Volume XVII, Issue 21 # May 21 - May 27, 2009 |
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Correspondence
We welcome your opinions and letters – with name and address. We will edit when necessary. Include your name, address and phone number for verification. Mail them to Bay Weekly, 1629 Forest Drive, Annapolis, MD 21403 •E-mail them to [email protected]. or submit your letters
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Coleridge Wrote it Better
Dear Bay Weekly:
For the benefit of high school students, you may want to issue a correction to your letter in the May 14 Bay Weekly — unless, of course, your intention was to test their alertness.
The correct following line in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is: “Nor any drop to drink.”
We should both thank my Scottish education for my remembering that following line of Coleridge’s poem; also my years of technical writing and editing as well as writing occasional pieces of fiction and (a long time ago) radio plays for honing my editorial eye. This last attribute is a nuisance at times because it distracts me from the message that the writer is trying to convey.
I should add that I enjoy Bay Weekly and look forward to Thursdays.
–Campbell Crawford, Prince Frederick
The Continuing, Worldwide Saga of the Piratical Swinging Radio England
Dear Bay Weekly:
A friend, Mr. Svenn Martinsen of Norway made me aware of Ben Miller’s work in Bay Weekly [Still Serving after All These Years: regarding the one-time pirate radio ship Olga Patricia aka Swinging Radio England/Britain Radio.
From late 1966 into ’67, I was general manager of SRE/BR and hired the Olga’s last master before she was forced to quit transmitting from her station off the coast of Britain. Now I live in Australia, far from my native San Francisco, where I resumed my radio career after the pirate adventure. There were fewer than 20 of us Yank deejays involved in that entire initial pirate radio era (1964-67). Sporadic attempts to revive the pirates came in the 1970s and 1980s but with nowhere near the impact of the first wave.
In May I will be back in the U.S. for the first time in five years and the D.C.-Maryland area reuniting with one of my Olga P pirate associates, Harry Putnam aka Johnny Dark. I had suggested that it would be great if we could catch up with the [old ship] between fishing runs and pose for a few dockside photos: Old Pirates Return to the Maritime Scene of their Raids. It’s amazing how much interest persists in the period and those who participated in it even as Father Time thins our ranks. There is a new movie out called The Boat that Rocked, which celebrates the era.