Yah, when we moved into our first house here almost three years 
ago, I hoped to gain a real sense of community, of belonging, of 
getting involved in a new neighborhood.  This came out of living 
in apartments for over 30 years.  At the last one where we lived 
for nearly 30 nears, the manager did more than I realized to 
develop that kind of community spirit by having potlucks and 
informal get togethers.  I even got some groups of musicians 
together to play for some of the parties and it worked! But where 
we are now, I met our neighbors who are all younger than we, and 
have invited them over.  Hasn't worked too well.  We are having a 
musician party where I am getting a band of friends together to 
play on a Saturday afternoon and not really expecting or even 
inviting neighbors to come, but maybe it will draw some folks.  I 
think people are just into their own things, too busy, too 
insecure, too afraid, too tribal.  Well enough on that.  I 
probably said too much here.  73, Jim

----- Original Message -----
From: Carjohns27 <[log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Date sent: Thu, 16 Jul 2015 01:32:40 -0500
Subject: Re: how the hobby has changed in 30 years Etc.

A-men with that one.  I fully agree.  What a shame.

Carolyn Kj4vt


--------------------------------------------------
From: "Pat Byrne" <[log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 5:05 PM
To: <[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: how the hobby has changed in 30 years Etc.

 Jim,
 What you said here goes along with something I heard on the 
radio
 recently.  It was a brief news item that someone's survey 
indicates
 that thirty percent of persons contacted had not nor intended to 
meet
 their neighbors.  That just amazed me.  With all of the social 
media,
 guess actually meeting people is out of fashion.  When i grew 
up,
 although God knows that was eons ago, the neighborhood was every 
kids
 turf.  During the summer, from dawn to evening, all of us hung 
out
 together and if you ran off the rails, any neighbors mom or dad 
could
 call you on it.  Do that today and you'd have the cops and seven
 lawyers all over you!!
 i don't understand all the changes but I don't think i 
necessarily
 approve of them.  Like that will make a difference.
 pat, K9JAUAt 02:34 PM 7/13/2015, you wrote:
Hi Colin, first, your ideas and thoughts as usual, are very well
stated.  Maybe your sticky notes aren't sticky enough so they
never got turned in.  Seriously though, when I was reading your
thoughts, it occurred to me that, like ham radio, the animal
groups have also been declining over time.  By Animal groups, I
mean the Lions, Elks, Moose, and so-on are or seem to all be
struggling to keep their numbers up.  Don't know about the rotary
and siroptimists, but I think that many people, especially young
ones, has been getting into the social media stuff and don't feel
the same need for direct interaction like meetings etc.  Maybe
this portends some major underlying social change because of
technology, maybe even polarization, especially in the US.  I
belong to two ham clubs here.  One, has a breakfast every fourth
Saturday of the month which usually gets about 20 to 25 hams and
their significant others, maybe some wannabees.  The other club
has a Friday evening meeting that usually has a tech lecture most
months  or auction a couple times a year.  I have not gone to
that usuY for lack of a reade but I think it's fairly well
attended.  I don't have a sense of the numbers in each club, but
another local club seems to be cranking out new hams some of whom
I have heard and talked too on VHF.  Wish I had the secret
solution for you, and us in general.  I don't think free pizza
and beer would even encourage folks for too long.
Speaking of HF, I got my ALS600 fired up and am not using any
antenna tuner in line since I found out the Ldg AT600 Pro II auto
tuner is just plain Not Blind friendly, even LDG wrote me about
that.  Now I gotta return the thing to HRO hoping they will give
me back most of the $338  I spent on it.  Hope we can talk on HF,
bands permitting, one of these days.  I could barely hear Lloyd
yesterday and called numerous times using the amp never to be
heard.  Kind of disappointing but 20 meters was pretty bad.  Well
enough for now, 73, Jim WA6EKS

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