Thanks to Flint Expatriate Harry Fisher for this fine artifact.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
5 comments:
Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.
Wow. I want one.
ReplyDeleteWhen the weather ball is blue...
ReplyDeleteWow - I am really off topic, here, but I wanted to post this little nugget of useless information. After making a series of utterly horrible life decisions I found myself, in the early 1990's, working as a security guard. On more than one occasion I was assigned to the venerable old Citizen's Bank Building, downtown. I worked alone - like 11 PM to 7 AM or something - and it was actually fairly creepy. To cut to the chaste, it fell to me to change the weather ball. I don't know why, but I'd always kinda figured that the thing was, somehow, automated or a moderately high-tech deal. Actually, a guard climbs some rickety stairs to this funky, dank room (buzzing, loudly, with eletricial current - it's right beneath that enormous sign)and there are these 3 huge buttons on the wall - red, blue, and yellow. Next to them is a telephone. The protocol is this: you call the National Weather Service, listen to the recording, do your best to interpret it, and hit the button(s). I think there was another button to make it blink "in agitation...".
ReplyDeleteIn an odd way it was actually kind of deflating; it was like finding out that the Wizard of Oz - the man behind the curtain - was just an ordinary schmoe like me - in fact, in this case, he was me.
Final note: on a dare from my former wife, I purposely set the thing completely wrong one night simply to see if the world would grind to a halt.
Nothing happened.
I remember that night. The light was agitating but it was clear out with no clouds or rain.
DeleteLMFAO 2 FUNNY DUDE! R U STILL A GUARD?
ReplyDelete