Fess Parker RIP

This morning I heard that Fess Parker died. Of course, for boys raised in the 1950s he was, and will be forever Davey Crockett.

As soon as I heard that he died I remembered my late brother Mike running around the house wearing his coon skin cap and singing "Davey, Davey Crockett, king of the wild frontier...."

Funny how little things will suddenly bring up a remembrance like that. About an hour after I had that thought I received an e-mail from my father who remembered pretty much the same thing. He remembered that my brother like to sing the song for an audience, something I would have never wanted to do.

New mid-Michigan obituary service

Stopped over in Davison last week and found a new printed, daily obituary service was available at a number of locations. It's pretty basic, stapled sheets of 8 1/2 X 11-inches, but it includes color pictures and ads, plenty of ads.

The product is distributed at a number of places, mostly restaurants, stores and libraries, but they also offer daily e-mail delivery of the obituary.

If you want an e-mail copy send a request to bridges.obit@yahoo.com.

The senior citizens at Taecken's Terrace apartments in Davison said they really appreciate the daily printed obituaries.

You know, if these folks are smart they will start putting a little police and government news with the obituaries and, oh, never mind.

A spinning squirrel

Our bird feeders are plundered by squirrels. My wife doesn't mind (squirrels have to eat too, she says), but I want the bird seed to be for the birds. Let the squirrels have what falls to the ground. But it looks like this squirrel has met his/her match in this feeder. There's some pretty funny squirrel videos that will appear when this video is over. Be careful, some of the videos are not funny and show squirrels meeting an untimely end.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

The story of the real St. Patrick is much more compelling than the story of a man who chased snakes out of Ireland.

Actually, that’s one of the things he didn’t do.

Kidnapped as a British boy, Patrick was brought into slavery in Ireland. No time today to tell you the wider story, but he eventually escapes, but is called by God to return to the country of his captors and evangelize Ireland.

As author Anita McSorley writes in “The St. Patrick You Never Knew,” his kidnapping and subsequent work was as significant to his world as the capture and story of Helen of Troy.

So, as a non-drinker, I hope and pray that some folks will skip the green beer today and find out the real story of St. Patrick and his incredible work and grace.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

This is why they should never have given the news away for free

A loyal reader sent this link to a survey about how people feel about paying for news online. Of course, the newspapers gave it away for 10 years so it's going to be hard to convince people to pay now.

As I've said before, the brains at Booth/Advance/Newhouse disregarded the opinions of old newsies like me and others who questioned the practice of giving away the news when the idea first surfaced more than ten years ago.

They patted us on the head and said we didn't understand the new realities. Well, as it turned out, we understood it better than them.

Another link about the Great Lakes Bay newspaper

Thanks to a commenter we have another view of the rebranding of the Bay City-Saginaw-Midland area.

A site that looks over the News Media

I haven't started to mine this site, but wanted to put up this link.

Great Lakes Bay announcement

Here's the announcement of Great Lakes Bay.