Hello, Great Fest as always. It seemed shorter this year which I think was due to the extra day last year. I did not get to do everything I planned, like listening to trunked radio systems, but that is typical. Too much equipment, Too little time.
I did not find any additional information in Providence at the RI Historical Society but searching archives can be hit or miss. The lead came from another discovery at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick. I saw a copy of letters, nearly two hundred year old, that describe the life of a direct ancestor. It was either in his own hand or transcribed. I like watching a program called "History Detectives" on PBS. It is a kid's program but they talk about archives and doing research. Genealogy shares a lot of the same techniques as other history research. I depend on various archives that hold histories of people and places for most of my research. Sheldon gave a talk about making provisions for things relating to your radio hobby after you die. Beside equipment there may be recordings, QSLs, etc that are pieces of history. We tend not to label things well because we know what they are. In Genealogy this results in the "Guess who is in the picture" problem. It reminds me of a song by Eric Bogle I played on the way home called "No Man's Land". The singer is resting by the graveside of a 19 year old soldier who died in 1916 and wonders if his photograph is a cherished one or just an old one of an unknown person. This comic references the death of one of the D&D creators and was recently released. http://xkcd.com/393/ A good portion of the Listening Lounge is audio that has been collected by people and placed in an archive somewhere. A lot of audio and video material has been lost. It is surprising some of the audio and video that are on The Internet. People are making websites into ad hoc distributed archives with interesting content like "Spiders on Drugs". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc The problem is what happens to the content when people and companies die or move on to other things. It is strange to see Electronics I used back in the 1970s and 1980s in Museums now. I could see receivers like a AOR 7030+ in a museum 20, 30, 40, etc years from now. Rather than just a static display of equipment the museum should also display static. Have in the background audio from various shortwave stations fade up out of low level static and back down again with an occasional cross-fade of two stations. Play a bit of the VOA Jazz Program, the theme to Radio Newsreel, Enver Hoxha speeches, bits of historical events, etc. I wonder if in 30 or 40 years anyone in the totally digital world will know what analog static sounds like. It is like kids today not knowing what direction clockwise is because of all the digital clocks. So looking back on the fest I found some interesting connections. 73 Eric _______________________________________________ Swlfest mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swlfest To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or visit the URL shown above. For more information on the Fest, visit: http://www.swlfest.com http://swlfest.blogspot.com
