Just when us old radio guys think the business is dead, it reinvents itself. Our parents lamented when long form radio programs transferred to Television. It took visionaries like Todd Storz and Gordon Mclendon to reinvent the medium as a jukebox with personality. That worked for many years, until consolidation…
By Scott Westerman “The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change” ~Heraclituse It’s impossible to stay in your comfort zone long without getting uncomfortable. Watch a satellite image of the inexorable progression of the weather across our continent and you begin to get a sense for the truth in the…
By Scott Westerman “Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.” ~Earl Nightingale My granddaughter is an exquisite teacher. She is filled with fearless inquisitiveness. When something interests her, she wants to explore it again and again, until it…
My good friend, Edward Charles Liebler left us on November 24. He was 79. In nearly two decades of friendship, he was my role model for a renaissance man. Born in Brown City, on April 6, 1939, he absorbed the classic American work ethic early and thought he might dedicate…
Once upon a time, in a place called Jacksonville, Florida, named for Andrew Jackson, who never set foot anywhere within it’s broad city limits, there were a city councilman, a bureaucrat, a semi-retired jazz festival producer and two telecommunications executives who had too much time on their hands. As they watched…
No job is forever. It’s a fact that you will ultimately face a career change. Why not prepare for it now? My friend Tony Bordo was working on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade when his job was eliminated. A lifelong fitness enthusiast, Tony decided to make his…
From the moment that AMSAT first lobbed an OSCAR (Orbital Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) into space, communication via the growing constellation of amateur radio satellites has held a special allure. Interested in getting active on the sats? A great place to start is to visit amsat.org. The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation was…
What will you do with all those atomic clocks if WWVB goes silent? We’ve got hacks! There is a lot of buzz about the possible closure of erstwhile NIST time stations, WWV, WWVH and WWVB. For many of us, WWV was one of the first stations we heard on our…
The fifth chemo is the worst. By now, you’ve watched her struggle with the poison four times. You don’t want to go to work. You want to be by her side. You want to help ease the pain. But you can’t do a damn thing about it. And that’s the…
We’re living on the Atlantic Ocean this summer. Colleen and I get up before dawn most mornings and stand on our 12th floor balcony to watch the sunrise. Every panorama is unique. Some mornings present an orange fireball that peeks above a placid sea into a cloudless sky. On other…