The LuLac Edition #1911, January 22nd, 2012

South Carolina.


The late Dick Cosgrove (right) with son Joe when his son was sworn in as a Judge in Luzerne County.

SOUTH CAROLINA NEWT’S SALVATION

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich romped to a decisive win in the South Carolina primary Saturday night. Garnering 40% of the vote and more than 250,000 ballots marked for him, Gingrich said in a victory speech that he’d challenge Barack Obama to 7 three hour debates. Strong backing from conservative and religious voters and people fears about an uncertain economy fueled Newt Gingrich's victory Saturday in South Carolina's Republican presidential primary, an exit poll of voters.
The stats also showed that for the first time, Gingrich had grabbed two constituencies that his chief rival, Mitt Romney, prided himself in winning in the year's two previous GOP contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. By a decisive 5 to 4 margin, Gingrich bested Romney among voters looking for someone to defeat President Barack Obama this November, and he led Romney by nearly as much among those who considered the economy the top issue in picking a candidate.
The primary went quickly to Gingrich this week when in a course of 72 hours, Gingrich got two standing ovations at various debates, Texas Governor Rick Perry dropped out and endorsed Newt and Gingrich’s ex wife came on ABC’s Night line and said Gingrich asked for an open marriage. Gingrich went all ballistic on CNN moderator John King saying bringing a personal issue like that to the forefront of a debate was despicable. I said on Topic A Friday night that in a weird sort of way, Mary Ann Gingrich might have helped her ex husband win the primary and play the righteous indignation card.
From here we go to Florida where Gingrich can get loaded up with more money in anticipation of the 31st voting in the Sunshine State. Romney needs to do something about his weak answers on tax returns. Meanwhile the guy in the catbird seat in all of this is Rick Santorum. The Romney people have it in their best interest to have Santorum stay in the race to split the conservative vote. The anti Gingrich people in the party might start funneling more money into Santorum’s coffers to keep him as a viable, stable, less explosive conservative alternative. Ron Paul will keep fighting getting a little piece of the pie and do what he does best, gin up crowds, scare some people, inspire people. But in the end, he’ll just roll along and entertain.

DICK COSGROVE

Dick Cosgrove long associated with the Pittston Dispatch died Saturday. Cosgrove was the father of former Judge Joe Cosgrove and George Cosgrove, who heads the administration at Pittston Area high School. I met “Mr. Cosgrove” when I was 15 years old. I used to take my music column up to the Dispatch and he’d always comment about my articles. I’d take in his advice and enjoyed the fact that one of the big shots (he was Advertising Manager then) actually paid attention to me. Cosgrove went in with the late William Watson Senior in 1947 forming the weekly paper that became an institution in the Greater Pittston Area. In his later years, Mr. Cosgrove wrote a weekly column for the Citizen’s Voice. My condolences to his family. This isn’t an original thought and most likely one that you’ll see thousands of times this week in print, but, “it was an honor to know Mr. Dick Cosgrove and an honor to be in his presence”. Somewhere in newsprint heaven, Bill Watson Senior and his son “Pidge” are trying to launch another newspaper. They got their ad man on board now!

COSGROVE’S FINAL COLUMN

From the Citizen’s Voice:
To our readers: Veteran Voice columnist Dick Cosgrove passed away Saturday at his home in Pittston. His final column was published Tuesday, Jan. 17:
Every week, I write a column for the Citizens’ Voice by sitting at my computer and typing the words of the column on the keyboard. It dawned on me this week that the keyboard I use on my computer looks the same as the keyboards I have used throughout my career.
I have been in the newspaper business for many years, more than 65 to be exact, and I have relied on the typewriter keyboard, or nowadays, the computer keyboard through all those years.
And while things are hi-tech these days, with computers and such, the keyboard everyone uses to write on computers or to send emails or to text someone still has the same look as the good old keyboards we used to use on the old mechanical typewriters.
I learned to type in business school at St. John’s in Pittston after high school. didn’t like the business portion too much, but the nun who taught there promised me that if I stuck with it I’d be able to type when the course was over. She was right and she gave me a tool which I still use to this day, the ability to type. It was right after that when I was on the stairs in the old Times Leader building on Market Street in Wilkes-Barre and met Joseph P. Murphy, the managing editor, who asked if I wanted to be a reporter. I said ‘yes.’ Then he asked if I could type. I again said ‘yes.’ He said “Report to Pittston on Monday.” So because I could type, I got the job and have been in the newspaper business ever since.
In those early days, and for most of my career, I typed on a manual typewriter. It was an old, heavy, black Olympia typewriter which used a fabric typing ribbon which was inked and moved slightly with each key typed. As the line of type got close to the edge of the paper, a bell would ring, reminding the typist that it was time to hit the “return” bar, which the typist would hit to slide the paper carriage back to the beginning of the line and advance the paper to the next line. It could be set for single or double space.
Machines like the Olympia typewriter really were “manual” typewriters. There was a lot of manual work that the typist had to do, but there was something about hearing the bang of the keybar on the paper and moving the return bar which let you know that you really were typing words on the page.
Typing on a computer keyboard is a lot different than typing on the manual typewriter.
The computer keyboard doesn’t need a strong strike for the image to appear on the computer screen and there is no need to push a return bar when the typed line of text gets near the end of the line. The computer automatically moves to the next line with no effort.
One thing the computer does that the old manual typewriters did not is either correct spelling mistakes or at least leave a mark to let you know that a word is not spelled correctly. If the old manual typewriters did that, it would have made a reporter’s life much easier.
While the old manual typewriters and today’s computers are different, they do share the same keyboard, with some small differences. The keys on both of these keyboards are the same, with the same letter formation. This kind of formation is called the “qwerty” keyboard, since the top line of the keyboard begins with the letters q-w-e-r-t-y. It originated in the 1870s with an invention of Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper man from Milwaukee. With the help of friends who worked on perfecting the keyboard layout, ultimately the idea was sold to Remington which perfected the “qwerty” keyboard in 1878.
This keyboard formation is the one I used in business school and on the old manual typewriter, and is still the formation used on today’s hi-tech devices like computers and telephones and other things.
“When a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he’s nobody’s friend.” Theodore White