Published: June 02, 2009 03:57 pm      

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Another birthday for Tennessee

A belated happy birthday to Tennessee! On June 1, 1796 a long, narrow swatch of sparsely populated land dotted with mountains and rivers became the 16th state in the new United Sates of America. It wasn’t long before it earned an honorable nickname, the Volunteer State. Over its 213 years its citizens could be counted on to answer the call when the country needed help.

For horse enthusiasts or Civil War buffs there is an interesting exhibit in our neighbor city over the mountain. At the Spring City Museum “Hoofbeats in the Heartland,” a traveling exhibit from the Tennessee State Museum, explores the impact of mounted warfare in the state during the Civil War. It will be on display through June l0. There is an admission fee of $5 for adults and $2 for students but free for children under 12. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday the hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday and Saturday noon to 8 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.

The above items are reminders of past history. As I research old newspapers for the "Looking Back" column I compare the past with the present. Newspapers in earlier days depended on correspondents from the many smaller communities surrounding Crossville for local news. Most of those folks preferred to be anonymous and signed their reports with fictitious creations.

Here are a few of the writer’s choices. XX, American, Rainy Days, Guffy, Sunshine, Cross-Eyed Molly, Freckles. There was Violet, Wild Rose, Tulip, Blue Jay and Blue Bird, May Bug and Tater Bugs.

In today’s world those citizen communicators identify themselves as bloggers. Although some of the early correspondents gave their personal opinion occasionally, they mainly reported the ordinary comings and goings of their neighbors. The present citizen writers are most interested in their view of a subject.

Blogs are part of the computer’s history. First there was e-mail and then in 1997 social network sites were introduced. There was Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and many other sites worldwide. Millions of people joined these SNSes that allowed users to share interests, interact and develop communities around similar interests.

Next came blogs and now there is Twitter. In this form of communication the user is limited to 140 characters. The message is called a Tweet. I have no doubt these terms will be replaced by even stranger terms so I will continue to write columns the old way.

Because I write for publication correct spelling is important and the more I learned about texting made me unhappy. That form of communication started with mobile phones and of course cell phones. Several examples – so yall ken com up wit sth els; yru gving our rents da tps and GRT JOB I LVE TXTIN AND LVE LRNIN MRE.

Next came online texting and a dictionary of symbols and numbers came into use. ! is the symbol for ‘I have a comment.’ To say ‘I love you’ text 143 or 459. Consider there are 82 million people engaged in texting and it boggles the mind . One more reason I have no desire to learn this new language.