Nice view. It's the pond and flowers in a courtyard in the Old Folks' Home, as we used to call these places. It has a nice name and a great rep and marvelous staff, and it's just beautiful. I don't know if anyone has mental pictures of Old Folks' Homes, but you might think of some place that looks like a hotel where people somehow neglect to check out, then get a letter that says their house burned down, and they nod and settle in with acceptance and resignation. Or it's a grim institutional bin with bored orderlies pushing around vacant sacks in blue pajamas.

You can well imagine my horror Sunday night when I saw there weren’t any pictures on the Bleat. I’d forgotten to upload the 0225 04 folder. After all these years. How could I? Well, because I’d been harried beyond measure on Friday, before we left. Let me tell you how things were around Jasperwood: I didn’t pack until Friday night. Usually I am ready to roll the day before, all squared away with toiletries packed, cords sorted, socks balled, and so on. But every spare moment had been spent on endless fine-tuning of the tribute video, and wife . . . “Requested,” shall we say, a change at 9:45 PM, which meant sending new versions to all the backups. Before I left the house I had to be sure I had the two videos on iPad, laptop, and phone, and all the necessary cabling. That included 3 HDMI cables, from three different suppliers, in case thy were the cord equivalent of the egg whisker or nice Amazon jacket that just ripped in the armpit.

So. Here’s the plan. Check in to the hotel, then go to the venue for the family dinner. It’s at a nice golf course. (This is not the venue for the large reception, which is at a different nice golf course.) I get there early, get out my gear and start hooking things up. I find the proper HDMI input and start searching through the menu for HDMI input. This being a Samsung of modern vintage, I get it; I have one too, and know where the input menu is. Except it isn’t there. Rooting around the back I find there’s a cable box hooked to the back with Velcro, and this is interceding between the TV and me. I rip it out with manly force, disconnect everything and connect directly to the TV, and, after jabbing the remote repeatedly, I find the proper input. Picture appears on the screen. All good. Except it’s hideously pixilated.

One of the staff guys steps up to help. He gets a much thicker HDMI cord - which means the picture won’t be pixilated because it has more space to get through, right??? J/k - and we connect through a HDMI-USBC dongle he conjures out of somewhere. By now it’s time for the show. As I’m going back through settings I realized to my absolute horror that this thing has some sort of Voice Assist enabled, which means a high-pitched robot voice speaking very very quickly reads every word on the screen, and every time I go back in the menu it starts shouting out all the options. When I land on the right place and the video is visible, I turn up the volume, and the TV shouts VOLUME60 VOLUME61 VOLUME62 VOLUME63 and so on. This does not set the right mood, shall we say. But it’s working. And so we go.

VENUE 2: the funeral. I am instantly relaxed because this is a mega church and they are made for AV. The two guys running the boards are named, and I am not kidding, Jacob and Isiah. I explain our options for getting the video into their system and they land on USB Stick, of course. This gets dumped into the main Mac and run through the 1080 projector. Looks fantastic. Technical run through for volume. I walk around the hall to see if there’s any spots where the music is too loud, because there’s a section where I realized I should have faded up slower. Not a problem, really. We’re good. But then Jacob and Isiah go, and the guy who’ll be running the boards shows up. Old School AV Geek and God bless him for it. We start talking cords and adaptors, and he shows me what he has in his bag: DisplayPort to HDMI. He has VGA to HDMI, which I goggle at like it’s a mutant in a jar of preserving fluid in a traveling freak show.

All goes well.

VENUE 3: the last reception. I go straight to the main room. The original plan was to have the video playing in three rooms, but I judge from the mood of those small rooms and the position of the TV that this is not likely or wise. Go for the big one in the main room. Open bag, get out the cords, get out the iPad and laptop. Fire up the videos. Try the iPad first. TV is flush against the wall; get out the flashlight to see where the HDMI is - ah! Unplug, replug, call up the inputs . . .

REMOTE DOES NOT WORK

Well, it works, but it’s sluggish. I ask the concierge for assistance and she gets another remote. You think “no, that’s not how it works,” but this one did seem to have a better relationship with the TV. Eventually I find the HDMI input and of course, nothing shows up. Of course. OF COURSE. Swap cords: no. So it’s not the cord. Swap outputs: no, it’s not the output. Dammit. Flop Sweat. Ah - what’s this? The inputs are in a box that feels loose. Another box held on by Velcro. I rip this off. Rudely. There’s the original TV inputs. Ah. Take out the HDMI that goes to the extender box, insert my cords.

NOTHING

But ah, the TV is showing a flash drive input option, only because there is already a drive in there. Otherwise it wouldn’t have show up. Slam in the Flash. Root around in the menu, find the proper submenu, highlight the file, hit PLAY

AND IT WORKS

Thing is, if I had to do this all again today with a different TV I could do it in two minutes. But I won’t.

I really hope I never have to do it again.

I'm talking about this because I don't want to talk about the funeral here. Maybe tomorrow.

It’s 1972. Small-town newspapers, as we’ve seen over the years, serve an important function: they alert the busybodies to everything everyone’s done. Yay, Jr. Girls win at Duback!       Breaking: the chemical we put in the water to make people reverse time no longer works     Well now Every town had an Edna, if they were lucky. Edna Liggin Inducted into Bernice Hall of Fame at Corney Creek PorkFest She was a member of the Bernice Garden Club, was active in Shiloh Baptist Church and spent invaluable time with residents at Pinecrest Manor Nursing Home. Many will also remember her as the “Bookmobile Lady”, traveling from school to school and to every part of the parish. The Gazette will always remember her as a valuable part of the paper for more than 50 years. From her “Sense and Nonsense” column in 1938 under the name “Eddie” to the present “As I See It”, Mrs. Liggin contributed not only her selfless time and energy to both the Gazette and Bernice News Journal but also a part of herself as she shared her love for writing. She borrowed a typewriter for her first writings to recall the burning of the Shiloh church and rebuilding of a new church in 1938 from the Gazette publisher Emmett Lee in 1937. She went on to recapture precious memories of Shiloh and Bernice in earlier days and gave readers much insight on genealogy. Her articles “Bottle Notes”, which went hand-in-hand with one of her favorite hobbies, were published throughout the 1970’s and through the 1980’s she wrote “As I See It” in addition to nostalgic historical pieces. The lady had a style:   Rumbleguts! She probably wailed in despair at this one. PLUTO! NOT FLUTO! Concentrated water? You drank the stuff to move the mail. Pluto Water was a trademark for a strongly laxative natural water product which was marketed in the United States in the early 20th century. The water's laxative properties were from its high native content of mineral salts, with the active ingredient listed as sodium and magnesium sulfate, which are known as natural laxatives. The water's high native content of mineral salts generally made it effective within one hour of ingestion, a fact the company emphasized in their promotional literature. Company advertisements stated the laxative was effective from a half-hour to two hours after ingestion. Another big of home-spun guttyrumbling:       ha ha I guess     When your four-page paper has its entire fourth page running this, well . . . . I suppose, though, that it did. That will do. More 30s ads to fill out the month, and then a Wednesday Misc fro Substack paying customers. Thanks for your visits, and I'll see you around.