The Menacing Fence of Welcome and Good Wishes

Fences are erected for many different purposes. To keep things in. To keep things out. Or as decorations, the classic white picket fence. In Jacksonville, North Carolina is a security chain link fence that runs about 5 miles along highway NC 24 surrounding the living quarters for families of Marines stationed at Marine Corps Training Base Camp LeJeune. The fence was erected post 9/11 along with many other security upgrades to the base including new fencing or adding more security access points or blocking or removing of other access points all together. The Second Marine Division is stationed here and the base main gate acts as one of the two revolving doors for Marines going and coming to Iraq from the US. The other revolving door being Camp Pendleton outside of San Diego, California, where the First Marine Division is based.

As I look down the road for several miles I am struck by the sight of bed sheets and tarpaulins with personal messages of welcomes and good byes and good wishes and announcements of births written, painted and imprinted hanging on the chain link security fence. These messages are from wives, husbands, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers, friends and total strangers. Some look like they have been here for a while, others look like they have just been put up. But every one prepared and installed with loving care. They go on and on and on for literally miles, the entire length of the security fence along NC 24 from the New River Bridge at the main gate down to the small community of Hubert. Even in the areas where the woods come up to the road, these messages of love and admiration are lined up side-by-side with hardly any open space anywhere along the fence.

To many the War in Iraq is only something that is on television that the politicians fight over or something you hear about from friends who have loved ones there. But to ride down the road at 55 miles per hour and see this sight that goes on for miles and know the reason for the fence wasn’t to be a billboard of wishes but to protect American’s from people who want to kill us and to know that the names on these makeshift placards are people who are fighting and in some cases dying for us, the heavy reality of what we are in hits home. The thought does cross my mind how many of these names belong to men and women who did not be come home? Or more importantly, will not be coming home. Names with messages of happy expression of good wishes that might never see them, turning into messages of lost hope.

Before I know it I am past the line of names and wishes on the fence and I realize I have to blog about this and I have missed the opportunity to take a picture of this moving sight. No time to turn around now to snap a picture. The sun is setting and we are running late. Then I realize there is no great haste to catch a picture. I am sure this sight will be here the next time we come by and I will be looking to see how many names are there from this trip and to see how many new names are added.

And Now a Message from Our Sponsor... - Part Deux

It is finally released. The latest webisode of Star Trek New Voyages, To Serve All My Days was released on Thanksgiving Day. The webisode written by D.C. (Dorothy) Fontana, the former Script Editor of the original 1960's Star Trek and reprising his role as Pavel Chekov, Walter Koenig.

Fan films usually are nothing to write home about. Not much more than some friends getting together with a home camcorder, cheesy costumes and props with cardboard sets and editing that can't be called editing and stories that are not much more than disjointed scenes strung together. Since computer editing software has become so affordable, people are getting into the "movie making" thing. This also has now opened up an avenue for semi-pros and pros to create their own productions at a fraction of the cost of a studio production with very good results.

In the Star Trek world, fans are pretty rabid about the future world of Star Fleet. Not just the nerds in the neighborhood, but Hollywood types as well. J.J. Abrams of "Lost" fame has signed on to helm the next Star Trek movie, a story that is reported to be Kirk and Spock at Star Fleet Academy.

But for those who don't mind spending money to not make any money with Star Trek, you have the soon to be released three part webisode Star Trek: Of God and Men conceived and written by producer Sky Douglas Conway, together with former Deep Space Nine freelance story writers Jack Trevino and Ethan H. Calk with a cast of ex-Trek stars from every version of Star Trek from the original series through the movies and all of the other TV series. CBS/Paramount, the copywrite owner of Star Trek isn't making a dime on it and they don't care. Why? No one is making money on it. It is free for the download, when it comes out, just like the New Voyages webisodes.

My guess is CBS/Paramount has run out of ideas and are looking to the fans for the next incarnation of Star Trek. It would appear that they are going back to the beginning, with the success of New Voyages (yes CBS/Paramount is VERY aware of NV having used some of their Enterprise Bridge set for an Enterprise episode entitled "In A Mirror, Darkly") and the apparent pre-buzz of "Of God and Men" with the J.J. Abrams movie to be released in 2009. That is not to say that only Kirk/Spock Star Trek is being produced. Far from it. Star Trek Hidden Frontier is a series of fan films shot in front of green screens in the time of Picard and Riker and is regarded as the next best Trek fan film. Hidden Frontier focuses on a sister starship of the Enterprise D/E, Excelsior and its home base, Deep Space 12. With the success of New Voyages, fan films across the entire universe of Star Trek have exploded with many new ones going into production all over the world including one from Spain, and even Turkey along with a slew from Europe. One is even rumored in Russia.

But back to New Voyages. As I have said in an earlier post on New Voyages, the technical work is very good. Not quite TV quality but certainly very watchable. With "To Serve All My Days" the bar was raised to the point that it is TV quality. Unlike the other NV episodes, this one was shot in widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. It is still standard def but the quality of the digital equipment and the people in control of those said pieces of equipment shines through. Of course in this production, many Hollywood types, not just writers and actors are helping out from set work to new graphics and it shows. The acting has also greatly improved over the last webisode, "In Harms Way." I think the writing has a lot to do that as well. D.C. Fontana knows those characters like no one else from that period who has helped. Of course this webisode is a Chekov vehicle and not a Kirk vehicle so Chekov has the most screen time. Newcomer Andy Bray has been cast as the NV Chekov and he gets high marks for his portrayal of the Russian navigator. In "TSAMD" as the webisode is known by in the NV world, is a story about the relation between Chekov and a Federation Ambassador, who is played by veteran actor Mary Linda Rapelye who also appeared as Chekov's hippy love interest Irina Galliulin in the original series episode "Way to Eden."

The story line is a freak accident has triggered a dormant disease in Chekov that causes him to age. It is a wonderfully written story and Koenig, reprising his role as Chekov, does a wonderful job. Mr Koenig said he was drawn to this project because for the first time, Chekov was more than a navigator or weapons officer and is explored in depth. It helped him put some closure on some issues he had had with the character. The unannounced appearance of Mary Linda Rapelye and her character Ambassador Lady Rayna Morgan is also a nice surprise as the webisode opens. The ending has the NV tribes tongues-a-waging, but everyone agrees, TSAMD is two thumbs up, WAY UP and is a turning point for the fan franchise. From the story, to the acting, to the new graphic effects, better set lighting and the original music score for the webisode, "To Serve All My Days" puts New Voyages beyond the fan films category into the realm of professional, a status no other fan film has ever achieved. For the first time, a non Paramont Trek, feels, smells, taste, sounds and acts like Star Trek. You get goose bumps when you watch NV due the technical quality, but when you see TSAMD, the hair stands up on the back of your neck. It is SO Star Trek.

The next webisode, "World Enough and Time" written by DS9 and "Of God and Men" writers Marc Scott Zicree and Michael Reaves has been shot and is in post-production for a March 2007 release date. Those there during the shoot in September say that the technical work on this webisode surpasses TSAMD with the full compliment of professionals now on board for this one and hence the faster rate of release than TSAMD, which took 18 months to release. It is reported that this episode was shot in 720p high definition. George Takei will reprise his role as helmsman Lt Sulu. Grace Lee Whitney, who portrayed Yeoman Janice Rand in the original series is also cast in this webisode.

"The Trouble With Tribbles" writer David Gerrold has written the next webisode to be shot next summer called "Blood and Fire." The story of Blood and Fire was originally pitched to Star Trek: The Next Generation, but was rejected due to its controversial storyline, homosexuality and AIDS. The story was reworked into the book "Blood and Fire" (now available in paperback). Carlos Pedraza has adapted the old script for this NV webisode.

It was also just announced that Ms Fontana has agreed to pen another NV webisode.

And this is a FAN FILM PROJECT?? This could be the "new" TV. If so, you heard it here first.

The New Voyage webisodes can be downloaded for free at http://www.startreknewvoyages.com

The Red Poppy

I had vaguely remembered seeing people wear red poppies on their jackets before but I never really knew why. When I was in Canada last year in October, I saw many people wearing red poppies. Not just men but women as well. The men wore them on their jacket lapels or collars and women wore them in varies ways from hats to jackets to pins and emblems.

One of the Canadian engineers who were there at transmitter school was wearing a poppy. I tried to figure out a nice way of asking what the poppy was for. It was obviously something of national significance since everyone and everywhere you went you saw them displayed. On the final day there, I asked him what the significance of the poppy was for.

He explained how the red poppy was a sign of remembrance to the veterans and the custom which is conducted throughout the old British Commonweath nations came from a Canadian military doctor named Lt Col John McCrae. He had written a poem called "In Flanders Fields" in 1917. The poppy was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across the battlefields of Flanders, Belgium in World War I. The red color representing the blood spilled in trench warfare. They start showing the poppy about a month before "Remembrance Day" November 11, which of course we call Veteran's Day.

This morning I saw a British official on TV wearing the red poppy and it brought back the memory of my conversation with the Canadian engineer about the poppies. I decided I would surf the net and see if I could find Lt Col McCrae's poem.

As we pause to remember our brave veterans on this Veteran's Day, we should also take a minute to remember our Allies who also have sacrificed along beside us in many wars on their Remembrance Day. To our USA Vet's on Veteran's Day, you are not forgotten and we salute you and thank you for your service to our country no matter what war you serviced in. To the Vet's of the British Commonweath, you too are remembered on Rememberance Day and your service is also remembered and appreciated by your friends, the American people.

How fitting of a tribute to all of the fallen veterans everywhere.

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Damn Internet!!

You never know what you will find on the Internet. In doing some very generic net surfing a couple of weeks ago led me to a web page I had never heard of. Heck I couldn't even read it since it wasn't in English. But this is what I saw with a caption that had 4 letters in a certain order I understood instantly, WGHP:

Most if not all of you do not recognize this picture and that is OK, really. But I recognize it since I see a similar sight all of the time. It is a distant pik of our towers. I then see another picture taken from a moving vehicle of a group shot of ALL of the towers down our way. Further investigation shows the site is in German and has pictures of ALL of the big towers used by radio and TV stations in the market.

I run the site through Google translator and see this site is done by an individual and he has gotten public information about all of the towers. On his site he has chronicled mostly European broadcast sites and the only American sites are here in the Triad. I don't see a name but there is an email address so I send him an email inquiring who is he and why is he taking pictures of our towers.

Several days go by and then I receive a very nice email from a Walter Brummer from Austria. He is a mechanical engineer who enjoys towers and his company has business here in the Triad and on one trip he was coming from Charlotte and took a side trip and wound up going by all of the towers south of town. On a return trip he went to the towers and took pictures of all of them and documented how the USA does broadcasting.

He had some incorrect information about some of the towers so I corrected him and then invited him to contact me on his next trip to the Triad. He thanked me for the corrections and said on one of his next trips, one in December and then another in January or February, he would try and look me up. Who knows, I may have found a new friend. This damn Internet!!

The Return of A Friend

My friend is back. I am glad to have my friend back. My friend was in bad shape for a while but is all better now. Luckily the problem was not terminal. It only took one part and some bench time and it was back up and running. “What?” you say? “Bench time?” What kind of a person is this? No person at all. It is a “thing.” It is my television. “You call your television a friend?” Sure! Don’t you call yours a friend too? Stats show that most people spend more time with their televisions than with other humans so wouldn’t it make sense that it is your “friend?”

I haven’t gone as far as some people do and name my TV or my car for that matter. Sure, I think highly of both of them. But when their time comes to hit the garbage, I will have some amount of sorrow, but I will be too busy enjoying their replacement to feel too bad for too long. But that is a long way in the future. I hope. The story that had my friend in “surgery” is somewhat typical.

A couple of months ago I started noticing a small faint ripple moving from the right to the left of the screen changing speed from very slow at times to very fast at times and other times not even there. Then about a month or so ago I started having trouble turning the set on. It would start to come on but never quite get there. Then it wouldn’t come on at all. The set is 4 years old and of course the warrantee expired 3 years ago. It is a HD set so there was no way I was going to throw it out and buy another one.

Trying to find a TV repair shop these days is like trying to win the Power Ball. When I first got the set, there was a recall on a circuit board and the manufacturer sent a company out of Kernersville to fix it. I thought I would call them. A call gleaned they were no longer a service center and it would be FIVE WEEKS before they could even send someone out to just pick up the set. Well that wasn’t going to cut it. I had determined that the problem was somewhere in the power supply system and not a fatal problem and I wasn't going to wait 5 weeks just to see a repair truck show up. I started looking around again. I found a little repair shop in High Point and called them. Yep, they could fix it and if I could bring it in, they could get it fixed quicker. I said “OK!” Well that was easier said than done. My friend weighs more than most people do. It weighs 212 pounds.

It is a 34 inch CRT set. With the widescreen picture tube, not plasma or LCD, that much glass weighs a ton. But with a dolly and a ramp off the front porch into the bed of the truck, off to the repair shop my friend and I go. The repairman tells me that he can start on it either that day or the next. Better than I thought. Exactly six days later I got a phone call. My friend was up and running and I could come take him home.

I showed up ready to fork over several hundred dollars but was surprised to find that it was only $95. $15 for one IC chip in the high voltage power supply and $75 labor. Typical more for the labor than for the parts. Oh well, I wasn’t going to complain. I got out cheaper than I thought. We loaded up my buddy and away we go.

It is so nice to have my friend back. My little 20 inch SD set from the bedroom worked just great, but it just doesn’t have the screen size or the resolution of the 34 inch HD set. There definitely was a large hole, not just physically but emotionally as well. Who would have thought that of a television? Hopefully I am set for a long time of great television vieweing from my friend who lives in the living room.

Five Years After Hell On Earth - 9/11

That Tuesday morning actually started for me 6 months earlier.

Back in March on a routine dental visit of teeth cleaning, the little yellow card that marked my next appointment was handed to me. It read "9:30 AM Sept 11, 2001." The moment I saw it a strange feeling came over me. I had no idea why, but it just didn't hit me right. The feeling lasted about 2 seconds and the reminder card went into my wallet so I wouldn't forget it and out the door I went. I didn't think about it again. I can't tell you anything else about that March day. I can't even tell you what day it was, but that 60 seconds is seared in my brain forever.

Fast forward to September. It was not a normal day in many ways. My wife, who also works in the newsroom as an assignment editor on the day shift was filling in for the night side assignment editor and was asleep. As I was waiting to leave for my 9:30 dental appointment I was surfing the net and I just happen to have FOX News Channel on, sampling "FOX and Friends", since I normally watch our morning news while getting ready to go to work. It was as clear and warm of a day here in the Piedmont as it was in New York City.

Out of the corner of my eye and half listening, I hear E.D. Hill say reports were coming in that a small aircraft had hit the World Trade Center. Being somewhat of an aviation enthusiast, my ears perked up and I started to pay attention to the television. The time, 8:48 AM, two minutes after the hit. I had planned to leave to go to the dentist at 9:15 since the dentist office is only about 4 miles from home.

I am looking at the pictures that are now on the screen and not believing a small aircraft could cause that much damage. The thought did cross my mind that it could be terrorism but I dismissed it as unrealistic as several "experts" via telephone began to say it MIGHT be terrorism. About 8:55 Jon Scott takes over the coverage from the F&F team. 9:03 the second aircraft slams into the south tower. As I am seeing it, instantly I grasp what is going on and say out loud to no one, "We are at war!" Several long seconds later, Scott says on air, "It has happened again! Another plane has hit the tower! This can't be a coincidence. This has to be a terror attack!"

I don't know why, but I instantly thought of my wife's 4 year old niece and 11 year old nephew and how they would never know a world at relative peace again in their lifetime. Sadness fell over me. Then the broadcaster in me took control. I knew what had to be done and it had to start now.

I then went to the bedroom and woke my wife. I said "Two planes have struck the World Trade Center in New York. They suspect terrorism. I think you need to call the station and see if they need you to come in early." I go back to the TV and see I need to leave in a few minutes. I begin planning on what I needed to do for work and how I can make my appointment and get to the station as fast as I can. Since this is not a local story, yet, I figure I have a few minutes to work in the dentist. Being the transmitter guy, I am usually not the first person they call.

At 9:30 I walk into the dentist office and ask if they have heard what happened in New York City. They hadn't. I asked if they could rush me through since I suspect I would need to get on to work. 20 minutes later I was out the door. The quickest I have ever been through a dentist's office! By 9:50 I am on the road headed for the station. Just about every radio station on the dial has someone else’s coverage. I hear CBS, NBC, ABC AND FOX TV audio on MANY stations. I call my wife and she tells me the south tower has collapsed. I can't even comprehend it.

I hang up and the cell phone immediately rings. It is my boss wanting to know where am I. I tell him I am on the way to the station via the dentist and should be there in 15 minutes. He waives me off and tells me to go to the transmitter and stay there. I arrived there in record time.

I go into the office and turn on the monitor and see we have picked up the FOX feed that is carrying FOX News Channel. Jon Scott and Shepard Smith are now co-anchoring. In mid sentence of Shep Smith saying how if the north tower comes down, the death toll will be unbelievable, the north tower collapses. Cut to a helicopter shot of the dust cloud that rises up from lower Manhattan. I can't believe what I have just witnessed on our air. Then the report of a 5th highjack plane inbound to Washington hits air, later proved to be unfounded. My head starts to spin.

I stay glued to the TV the rest of the day and then when I go home that night until I go to bed at 3 AM when the adrenaline rush of the day wears off. For the next 6 days, I stay glued to the TV as every station in the country goes wall to wall coverage.

I can't tell you what I saw that whole time, but I was there and saw it all.

SNL - Too many years later

Staying up all night was a favorite thing of mine in my youth and Saturday nights were no different. Back in those days, my parents owned a house at the beach and we would go every weekend.

I can remember watching a little known news show at 11:30 pm on Saturday nights called "NBC News Weekend" with even less know reporters Lloyd Dobbins and Linda Ellerbee. It was the first attempt at a hip late show on network TV. It lasted about 6 months but was a forerunner to the 1983-4 "NBC News Overnight" with the same Lloyd Dobbins (later Bill Schechner) and Linda Ellerbee. It too failed within a year or so but set the stage for all of the overnight news programs you see on network TV today. Somewhere I have on beta tape a couple of "NBC News Overnight's" with Schechner and Ellerbee. This is where Ellerbee got the "Lucky Duck" idea from. She received a little yellow duck (same one you see at the end of her production companies programs) from a viewer and she liked it so much she put it on the anchor desk and started calling it "Lucky Duck." After the show ended and she left NBC News, she started a production company called "Lucky Duck Productions." She also stole her trademark line, "And so it goes" from Lloyd Dobbins. Dobbins used it to close the show on "NBC News Weekend" and "Overnight." When he left "Overnight" Ellerbee started using it and has ever since. I met Dobbins in the early 90's at the NC state AP News Convention after he retired from NBC News and had moved to Raleigh. He jokingly said he was still mad at Ellerbee for stealing his line, but at least unlike him, it was still working.

After the "Weekend" experiment failed, Tom Snyder got a shot at late night Saturday with a version of "The Tomorrow Show." It failed also but "The Tomorrow Show" moved to five nights a week after "The Tonight Show" and later went to CBS as the "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder" after "The Late Show with David Letterman" and still continues after moving from a news/feature show to a purely comedy show with Craig Kilborn and now with Craig Ferguson.

On that last "The Tomorrow Show" on Saturday nights, Tom Snyder introduced a group of people that would become show biz icons. On that August night the world was introduced to the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" better known as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Garrett Morris. I do think Belushi was stoned out of his mind that night. He did some things that got Snyder hot under the collar, but it was a forebearer of what was to come. The next Saturday night at 11:30 pm we saw the first prat fall of Chevy Chase and an institution was born.

I watched that show every Saturday night for the next 5 years. In the 1980 season when Lorne Michaels left, most people, including me, left also. It was a few years later I came back during the later Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo years and then last watched regularly in the 1985-6 "superstar" season of Jim Belushi, Mary Gross, Gary Kroeger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the well known Billy Crystal; Martin Short, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Rich Hall. After that season, when the cast was purged, I bailed for good.

I would catch an occasional show if there was a guest host I liked but would only watch those parts they were in. In recent times I watched the first post 9/11 opening with NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and NY Governor George Pataki. After the monologue I bailed again and had not watched SNL since. Until this past Saturday night. It was a repeat of the Christmas show with Jack Black as the guest host.

With the new TV season about to start, there was nothing on and for the first time in a long time, I wasn't fast asleep at 11:30 on a Saturday night. So the wife and I watched SNL. Either I have gotten too old to get modern comedy or this show stunk. None of the skits were funny. Weekend Update with Tina Fey was so lame, I have seen amateur parodies funnier. Even the wife commented how unfunny it was.

With NBC producing two shows this season about a fictitious late night comedy/sketch show ("30 Rock" created and produced by SNL alum Tina Fey) and "Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip" by "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin) either one or both could be funnier than the show they are based on.

Sometimes it isn't such a good idea to keep reinventing yourself. After 30 years it might just be time to retire SNL. One could say it had a good run.