Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

I grew up listening to Larry Lujack on WLS Chicago. I remember the deejays talking about people who stopped by the station to watch them work.

At Christmas time, my parents would take me 200 miles to go shopping in The Loop—and every year I begged them to let me go to WLS while we were in the city. I guess there really is no Santa Claus because I never got to see Lujack inside the booth on WLS.

I had to settle for listening to the music of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s on a little transistor radio. I remember turning the volume really low and listening all night long on hot summer nights when it was hot to sleep.

I laughed out loud when I saw that Wikipedia described Lujack as a precursor to shock jocks. Uncle Lar was so tame.

I just looked up his bio and found he was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2004. He more than deserved it.

I was intrigued to discover that, in 2000, he began remotely broadcasting to Chicagoland from his home in New Mexico. Radio has come a long way and so subtly we barely noticed.

Radio has always been by the people and of the people (See Independent Music: Then and Now) even though big business tried to make it a product. Radio is a personal experience.

I recently discovered Whole Wheat Radio (http://www.wholewheatradio.org). They have coupled Wiki technology with “make your own” radio programming. Musicians stop in the chatrooms and join in the banter whether it is about airplanes, music, or what’s for dinner.

WWR is what PBS promised to be. During every fund-raiser, PBS vows that you get to program the tv station and that your money is near and dear to the programming.

My local PBS station is the worst one I have ever seen. The programming is outdated, tedious, and repetitive. Add to that, the station suddenly announced they had just discovered they were $6 million in debt.

Chet Tomczyk, who makes it sound like he woke up one day and saw he was $6 million in debt, had the audacity to react by asking the public to fork over another $6 million and for the banks to forgive as much of the debt as possible. What a lesson to teach our children. If you mishandle money, just ask hard-working listeners and parents and their children to pay for your lack of money management skills. And don’t apologize.

Oh, and change your clothes. Tomczyk, who always appears in a suit and tie, wore a turtleneck in the Save Our Station ads. Yes, we noticed. Perhaps he was trying to make it look as though he was personally suffering financially to the point that he could no longer afford neckties. I have no idea. I just thought it looked contrived and ridiculous.

And no matter how many millions people give WTVP, you do not get to program the station. They cut the programs I am most interested in and threaten they’ll need to make even more cuts in order to stay on the air. That’s okay. They can go off the air.

I don’t mind because the programs they used to run that I liked are available on DVD from Netflix. And for far less than a suggested donation to a station that has proven they don’t respect their viewers and their financial contributions.

I did exercise the programming control I do have: I eliminated WTVP from internet tv listing. What Tomczyk has done is vulgar and I won’t be watching, even if he cons people into keeping him on air.

During the same time period when he was begging for money – and never apologizing, that I saw – I moved on to internet radio. I do get to program internet radio. I get to create my own play lists for everyone to listen to. The donations I make to internet radio are in the form of buying the music I care about – and choose to support. My money doesn’t go to … what was it Tomczyk used that $6 million for? No one knows. There is no accountability.

The more I listen, the less I watch television. The more I rent the quality programs (PBS loves those words) I used to see on WTVP, the less I watch television.

In fact, WTVP should take a lesson from WWR and make their finances public. Perhaps, if they had, a viewer might have pointed out to them years ago that they were deep in debt. How does any business get $6 million in debt and not notice it?

Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

It is probably safe to say that no one ever uses all the features of any Microsoft Office application. There are just too many of them.

Don’t tell Bill Gates, but there are two features I use so often I would pay extra for them. If you’ve ever taken a Microsoft Office course from me you already know this and skip reading it.

The Format Painter

I am a fanatic about formatting. I try to format as I write, but often the writing causes me to change my mind after much of it is done. Fortunately, Microsoft Office offers a solution known as the Format Painter.

Chances are that, even if you have never used it, you have seen the format painter icon on the standard toolbar. It looks like a little yellow paintbrush.

Here is how it works. Let’s say you have written a dozen pages of text. In order to make the text a little more readable, you break it up with subheadings.

To dress up the document a little more, you realize it would look really nice to keep the font style and size for the bulk of the text, but change the appearance of the subheading text.

The first step is to revise the subheading font size, style and general appearance. When you’re happy with it, select the entire text you just dressed up.

While it is selected, double-click the format painter icon. Normally, you only single-click on an icon, but I’ll explain the advantage of double-clicking in a moment.

Without clicking anyplace in the document, move to another instance of a subheading you need to format so that it matches that first one. You can use your scrollbar, the Page Up or Page Down key, or your mouse to find the text you are looking for. Just do not click anyplace in the document.

When you see the text you want to reformat, hover your cursor above the text. You’ll see that your cursor has changed into a paintbrush, just like the Format Painter icon.

Drag your cursor across the text you want to reformat. As you do, the style of the original subheading is applied to this text so that it matches.

In fact, all text that you drag the format painter across now will be changed to match that original text you selected.To make the format painter stop changing text, you can do one of two things: either touch the Escape key, or click again on the format painter icon on the standard toolbar. Otherwise, everything your cursor crosses will continue to be reformatted!

Now, back to the reason for double-clicking on the Format Painter icon in order to activate it. Single-clicking on the format painter activates it for a single “application” of the “paint.”

In other words, if you select text and then single-click on the Format Painter you will only be able to reformat one instance of text. Then the Format Painter turns itself off. If you need to format more than one text selection without reactivating the format painter, you need to double-click the format painter icon.

The Clipboard
Most people know you can use the old standby Control+C to copy data. Then you move your cursor to another location. Then you Control+V to paste. You can use the Copy and the Paste icons, instead. Prior to Office 2007, you could also go to the Edit menu and choose Copy; then go back to the Edit menu and choose Paste.

I intentionally configure computers in my classrooms to show the Task Pane in Office 2003, and earlier versions, because we use the Clipboard in class. Inevitably, students immediately close the Task Pane because they don’t understand how how the Clipboard interacts with Copy and Paste, and why they need to know understand the process.

Furthermore, most people don’t know how to get the Task Pane back or how to get to the Clipboard. That’s a hint that there is another way to open it, by the way! In earlier versions, the Clipboard was merely one of the things you could access through the Task Pane. But the Clipboard had become so useful that it earned its own keyboard shortcut, Control+CC and the Task Pane had its own shortcut, F1.

By the release of Office 2007, Microsoft seemed to have realized that savvy end-users know the Clipboard is perhaps the most useful item on the Task Pane — and that expert users use the Clipboard extensively.

Office 2007 eliminates the Control+CC Clipboard shortcut. It is no longer needed. You no longer even need a Task Pane to get to the Clipboard. The Clipboard has been graduated to its rightful place in the first section of the standard toolbar in Office 2007.

Some people gradually have realized that, once something is copied, you can continue pasting it as many times as you need as long as you keep any Office application open. You can even copy data from type of file, such as an Excel spreadsheet, and paste it into another type of file, such as a PowerPoint presentation. However, regardless of your copying method, the only thing you can paste through these techniques is the last thing you copied.

So what do Office experts know about the Clipboard that perhaps you don’t? When you open the Clipboard, you’ll see that it says “1 of 24.” That means you can copy up to two dozen items to the Clipboard and randomly paste them into any Office document, as long as you keep at least one Office application open. (The Clipboard clears itself when all applications are closed.)

What this means is, while you are working on your Excel spreadsheet, you can copy half a dozen pieces of data and it will stay on the Clipboard until you are ready to paste it elsewhere.

Then let’s say you copy information from a couple of Word documents to the Clipboard. Now, you go to PowerPoint and open the Clipboard. There is only one Clipboard across all the Office applications. As you copied all of the information above, it was all placed on the Clipboard and it can be pasted into files created with other Office applications.

When you get ready to paste the information into, your PowerPoint file, in the example above, open the Clipboard. With Office 2007, click on the Clipboard option on the standard toolbar; in earlier versions use the Control+CC shortcut.

Move your cursor to the location where you want to paste something. Find the data on the Clipboard. Click on the data and it will instantly paste itself into your document at the cursor’s current location.

It is not necessary to paste the items from the Clipboard in any particular order. It is not necessary to rapidly paste them elsewhere. They will remain on the Clipboard until you get ready to use them.

Get Your Money’s Worth
The Format Painter and the Clipboard are, without question, my two favorite Office features. I’m glad I didn’t have to pay extra for them. But they are so useful that, if you don’t take advantage of them, you really are not getting your money’s worth from Microsoft.

It appears that Microsoft has realized savvy users know all about the Format Painter. In Word 2007, the Format Painter icon appears in a the standard toolbar along with only the most-used icons in all of computerland: cut, copy and paste.

Obviously, the gurus over at Microsoft know that that the Format Painter is one of the four most important tools in Office. Like I said, if you’re not using it, you are not getting your money’s worth.

Also, in Word 2007, the Clipboard gets its own text menu in the standard toolbar. Right below those for most-used tools, is the clipboard. It had to only be a matter of time. Everyone knows Control+C is the shortcut for copying. Only the savvy know that Control+CC opens the Clipboard in earlier versions of Word. In the 2007 version, the shortcut doesn’t work any more because anyone who really knows how to use Word understands how valuable the Clipboard is.

Get your money’s worth. Learn how to use the best tools in Office!

Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

Things are going a little slow with “I Can Do This” even though I have been writing curriculum. I got my site listed, along with 38,047 sites from 203 countries. Oh, my….

I put a free tutorial online just as a practice for myself, as much for anything.

Sunday should have been my Moodle day but it didn’t happen. I did finish the lesson plan for an upcoming digital photography class that I will probably turn into a Moodle course. Eventually.

I got the Moodle books. They look good.

Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

The MTV generation uses the term crib to refer to a posh house. Historically, in the United States, a crib was a prison for women slaves.

I have often wondered if the staff at MTV’s tv show, “Cribs” understands the tragic history of the crib and the impact cribs have had on genealogy. Following the abolition of slavery in the United States, so-called “white slavery” took hold.

“White slaves” are usually very young white women, as young as eleven, who have been forced or tricked into prostitution. But young girls of every ethnic group have been enslaved for more than a century.

Calling an extravagant home a “crib” is a far cry from the origin of the term. A crib was a tiny closet or cubicle where a sex slave was imprisoned. She was free only to provide prostitution services to a client.

Cribs existed across the United States between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Universal Pictures brought the cribs to light in 1913 via the movie, “Traffic in Souls.” The story was based on slave traffic arrests in New York.

Soon, “Inside the White Slave Traffic” was released, documenting white slave traffic in New Orleans. The movie was largely attended by men and offered no solution.

As a result, reformed protested the movie’s content. Attempting to prevent such from movies becoming a salacious genre, reformers managed to ban all white slave films in 1914. The unintentional result was that white slavery seems to have slipped under the radar before the public had a chance to understand it.

The Rocky Mountain News ran an editorial on April 3, 1908, about local resident Billy Wheeler who claimed to have made his fortune in Denver by operating cribs on Market Street. The editorial notes that the average citizen comprehends what that means. The editorial claims, “These slaves are not black, but white; not men, but women.”

While that may have been true in Denver in 1908, “white” slavery was not restricted to Caucasians. Nor were they necessarily women although reportedly male sexual slaves have largely been homosexuals.

“Crib whores” on the west coast were not even predominantly white. Between 1900 and 1918, they were mostly Chinese and Black sexual slaves.

Cribs appeared from coast to coast. In 1911, Bellingham, Wash., was considered the clearinghouse for west coast white slave trade. Reportedly, Bellingham maintained a municipal crib house, which was apparently a crib operated by the city government.

Most of us think of Salt Lake City, Utah, as a religious icon. As early as September 1885, Philip Pugsley operated a crib in Salt Lake City. He sold the property in 1899 to Joseph J. Snell who continued to operate cribs there until at least 1916. There were also cribs at 243 South Main Street and 222 South State Street.

In the 1870s and 1880s, cribs were located in Chicago’s Hell’s Half Acre. This area was bounded by State, Taylor, and Polk streets and Plymouth Court. Cribs at Bed Bug Row, at 19th and Armour Avenue, housed Negro whores.

While most people forgot the origin of the term, in June 1972, Time magazine ran an article entitled “White Slavery, 1972.” The story was the same as it had been for a century of white slaves. The article opens with a young girl’s story about being kidnapped while she was shopping and then being sold to a pimp for $100.

Her pimp went on to explain her imprisonment. He also points out, “She in a beautiful crib [apartment].” Time added bracketed clarification, realizing its readership had, in fact, forgotten this unsavory use of the same term used in a Christmas song about the baby Jesus.

Every time I see “MTV Cribs” listed in the television-viewing schedule, my heart sinks. I cannot help but think about all the young women who endured such horrible lives.

So what does all this have to do with genealogy? Everything.

These women (and men) were kidnapped and kept against their will in secret locations. They lived in the shadows.

Crib residents were missing from the census returns. They were not present on tax lists. They are lost to history.

For more information about white slavery and cribs see the following:

• White Slavery, 1972, Jun 5 1972
• “The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918” by Ruth Rosen
• “The Law and the White Slaver” by Kate Richards O’Hare, 1911
• “Prostitution, Polygamy, and Power: Salt Lake City 1847-1918” by Jeffrey Nichols

Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

This is a cheap and simple way to create a fruity dessert.

Start with a Jiffy pizza mix. They cost about 80 cents. Start the pizza as you would normally, spreading the pizza dough in a pizza pan. Sprinkle the crust with cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice. Put it in the oven at 400 degrees for about three minutes. Remove the crust.

Place about a cup of oatmeal in a small pan with about two tablespoons of margarine and two tablespoons of brown sugar or sugar-free sweetener. Heat the mixture until the oatmeal is moist.

Sprinkle a can of no-sugar-added fruit pie filling on the pizza shell. Any kind of fruit will do.

Sprinkle the oatmeal mixture on top.

Follow the directions and bake the dessert pizza the same as you would any other pizza.

Remove the pizza from the oven when it is done and let it cool.

Make an optional glaze by mixing some sugar-free sweetener with some water or milk. Drizzle it on the mix.

Slice and serve.

This is also good with pineapple slices. The advantage of using pie filling is the shell tends to get a bit dry without the fruity glaze. If you use other fruit, adjust the spices accordingly.

This recipe freezes nicely. Pop a slice in the microwave when you get a sweet tooth.

Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

This is the simplest and healthiest quiche you’ll ever eat. And it tastes great!

First of all, it is fake because it doesn’t use a crust or eggs. You can fake it out even more if you use fake cheese (non-dairy). Here is how I make it.

I start with a glass pie dish. I use glass because…I like to.

Spray the inside of the dish with non-fat fake butter spray. Spray it liberally!

Now take about two tablespoons of Italian Bread Crumbs and sprinkle them in the “buttered” pie pan. Rotate the pie pan and shake it gently until the bread crumbs coat the entire pan.

If necessary, add some more bread crumbs. Don’t worry if you have a little extra in the pan. I just leave the extra and distribute it evenly.

Heat one Italian veggie sausage in the microwave. That’ll take about a minute and a half.

While the sausage is heating, put about a cup of frozen broccoli florets on a plate. When the sausage is done, remove it and put the broccoli florets in the microwave. Be sure the florets get completely heated! Otherwise, your quiche is going to be soggy from the extra moisture in the frozen veggies. The florets should take about two minutes to heat thoroughly.

While the florets are warming up, slice up the Italian veggie sausage. Slice it lengthwise one time, and then slice it into ½ inch pieces.

Mix about half a carton (one cup) of egg substitute with about ½ cup of fat-free milk. Add about a cup of fat-free or non-dairy cheese of any kind, and stir just until mixed.

Remove the broccoli florets from the microwave. Place the florets and the sausage slices in the pie pan. Pour the egg-and-milk mix over the veggies and sausage. If you like, sprinkle a little more cheese on top.

If you use Italian bread crumbs and Italian sausage you won’t need any other seasoning.

Bake the mix for about half an hour in a 350 degree oven. Slice and serve.

Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

An editor once told me I am good at writing news because I know the difference between news and information. And, information is about as interesting as reading a manual (my words).

Recently one of my editors asked me if I would be willing to write a last minute article after another freelancer discovered they did not have time to complete it by deadline. I write fast. I knew it would not be a problem.

The editor’s next email made it obvious to me why my colleague wasn’t able to finish the assignment. It was a 500 word story about a new business in town. For this, she had written an entire outline.

Maybe a lot of people write outlines for a handful of paragraphs, but I don’t. One reason is the tendency to anticipate the answers too much. Even news is more interesting if you have the luxury of letting the story tell itself.

Whether you outline for a tiny assignment like this or not, there is one question you cannot ask and you can’t anticipate what it is. Sometimes the question comes out naturally. But, for me, the closest I can get is, “What else do you want me to know?”

By this point, my interviewee has accomplished their agenda. They got in all the sound-bites. They know they are still on the record – actually on editor told me an interview is ALWAYS on the record. But they know they can relax and tell you a little more of the story.

I’m not looking for them to tell me anything confidential or compromising. I’m looking for them to tell me something interesting. What I find interesting, is that one unexpected aspect that I could never have anticipated.

Recently I was interviewing someone in the arts for a publication targeting seniors, especially volunteer opportunities in the community. The interview was done. We were just wrapping up and I was about to close my notebook.

Out of that last few minutes of seemingly unrelated chatting came a story about a volunteer with Alzheimer’s who gives of her time to sew costumes. Sewing is one of the few things she remembers how to do, and one of the few things she and her daughter can still share while the disease has taken away so many memories.

It wasn’t in the outline. It wasn’t on the agenda. But it gave the story an inspiration that would not have been there otherwise. It was the question I could never have asked.

Copyright 2008@ Judy Rosella Edwards. Do not reprint without written permission.

The internet radio fad may seem to be something new and unique. But the independent artists of internet radio seem eerily reminiscent of the times and talents of early traditional radio.

The oldest radio station in Illinois, and the second oldest commercial radio station in the US, is WDZ. It was the brainchild of James L. Bush, a commodities trader in Tuscola, Illinois, just south of Champaign-Urbana and the University of Illinois. Bush had a very practical motivation for putting radio to use. He needed to find a fast yet inexpensive way of communicating grain prices to buyers.

If you’ve ever been through Tuscola, you can’t miss the massive grain bins even today. Grain is big business in Tuscola.

But a radio station isn’t very interesting when there is dead air time between the grain reports, regardless of how crucial grain prices are for farmers deciding when to sell and markets timing when they should buy.

Reportedly, by the mid-1920’s, more radio sets graced the homes of farmers in Illinois than in any other state. To keep people listening and to make good use of their radio investment, WDZ filled the airwaves between grain reports with live music performed by local amateur musicians and performers or anyone with the courage to step up to the microphone.

Probably few performers were paid. Most apparently didn’t have promoters and entertainment lawyers representing them. And the performers and their friends and family were responsible for some of the programming, aside from the grain prices, by making music requests.

I have a diary belonging to Dora Wade, a relative of mine, who journaled her life from 1931 through 1935, when she died in her mid-thirties. She was in ill health but wrote in her journal nearly every day documenting everything from the weather to what was on the radio, accompanied by her personal commentary.

It is like reading a Depression-era blog written in pencil. Her biggest crisis was when the “B” batteries in the family’s one Crosley radio would run down. Especially for the housebound Dora, the radio and WDZ was her window to the world.

On March 3, 1934, a relative from Gays, Illinois, called in to WDZ radio in Tuscola to request “Jack and Jill” sing “The old spinning wheel” for her. She says, “That made me very happy.”

Indeed, it must have. During the nearly five year span of Dora’s diary, she only left her farm twice. The rest of the time she was bed-ridden or rarely ventured beyond the porch of her parents’ Shelby County, Illinois, farmhouse.

Billy Hill wrote “The old spinning wheel” in 1933. Altogether he wrote about 90 titles for Tin Pan Alley.

The Songwriters Hall of Fame notes that the Tin Pan Alley era was a time when the sale of a song’s music and lyrics in sheet music form outweighed its performance value. It was a time when it was all about the words and music.

“Jack and Jill” were an old-time radio act from the early Grand Ole Opry era. Presumably this was the same act. Among the amateurs, there were the “stars” – the professional singers with contracts and the more traditional music careers.

Much as the independent music is finding its niche on the internet – another medium never designed for entertainment—the early days of radio literally gave a voice to the novice, the amateur, the person-in-the-street. That is not to say they were without talent, but merely without representation.

Just weeks after “Jack and Jill” sang to her, another of Dora’s relatives, Margaret (Draper) Wade did one better than just make a song request. On June 14, 1934, she drove some 52 miles to Tuscola, stepped up to the microphone, and sang “The Old Spinning Wheel.” She dedicated the song to Dora and several other people.

The title of this song has been used for a variety of songs, all of which have been performed by a vast number of artists. The lyrics that went out across the Midwestern farmlands on June 15, 1934, were probably the version written by Ned Washington, another Tin Pan Alley artist. Washington got his start in Vaudeville as an emcee and agent for other performers. Eventually, he won an Academy Award for the score for the film “Pinocchio,” six years after Dora passed away. Not only did Dora not see this movie, she died without ever seeing a moving picture.

The melody for this version of “I’ll be Faithful” was the creation of Allie Wrubel. Also a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, you can blame Wrubel the next time you can’t get his song, “Zip A Dee Doo Dah” out of your head.

By November of that year, Margaret was singing regularly over WDZ on Saturday mornings at 10:45. By January of 1935, Margaret was still “warbling,” as Dora would describe it in her diary.

Margaret apparently did not go on to have a lucrative music career. It is not clear if she ever sang aside from her WDZ experiences.

But like today’s internet independent media outlets, Margaret got to express her musical talent. She never became rich or well-known for it. But it meant a lot to those who knew her and respected her ability to “warble” like a bird.

The world has changed. WDZ moved to Decatur, Illinois. Billed as Magic 1050, WCZ is now an “Urban Radio Station serving Central Illinois African America” adults age 25-54. It is not very likely you could show up and take the mike! Their website doesn’t indicate that it is possible to request music.

Enjoy indie music while you can. The artists who pour their soul and voice into internet radio obviously do it out of love.

Links:

• WDZ History
• Doug Quick Online
• Dora Wade Diaries: 1931 to 1937