Bernie Goldbach was in the jump seat of Golden Bear over Golden Gate in the Summer of 79.
OVER ON AUDIOBOO, one of the most congenial social networks on the planet, several people are discussing noise overhead, in the street, in their gardens and in their earbuds. To each, their own.
I used to live less than a mile from several runways, so not only do I know the roar of a turbofan and the blast of an afterburner, but I also remember the taste of JP4 exhaust wafting over my morning coffee. All those things came crashing home to me as beautiful noise in an Audioboo.
I'M TRYING TO figure out how to squeeze a free 20 minutes out of a normal afternoon.
It takes me that long to cobble together a blog post but during a normal academic day, I don't have 20 minutes of uninterrupted time--except the blocks of time I spend in the classroom.
This is the worst academic schedule I have ever endured--but I won't bore you with the details. I know that by writing this short post during our Spring Break that I will have alerted people to the need to equitably balance workload.
Part of the difficulty I'm experiencing arises from a three structural changes that evolved on the heels of major decisions made by the Irish Minister for Education three years ago.
I know exactly where I was seated when I heard of his death because I couldn't get out of my chair in Kilkenny after seeing an email with the subject "Sorry to hear the news." My cousin Debbie sent the email while working on a bridge crew with the Santa Fe railroad in Iowa. The outpouring of condolences from around the States kept the home phone engaged for hours. And when I finally got through to my mother, she was as stoic as ever.
We returned to the States to bury dad in the same cemetery as my grandparents. And Pennsylvania weather marked the occasion by burying our borrowed car under a fresh 22 inches of white snow. We'll never forget that week in February 2003. And we need to work out a way to visit Pennsylvania on the anniversary of George Goldbach's passing before the end of this decade.
Bernie Goldbach in Ireland | C-130 shot in Minnesota.
I HAVE LOGBOOKS in the house that bring back memories of flights involving the Central Security Service. One of those CSS flights involved opening our doors in flight.
I often wonder if I will ever take snippets of the adventures I enjoyed and weave them into a fictional account of a young pilot going about the business of flying the flag over foreign lands. I've got the storyline percolating in my brain and often wake up in the middle of the night remembering some white knuckle moment.
I rarely got to see the view of Loadmaster Dylan Strom in the photo because I was up front doing the driving. However, I've five jumps out the side and back of several aircraft so I know the sight and sound of hitting the slipstream and watching the silk canopy pop open overhead.
Bernie Goldbach in Ireland | Photo of Stephanie Lower in Maryland.
I KEEP A JOURNAL that spans various sorts of media, including some old cassette tapes that I'm digitising. I stumbled upon one from Stephanie Lower on the anniversary of her death.
For 2013, I'm trying to finish each week with a "Found" item and an old tape--this one from June 1990-- complete with pops and hisses, qualifies as a major find. It also comes with all the artefacts of the cassette era as listeners will discover in the audio clip below.
I shared the audio clip to the Audioboo community and immediately connected with audio engineers who offered very helpful suggestions about how to eliminate the irritating hum accompanying Stephanie's voice at various intervals.
Bernie Goldbach in Drogheda | Little Dylan on the mic.
I LEARN A LOT by listening to my children. And I learn a lot of what I've missed by listening to others tell me what they're hearing.
That's happening now during the holiday season as our year-and-a-half-old crawls at high speeds towards new things he can see within his reach. He discovered a karaoke machine on the floor of his cousins' sitting room and immediately began using the mic as it was designed. He imitates what he sees around the house, giving me a view of what I might see in the mirror.
I've started making short audio recordings of him interacting with his world. I'm using the Audioboo app to make and share his noises, then saving the uploaded audio into my Evernote account where I've a folder just for Dylan Goldbach. Dylan's vocabulary is very limited at the moment but his reactions are very astute and he commands responses from the big people in his life, even people who have never seen him, like Jackie Rumble (aka TheBooMagnet) in Canada. She made the audio clip below.
Bernie Goldbach in Cashel | Photo of a Moleskine note.
I SPEND A FEW MINUTES every two months setting up the front and back matter in my Moleskine journals. I have started thinking more about elements of manuscripts since becoming immersed in Scrivener.
Front Matter. I use plain black Moleskines so there's no cover art. However, at least a dozen of the 190 pages in each Moleskine get hijacked by Mia for her art work. I'm going to elevate some of this Art by Mia to becoming cover art or sleeve art on projects
Title Page. If I ever hope to create an eBook from one of my Moleskines, I need to create the title page that automatically opens when viewing my (upcoming) Moleskine book on an eReader. The title page is minimalist. It show the book’s title, author’s name, and publishing company.
Dedication. Witty dedications work best. They help readers bond with authors (or discard them as a result of a confusing dedication).
Copyright. I've started putting Creative Commons Copyright images directly on some of my Moleskine pages because I'm snapping and saving the pages into Evernote where they can be shared with the world.
Epigraph. I'm saving quips and quotes for the beginning of my Moleskines. They can help put my journaling into context. A lot of the fragments we hear uttered by our five-year-old would fit as epigraphs.
Preface. I visit the preface of my Moleskines to update myself on how my journaling has evolved. A good preface also frames the context of my current journal.
Back Matter. I've learned to appreciate back matter after purchasing dozens of Kindle e-books.
Note from the Author. I write a note of thanks to readers, imagining that my grandson will stumble upon one of my Moleskines and discover something I've written for him. Notes from authors also passes along contact details, escpecially the hyperlinked places where they can hear me talk through earbuds. Just like Eoin Purcell, I believe the "best time to sell to a reader is when they’ve just finished enjoying one of your books".
Bernie Goldbach wants to write more. And get paid for it.
Bernie Goldbach on Luas | Photo snapped at Red Cow.
ONE WAY SMALL communities get better transport services is by connecting on main lines. That is the lesson learned with Irish Rail, motorways and maybe institutions of higher education.
But often these efficiencies appear as algorithms in Change Management spreadsheets. The impact on the ground is different for some at the bottom, as suggested in an Irish Times piece by Carl O'Brien on a possible merger between the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) and University College Dublin. The move has been mooted since the Hunt Report was published. If the merger happened, oh would change the status of NCAD, the origins of which date back more than 265 years.
The Irish Times reviews several sensitivities associated with the possible merger, including the ability for NCAD to retain its corporate identity. The institutional identity, core ethos and staffing issues deserve careful consideration by NCAD staffers because they could be easily subordinated to ruthless amalgamation of assets.
If I worked in NCAD, I would ask my local union organizer what kind of surprises lie on the interlined road ahead. You can rest assured that there is no air for quango centres of expertise within the streamlined departmental structures of 21st century higher education in Ireland.
Carl O'Brien -- "NCAD and UCD in talks over possible merger" in The Irish Times, December 8, 2012.
Bernie Goldbach has journal entries written while working for 36 years and was downsized twice during management initiatives that closed down his parent organizations.
I HAVE ISSUES with O2-Ireland's standard billing fees for 3G broadband because if I use the service as my primary data connection, I exceed my allowance before half the month is finished.
I run both O2 and 3Ireland MiFi service in my daily routine and rack up at least 25 GB of data usage over the air. Once I use 15 GB with O2, any additional broadband usage costs an inordinate amount of money. As the screenshot shows, O2 charged me a fee equal to an entire month's broadband for two days of service.
Part of my O2 usage pattern is a tribute to the powerful upstreaming service offered by O2. The O2 mobile broadband service is well worth the contract but it simply is not fair to set power users up for bill shock because of a fee schedule that is designed to extract immense profit from known usage patterns.
