Radio Saturday, 430am

4:30am.  I wake and think about radio, which I love. I also like to write and take pictures. I don’t  have a natural affinity for video as much and that took a couple hunnerd grand and several years to figure out but in the end I do like to create and I like to do it mainly in

Radio
Writing
Pictures 

What that means going forward for the future of radio I have no idea. I just like to take pictures with my Nikon D3200 DSL. I really don’t like to take pictures with my phone and I certainly don’t like the quality of the Go Pro Hero or my original GoPro for stills. GoPros are good for filming a bike ride along the Little Cal… but they suck for those fishbowl photos.

So radio, writing and pictures. I did publish a newspaper for a few years and edited a zillion articles and wrote about that many too. After a while you just by accident develop a rhythm and it doesn’t mean you’re a great writer just that you can feel your own heartbeat long enough to not put the readers' feets to sleep. Reach through the computer and touch their wrists, feel their heartbeats too. Then take a breath and start typing and see what happens.

Rhythm. The same thing goes with radio. I did my first radio show in 1985 on WJOB and then for 20 years while I traded I listened to AM talk radio nonstop. Sports, business, traffic, political, sports. After a while of just listening the rhythm of radio seeps into you. Now after doing the same morning show for more than seven years I get an even deeper understanding of the rhythm of talk, talk, talk… commercial, commercial, commercial… traffic, weather, , news, a joke, some sports, callers, callers, callers, talk, talk, talk, a little music… commercial, commercial, commercial.

Don’t forget to give the time in that glorious rhythm of yours. A couple weeks ago at a greasy spoon in Hammond a woman came up to me and said that she listens all the time. And that she makes her kids listen too while they’re getting ready for school.

“Oh, and my dad listens, too. He’s blind.” And this former mill rat walks up in an American Legion jacket. He looks at the growing mole on my forehead while he speaks.

“Is this JED? You’re JED.” And he reaches out and touches my nose.

“You gotta give the time more. I’m visually impaired and I listen to you all morning and I gotta know what time it is. Think about the blind people, too, you know.”

So there. Writing rhythm, radio rhythm and giving the time. There’s even a rhythm to the photos that I take. Maybe you can feel it if you go through my smugmug.com collection of photos. Yesterday during a break Ryan took some photos of me and Dr.Mary Tilak in the studio.

“What do you do with all of these photos,” the doctor asked in her best Indian accent.

“Ryan and I put them on the internet. We’ll send you a link.”

We don’t promote the photos at all. In a way, I don’t want anyone to see the photos of radio. I post them so that one day when radio is over there will at least be some photos of a radio station before the end. John Henry radio.