Sunday, March 28, 2004
Color TV is 50 Years Old
Television's bright idea turns 50
The revolution really was televised after RCA began making the first color sets in 1954; a decade later, its subsidiary NBC was broadcasting as many as 40 hours a week in bright hues
By Siobhan McDonough
Associated Press
March 25, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Doreen Golanoski remembers being a little girl when her family's television set delivered something amazing--a burst of color on the screen. Finally, she could see "The Jetsons" in vivid greens, blues, reds.
"You can't really appreciate color television unless you know what it was like to watch black-and-white," Golanoski, now 48 and the owner of five sets in her Nanticoke, Pa., home, said on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of color television.
On March 25, 1954, Radio Corporation of America began manufacturing color television sets at its Bloomington, Ind., plant. It built 5,000 sets with 12-inch screens. They sold for $1,000 each, astronomical in those days.
They didn't get much use that year, because color telecasts were rare. But the American love affair with the tube had taken a leap forward into the hues of real life.
The effort to bring color to the home screen was no easy feat. It occupied scientists throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s at RCA laboratories in Princeton, N.J. Their eventual concoction sounded like something out of a science fiction novel: the three-beam shadow mask tube.
The struggle for a clear, true color picture was hardly over. RCA continually tweaked the technology behind it all, and soon replaced the original combination of phosphate, silicate and sulfide phosphors with a more efficient group made up entirely of sulfides.
The results: higher light output and better color balance. Even so, generations of viewers would fiddle with mysterious buttons to try to make sickly green or rashy red faces the color of flesh.
After an experimental start by CBS, NBC, a subsidiary of RCA, developed and promoted color television in the marketplace. Ten years later, NBC was broadcasting as many as 40 hours a week in color.
The first 5,000 color sets were gobbled up by consumers. In 1967, color outsold black-and-white TVs for the first time--with more than 5.5 million sets sold--and in 1973 more than half of all households had color.
Many people remember the day they tuned in their own first splash of color.
"Everyone was piling into my mother's room" to watch the new color set there, said Jermaine Johnson, 28, of Washington.
"I felt like we finally stepped up, we moved up a notch," he said.
For him, it was 1987, well after color TV made its introduction.
Johnson and his wife have four televisions now, two in regular use and two more for when guests are over.
"I watch it until I fall asleep," he said.
U.S. households had 248 million TV sets in 2001, or 2.4 sets each on average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, citing the latest year measured.
The Consumer Electronics Association projects that more than 18 million color sets and about 150,000 black-and-white sets will be sold this year.
TV ownership blanketed the country as far back as 1960, when 87 percent of homes had a set, according to the bureau. Now they are nearly universal, in more than 98 percent of homes.
And, increasingly, in cars.
Golanoski, who has TVs in her living room, basement and three bedrooms, is ready to impart her appreciation of the tube to younger generations.
During an excursion with her stepdaughter in Alexandria, Va., Golanoski shopped for a portable television for the mini-van to keep her granddaughter amused during long road trips. The granddaughter and her mother live in North Carolina.
"We need to see each other more often and we need a television for the car so we can accomplish that," Golanoski explained.
People watch plenty of TV. Adults are projected to watch, on average, 1,669 hours of television in this year, or roughly 70 days worth, according to census figures.
Frank Vespe, executive director of TV-Turnoff Network, a group that tries to get people to do just that, is not cheering color television's big anniversary.
"Television has supplanted just about every other leisure activity," he lamented.
Color sets make huge splash in TV market
Sales of color and black-and-white TVs:
1954: Color television sets enter the market, and about 5,000 are sold, compared with 7.4 million black-and-white sets. Fifty-six percent of American households have black-and-white TVs.
1965: Black-and-white TV sales peak at 8.4 million, while sales of color TVs reach about 2.7 million. Seventy-eight percent of American households have black-and-white sets; just under 5 percent have color.
1967: Color sets for the first time outsell black-and-white, almost 5.6 million compared with nearly 5.3 million.
1973: For the first time, at least half the nation has color television: Fifty-five percent of households own at least one. Black-and-white TVs are still in 76 percent of households.
1994: Sales of color TVs peak at 24.7 million; black-and-white sales drop to 540,000. Nearly all American households--98 percent--have at least one color TV. For the first time, fewer than half--49 percent--have black-and-white.
2004: American consumers are expected to buy 18.6 million color TVs and 150,000 black-and-white sets by year's end.
Associated Press.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
The revolution really was televised after RCA began making the first color sets in 1954; a decade later, its subsidiary NBC was broadcasting as many as 40 hours a week in bright hues
By Siobhan McDonough
Associated Press
March 25, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Doreen Golanoski remembers being a little girl when her family's television set delivered something amazing--a burst of color on the screen. Finally, she could see "The Jetsons" in vivid greens, blues, reds.
"You can't really appreciate color television unless you know what it was like to watch black-and-white," Golanoski, now 48 and the owner of five sets in her Nanticoke, Pa., home, said on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of color television.
On March 25, 1954, Radio Corporation of America began manufacturing color television sets at its Bloomington, Ind., plant. It built 5,000 sets with 12-inch screens. They sold for $1,000 each, astronomical in those days.
They didn't get much use that year, because color telecasts were rare. But the American love affair with the tube had taken a leap forward into the hues of real life.
The effort to bring color to the home screen was no easy feat. It occupied scientists throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s at RCA laboratories in Princeton, N.J. Their eventual concoction sounded like something out of a science fiction novel: the three-beam shadow mask tube.
The struggle for a clear, true color picture was hardly over. RCA continually tweaked the technology behind it all, and soon replaced the original combination of phosphate, silicate and sulfide phosphors with a more efficient group made up entirely of sulfides.
The results: higher light output and better color balance. Even so, generations of viewers would fiddle with mysterious buttons to try to make sickly green or rashy red faces the color of flesh.
After an experimental start by CBS, NBC, a subsidiary of RCA, developed and promoted color television in the marketplace. Ten years later, NBC was broadcasting as many as 40 hours a week in color.
The first 5,000 color sets were gobbled up by consumers. In 1967, color outsold black-and-white TVs for the first time--with more than 5.5 million sets sold--and in 1973 more than half of all households had color.
Many people remember the day they tuned in their own first splash of color.
"Everyone was piling into my mother's room" to watch the new color set there, said Jermaine Johnson, 28, of Washington.
"I felt like we finally stepped up, we moved up a notch," he said.
For him, it was 1987, well after color TV made its introduction.
Johnson and his wife have four televisions now, two in regular use and two more for when guests are over.
"I watch it until I fall asleep," he said.
U.S. households had 248 million TV sets in 2001, or 2.4 sets each on average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, citing the latest year measured.
The Consumer Electronics Association projects that more than 18 million color sets and about 150,000 black-and-white sets will be sold this year.
TV ownership blanketed the country as far back as 1960, when 87 percent of homes had a set, according to the bureau. Now they are nearly universal, in more than 98 percent of homes.
And, increasingly, in cars.
Golanoski, who has TVs in her living room, basement and three bedrooms, is ready to impart her appreciation of the tube to younger generations.
During an excursion with her stepdaughter in Alexandria, Va., Golanoski shopped for a portable television for the mini-van to keep her granddaughter amused during long road trips. The granddaughter and her mother live in North Carolina.
"We need to see each other more often and we need a television for the car so we can accomplish that," Golanoski explained.
People watch plenty of TV. Adults are projected to watch, on average, 1,669 hours of television in this year, or roughly 70 days worth, according to census figures.
Frank Vespe, executive director of TV-Turnoff Network, a group that tries to get people to do just that, is not cheering color television's big anniversary.
"Television has supplanted just about every other leisure activity," he lamented.
Color sets make huge splash in TV market
Sales of color and black-and-white TVs:
1954: Color television sets enter the market, and about 5,000 are sold, compared with 7.4 million black-and-white sets. Fifty-six percent of American households have black-and-white TVs.
1965: Black-and-white TV sales peak at 8.4 million, while sales of color TVs reach about 2.7 million. Seventy-eight percent of American households have black-and-white sets; just under 5 percent have color.
1967: Color sets for the first time outsell black-and-white, almost 5.6 million compared with nearly 5.3 million.
1973: For the first time, at least half the nation has color television: Fifty-five percent of households own at least one. Black-and-white TVs are still in 76 percent of households.
1994: Sales of color TVs peak at 24.7 million; black-and-white sales drop to 540,000. Nearly all American households--98 percent--have at least one color TV. For the first time, fewer than half--49 percent--have black-and-white.
2004: American consumers are expected to buy 18.6 million color TVs and 150,000 black-and-white sets by year's end.
Associated Press.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Blogging Still Infrequent
Study: Blogging Still Infrequent
Mon Mar 1,10:00 AM ET
TechWeb News
The phenomenon of self-publishing on the Internet was supposed to bring the power of the people to the world. To some extent it has, according to a new survey, but only from a surprisingly small percentage of Web users.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that Web users, in general, have posted personal content in a haphazard manner--uploading some photos here, some written material there.
"[We] found that more than 53 million American adults have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content online," the Pew report stated. "Most of those who do contribute material are not constantly updating or freshening content.
"For instance, more than two-thirds of those who have their own Web sites add new content only every few weeks or less often than that."
The study, released Sunday, said that less than 5% of those with blogs--the personal pages created by Internet users--update them daily.
The study gives some insight into the phenomenon of file sharing and music swapping. Pew said about 20% of the Web users it polled "have allowed others to download music or video files from their computers." The study also found that 5% contributed audio files to Web sites and 3% delivered video files.
The study, based on phone surveys of 1,555 Internet users last spring, established that students made up a disproportionate number of content creators"20%. (Only 14% of Americans identify themselves as students.) "It's not surprising that students are so well represented among content creators," according to the report, "given that many universities offer extremely high bandwidth facilities to their students and may make creating online content a part of the required coursework for a student."
The most popular material posted to the Web was photos--about 21% posted pictures of one sort or another. The report broke down individual Web content providers into three main categories:
* Young, power creators are more sophisticated Internet users, averaging about 25 years old and are the most likely to blog. * Older content creators, averaging around 58 years old, tend to share photos and also to use the Internet for genealogical research. * Content omnivores, averaging around 40 years old, are the heaviest users of the Web, usually at work. At home they usually have broadband connections.
Mon Mar 1,10:00 AM ET
TechWeb News
The phenomenon of self-publishing on the Internet was supposed to bring the power of the people to the world. To some extent it has, according to a new survey, but only from a surprisingly small percentage of Web users.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that Web users, in general, have posted personal content in a haphazard manner--uploading some photos here, some written material there.
"[We] found that more than 53 million American adults have used the Internet to publish their thoughts, respond to others, post pictures, share files and otherwise contribute to the explosion of content online," the Pew report stated. "Most of those who do contribute material are not constantly updating or freshening content.
"For instance, more than two-thirds of those who have their own Web sites add new content only every few weeks or less often than that."
The study, released Sunday, said that less than 5% of those with blogs--the personal pages created by Internet users--update them daily.
The study gives some insight into the phenomenon of file sharing and music swapping. Pew said about 20% of the Web users it polled "have allowed others to download music or video files from their computers." The study also found that 5% contributed audio files to Web sites and 3% delivered video files.
The study, based on phone surveys of 1,555 Internet users last spring, established that students made up a disproportionate number of content creators"20%. (Only 14% of Americans identify themselves as students.) "It's not surprising that students are so well represented among content creators," according to the report, "given that many universities offer extremely high bandwidth facilities to their students and may make creating online content a part of the required coursework for a student."
The most popular material posted to the Web was photos--about 21% posted pictures of one sort or another. The report broke down individual Web content providers into three main categories:
* Young, power creators are more sophisticated Internet users, averaging about 25 years old and are the most likely to blog. * Older content creators, averaging around 58 years old, tend to share photos and also to use the Internet for genealogical research. * Content omnivores, averaging around 40 years old, are the heaviest users of the Web, usually at work. At home they usually have broadband connections.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Leaving Ireland for Chicago
Leaving Ireland for Chicago: You want this city
By Antonia Logue
Special to the Tribune
March 17, 2004
You want this. You want this city, this newness, this chance. You want this fear that makes everything seem harder yet makes you want it all the more.
You want this unknown, this every day being the day you step up to the plate, this expectation, this panic, this knowledge that you can do all this and more. This fear that you can't.
You came here because somehow it happened, and you can trace it, explain it, pull your whole American life up and show the roots, but that's only half the story. A job, a girl, a lead, a boy, a holiday you never unpacked from, a life you came to live for a month, a year. . . . And yet.
And yet this city, this country worked some magic. Something in the architecture of what you see here is also within you; in this city of north and south, of reversed rivers and wide streets, of strikes and unions, of commutations and fires, of alleyway murders and political dynasties, this town of gossip and reverence, dog beaches and riots, skyscrapers and soot.
You fit here; you came for a moment maybe, you came forever, some part of you always here now in this messy confidence that rides the faces on buses, on the "L," climbing from taxis. Your tiredness in the faces you see at the post office, in the supermarket, at traffic lights; your happiness in the bride coming down the steps, the child climbing the slide, the first-time father; your ache in the waitress' feet, the traffic cop's arms, the schoolteacher's voice; your life unfolding here for good and bad, because somehow you are part of this, a city further from Dublin and Derry than Cairo or Tehran and yet yours. Somehow it is yours.
This country where single states are bigger than Ireland, where Derry City is swallowed whole by a single suburban mall, the county by its carpark.
You came and didn't think too hard for all the thinking you did, because in 2004 you feel you don't need to use grandiose words to describe what you're doing. Emigration is a word for docksides, it's for tears and mothers waving handkerchiefs, it is for Hollywood and famine ships, not you at the airport flying seven hours to a new job, a new city, new unfound friends, new everything. The word for that is Adventure.
And it all sounded grand at home; in the safety of the known it seemed OK.
A fun opportunity
It seemed more than OK, it seemed obvious, an opportunity that would be fun, something you'd easily rise to. It didn't seem to include an airport with no one there to meet you, a borrowed apartment with deck chairs for furniture, a clutch of phone numbers of friends of friends of friends whom you're too shy to call, a February cold that chills you to the marrow, a system of grids and cross-streets that your guidebook tells you makes it one of the easiest cities in the world to navigate as you get lost and lost and lost.
And that guidebook gives you unexpected solace as you wander these Chicago streets, hiding behind a tourist face, with your tourist questions and tourist mistakes, because tourists go back. This is temporary if you want it to be, that 19:40 flight to Dublin will fly you home any night of the week to all that is familiar. You need not conquer this world if you don't want to. You can go back. You can go home.
And invisibly that solace becomes excitement again. A thrill in you that you are here, that you have this whole city for yourself to find the things that matter to you. To explore and know and discover, a city full of people and interests, of unhad conversations, unthought promises, unfelt feelings.
It's yours to make anything of, and the fear this first instills fades and you wake each day expectant, ready for anything it brings.
You get a phone. You open a bank account. You find a coffee shop you love.
You hear a band you've always wanted to hear. You make the shy-calls.
You start the job. You make friends. You start to play the all-American dating game. Men open doors and pull out chairs and ask you to speak some "Gaelic."
You go to gigs. You trade music. You meet your new friends' friends.
Your phone starts to ring and your weekends become full and faces become familiar. You give back the deck chairs and the borrowed flat and find your own space, and fill it with things and people that make you happy. You meet someone. You discover you love your job, are floored by how you love it.
People come to visit from home and suddenly you're the tour guide, you're the one with the stories and the secret corners, the favorite bars and best-loved restaurants. You are the one waving your hand across this city like it's really yours.
Warmth in cold place
For it is. As much yours as anyone's in this country of nomads and adventurers, where a million peaks are climbed a day, be it on the stock market or in a writer's head, in an engagement celebrated, a divorce finalized, a union deal signed, a painting painted, a cast taken off, a first job begun, surgery awoken from, first words fumbled with, a record smashed, a bad habit broken, a song first sung. For all the politics and civil liberties fractured, the dissolute wealth, the fallibility and false calm, this is the country to which you have come.
This magical city with its warmth in the most arctic of winters is your city now, this lakeshore your waterline, these skyscrapers yours to take for granted, these rainbow trains yours to ride, these teams yours to cheer, these streets yours to roam, these stories yours for the telling.
Because this is Chicago.
This is home.
Antonia Logue was born in Park, County Derry, in Ireland, and is the author of "Shadow Box," which won The Irish Times Fiction Prize. She is a professor of English at Columbia College in Chicago. Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
By Antonia Logue
Special to the Tribune
March 17, 2004
You want this. You want this city, this newness, this chance. You want this fear that makes everything seem harder yet makes you want it all the more.
You want this unknown, this every day being the day you step up to the plate, this expectation, this panic, this knowledge that you can do all this and more. This fear that you can't.
You came here because somehow it happened, and you can trace it, explain it, pull your whole American life up and show the roots, but that's only half the story. A job, a girl, a lead, a boy, a holiday you never unpacked from, a life you came to live for a month, a year. . . . And yet.
And yet this city, this country worked some magic. Something in the architecture of what you see here is also within you; in this city of north and south, of reversed rivers and wide streets, of strikes and unions, of commutations and fires, of alleyway murders and political dynasties, this town of gossip and reverence, dog beaches and riots, skyscrapers and soot.
You fit here; you came for a moment maybe, you came forever, some part of you always here now in this messy confidence that rides the faces on buses, on the "L," climbing from taxis. Your tiredness in the faces you see at the post office, in the supermarket, at traffic lights; your happiness in the bride coming down the steps, the child climbing the slide, the first-time father; your ache in the waitress' feet, the traffic cop's arms, the schoolteacher's voice; your life unfolding here for good and bad, because somehow you are part of this, a city further from Dublin and Derry than Cairo or Tehran and yet yours. Somehow it is yours.
This country where single states are bigger than Ireland, where Derry City is swallowed whole by a single suburban mall, the county by its carpark.
You came and didn't think too hard for all the thinking you did, because in 2004 you feel you don't need to use grandiose words to describe what you're doing. Emigration is a word for docksides, it's for tears and mothers waving handkerchiefs, it is for Hollywood and famine ships, not you at the airport flying seven hours to a new job, a new city, new unfound friends, new everything. The word for that is Adventure.
And it all sounded grand at home; in the safety of the known it seemed OK.
A fun opportunity
It seemed more than OK, it seemed obvious, an opportunity that would be fun, something you'd easily rise to. It didn't seem to include an airport with no one there to meet you, a borrowed apartment with deck chairs for furniture, a clutch of phone numbers of friends of friends of friends whom you're too shy to call, a February cold that chills you to the marrow, a system of grids and cross-streets that your guidebook tells you makes it one of the easiest cities in the world to navigate as you get lost and lost and lost.
And that guidebook gives you unexpected solace as you wander these Chicago streets, hiding behind a tourist face, with your tourist questions and tourist mistakes, because tourists go back. This is temporary if you want it to be, that 19:40 flight to Dublin will fly you home any night of the week to all that is familiar. You need not conquer this world if you don't want to. You can go back. You can go home.
And invisibly that solace becomes excitement again. A thrill in you that you are here, that you have this whole city for yourself to find the things that matter to you. To explore and know and discover, a city full of people and interests, of unhad conversations, unthought promises, unfelt feelings.
It's yours to make anything of, and the fear this first instills fades and you wake each day expectant, ready for anything it brings.
You get a phone. You open a bank account. You find a coffee shop you love.
You hear a band you've always wanted to hear. You make the shy-calls.
You start the job. You make friends. You start to play the all-American dating game. Men open doors and pull out chairs and ask you to speak some "Gaelic."
You go to gigs. You trade music. You meet your new friends' friends.
Your phone starts to ring and your weekends become full and faces become familiar. You give back the deck chairs and the borrowed flat and find your own space, and fill it with things and people that make you happy. You meet someone. You discover you love your job, are floored by how you love it.
People come to visit from home and suddenly you're the tour guide, you're the one with the stories and the secret corners, the favorite bars and best-loved restaurants. You are the one waving your hand across this city like it's really yours.
Warmth in cold place
For it is. As much yours as anyone's in this country of nomads and adventurers, where a million peaks are climbed a day, be it on the stock market or in a writer's head, in an engagement celebrated, a divorce finalized, a union deal signed, a painting painted, a cast taken off, a first job begun, surgery awoken from, first words fumbled with, a record smashed, a bad habit broken, a song first sung. For all the politics and civil liberties fractured, the dissolute wealth, the fallibility and false calm, this is the country to which you have come.
This magical city with its warmth in the most arctic of winters is your city now, this lakeshore your waterline, these skyscrapers yours to take for granted, these rainbow trains yours to ride, these teams yours to cheer, these streets yours to roam, these stories yours for the telling.
Because this is Chicago.
This is home.
Antonia Logue was born in Park, County Derry, in Ireland, and is the author of "Shadow Box," which won The Irish Times Fiction Prize. She is a professor of English at Columbia College in Chicago. Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
An American Holiday
St. Patrick's Day
Parades an American way of celebrating
By Emilie Le Beau
Special to the Tribune
March 16, 2004
St. Patrick's Day may be about celebrating the Irish, but it's actually all-American. While we celebrate March 17 with shamrocks and parades, folks in Ireland spend St. Patrick's Day differently.
"Until very recently, it wasn't very much celebrated [in Ireland] except as a holy day of obligation," says Janet Nolan, a history professor at Loyola University in Chicago.
A holy day of obligation means practically every place but the local church is closed. Pubs and restaurants are just now beginning to stay open on St. Patrick's Day, but people in Ireland still are expected to go to mass and honor the country's patron saint.
Irish immigrants to the United States considered St. Patrick's Day special and used it as a way to respond to the discrimination they felt in the 1800s. Parading on St. Pat's was a way to "show off their [unity] as Irish people in America," Nolan says.
Irish-Americans still parade on March 17, but the reasons have changed.
Marty O., 8, of Munster, Ind., says he goes to a St. Pat's parade every year and looks forward to the day to celebrate his heritage. "It reminds me of my grandpa," Marty says. "My grandpa was really interested in Irish things, and I would really like to learn about Irish warriors."
Every Saturday Marty goes to the Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago for language, history and music classes. He is learning to speak Gaelic and to play Irish musical instruments.
Going to Irish school was Marty's idea, and he says he has missed only one class. "It's a really nice thing to do, because it connects me to the past," he says.
Paul B., 9, of Oak Park also likes to be connected to his family's Irish past. His great-grandmother left Ireland and her family behind for America. "I like to hear stories about what she did back there," he says.
Paul enjoys St. Patrick's Day because he gets to spend time with family. They have a small party and eat traditional foods like corned beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes and soda bread.
Lisa M.'s family also has a similar menu for St. Pat's. Plus she spends the day performing with the Trinity Irish Dancers, which she has done since age 4. "I love doing Irish dancing shows," says Lisa, 13, of Western Springs. "It's a celebration of our Irish nationality."
You don't have to be Irish to don green on St. Patrick's Day, however. Nolan says many non-Irish in America celebrate the day because it represents a "happy holiday."
"It's become an American holiday, not just an Irish-American holiday," she says.
And, Nolan says, the Irish have taken note of our festivities and "are imitating Americans by celebrating St. Patrick's Day with a parade." Several cities, including Dublin, now have St. Patrick's Day parades.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
Parades an American way of celebrating
By Emilie Le Beau
Special to the Tribune
March 16, 2004
St. Patrick's Day may be about celebrating the Irish, but it's actually all-American. While we celebrate March 17 with shamrocks and parades, folks in Ireland spend St. Patrick's Day differently.
"Until very recently, it wasn't very much celebrated [in Ireland] except as a holy day of obligation," says Janet Nolan, a history professor at Loyola University in Chicago.
A holy day of obligation means practically every place but the local church is closed. Pubs and restaurants are just now beginning to stay open on St. Patrick's Day, but people in Ireland still are expected to go to mass and honor the country's patron saint.
Irish immigrants to the United States considered St. Patrick's Day special and used it as a way to respond to the discrimination they felt in the 1800s. Parading on St. Pat's was a way to "show off their [unity] as Irish people in America," Nolan says.
Irish-Americans still parade on March 17, but the reasons have changed.
Marty O., 8, of Munster, Ind., says he goes to a St. Pat's parade every year and looks forward to the day to celebrate his heritage. "It reminds me of my grandpa," Marty says. "My grandpa was really interested in Irish things, and I would really like to learn about Irish warriors."
Every Saturday Marty goes to the Irish American Heritage Center in Chicago for language, history and music classes. He is learning to speak Gaelic and to play Irish musical instruments.
Going to Irish school was Marty's idea, and he says he has missed only one class. "It's a really nice thing to do, because it connects me to the past," he says.
Paul B., 9, of Oak Park also likes to be connected to his family's Irish past. His great-grandmother left Ireland and her family behind for America. "I like to hear stories about what she did back there," he says.
Paul enjoys St. Patrick's Day because he gets to spend time with family. They have a small party and eat traditional foods like corned beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes and soda bread.
Lisa M.'s family also has a similar menu for St. Pat's. Plus she spends the day performing with the Trinity Irish Dancers, which she has done since age 4. "I love doing Irish dancing shows," says Lisa, 13, of Western Springs. "It's a celebration of our Irish nationality."
You don't have to be Irish to don green on St. Patrick's Day, however. Nolan says many non-Irish in America celebrate the day because it represents a "happy holiday."
"It's become an American holiday, not just an Irish-American holiday," she says.
And, Nolan says, the Irish have taken note of our festivities and "are imitating Americans by celebrating St. Patrick's Day with a parade." Several cities, including Dublin, now have St. Patrick's Day parades.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
Hot Dog?
Church nixes Good Friday hot dogs
By Associated Press
March 15, 2004, 6:13 AM CST
BOSTON -- Opening Day ticket holders at Boston's Fenway Park this year who are Catholic face a dilemma: the Boston Archdiocese said since the afternoon game against the Toronto Blue Jays falls on Good Friday, they must refrain from eating meat, including hot dogs, sausages and pepperoni pizza.
"We're already getting all kinds of requests for dispensation to eat meat," said the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, a spokesman for the archdiocese. However Coyne said that after a meeting to discuss the requests, Boston church leaders decided a baseball game was too weak an excuse to duck the no-meat rule
"I would hope it was just an oversight when they were doing the schedule," Coyne told the Boston Herald. "I think it's very insensitive to the huge number of people who are Christians and fans."
In 1995 and 2000, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, then the head of the archdiocese, allowed local Catholics to eat meat when St. Patrick's Day fell on a Friday during Lent.
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
By Associated Press
March 15, 2004, 6:13 AM CST
BOSTON -- Opening Day ticket holders at Boston's Fenway Park this year who are Catholic face a dilemma: the Boston Archdiocese said since the afternoon game against the Toronto Blue Jays falls on Good Friday, they must refrain from eating meat, including hot dogs, sausages and pepperoni pizza.
"We're already getting all kinds of requests for dispensation to eat meat," said the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, a spokesman for the archdiocese. However Coyne said that after a meeting to discuss the requests, Boston church leaders decided a baseball game was too weak an excuse to duck the no-meat rule
"I would hope it was just an oversight when they were doing the schedule," Coyne told the Boston Herald. "I think it's very insensitive to the huge number of people who are Christians and fans."
In 1995 and 2000, Cardinal Bernard F. Law, then the head of the archdiocese, allowed local Catholics to eat meat when St. Patrick's Day fell on a Friday during Lent.
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Confluence
-------------------
Adventurers seek to get to the points
-------------------
By Steve Chawkins
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
July 1, 2003
The plan for the afternoon seemed straightforward enough: Leave the Internet conference in Kuala Lumpur, head for the jungle and find an imaginary dot. On the map, it seemed to be just off the road.
So in pursuit of a little techie fun, a Vermont computer programmer named David Lawrence and his pal, James Seng, bumped and swerved more than 120 miles over tortuous Malaysian highways. As darkness fell, they waded into a swamp, offering themselves up as free lunch for leeches and stinging bugs. They cut themselves on razor-sharp thistles. Seng lost his glasses in the muck and nearly parted with his Birkenstocks. The ooze swallowed Lawrence's leather business-card holder.
Focused on his hand-held global positioning system, Lawrence pushed on. But a couple of hours after they had entered the swamp, the two gave in to heat, nausea and exhaustion. They missed what they had come for: a glimpse of the single spot on Earth where the 4th degree of latitude north and the 102nd meridian of longitude east intersect. Photographed by later travelers, the spot, it turned out, was nothing more than a thick, tangled, wet, fetid, green mess.
But that point -- which the seekers of such things call a "confluence" -- was hardly the point.
"I have a wanderlust," said Lawrence, who in his three-continent quest for confluences has been detained by border guards and nearly struck by lightning. "Yet traveling without a destination seems so random. This gives you a purpose."
It's an aim that has moved thousands of confluence-hunters to scale mountains, tromp through muddy fields, hack into jungles and attempt explaining themselves to incredulous natives from Montana to Mongolia. To confluencers, what is on the spot is not so important. It's the getting there that matters.
Alex Jarrett has shrugged off the get-a-life naysayers for years. Jarrett, 27, is the founder of the Degree Confluence Project. At http://confluence.org/ , it chronicles the effort of volunteers to photograph and describe nearly 16,000 whole-number confluences girdling global land masses. So far 3,000 adventurers have contributed.
"We once made someone's list of the hundred stupidest Web sites," Jarrett said ruefully in an interview. "But now I don't think that would happen. Now you can see that the project has some merit; I call it a sampling of the world."
Jarrett writes computer programs and helps run a recycling service via bicycle in Northampton, Mass. But seven years ago, he was working in Peterborough, N.H. -- just 10 miles from the enticing intersection of 43 degrees north and 72 degrees west.
Pure coordinates
Growing up with a reverence for maps, Jarrett was intrigued by the simple wholeness of those coordinates. Lines of latitude and longitude, it must be said, meet at every spot on Earth. But 43 degrees north, 72 degrees west was uncluttered by the usual subdivisions of minutes and seconds. It was pure. It offered Jarrett a chance to use the nifty GPS device he had recently bought. And it was just a bicycle ride away.
"It was basically a woods by a swamp," he recalled. "We found an interesting-shaped tree there and took a picture of it."
Jarrett told friends and family members about his find. A few got a kick out of it and hunted down other confluences in New England. Then Jarrett started the Web site.
"I can't say I was seriously thinking it would ever get anywhere," he said. "But why not? I just thought it would be interesting to see if anyone else would do this and send me their photos."
The rules were simple. Hunters had to take their photos within 100 meters of a whole-number confluence. If the spot lay on private property, Jarrett encouraged confluencers to seek permission, providing request letters in seven languages on his Web site. The points themselves are on land or within sight of land, except for some spots at the poles, where lines of longitude converge and confluences can be just a mile apart.
Slowly, word of the project spread, piquing the interest of computer and engineering types who were up for a little adventure. At the same time, GPS units, which triangulate signals from satellites, plunged in cost and soared in accuracy. Many now go for as little as $100, and most can pinpoint any spot on Earth within about 15 feet.
Thanks to technology
In Saudi Arabia, oil company engineer Colin Irvine marvels at the technology that has eased his treks through places such as the trackless orange dunes of the 250,000-square-mile Empty Quarter.
"This is definitely GPS country," he writes on the confluence Web site. "If you set up camp and drive away for a look around, you may find your tracks have disappeared within an hour if the wind is blowing. You may pass within 100 meters of camp and never see it behind the next dune, which is strangely like the last dune, and sort of like the next dune . . . "
At last count, 73 of Saudi Arabia's 184 confluences had been visited, many of them by oil expatriates such as Irvine. Some of the confluences are just off whatever passes for a road, leading Irvine to admit a bit of what he calls "confluencial inadequacy."
"I read on the Web site about all these people finding confluences while hanging from ropes, clawing their way through manzanita, or cross-country skiing for 50 miles one way," he wrote after picnicking with friends mid-desert at 26 degrees north, 49 degrees east. "This trip didn't do anything to address this shortfall of self-image, but by God, this time we had chairs and coolers so we could savor the experience."
In fact, confluencing is not just a pastime for granite-jawed, Patagonia-clad thrill-seekers. In California, video game technical artist Spencer Lindsay is one of many confluencers who have packed their children into the van, headed for the Sierra, and made an educational weekend of it.
"The kids really loved it," said Lindsay, who lives in San Diego. "And before we went, it was really important for me to get out the atlas and help them figure out just where we are on our planet."
In Utah, state Judge David Mower has visited 18 of the state's 19 confluences, keeping his eye open for opportunities as he rides a circuit through five remote, rugged counties.
Feelings of exultation
"In my work, I'm scheduled out weeks in advance," he said, but sometimes a case will settle quickly. He will veer off to pick off another confluence. "There's always this feeling of exultation," he said. "I always return to the courtroom refreshed."
With 86 visits in 30 countries under his belt, the undisputed king of confluencing is Peter Mosselberger, captain of a refrigerated cargo ship called the Nova Scotia.
"Frankly, I'm a lazy person," said Mosselberger, who was reached on the docks of Kaliningrad, Russia, while unloading frozen turkeys and chickens from Brazil. "I will not walk 20 miles through the mountains. I do only comfortable confluences."
For some of those, he didn't even have to leave his chair as he piloted his ship past offshore targets from Florida to Finland.
Others were not nearly so comfortable, despite the captain's preferences. Prodded by a local guide, he had to "leap like a he-goat" from hummock to hummock to avoid the quicksand of a treacherous bog in Russia.
"I was scared to death," he said. "We could have disappeared forever."
Beware snakes, crocodiles
In northeast Nigeria, he was wary of snakes and crocodiles as he and his local shipping agent gingerly ambled down a jungle path toward 5 degrees north, 7 degrees east. But what turned them back less than half a mile from the confluence was a crude, manmade structure -- an "idol fence" set up to warn wanderers of the unseen power residing behind it.
Its message: "If you enter this territory without properly sacrificing an animal, you'll be afflicted with an incurable sickness," Mosselberger said.
"I would never dare to violate sacred areas," he added.
About 14 percent of the world's confluences have been bagged, but in the lower 48 states, only 65 of 867 remain unconquered. Many are in the hands of recalcitrant private owners or are on inaccessible government land, including Nevada's famous Area 51, the military base at the center of many a UFO conspiracy theory.
So what does America look like, at least from 802 arbitrary, more-or-less evenly spaced vantage points?
"I've been very surprised that it's not filled in with cities everywhere," said Jarrett, the project's founder. "I've been amazed that there are so few houses."
Yes, some confluencers have found their quarry smack in the middle of a North Carolina townhouse complex, an Ohio factory, a Mississippi trucking firm. But browsing through the Web site's U.S. photos, you discover shot after shot of farms and fields, Eastern hardwood forests and rolling Western plains.
The photos might make a nice coffee-table book one day, but the activity has no real commercial value, Jarrett said. Geography instructors have used confluence quests as a teaching tool, he said, but most confluencers are turned on simply by the thrill of the hunt.
That tickles Miles Hicks, superintendent of golf courses for the city of Santa Cruz, Calif.
Until recently, he didn't know that a wooded area off the 10th fairway of DeLaveaga Golf Course hid 37 degrees north, 122 degrees west. Easily reached in a stroll from the clubhouse, the point has drawn at least 15 confluencers.
"These people really need something to do," Hicks said. "What ever happened to going to Hawaii?"
Copyright (c) 2003, Chicago Tribune
Adventurers seek to get to the points
-------------------
By Steve Chawkins
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
July 1, 2003
The plan for the afternoon seemed straightforward enough: Leave the Internet conference in Kuala Lumpur, head for the jungle and find an imaginary dot. On the map, it seemed to be just off the road.
So in pursuit of a little techie fun, a Vermont computer programmer named David Lawrence and his pal, James Seng, bumped and swerved more than 120 miles over tortuous Malaysian highways. As darkness fell, they waded into a swamp, offering themselves up as free lunch for leeches and stinging bugs. They cut themselves on razor-sharp thistles. Seng lost his glasses in the muck and nearly parted with his Birkenstocks. The ooze swallowed Lawrence's leather business-card holder.
Focused on his hand-held global positioning system, Lawrence pushed on. But a couple of hours after they had entered the swamp, the two gave in to heat, nausea and exhaustion. They missed what they had come for: a glimpse of the single spot on Earth where the 4th degree of latitude north and the 102nd meridian of longitude east intersect. Photographed by later travelers, the spot, it turned out, was nothing more than a thick, tangled, wet, fetid, green mess.
But that point -- which the seekers of such things call a "confluence" -- was hardly the point.
"I have a wanderlust," said Lawrence, who in his three-continent quest for confluences has been detained by border guards and nearly struck by lightning. "Yet traveling without a destination seems so random. This gives you a purpose."
It's an aim that has moved thousands of confluence-hunters to scale mountains, tromp through muddy fields, hack into jungles and attempt explaining themselves to incredulous natives from Montana to Mongolia. To confluencers, what is on the spot is not so important. It's the getting there that matters.
Alex Jarrett has shrugged off the get-a-life naysayers for years. Jarrett, 27, is the founder of the Degree Confluence Project. At http://confluence.org/ , it chronicles the effort of volunteers to photograph and describe nearly 16,000 whole-number confluences girdling global land masses. So far 3,000 adventurers have contributed.
"We once made someone's list of the hundred stupidest Web sites," Jarrett said ruefully in an interview. "But now I don't think that would happen. Now you can see that the project has some merit; I call it a sampling of the world."
Jarrett writes computer programs and helps run a recycling service via bicycle in Northampton, Mass. But seven years ago, he was working in Peterborough, N.H. -- just 10 miles from the enticing intersection of 43 degrees north and 72 degrees west.
Pure coordinates
Growing up with a reverence for maps, Jarrett was intrigued by the simple wholeness of those coordinates. Lines of latitude and longitude, it must be said, meet at every spot on Earth. But 43 degrees north, 72 degrees west was uncluttered by the usual subdivisions of minutes and seconds. It was pure. It offered Jarrett a chance to use the nifty GPS device he had recently bought. And it was just a bicycle ride away.
"It was basically a woods by a swamp," he recalled. "We found an interesting-shaped tree there and took a picture of it."
Jarrett told friends and family members about his find. A few got a kick out of it and hunted down other confluences in New England. Then Jarrett started the Web site.
"I can't say I was seriously thinking it would ever get anywhere," he said. "But why not? I just thought it would be interesting to see if anyone else would do this and send me their photos."
The rules were simple. Hunters had to take their photos within 100 meters of a whole-number confluence. If the spot lay on private property, Jarrett encouraged confluencers to seek permission, providing request letters in seven languages on his Web site. The points themselves are on land or within sight of land, except for some spots at the poles, where lines of longitude converge and confluences can be just a mile apart.
Slowly, word of the project spread, piquing the interest of computer and engineering types who were up for a little adventure. At the same time, GPS units, which triangulate signals from satellites, plunged in cost and soared in accuracy. Many now go for as little as $100, and most can pinpoint any spot on Earth within about 15 feet.
Thanks to technology
In Saudi Arabia, oil company engineer Colin Irvine marvels at the technology that has eased his treks through places such as the trackless orange dunes of the 250,000-square-mile Empty Quarter.
"This is definitely GPS country," he writes on the confluence Web site. "If you set up camp and drive away for a look around, you may find your tracks have disappeared within an hour if the wind is blowing. You may pass within 100 meters of camp and never see it behind the next dune, which is strangely like the last dune, and sort of like the next dune . . . "
At last count, 73 of Saudi Arabia's 184 confluences had been visited, many of them by oil expatriates such as Irvine. Some of the confluences are just off whatever passes for a road, leading Irvine to admit a bit of what he calls "confluencial inadequacy."
"I read on the Web site about all these people finding confluences while hanging from ropes, clawing their way through manzanita, or cross-country skiing for 50 miles one way," he wrote after picnicking with friends mid-desert at 26 degrees north, 49 degrees east. "This trip didn't do anything to address this shortfall of self-image, but by God, this time we had chairs and coolers so we could savor the experience."
In fact, confluencing is not just a pastime for granite-jawed, Patagonia-clad thrill-seekers. In California, video game technical artist Spencer Lindsay is one of many confluencers who have packed their children into the van, headed for the Sierra, and made an educational weekend of it.
"The kids really loved it," said Lindsay, who lives in San Diego. "And before we went, it was really important for me to get out the atlas and help them figure out just where we are on our planet."
In Utah, state Judge David Mower has visited 18 of the state's 19 confluences, keeping his eye open for opportunities as he rides a circuit through five remote, rugged counties.
Feelings of exultation
"In my work, I'm scheduled out weeks in advance," he said, but sometimes a case will settle quickly. He will veer off to pick off another confluence. "There's always this feeling of exultation," he said. "I always return to the courtroom refreshed."
With 86 visits in 30 countries under his belt, the undisputed king of confluencing is Peter Mosselberger, captain of a refrigerated cargo ship called the Nova Scotia.
"Frankly, I'm a lazy person," said Mosselberger, who was reached on the docks of Kaliningrad, Russia, while unloading frozen turkeys and chickens from Brazil. "I will not walk 20 miles through the mountains. I do only comfortable confluences."
For some of those, he didn't even have to leave his chair as he piloted his ship past offshore targets from Florida to Finland.
Others were not nearly so comfortable, despite the captain's preferences. Prodded by a local guide, he had to "leap like a he-goat" from hummock to hummock to avoid the quicksand of a treacherous bog in Russia.
"I was scared to death," he said. "We could have disappeared forever."
Beware snakes, crocodiles
In northeast Nigeria, he was wary of snakes and crocodiles as he and his local shipping agent gingerly ambled down a jungle path toward 5 degrees north, 7 degrees east. But what turned them back less than half a mile from the confluence was a crude, manmade structure -- an "idol fence" set up to warn wanderers of the unseen power residing behind it.
Its message: "If you enter this territory without properly sacrificing an animal, you'll be afflicted with an incurable sickness," Mosselberger said.
"I would never dare to violate sacred areas," he added.
About 14 percent of the world's confluences have been bagged, but in the lower 48 states, only 65 of 867 remain unconquered. Many are in the hands of recalcitrant private owners or are on inaccessible government land, including Nevada's famous Area 51, the military base at the center of many a UFO conspiracy theory.
So what does America look like, at least from 802 arbitrary, more-or-less evenly spaced vantage points?
"I've been very surprised that it's not filled in with cities everywhere," said Jarrett, the project's founder. "I've been amazed that there are so few houses."
Yes, some confluencers have found their quarry smack in the middle of a North Carolina townhouse complex, an Ohio factory, a Mississippi trucking firm. But browsing through the Web site's U.S. photos, you discover shot after shot of farms and fields, Eastern hardwood forests and rolling Western plains.
The photos might make a nice coffee-table book one day, but the activity has no real commercial value, Jarrett said. Geography instructors have used confluence quests as a teaching tool, he said, but most confluencers are turned on simply by the thrill of the hunt.
That tickles Miles Hicks, superintendent of golf courses for the city of Santa Cruz, Calif.
Until recently, he didn't know that a wooded area off the 10th fairway of DeLaveaga Golf Course hid 37 degrees north, 122 degrees west. Easily reached in a stroll from the clubhouse, the point has drawn at least 15 confluencers.
"These people really need something to do," Hicks said. "What ever happened to going to Hawaii?"
Copyright (c) 2003, Chicago Tribune
