The Bell & Howell Language Master

First post of the year, I hope this finds you well (or at least better than I've been with a fever and head cold.)

The Bell & Howell Language Master was a language teaching system used by language and speech therapy instructors in the 1960s and '70s. It used 3 1/2" x 9" inch cards with a strip of magnetic tape that ran near the bottom of the card with two tracks that ran for 3 seconds. One for the instructor, the other for the student. It allowed switching between tracks to compare instructor/student pronunciation. 


*Guitar effects pedal (as shown in the video) not included.

The School Lunch Crisis

Image: KCPQ-TV

You may have heard about the outrageous incident in Kent, WA recently when a student who was 26 cents short on his school lunch card was not only denied his lunch, but the lunch was tossed in the trash and the student was humiliated in front of his peers.

http://q13fox.com/2014/06/11/kent-father-angry-after-son-is-denied-lunch-and-humiliated-at-local-middle-school/#axzz34vFqNfvM

It's not just in Kent, but around the nation and for far too long, we've been hearing similar reports of children being denied school lunches and bullied by the very people serving them due to an inability to pay.

It is a national embarrassment. And enough's enough. This is the United States of America. These are our kids, not inmates at a North Korean prison camp.

There was a time my mom couldn't afford my school lunch money. The lunch ladies served me anyway and gave me a form to take home to my mom about the reduced or free school lunch program. She'd send me back with it next day with her information. I still got lunch. Problem solved thereafter.

Why can't it still be this way?

Sometimes parents lost jobs, sometimes there would be financial hardships. The principals and teachers knew this and they would eagerly talk to parents and see if their kids qualified for reduced or free school breakfast/lunch programs until they got back on their feet. Sometimes a bully took your lunch money. It made no difference. You still got a decent lunch.

And we funded these programs well during the '50s, '60s and '70s. Granted, it wasn't the greatest taste explosion for some of us.

I couldn't wait for pizza day!

But for others, we'll never forgot them because they got us by and we looked forward to them, no matter what they seemed like to us.

People then never viewed it as a problem. Or as "socialism". Or any myriad of disgusting and completely WRONG analogies that never even appeared in the public discourse until the 1980s when the Reagan administration made devastating cutbacks in public education and drastically reducing funding for school lunch programs. A precedent that has only gotten worse.

Since that time, public education funding has dropped even further, leaving school districts to make up the balance in unpaid meals or to serve special alternate lunches for indigent children (a concept I find revolting because it marks poor children in the lunchroom, making them targets for bullies. Poor children in the school lunch program deserve exactly the same lunch offerings in the same portions as everyone else.)

School lunch programs were once viewed as an investment in children. An investment that has paid off incalculably since the 1940s. And we never thought twice about it. And it's time to let our representatives in Congress know we view it that way again. Because it is an investment in our children's education. And one of the worthiest.

But instead of talking about it, some of us are DOING something about it.

Come to Louie G's Pizza in Fife, WA Friday July 11th at 7:30pm for a spectacular all ages benefit show featuring cutting edge Northwest music from Boneshaker, Alien Nation, Q-Dot, Mister Von and Gossamer. Proceeds to go to a special fund to help needy local school children afford school lunches. A great night of music and fun for all at the Northwest's BEST place for live music, food and fun for the whole family. Voted among the Best in Western Washington by KING-5's Evening Magazine.

And please donate what you can to help.

https://www.facebook.com/events/490991297700830/

Admiral Stereo Demonstration Record, 1958

 

A classic stereo demonstration record from the late 1950s. With that PHANTOM Third Channel! This video sounds good on any decent stereo output. I have my computer patched in the AUX input of my 1983 vintage Sony STR-VX300 stereo receiver and it REALLY sounds good.

The label looks strangely like Decca's multi-color bar label of the early '60s to the early '70s. But it was made by RCA. Hmmm......

Part 15 Radio

If you ever wanted to run a radio station (and who hasn't?), there is a way you can do it without a lot of money, that has small, but fair enough range (about a mile, more or less - enough for a local neighbourhood) and without a license - legally.

There's a little known sub-section in the Code of Federal Regulations under Title 47 called Part 15. Under this section, you can legally operate a small radio transmitter running no more than 100mW (milliwatts) and a maximum antenna height of three meters (about 10 feet) on AM. (FM is much more limited in signal strength and smaller in antenna height.)

You can operate on either AM of FM. But the range you get with FM is much more limited (about 250 feet) than with AM. AM is by far the best method of transmitting under Part 15 rules.

Most Part 15 operators transmit in the upper portion of the AM dial, in that "expanded band" area that appeared on AM radios made past 1988 between 1600-1700 on the AM dial where there are fewer stations. Range is actually farther on these frequencies than those on the lower end of the AM dial. Which was something I never understood because technically, the lower end of the dial always seemed to have the farthest broadcast range of most AM stations. But I think that's factoring in grounding and other high-end engineering methods (that's one downside with AM, you have to really study radio transmission methods and theory.)

Here are some web sites that can get you started on this incredible little hobby:

http://www.hobbybroadcaster.net

http://www.part15.us

http://www.lpam.net

Halloween Hits: Georgie - Scholastic Records 1968

                                       

And the B-Side:  Mother Ghost Nursery Rhymes and Other Tricks and Treats

I think everyone who ever went to a suburban public elementary school in the '70s still remembers the Scholastic Book Club flyers and the books, magazines and records they offered within

Dynamite magazine anyone?

Scholastic Records was a sort of like Disneyland Records, if Disneyland were heavier into story books for their literary value than the commercial exploitation of them.

The Georgie record were based on a series of books written by Robert Bright, an author of children's books and it's pretty safe to say Georgie (written in 1944) was inspired by Casper The Friendly Ghost (first featured in 1939.) You could not hear this record and not make some immediate connection with Casper. Both are friendly ghosts, both are lonesome. Both have human relation problems.

The series continued with Georgie and The Robbers and Georgie and The Noisy Ghost.
 
Georgie was narrated by voice actor Bob McFadden, best known for his commercial work - he was the voice of Frankenberry in the Count Chocula cereal commercials.

Bob McFadden also had a Halloween hit in 1958, "The Mummy" for Brunswick Records.

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PeeChees

The Classic PeeChee

The PeeChee folder: For almost 70 years, PeeChees had remained virtually unchanged until the last few years when they changed the design and added colours.

Schoolhouse Rock!

Schoolhouse Rock! was a series of educational shorts that ran Saturday mornings on ABC-TV from 1973 to 1985 and for a generation became a regular part of our Saturday mornings.

I remember when my mom first heard "Unpack Your Adjectives"

She looked at the TV and said "That's Blossom Dearie"

"What?" I asked

"The person singing this is Blossom Dearie" she said

"Why are you calling me dearie?

My mom rolled her eyes.

"I mean the person singing this song on TV! She's Blossom Dearie!"

"Why are you calling her 'dearie'? You don't even know her."

My mom facepalmed.

"One more time.....Her NAME is Blossom Dearie!....That is her NAME! She was a jazz singer from back in my day. I saw her at a nightclub in San Fransisco when I was in nurses training"

"That's weird"

"And so are you."

RIP Jerry Nelson a.k.a The Count

Funk & Wagnalls

They were found at any given supermarket. The ubiquitous Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia store displays.

In the pre-internet age, the Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia sets were fun to collect. And they lured you in with the first book, which sold for a penny or some ridiculously low price. But each week, you had to buy more volumes at the not-so-cheap regular prices to complete your set.

Once you completed the collection and you just had to pick up the Y-Z book, you were often rewarded with a matching dictionary set or even a small veneer bookcase for your encyclopedia. 

Funk & Wagnalls also got into the record business in the '70s, offering a collection of light classical and opera music called The Joy Of Great Music, using the same scheme as their encyclopedias...

The Spirit of '76

Slime

 

Slime was a product made by Mattel that simply grossed out EVERY Mom. Or most girls.

Slime was a goo made out of guar gum (a non-toxic substance used primarily as a low calorie food thickening additive, mostly for sweets and dietary products to help give you that "full" feeling) and dyed a bright glow-in-the-dark lime green colour. It's main demographic was boys because hey, we LOVED something that grossed out everyone around us. Not many girls we knew were adventurous enough to touch the stuff back then either. Moms (ESPECIALLY MINE) HATED it. "You had better not let any of that get on my carpet!" my mom demanded, thinking it would STAIN the carpet (it never did). And woe if you DID drop it anywhere. Because the biggest problem with Slime, beyond the parental, school and girl gross-out factor is the fact it was ONLY meant to be held with CLEAN hands (and boys? HA!) and NOTHING MORE.

Because Slime picked up ANYTHING you accidentally dropped it on. But this was also educational as you begin a new appreciation for how MUCH dust and ick are on your floors and carpets at any given time. Or how much the pets ACTUALLY shed.

And that's why it eventually grossed out boys too.

Later versions of Slime came in yellow and purple colours with soft plastic eyeballs and worms.  

Highlights For Children

When I was a little kid (before I discovered Mad and later, Rolling Stone, Highlights was my favourite magazine.

It was fun and simple reading. And who could forget Goofus & Gallant? All I know is who had offspring. And it wasn't Gallant (even then, I was expecting a "coming out" issue of some kind.)

The articles were mostly factoids and basic American history. But it was the way they were written that I liked. Although Highlights avoided controversial topics of any kind (which during the years of Watergate hearings breaking into my favourite afternoon cartoon shows and my mom calling Nixon a duplicitous lying son of a bitch at the TV, wasn't such a bad thing.) I was already hearing enough of it.

  

More Actual Books

Newcomb Classroom Phonograph (1970s)

I still remember these. They were rugged, dependable and incredibly HEAVY. The tone arm itself must've weighed a pound......

Texas Instruments Little Professor (1978)

How many of you remember the Texas Instruments Little Professor? I had one of these.

It was an elementary level math game that displayed basic math problems. What made it so popular was electronic computing was a brand new thing in the '70s. Kids actually looked forward to doing math with this!