Memories

Something’s in the Way

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“You will remember nights like this,” Mom would say with a smile.

* * * *
For those aware that there is a thing called the sky, every so often those of us located on the continental United States are given the sight of a full lunar eclipse during a full moon. This last happened one year ago last September. It was not only a lunar eclipse during a full moon, but it was a “supermoon,” as online newspaper headline writers insisted.

The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle; it varies from 221,000 miles away to just over 252,000 miles away. Last night, it was at perigee, or its closest point in its orbit, and that coincided with the full moon. Thus, the full moon last September looked enormous: 14% larger than the average full moon and many times brighter than average. And then the Earth’s shadow took it away in an eclipse, because that’s what the Earth does.
Read More

The Sidewalks of No Job

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Being disabled and collecting a tiny-but-steady income means that I no longer need to do a few things:
Read More

Ad Vice

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Lies, damn lies, and ad sales: If one fact yields 20 further facts and you know them all, you are very smart.

* * * *
Our newspaper’s weekly circulation was a closely guarded exaggeration. The circulation manager knew the number, the editorial department knew it, and the advertising manager knew it. The newspaper’s circulation was about 2000 copies per week. And now you know it, too.

The pliability of the words “circulation,” “copies,” “newspaper,” and “week” was tested with each and every ad sales phone call. This is because if we told an advertiser the (correct) 2000-per-week number, that advertiser might have asked us to pay them for the honor of placing their ads in our publication; thus, our ad sales manager gave them a number ten times larger. More often than not, they were told that over 20,000 pairs of eyes “saw” any given issue of the newspaper. Actually, in a laudable effort at a specificity that would grant our numbers a sheen of legitimacy, they were given a figure of “21,000 readers.”
Read More