What Happened to My Spelling

They call me the English Police. Not that I’m a London Bobby (after that famous Home Secretary Robert Peel), no I’m just serious about grammar and spelling. I used to be so fierce about it that if an unaware publicist sent me a press release at The Hollywood Reporter or at BRE that was misspelled or grammatically incorrect, I'd toss the offending piece of paper in the trash. But first, I'd call the person and tell them what I was planning to do. It was actually good training for the careless. And, it was easy for me to spot something spelled wrong. I have always been a champion speller. Suddenly I have to look at a word once or twice to see if it is spelled correctly. Bob forbid, if I am someplace without spellcheck, I now find myself in trouble. When did this all go wrong? Did I just get lazy? Once outraged at online people who couldn't be bothered to capitalize the necessary places, I now have my settings adjusted so they will do that for me before I send anything. Today during a post, I couldn't think how to spell something, so I just substituted another word that I could spell. This is, no doubt, the first step on the slippery slope on the pathway to Hell - for Ruth Adkins Robinson.

Black Radio

Radio used to be a wonderful part of my life. When I was a kid, I'd listen way over at the end of the dial to "Big Ed" talk about what he wanted to and play what he wanted to play as an accompaniment to my homework. Later driving that pale blue Cadillac convertible (that I was neither old enough to drive nor old enough to own) from Louisville to LA, I turned the radio up as loud as it would go and sang at the top of my lungs with all the stations that I found along Interstate after Interstate. This must have been the golden days of graphic names of the jocks across the country from that time. "Jocko Henderson," "Fat Daddy Johnson," "Frankie Crocker,*the Chief Rocker," Eddie O'Jay, "Sunny Jim" and so many others played the songs that we loved and made hits out of them. They had control of their own particular airwaves. When I got here to Los Angeles, I listened to Magnificent Montague ("Have Mercy") and Hunter Hancock on KGFJ. No doubt that I love all kinds of Black music and Black Radio, after all I was editor-in-chief at Black Radio Exclusive for ten years or so, and have written probably 300 cover and feature articles over time. I wonder what people writing about radio have to say these days. Real radio seems to be getting scarcer and scarcer. I don't know what's happening at KJLH right now but with the addition of Steve Harvey to the lineup, my friend Karen Slade might see a little more Kindness, Joy, Love and Happiness coming her way. From time to time, I long for "Big Ed" and his soothing radio style--Ruth Adkins Robinson