Bob Wertz

I’m noticing a tension growing between national organizations and their local affiliates. Just three recent examples that have crossed my path:

• I was once an AIGA¹ chapter president and stepped down to go back to graduate school, but I was also disillusioned with the mission and how the national organization treated its chapters. Now AIGA National is struggling with finances and relevance, while member’s loyalty (and all the value of the membership) is tied up at the local level.

• Churches are going through the same thing. When the massive Methodist church near us left the denomination, they didn’t join one of the new organizations. They essentially became a non-denominational church. And pointed out in the news article that they get to keep all of the money they used to send to the churchwide organization.

• The organizers of the local NaNoWriMo² group in our area...

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Every time I’m reading online and a “subscribe today” box pops up over the top of what I’m reading, I just leave the page.

Explaining to my teenage daughter what microfiche is, and how we used it for research before the internet.

Today was rough. Not sure why, exactly. Nothing particularly significant happened. It just sucked the life out of me.

My inlaws were getting “Breaking News Alerts” from Messenger. Someone was sending them “news” through Facebook, and because they have notifications on, they looked like legitimate news updates.. But they were a bunch of MAGA nonsense that was probably actually Russian disinformation.

An incredibly strange accident, but my wife and son are fine.

Two weeks ago, Liz and Ryan were driving to school early in the morning in a midst of a rain storm when a pine tree blew into their path and impaled their 2020 Buick Envision. The tree was about 24 feet tall, passed through the headlight, through the engine, through the firewall, through the dashboard and extended several feet into the passenger cabin, between the front headrests.

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NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth. It’s amazing how NASA has kept Voyager 1 and 2 operating. The probes were launched in 1977. 🪐

The last few weeks have been a blur… busy at work, wrapping up the semester as teacher and student, dealing with the aftermath of my wife’s car accident (she’s fine), buying a new car, my son’s lacrosse season… but I think I’m starting to round that corner back to some semblance of normalcy. 🤞

I watched a couple of my favorite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer tonight. The show was once one of my favorites and creator Joss Whedon could do no wrong. I loved Buffy, Firefly, The Avengers and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I even watched Agents of SHIELD. But eventually, it came to light that Joss wasn’t the feminist he claimed to be, repeatedly cheated on his wife, and verbally abused many of the people he worked with, especially Charisma Carpenter.

Chocolate Cake for Breakfast is one of my favorite stand up routines. Bill Cosby’s family-inspired standup — long before the Cosby Show — was hilarious. But later in life, he was credibly accused of drugging and sexually assaulting several women.

Gill Sans is a legendary typeface, created by author, artist and typographer Eric Gill. I’ve worked for several companies for which Gill Sans was a key element of their...

Turned in my final paper for the class I’m taking this semester. Not completely happy with it, but finished with it for now.