Mimeograph

As I searched my memory for early media and media tangents like the mimeographed grammar school lunch menus popped into my head. My geek nephew Caleb has start a museum in his living room for obsolete media machine rendered useless by the computer.  Piles of machine like manual typewriters, movie projector, battery powered portable record players ... even if he had an amphitheatre for a home he wouldn't have space for the universe of machines now junked by the incessant relentless computer.  He doesn't have a mimeograph machine nor can his desk top, lap top, iPod, iPad, or iPhone reproduce the smell of mimeograph paper. Not yet anyway.

As a kid at Central Grammar School I learned how to thread and run the movie projectors and such as part of the pre-nerd AV (Audio/Visual) Club. Sometimes I had to run movies for other classes. I had to have complete command of the serious media machines like slide projectors, tape recorders, overhead projectors, and record players. Important work somebody had to do. The real excitement came going to the nearby amusement park call Savin Rock and using the phonograph making little booth were one could record your voice on a record that would eject out of the machine all for you or to be sent of to a family member in Korea or some place else in the world.

I recently sold a 16 m.m. cartridge loaded movie camera at the flea market for a five dolla' bill. The wind-up camera has a variable speed multiple rotating lens, single frame animation and is practically indestructible. It is the same body as another camera I own from WWII that were mounted on the bombers use in that war.

Milford High Print Shop

My life as media began in Milford, Connecticut.  There are some early processes and visual renderings that as a child I could recreate and describe now with such vivid memories that a shrink might take notes.  But my Milford media should start with the Milford High School Print Shop.

As a Thirteen year old entering freshman high school student I was obligate to decide my entire future by having to choose between two paths. One the college course of classes the other an "Industrial Arts" path.  College heading student were not allowed to take advance auto mechanics.

My Life as Media: Milford

I haven't even looked at my Mom's photos or the Caruso's pictures of the backyard paint store but both sports and the Color Bar, as Popeye would say, made me "... what I ams." I ams what I ams became a mantra I would later use while working for CBS. When living in New York City which just 70 and about a million miles from Milford, CT, one needed a mantra.  For media sakes both sports and paint were huge but from early on newspapers actually delineated who I was.

The media me memories of scrapbooks filled with newspaper clipping, 8 m.m. movies, photographs plus the Teske type media - trophies, letter-sweaters, programs, award night banners and game balls meant little compare to the magic of media creation. Not just the process of Brownie camera photograph but making a flip book or graphic story board with paste on cartoon bubble text. Or the little packet of photographic paper sold that were sold bubble gum and trading cards section of Issie's or Donahues containing ready made negative and a cardboard sleeve for making contract prints that we could expose to sun light to 'create' the picture. A sorta miniature instant photo that didn't last long without fixative but who cared, it was cool.

media

It fucking hurts looking backward.  I don't like to complete a thought about personal memories but through media it all becomes real. Even photos pale in memory compared to something like air plane trading cards. The word 'foto' itself has for me the reinforcing memory a of the press room of the Milford Citizen; the smell of a darkroom, the sound of a Linotype machine casting lead letters to print the local news.

The photos of the Color Bar don't do justice to the emotions tied to a empty can of paint from the Color Bar.

The little backyard paint store had shelves of wall paper books, paint color chips and a back room filled with extra can of wrong color mistakes. You think there was some truth to what the Dean of Fine Arts at Uconn told me, "Your head is like a carnival." And by the way, the Dean implied, please transfer to the Theatre Department.

Color Bar - Jagoe

7 Seas and the Beatie Jet Lighter

Frasers' Market