20080707 Happy Birthday Aunt Kay Church

Happy Birthday Aunt Kay Church

July 7th, 2008 by Kevin Dayhoff

Yesterday was the Carroll County information desk receptionist, Kay Church’s birthday. She’s the same age as President George W. Bush.

On July 13th, 2006, I wrote in a piece titled, “

20060713 Happy Birthday Kay Church”:

So just what does an “information desk receptionist” do?

After all, I have always been focused on the fact that she has a friendly greeting, warm smile, and almost always has cookies.

She sits almost exactly where the old Crowl ice cream factory used to be, long before the office building was there, so she is continuing a great tradition of hospitality through food.

When I wander into the building, Aunt Kay is quick to tell me where to go.

In my years of working for the public I’ve been told where to go on a number of occasions, but no one does it as nicely as Aunt Kay.

According to our sources, Aunt Kay is part guidance counselor, honorary bailiff (armed with a salad shooter and hard carrots at the ready,) tour guide and mother confessor.

She is also the mother of two grown children. Well, three, if you count her husband, Ron, who also works for county government in the Bureau of Development Review.

Aunt Kay has worked for the county since August 1988, when, after working for Black and Decker in Hampstead, the Manchester Pharmacy and the Hampstead sewing factory, she took a job in personnel services (now called production distribution,) on the bottom floor of the building.

In November 1989 she got a promotion and a raise – to the first floor, where she has been found ever since in her “command station” at the main entrance of the building.

As for her job, Aunt Kay says, she’s “taken an avocation and turned it into a career. I like people and I like talking.”

Read the rest here: 20060713 Happy Birthday Kay Church.

Happy Birthday Aunt Kay.

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Annual events holidays Birthdays, Carroll County Government News, People Carroll County

20080707 Happy Birthday Aunt Kay Church

20070312 Happy Birthday Jack Kerouac March 12 1922

Happy Birthday Jack Kerouac

March 12, 1922

H/t: Biography.com

I’m not sure I know where my copy of “On the Road” is…

"… nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old…"

Of course one of the amusing things about Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” is that I had long understood that he did not know how to drive a car. Although Wikipedia says that he did not learn “to drive until 1956 (at age 34) and he never had a driver's license.”

Whatever.

Baltimore Colt fans will not be amused to know that Mr. Kerouac typed “On the Road” –

“on one long scroll of teletype paper, which Kerouac called "the roll."[1] The roll does exist — it was purchased in 2001 by Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts, for $2.4 million — and it was indeed typed in a blazing three weeks, with no margins, singlespaced, and no paragraph breaks.

But the myth of the story overlooks some of the finer points of the novel's composition. Much of the book was actually written as it happened, over the seven years of Kerouac's travels, in the tiny notebooks that he always carried with him and wrote in during his spare time.

The myth also overlooks the tedious organization and preparation that came before Kerouac's creative explosion, as well as the fact that Kerouac revised the novel several times before Malcolm Cowley of Viking Press agreed to publish it.

Owing to Irsay's ownership of the scroll, it was on display in sections at Indiana University's Lilly Library in mid-2003.

In January 2004, the roll began a 13-stop, four-year national tour of museums and libraries, starting at the Orange County History Centre in Orlando, Florida. From January through March 2006 it was on display at the San Francisco Public Library with the first 30 feet unrolled. It will spend three months on display at the New York Public Library in 2007, and in the spring of 2008 will be on view at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Of course, for those of us who are writers, we can understand, “He tended to write constantly, carrying a notebook with him everywhere.”

And – “At the time of his death in 1969, Kerouac's estate was worth little more than ninety-one dollars, but by 2004 had grown to an estimated $20 million.” Is an inspiration for all of us… In a perverse kind of way.

What none of us wants to emulate is that he died at age 47 from complications of a life of chronic alcoholism.

I had always heard about this quote from Truman Capote and found it in the Wikipedia entry…

“Some believed that at times Kerouac's writing technique did not produce lively or energetic prose. Truman Capote famously said about Kerouac's work,

‘That's not writing, it's typing.’”

Despite such criticism, it should be kept in mind that what Kerouac said about writing and how he wrote are sometimes seen to be separate. According to Carolyn Cassady and other people who knew him he rewrote and rewrote.”

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"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
—from On the Road, which demonstrates Kerouac's use of imagery in a beat style.

Writer, born in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. He studied at Columbia University (1940–2), and served in the merchant marine (1942–3) and the navy (1943). Later he studied at the New School for Social Research (1948–9). He lived with his mother in Lowell, held a variety of jobs, and traveled throughout the USA and...

Read Full Biography Article

biography.com/search/article.do?id=9363719

There is another more comprehensive biography over at Wikipedia.

20070204 Happy Birthday CSM Thomas Beyard

Happy Birthday (January 20th) CSM Thomas Beyard

Command Sergeant Major Catfish Beyard celebrates a birthday at TF AVCRAD Kuwait.

TAG Tours Continue...CA and TX You’re It!

The Adjutant Generals from both California—Major General William Wade II—and Texas—Major General Charles Rodriguez—came by the AVCRAD for a tour this week. They were accompanied by their state Command Sergeants Major, CSM William Clark, Jr. and CSM Richard Vasquez, respectively. Once again the Soldiers of the AVCRAD put their best foot forward and showed these folks that the AVCRAD has some shining stars of its own.

Left, from Left: SFC Terronez (of California) gives a tour of his shop to MG Wade (TAG-CA) and MG Rodriguez (TAG-TX) while CSM Beyard looks on.

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