Media, media, media,……

2/18/2019

SIMH: “Years I spent in vanity and pride; caring not my Lord was crucified, knowing not it was for me He died, on calvary!”

“Mercy there was great and grace was free, pardon there was multiplied to me, there my burdened soul found liberty, At Calvary!”

….and then my favorite verse:

“Oh! the love that drew salvation’s plan, Oh, the grace that brought it down to man, Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span!, At Calvary!”  What a wonderful song to awaken to and to keep in my mind all day long. (I might have done this already on the blog, but it cannot be repeated often enough.)

This was to be the blog in which I discussed the retailers who use hired help to run their business, but I will reserve that till the next one. This is about the electronic world in which we live. Yesterday, my friend, Alex asked me if I was still doing Monday night live bible class on Zoom. I answered yes and he suggested I do Facebook Live in addition to open up the message to more audience. Several others do their Sunday and/or Wednesday messages on FB Live, so this wasn’t new to me as a platform, I just never have availed myself to it because of my innate fear of things which go wrong when I touch electronics. But I thought about it and took a swipe at it and—good grief! it really was simple!.

So, last night at 7pm, Engineer Jerry actually started both Zoom (live with people who can talk back to me or ask questions) and FB Live (a social media) at the same time. Less than a hundred years after a sitting president spoke for the first time to the entire country on national radio! (In 1924, Calvin Coolidge was urged by his political compadres to go on radio and speak to the nation about his being elected to a full term as president. He finally relented and said he would. His speech was something like this: “My fellow Americans, this is your President, tomorrow: go vote. Thank you and goodnight.” Modern day POTUS wannabes should take note: he won.)

Last night, live action videoing on the two media available to me, I spoke a lot longer than the 1924 president did. Probably some who heard and saw me wish I had been as brief as Silent Cal, but I wasn’t trying to get elected. I was trying to point out some things hard to get across without an hour, or so, to get it said. What amazes me more than the  fact that someone would watch me for an hour is this: The media—both Zoom and FB are flawless on both video and audio. And my hope is (of course) that I didn’t do anything that would be a detriment to people seeing and believing the truth of God’s word. but, if it can be done on these two media well, then I shall attempt it each Monday night as long as I can. I really appreciate the feedback from all you who responded on both last evening and hope you’ll continue to be blessed by the effort.

I’ve seen the rise of TV from 9” round tubes, 1949 Crosley, to semi-round RCA Victor, to horrible color (1956 World Series—Don Larsen’s perfect game), to what network’s referred to as “living color” in the ‘60s. When color was a more universal feature (late ‘70s), the phrase was coined for Americans, “recliner chair, six-pack of beer, and a color TV—what else could a man want?!” Then, sound without pictures came back with the huge rush of stereo and “quadra-sound” and towers of sound-making features piled high in cabinets came in, followed closely by exceptional quality stereo in head-phones. 

When cell phones first came into being, very few people would have ever guessed what was going to happen in that industry. (My son worked in IT in that industry and he saw the “handwriting on the wall,” telling me just after the turn of the century that soon, no one would be paying for “long distance calls.”) When the takeover was accomplished by cells, the “smart phone” came along and taught us all how really dumb we were. Now, less than two score years from the cell’s invention, not only do we all carry phones for which we pay monthly fees higher than the old long distance bills, the phones have us being bombarded with media, from old TV shows to current news broadcasts from a plethora of networks, carrying everything from games to our entire bibles with reference systems in our hand held electronic devices.

30 years ago, I was playing golf with two Jr. High boys who began talking about swinging like Jack Nicklaus taught on his videotapes. I ask were these tapes they owned? “Yessir, Mr. Lockhart,” they said, “they don’t cost much and you can play and rewind and play and rewind till you learn it, you just have to be careful swinging the club in front of the TV.” I shook my head and said, what did we do before VCRs. They said, “when was that, Mr. Lockhart?”

Thanks for reading, the Elder