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Author: |
Emory Schley |
Created: |
10/4/2006 3:15 PM |
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Readers are invited to comment on any of the items or discussion seen below, or any matter of concern here in Beautiful Marion County! |
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Will Christmas shopping season turn out to be a boom – or a bust? |
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By Emory Schley on
11/30/2007 6:05 AM
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Perhaps it’s a cynicism that comes with old age, but I frequently am afflicted with that old deja vu feeling when confronting the everyday world I live in.
Take for example, the Christmas shopping season, which started off with a bang the morning after Thanksgiving. Many shoppers, all across the country, got up in the middle of the night to take advantage of special pricing sales in many mainline retail establishments. Almost everyone in the retail game offered deep discounts, two-for-one pricing, and all types of extra incentives to entice shoppers to plunge wholeheartedly into their first shopping forays of the holiday season. And it worked. Malls and stores were filled with milling throngs eager to snare whatever bargains they could pounce upon.
But as the buying season progres ...
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A Sunday walk in the woods does a fellow good this time of year |
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By Emory Schley on
11/28/2007 6:00 AM
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Last Sunday, I took a little trip over to the Land Bridge Trailhead located on County Road 475-A just a tad over two miles north of County Road 484. There’s a trail through the woods over to the Land Bridge which straddles I-75. In fact there are several trails through the woods there, one for walkers, one for horses and their riders, yet another for bicyclists.
Sunday was a beautiful day for getting out and enjoying the great outdoor beauty this part of Florida has in such abundance. I’ve been to this particular trailhead and walked to the Land Bridge perhaps dozens of times over the past few years, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen so many others out and about and enjoying Nature’s wonders at the same time. Often in the past, I’ve found I’m the only one on the foot paths, and only occasionally will a ...
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A fantasy come true might not be so great after all |
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By Emory Schley on
11/26/2007 6:00 AM
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One of these days, I’d like to just forget all about the few cares and woes I have, and just float aimlessly down a peaceful, quiet river in a canoe, soaking up the sun, listening to the birds and wildlife along the banks of the river, and the gentle lapping of the water along the length of the canoe. No paddle, no compass, no map, no itinerary, just a peaceful little excursion down the river, letting Nature carry me along with abandon wherever and however it may.
I’m not really sure why I find such an idea so appealing, but it’s one that I’ve entertained in my fantasies for many years. When you start analyzing that wish though, you quickly discover its flaws. Among its shortcomings: What if an alligator tips the canoe over, and you don’t even have a paddle to fend off the beast? What if you plow into a thicket of ...
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Keeping up with growth is a never-ending challenge for officials |
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By Emory Schley on
11/23/2007 5:50 AM
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Last week, I was on vacation, so that’s why there were no blogs written for a period of time. Last Sunday marked the final day of my vacation, but I had to attend to a matter that got inked in on my calendar months ago. I was a guest of the American Jewish Club in the State Road 200 community of On Top of the World where I was invited as a guest speaker. On Top of the World is a gated community, and I recall when the bulldozers first showed up in the area and began toppling trees and ripping out underbrush to make room for the new development.
My wife and I had moved up here in 1971, and many times we traveled SR 200, then still a lonely two-lane roadway that probably saw more wildlife crossing it than automobiles. But times have certainly changed. Now the area is exploding in growth and new developments fill many an architect’s CAD systems, w ...
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Almost time to start on that long, long list of stuff to do |
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By Emory Schley on
11/21/2007 6:05 AM
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The old calendar is slowly closing in on the final days of my career. It’s a time I approach with some trepidation, but with a certain amount of joy as well. My list of things to do after I retire is so long I know, realistically, I’ll never even approach getting all the tasks taken care of, but if I stick to the list, then I certainly won’t lack for anything to do.
And then there’s the matter of travel. There are lots of places in this country I’ve never seen. I do believe I’ve seen more of Europe than I have of the United States. For example, I’ve never seen New York City, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. My eyes have never swept over the wonders of the Grand Canyon, or Yellowstone, or Mount Rushmore. I’ve never been to California, or Chicago, or Las Vegas. Boston, Philadelph ...
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There's just something endlessly fascinating about pi |
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By Emory Schley on
11/19/2007 6:35 PM
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Lots of numbers are endlessly fascinating, but none more so than π. In speech, it’s pronounced “pie,” but in its written form, it’s pronounced more like “pee.” It is, of course, our old friend from geometry and algebra days, the one that allows us to solve math problems that involve circles.
Modern computers have figured out the value of π to a trillion places. In 2002, the value of pi was computed to 1,241,100,000,000 places, or if you’re not very facile with numbers, that’s 1 trillion, 241 billion, 100 million! A trillion, for those a little unsure with numbers of this size, is a million millions, or a 1 followed by 12 zeroes or 10^12. However you look at it, it&rsqu ...
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A little bit of magic, please, Maestro! |
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By Emory Schley on
11/9/2007 5:52 AM
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It’s odd how just a little misdirection and a flair for razzle-dazzle can cause someone else to totally misinterpret what you’re doing to the extent that they are completely baffled. A buddy of mine way back in the fifth grade in grammar school once showed me the secret of a trick he used to do with a rubber band. The effect is this: You show your closed hand, in a fist configuration, to your about-to-be startled spectators. A rubber band is wrapped tightly around the index and ring fingers. Then you quickly open your fist and the rubber band “magically” jumps from the index and middle fingers to the ring and small fingers, apparently “teleporting” itself instantaneously through the first two fingers.
It’s a very simple trick, one you can probably figure out for yourself if ...
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Thank you very much, but no thanks! |
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By Emory Schley on
11/7/2007 6:01 AM
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There are lots of little nit-picking peccadilloes that plague us during our everyday activities. Among the most annoying, at least to me, is whenever I buy some little gee-gaw, the sales clerk always asks if I want a service contract to go with the item. As a marketing tactic, it strikes me that this is not a very sound strategy. It can have a deleterious effect in the mind of the customer. I’m sure this technique adds a lot of additional bucks to the bottom line of the ledger, but most of the experts say service contracts generally aren’t a good idea for the consumer, who winds up paying for repairs that are never made, in most instances.
Most items bought from reputable sources have at least a 30-day warranty on them, and some even longer. That should be long enough to get the item home, open up the packaging, and take the little gee-gaw for ...
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The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything |
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By Emory Schley on
11/5/2007 5:55 AM
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The number 42 has gained a reputation of sorts, far beyond what one might normally expect of a simple two-digit entity. Late author Douglas Adams was apparently quite taken with the enormous significance of the number 42, and he declared it “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” However, it’s not just important in Adams’ “The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” but in many other fields as well.
In the ones and zeros language of binary expression, the language all computers ultimately speak, 42 becomes 101010. It was the jersey number of Pat Tillman at Arizona State University. In the ASCII character code, it represents an asterisk. In the game of cricket, there are 42 laws or ru ...
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A rather lofty challenge to the grammatically inclined |
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By Emory Schley on
11/2/2007 4:51 AM
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In my newspaper column last Tuesday, I related how I had recently written something that required the use of three consecutive punctuation marks, and how I missed my chance at using four-in-a-row in a recent piece I wrote. Then a fellow employee claimed to have used five punctuation marks, consecutively that is, which gave me the brilliant idea of trying to see if anyone could come up with a sentence, using standard English grammatical and punctuation practices, wherein five, six or even seven or more punctuation marks could be used.
In the interest of fairness, we decided that spaces of any kind wouldn’t be allowed, and neither would repeated multiples of the same punctuation mark, like in “!!!”. Also banned from considerati ...
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A sound studio in the palm of your hand... |
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By Emory Schley on
10/31/2007 4:54 AM
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It’s amazing what modern-day technology can accomplish. For my recent birthday, I bought myself a small portable audio recorder, a Zoom H2. Not much bigger than a package of cigarettes, it fits comfortably in the hand. It has not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR built-in microphones which offer an amazing number of choices in recording sounds. It will record in stereo from either the front or the back, offering 90-degree coverage one way and 120-degree coverage the other. Or you can record four-channel audio using both front and back simultaneously.
You’re not restricted to just the built-in microphones either. You can plug in a mic. I have a small binaural mic I use with mine quite frequently. A binaural microphone is a dual microphone with two separate heads. The two ...
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A rather glum day features a sparkling event! |
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By Emory Schley on
10/31/2007 4:50 AM
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Over the weekend, I went to the Ocala Festival of the Arts at McPherson Governmental Complex. The weather was threatening, but artists turned out by the dozens chancing their carefully-wrought works of art to the elements as thousands of eager attendees strolled through the grass covered lanes between the display tents, ogling the sculpture, photography, musical instruments, and brightly hued paintings representing just about every possible genre imaginable. The murky weather produced the occasional mud puddle too, as the ground mushed and squished under the patrons’ feet.
Jack Thursby is a retired Central Florida Community College professor of art who brings considerable skill and enviable talent to his acrylic paintings. I’m always attracted to his work because he produces shadowy a ...
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Aiming for a goal is no guarantee you'll hit it |
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By Emory Schley on
10/29/2007 4:56 AM
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Have you ever stopped to consider what a huge role simple coincidences play in the average person’s life? It’s almost stunning to realize that any number of steps along the way to wherever we find ourselves today could have resulted in a change of direction for our entire lives. It was only by the greatest of coincidences that I met my future wife, some 41 and a half years ago. We never should have met at all, but because of various mis-steps along the path of life, we did finally meet, sparks ignited and soon we were married.
I’ve spent almost four decades in the newspaper game, and that never should have happened either. If not for a few little insignificant steps off the pathway of life, I probably would have wound up in a totally d ...
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Getting acquainted with an old and simple craft |
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By Emory Schley on
10/24/2007 4:48 AM
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I’ve always wondered what it would be like to work with papier-maché. For some reason, that’s one of the activities I missed out on in school somehow. I’ve always thought of papier-maché work as rough and primitive, and much of it does deserve that reputation, I suppose. However, recently, an opportunity came up for me to get some firsthand experience with the stuff.
Of course, I went to the Internet first to check out the available opportunities. I was shocked to find that papier-maché can be worked down to an almost glass-smooth consistency, and one fellow in Russia produces sculptures (or bas-reliefs) with the material that look as good as anything ever created in the fi ...
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A question that repeatedly arises throughout life |
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By Emory Schley on
10/22/2007 4:47 AM
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When I was a child, I used to wonder if I would ever live long enough to make it out of elementary school and into Junior High. Once I did, those thoughts were replaced by wondering if I’d live long enough to make it to Senior High. And when that time inevitably rolled around, I found myself wondering if I would make it long enough to finish high school.
That particular thought, in an unending variety of permutations, has dogged me most of my life. When I was in the Army, I often wondered if I would live long enough to be a civilian again. When my time with Uncle Sam was completed just shortly following my marriage, I used to wonder if I’d live long enough to become a father. With the birth of our firstborn, I distinctly remember wondering if I would live long enough to see her grow t ...
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Flying "TV Tower" gives world a different perspective! |
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By Emory Schley on
10/19/2007 4:50 AM
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Many years ago, I was talking to a fellow on the phone, and when we had concluded our business, he nonchalantly asked, “How’d you like to take a ride Sunday – in an open cockpit airplane?”
“Would I? You bet,” as visions of one of those old bi-planes, like a Sopwith Camel, danced through my head. This guy was a long-time pilot, and a flight instructor, as well as a certified airframe mechanic, I think it’s called. Needless to say, he knew his way around an airplane. The following Sunday, at the appointed time, I showed up at his place, a small airpark he owned in Citrus County just over the county line when you go out State Road 200.
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Here's something you just can't do in Florida |
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By Emory Schley on
10/17/2007 4:49 AM
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Having been born and raised in Florida, I missed out on some of the simple joys of childhood: activities like building a snowman, tobogganing, sledding, skiing, ice-skating and having snowball fights. That’s all OK, because you never miss what you never had. I used to watch all these winter activities on television, and sometimes in the movies, but it was kind of difficult to relate to any of it because of the foreign concept of having anything fall from the skies except rain and occasionally –very occasionally– a bit of hail.
Right after I turned 21, I found myself in a foreign land, far from home and warm weather. I was in Germany then, thanks to the U.S. Army and the communists who built that notorious wall in Berlin.
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Sometimes, you just have to settle for 'close enough' |
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By Emory Schley on
10/15/2007 4:49 AM
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On Friday, Oct. 5, 2007, I wrote about once seeing ol’ Harry S Truman, in the flesh, when I was just a little guy. He was on his way to Key West on one of his fishing trips. This would have been sometime back in the last half of the 1940s.
Some 20 years later, I found myself living and working in Washington, D.C. where I was managing a camera department in a large membership department store named GEM, for Government Employees Mart, or maybe it was Market, I don’t remember for sure.
Anyway, at Christmas time, business was quite heavy, as you might imagine, so I had put on some part-timers to help with the holiday madness. As luck would have it, one of t ...
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It all happened 515 years ago today |
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By Emory Schley on
10/12/2007 4:57 AM
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Five-hundred and fifteen years ago this very day, an excited crew aboard Christopher Columbus' small flotilla sighted land after tossing about for months on an angry, vengeful ocean. At that point in their extended voyage, land must have been the greatest sight they could have been afforded, second only perhaps to an appearance of the Blessed Virgin herself.
And with that sighting, a whole new era opened up for Mankind. Three small ships, the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, opened a path from Old World to New, bringing Western culture to a paradise of forested lands with strange peoples, rolling savannas, mighty rivers, towering mountains and treasures beyond belief. Much has been written about that ...
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The eternal parade that takes place well above our heads |
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By Emory Schley on
10/10/2007 4:55 AM
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Clouds are fascinating entities, don’t you think? They can hug the earth or soar to dizzying heights. They come in lots of different types, and they constantly transmogrify themselves. Clouds are the original “shape-shifters” that one sometimes reads about in science-fiction novels. Watch a bank of clouds for a few moments, and you can see a never-ending parade of new shapes forming as wind, in little puffs and jets constantly impress themselves on the compliant puff-balls.
No human sculptor ever had a more willing material to work with.
It’s not just shapes that capture our fancy with clouds, they come in a dizzying array of colors, too. Have ...
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