Salesman Called To Big Meeting In Sky

He had a take-charge attitude and aggressively sold radio advertising. He possessed competitive skills that seemed to have been honed in a media sales bootcamp.

Dan Clarkson lived in San Luis Obispo for most of his 66 years, where he also announced Cal Poly games play-by-play on KVEC, loved to joke and have a party.

Sometime Monday night or Tuesday morning Mr. Clarkson died of kidney failure in his home. This coming Monday, (8/1/05), there will be a funeral and graveside services for the man I once worked for and learned much from.

Dan taught me radio sales methods that always worked for him, and wouldn't you know? They worked for me too. He spent time with his children, his doggies and his classic cars.

He might have chuckled to know I think I resemble his '57 Chevy grille. I'm sad he's gone. Sphere: Related Content

News Mission Blog Editorial Guidelines

Thank you for stopping by this page. As we grow, it becomes necessary to state what few guidelines we follow. The blog itself is successful because, 1) it is consistent in presentation, writer to writer and 2) it's well written. We have a high standard of standardness, but that's our goal!

How we choose writers. As the editor, I'm looking for well-written, thoughtful essays reflecting local issues, passion and a willingness for civic action. Suggestions are welcome. Our list of bloggers are people with something to say, an ability to say it often and they're active in the community. They may have frequent letters to the editor published. That's the kind of person we look for, across the spectrum of political viewpoints.

Content considerations. I have a "hands off" policy about blogger content. The understanding we have is that each writer is responsible for his or her post content. When writing about public figures, you must know what constitutes libelous material: harmful intent (malice) must be present, in addition to knowing what you state is not the truth.

To put it another way, "truth is the best defense" when making a statement of fact. Meaning becomes more elastic when it's an opinion or written as a satire. I'm no lawyer, but you've just read a number of "keywords" which you could Google and read some of the results for more in-depth analysis of this topic. Also see the movie: Absence of Malice and the whole scoop about Larry Flynt's favorable Supreme Court ruling.

Style considerations. How you say what's on your mind is important because it can add dimension to your writing.

Online, STATEMENTS IN ALL CAPS are seen as "shouting;" we can get our point across without it. However, you can use phrases in italics or bold, as above, to serve as subheadlines or just to give emphasis.

If one wants to refer readers to another web page for details, link to it. Simply quote a phrase from the other source page to illustrate the point you want to make, or fresh observation you offer.

The main body of our posts are presented in good, standard, black, Georgia font of "normal" size. Nothing larger. The title headline is in red to grab our reader's attention. Include one or more keywords in it!

Spam free techniques. I'm using the best anti-spam tricks I know. Writers may want their direct email address displayed for feedback (or not!). In all cases, I use source code "HTML equivalents" to display email addresses in this blog. It stops the emailbots which constantly look for any email address they can find.

Comments from the readers. We begin with anyone being able to post an anonymous comment. If the language in comments stays within the bounds of decorum, we can leave it that way. Writers can be notified of any new comment posting, if they wish.

More guidelines may be added from time to time, but I like to think "less is more." Thank you! Sphere: Related Content

About The Fourth Of July, 2005

The rockets' red glare faded into the lovely Lompoc evening sky just twelve days ago. And the more I thought about our Country's Independence Day, the more ironic the facts seem to me.

Amidst some of the most generous tax breaks for corporations and the top one percent of taxpayers, we are a nation at War. Yet we haven't heard our President talk to us of wartime sacrifices. Across the amber waves of grain, we are not growing "victory gardens" as many did in WWII.

Our Central Coast homefront families are not collecting tin foil, rationing butter or enlisting in a national effort which entails actual personal sacrifice in support of our troops overseas. Our country is without collective pain.

This war is suffered by unseen individuals. The Pentagon has outlawed any photographs of soldiers' coffins returning from the war zone.

"There will be no arrival ceremonies."

You see, it's easy to identify with our soldiers on a shallow basis. Put a ribbon sticker on your bumper to "support our troops."

On this Fourth of July, did you reflect on any hardship you willingly suffer for our uniformed men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan? Higher taxes? Higher stock prices? Gasoline at $2.67 per gallon? Perhaps you thought of the personal loss of eight grieving Central Coast families mourning dead sons.

At this time, there are 32,737 United States casualties: dead, wounded and evacuated during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Didn't realize it was that many, huh?

When the colonists declared independence from Britain, they staged a tea party, a protest against a corporation, a trading company, which dumped cheap tea on the market. The Trading Company influenced the King to slap a heavy import tax on all other tea imported to the American colonies. Jacked up the prices on everything, except the "special" tea.

Americans would not swallow it. The situation was called taxation without representation. In an ironic way, we again seem to be paying the tab for corporate interests. While the Administration talks about the global war on terrror lasting many, many years yet without any requests for personal sacrifice. The bills are coming due.

American families pay too much these days with dead sons or daughters in Middle East sands, or in corporate rip offs. Halliburton and missing millions of dollars in Iraq rebuilding funds; Enron settling with the State of California for $1.5 billion to resolve complaints that it cheated states in the West during the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001. The list goes on.

This Fourth of July was a time I looked at the flag of our country. I saw its beauty, its promise--and the daily human price, we on the Central Coast, pay for every star and every stripe. Sphere: Related Content