About 10:45pm.
A little housekeeping. I somehow got the name of the Maudie co-star mixed up in my head. I have no excuse. I should have checked it, but I didn't. Mike Cranston pointed out, here and on my Facebook, that it was Ethan Hawke. Of course, he was right, and I was wrong. I will leave my original mistake on the post, but Mike's and my comments on yesterday's post will show the correction.
And a couple people have suggested I supply a précis of these blog posts when they go up. That, I cannot do. I use a software package called dlvr.it (get it?) that polls the blog every 15 minutes or whatever it is. When it sees there is a new blog post, it produces a tweet pointing to the new post. That tweet, in return, feeds my Facebook timeline. Dlvr.it also updates the Bevboy's Blog Facebook fan page. Unless they have changed the parameters of dlvr.it, there is no provision for it to summarize the blog post content.
I automated the whole thing to save me time. For years I would write a blog post and then manually create a tweet and then a Facebook update. When I learned I could tweet and that would populate my Facebook, I was elated. When I discovered that I could automate the entire process simply by linking the blog to dlvr.it, and have it take care of the notification process, it was like I was 12 years old again, if you catch my drift.
The best I can do is follow the suggestion put forth by a couple of people, which is to use post titles that are more meaningful than, say, the day of the week. I did that recently for the "Halifax Shame" posts, which reached a significant audience, especially after Tim Bousquet at the Examiner liberally quoted from it in his Thursday Halifax Examiner edition.
So, that's what I will try to do, going forward. Better blog post names.
Anyway, how was your day? I got up not long after I got the wrong answer on CBC's Weekend Morning's "Mystery Vocalist" contest. A couple hundred thousand people heard me. I have been wrong before, and will continue to be wrong, until I am right, at which time I will win another fabulous prize consisting of whatever is stuck to their shoes and hasn't gone out with the recycling yet. They need a bigger budget.
After breakfast, I returned to the Archives. Got there around 11:45 and stayed there for four hours. I spent most of that time researching some unsolved murders. One of them yielded a treasure trove of articles. I had forgotten about this poor man's murder, but when it happened over 30 years ago, it was a huge story that occupied both daily papers for days and days.
Another unsolved murder was one I had not searched for information about in the Daily News, just the Herald. In the 1980's and into the 1990's, they covered crime like nobody's business. If it bled, it led. But by 1996, the time of the second unsolved I researched today, the paper had been sold to Harry Steele I think it was; and he had proceeded to make cuts to the paper. They barely had any reporters left. Where once they would have been all over this particular story, today I only found a couple brief pieces which were unsigned, which tells me it was just rewritten wire copy. One article, they had the wrong date on the header for that page. Just pure sloppiness.
The Daily News limped along for another 12 years. They started covering crime again, but the paper had an ever-increasing emphasis on columnists, who I'm guessing were either freelance or paid a crap salary. Very few reporters. What a damn shame.
Anyway, I also looked up a few other things during my four hours there. I looked up from time to time. A couple of times, I saw Dan Conlin, who is the guy who runs Pier 21 now. For years he was the main guy at the Maritime Museum.
I quit for the day around 3:45 and went down to the locker to retrieve my coat. Dan was there, getting his. We chatted for a few minutes. I had last seen him at a Kingsport Gala Days a couple of years ago. My Frank binder has the Bevboy caricature on it, and he remembered me from that, plus a few exchanges we had had over the years. He asked if I had found out anything else about Theda Bara since we had last communicated. I told him what little else I had discovered, and he told me a few things about the social aspect of those who lived in that section of the province during the 1920's. Lots of rum runners to the States, thanks to prohibition. Maybe that's what helped attract Theda and Charles Brabin to summer here for 20 years.
I speculated that they sold the property, which they called Baranook, because by 1941, when they sold it, their heyday was long behind them. Theda had not acted in years and years. And Charles, a film director, was all but unhireable after some career missteps in the early 1930's. They may have sold it because they needed the money. I don't know. Just guessing.
We talked a bit more. Gave him a blog business card. Parted ways. I grabbed a couple slices of pizza at a place in Fairview on the way home. Hello, Velos Pizza guy. I went there quite often when they were on Almon Street, but they shut that place down a year or so ago. I took a slice home to Patricia, who ate it with the enthusiasm of a person who no longer has to cook dinner.
We talked about getting some groceries tonight, but stayed in. We watched "Office Christmas Party" tonight. At some point, I fell asleep but woke back up during the actual party, which resembles no Christmas party I have ever attended.
Spent some time trying to find something else to watch tonight, but we were both getting tired, so I came down here to write this blog post before turning in.
So, that was my day. How was yours?
And, what are you wearing, anyway? I could use the context.
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
No comments:
Post a Comment