Monthly Archives: January 2013

When Print was the Touchstone of Journalism

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Men, Opinion

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BY FRANK TERRANELLA

Frank-Journal News Pix

Frank, at the Journal News, working the slot on the news desk.

I am part of an ever-growing fraternity – former newspaper journalists. It has been sad to see the industry implode over the last three decades. Like most people who have worked in newspapers, I wish I was still doing it. But the combination of poor pay, anti-social working hours, and an industry that has been slowly going out of business for a generation, has produced a diaspora of journalists. My journey from newspaperman to lawyer/blogger is typical.

In my junior year of college, I started writing for the college newspaper. I loved it so much that I arranged an internship with the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Massachusetts for my senior year. Over the summer before my senior year, I worked on a local weekly in my hometown. This was back in the days when newspapers were printed using linotype machines. These now-extinct machines consisted of a keyboard that created lines of type (similar to the striking keys on a typewriter) out of molten lead. As might be expected by the last two words of the previous sentence, this machine threw off a lot of heat – hence the term “hot type.”

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School Drills, Past and Present, Never Child’s Play

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Men

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A civil defense educational video on school preparedness for nuclear war in the 1950s.

BY BOB SMITH

I attended grammar school in Northern New Jersey during the early 1960s when the Cold War was in full bloom, with Nikita Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the desk at the United Nations and threatening to bury us all.

Teachers and schoolchildren, today, live in fear of random attacks by madmen with automatic weapons. Today’s threat is intensely personal – the shooter, often acting alone, stalks the halls and brutally murders innocents, one by one, at close range. The threat in the 1950s and 1960s was entirely anonymous – intercontinental ballistic missiles bearing nuclear warheads would launch from an ocean away and descend from the sky, killing millions.

Some elementary schools now have armed guards or run lockdown drills, in which the lights are turned off, classrooms are locked, and students hunker down in the dark, hoping the door doesn’t open. We were afraid, just as schoolchildren today may be, as we, too, prepared for the unthinkable.

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The Saturday Blog: Ice

05 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by in Concepts

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As we approach the epicenter of winter – snow, ice and bitter chills – we find the ice part particularly intriguing. It freezes, and then breaks apart as the temperature changes. This process creates movement and sound. It’s fascinating to watch – like a waltz.

 

An Oil Painting, Deconstructed

04 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in Art

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The Crash Landing Was Safe 12.29.12

The Crash Landing Was Safe 12.29.12

BY JULIE SEYLER

I take reams of photos when I’m painting because I usually do not have an end vision in my head, and therefore, like to document its story. Sometimes, I start a new work simply because there is leftover, pristine oil paint on the palette. I cannot bear to toss it, so I put it on canvas, and figure it will work out. Oil paint is incredibly forgiving. All mistakes can be painted over.

What evolved into “Crash Landing,” was started because of leftover paint from “Muscle Chick,” the work that accompanied Frank’s post on women’s well-toned biceps. It developed as I nursed my disappointment over canceled vacation plans, and was finished soon after I was told my hip surgery had been completely successful. So this is the story:

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The Un-Friendly on Facebook: Ex-Wife, Peeing Dog, and Smeared Pudding

03 Thursday Jan 2013

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BY BOB SMITH

Bob FBI recently got a Facebook friend request from my ex-wife. Isn’t that oxymoronic? We couldn’t be friends in the real world, so why is it okay to be electronic, virtual friends? Christ, if we didn’t have to actually spend time together we might still be married. Maybe it’s the nature of electronic friendship. In the pre-Internet world I grew up in, real-world friends were people who were there for you, as in physically proximate; nearby – not just out there somewhere. With virtual friends, on the other hand, it doesn’t matter a bit where they’re physically located because most of them don’t have a real-world relationship anyway. And friends actually like each other, don’t they? That was the main reason my ex-wife and I split up – we didn’t. But virtual friendship doesn’t require sharing any true affection; each “friend” just has to be curious about what the other person’s up to. If you post enough facts and photos on your Facebook page, your “friends” can peruse your entire life without making contact at all – apart from stroking the keyboard.

What do we get out of these remote non-relationships? I just went through Facebook and took a tour through the lives of a number of my electronic friends. I saw the following:

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So, It Might be OK to be Fat(ter) in our 50s

02 Wednesday Jan 2013

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BY LOIS DESOCIO

In a nod to Frank’s post today about his admiration for a curvy, not rail-thin, woman (and for those of us in that new-year struggle between whether to: start a diet today! Or: finish the leftover eggnog and cookies and triple-stuffed, cheese-covered pork roast first), a new study has been released by The Journal of the American Medical Association that suggests a little extra pork on the body is not such a bad thing, especially for those of us over 50.

According to an article in The New York Times by Pam Belluck, the report, discusses the relationship ” … between B.M.I and mortality,” and is “… the largest and most carefully done, analyzing nearly 100 studies.”

Two interesting tidbits from the article are: in 1912, the woman who was deemed in “perfect health,” by the medical standards of the day was 5’7,” and weighed 171 pounds. And some experts today have concluded that, even though “it is unproven and debated,” “… extra body fat when you’re older,” “could be protective in some cases.” The study also found that “people 65 and over had no greater mortality risk even at high obesity.”

No Trouble With the Curves

02 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Men, Opinion

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Photo of a photo of a A. Jaffe from 1951

Photo of a photo of a curvy A. Jaffe from 1951

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

As an over-50 male, I am sorry to say that the women that Hollywood is putting up on the screen these days as the new models of feminine beauty often leave me cold. When I see people like Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller or Olivia Wilde, all I want to do is feed them. Have a chocolate shake. Gain 20 pounds. Grow some curves!

I think that men who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s may have a different idea of the perfect female figure than young men today. We over-50 men first noticed women at a time when the feminine ideal was Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield. Oh sure, there was also Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, but these were women admired more for their faces than their bodies. If you asked any teenage boy in the 1960s which movie star had the best figure, he was more likely to say Elizabeth Taylor or Raquel Welch than Doris Day or Jane Fonda.  Even on television, the most popular mouseketeer among boys was not Karen or Sherry or Darlene. It was the full-figured Annette.

Our fathers and grandfathers shared this admiration for a female figure that was, in their words, “healthy-looking.”  The ideal then was the voluptuous Gibson Girl look of the early 1900s. That was continued into the 1930s with chorus girls in Busby Berkeley musicals showing a lot of meat on their bones -especially around their thighs. I don’t know whether those women would be considered beautiful today, but I do know that in the 1960s, women who by today’s standards would be considered fat, were held up as the feminine ideal.
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