanted to retire from. Call me unconventional…people always have. At this stage, I see it as a way to stay involved and vital.
About Archives
The Bingham family of Louisville, KY, owned the only surviving newspaper there and operated it for several generations. The Courier-Journal was a national model for good journalism and ethics. Barry Bingham, Jr. (“Barry Junior”) was a hugely successful editor and publisher from 1971 until 1986 when the family sold the newspaper, broadcast, and printing businesses after 154 years of unusually enlightened media management. Barry emphasized photojournalism for all his years. The paper won an amazing 11 Pulitzer Prizes and scores of other honors.
When Gannett bought the C-J in 1986, it had a “morgue” (library of photographs) with millions of photos covering almost 100 years from Kentucky and all over the world.
Gannett owns USA Today and more than 1000 other papers, radio, and TV stations. The Binghams owned one of each. The Courier-Journal, despite its tradition and prestige, is an insignificant 21st-century asset to Gannett. The millions of historical photographs are not a source of pride as much as they are a storage challenge. Long story short, and omitting some fascinating details, the Bingham family managed to pry loose the photo archives from the C-J and get Gannett to donate them to the University of Louisville photo archives.
Last week was the ceremony for the launch of the Barry Bingham, Jr. Courier-Journal Photographic Collection.
It was a joyful celebration for his two daughters, Emily and Molly, their mother Edith, their aunt Eleanor, and ~200 alums of the Courier-Journal.
As you can see from this group of photographs, it is a unique and valuable repository of history. It can be a model for the ever-shrinking (and disregarded) newspaper photograph collections everywhere.
It was exciting for me to be present for the formal establishment of this vast archive of images (more than 3 million). I have spent dozens of years collecting videos, nearly all of them (~10,000) are available free from the Media Burn Independent Video Archive (mediaburn.org). One time I calculated the number of frames in Media Burn. It came out to over 6 million, more than the Bingham collection, but most of the video frames are almost exactly like the others in the video, whereas the stills are probably more varied.
But the underlying reason for saving any of it is to establish a place where history can live and be accessible. The Louisville collection was the work of several dozen photographers over the years. Media Burn is a collection of thousands of creators of independent videos.
Modern Photography
According to the industry publication, Infotas, more than 1.9 trillion digital pictures will be taken in 2022. [1,900,000,000,000]. Of the 7.5 Billion people on earth, more than 1 Billion carry smartphone cameras. 85% of all pix taken are now on phones. The Japanese-based industry organization (Canon, Olympus, Nikon, etc.) reports that shipment of camera-cameras dropped 93% in the last ten years. Every year from 1890 to 2010, stand-alone camera sles increased. Eye-yi-yi Bill Gates and the iPhones.
Everyone over the age of ten remembers
The company no longer makes cameras, only printers and chemicals.
Its sales went from $13.1 Billion in 2001 to $1.2 Billion in 2022. Go-Pro started 20 years ago and its sales now are more than Kodak, the buggy whip business of the 21st century. If Kodak had been flexible enough to convert to cell phone cameras, it wouldn’t have died as it did.
Where Do Good Ideas Come From?
Trying to figure out what works leads me to remember a quote by the greatest college basketball coach, perhaps of all time, John Wooden:
“When I had assistants, I always wanted them never to be afraid to make a suggestion. We don’t know a thing we don’t learn from somebody else in one way or another. If you do agree with their suggestion and use it and it works, be sure that they are the one that gets the credit, not you.”
Definitely enlightened, but I must admit that over time, what I created and what I “borrowed” from others seem to have been conflated, especially for the stuff that works.
Garbage? In whose eyes?
“Just because people throw it out and don’t have any use for it doesn’t mean it’s garbage.”
Andy Warhol
Don’t you wish your mom had paid attention to that when she threw out your Mickey Mantle baseball cards? I sure do.
In Praise of José Abreu
With just a few games to go in the 2022 baseball season, our White Sox have disappointed mightily. José Abreu is the rock of consistency on a team rocked by spotty everything. This was the team that was odds-on favorite to win the division and the American League, to exceed last year’s 93-win season and excite for the whole season.
They’ll be lucky to finish at .500 and win 81 games. The pitching and defense was spotty and the hitting was shameful. Yes, they had an inordinate number of injuries but they just never got anything going. Many have pointed fingers at
ownership and management for not being able to field a winner. Whether it was the 78-year-old manager appointed by the 86-year old principal owner, or the staff, from general manager to hitting coach, or the attitude of the players, we’re
finally put out of our misery. One thing we know is that the team that walked away with the division (Cleveland) paid its players way less than half of what the Sox paid ($57 million vs. $157 million.)
I don’t really know why they stunk but I do know I wasted of hundreds of hours of watching on the big TV and shouting at it. There must be a better way to spend the summer!
Ah, but Abreu…he was cold in April (.217) but bounced to his consistent form for the next five months, and was at .305 (fifth in the league) with a week left in the season. He also had 75 RBI. On a team that didn’t do many things right, he did
just about everything well.
We had to feel sorry for him as his teammates let him (and us) down. Gotta be a better way, José.
Ah, but the kids!
Our home team had a whole lot better summer than the local ball club.
We’re feeling so lucky our whole group has avoided the recent catastrophes of our friends in Florida, and Eastern Kentucky.
Here’s to a safe and loving October…
p.s. Next Sunday, October 9 is the Media Burn Video Ball, a fundraising and super-fun event. Anyone within striking distance of Chicago, please come! Buy your ticketrs here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/media-burns-20th-anniversary-video-ball-tickets-403644199667
Here’s the info
PY-O-MY 
Thanks, Score. Not much of interest to me in the October PY, though I did like the photo of Rocco!
Writing from the Atlanta airport just returning from a birthday parade past Jimmy Carter’s house in Plains where he waved to us all from a wheelchair parked at the driveway in front of his residence. According to his son Chip, Carter, now 98 years old had earlier been watching the Navy/AirForce football 🏈 game.
Glad you had a couple of nice reunion interactions. Catch you downstream, Bj