Oh, for cryin' out loud! - literally.

It's a new year again. I make no promises about blogging more. I had every good intention this past year and had a last minute push to beat the year before. I want to write but I don't always have something to say. That might be obvious to you from reading what does get posted. It's not always fresh on my mind to post – even if I do have something to say. But I got 2 journal and two fancy writing pads for Christmas this year, so I better do some writing if only because that was perhaps a sign.

I'm the only one in the school library this afternoon – besides the staff – I am researching how pop music, rock and roll namely, and the deejays that promoted it in the 1950s and 60s helped with the integration of blacks and white in the US. I have at least 8 books on the topic of radio or black music piled on this desk trying to find fodder for this paper. As I read there is a nostalgia that has overcome me. I'm reduced to tears for no good reason but the wonder of how our nation was built and hard-working value system we once had in America. I remember my dad once crying telling me a story of a Swedish business man trying to communicate an idea to an American business man over the phone. When he couldn't make himself understood he asked for a fax number to fax the information. My dad was in tears before he could finish the story about how it all come together because of this technology. We thought Dad was ridiculous. But I think that is how I feel today about radio. It's a little bigger picture though, because what happened in the 1950s when radio needed to find a way to compete with TV the perfect storm resulted in a boon for integration!

I don't know why it makes me feel sentimental, but it's BIG. Radio turned to pop music which eventually got called rock and roll, there were a few cutting edge deejays that took the music format to the next level by playing jazz or other black music on their radio programs of pop music. Before you know it – literally, you have dance parties with blacks and whites enjoying the same music.

Amazing. Now I need to get back to the paper writing. But it truly is an awesome convergence of media and economic developments to push us into crossing musical lines that include whites coming to love black music and vice versa.