Musings from the Ozone

Bulletins make people become alert. Without pulling out a dictionary, we all should know the basic meaning of a bulletin: a short broadcast containing a single item of news. There are official announcements from the government and there are official communiqués  from organizations and institutions.  Official statements from the government may cause panic; such as,  a bulletin that we are under a heightened terror alert.  Recently, we were informed of a terror plot that had been foiled, and we who live in New York City and the surrounding burbs, were relieved that someone  was on the job of detecting and thwarting terroristic activities before they happened.  Bulletins can also be a warning to take cover, in case of an imminent  tornado, or hurricane.  We need bulletins!

 Through the years, there have been many methods of broadcasting, and with each succeeding decade, it appears that we are getting more efficient at dispatching bulletins to the public.  In what is called 'mass media,' we generally think of all the various means of communication available to us.  If we should wish to broadcast some information to the public  we have many methods besides the logical ones of radio or TV.   In the case of a tornados' activity, a community may have limited choices in their ability to notify the public.  Some communities  rely on sirens, although there would have to be many sirens blasting before people will realize that something significant is happening.  I will never forget how frightened I felt in Farmingdale, in what was our first Christmas season after moving here.  About 1 week before the holiday, fire trucks, police cars, and official cars with sirens attached, went through our neighborhoods with all of their sirens blaring those incessant and piercing wails.  My heart began to pound,  fear and trepidation gripped my soul.  What on earth was happening? Was some house in the neighborhood on fire?   Suddenly, a fireman began to knock on my door.  I rushed to open it, thinking the very worst, when he notified me that they were collecting for a yearly fund drive.  It was for the needy fire department.  After such a rude awakening to why all  the sirens,  I felt angry to think that they had to shock the whole community in such a blatant and frightening way just to raise a few dollars.  I still do not like that approach, although after 22 years, I have finally grown accustomed to their ludicrous way of collecting money for the fire department.   If the electricity is off during a storm, the community will also have to rely on battery operated radios in addition to the sirens to issue their bulletins.  It can be a horrific situation if a bulletin about an oncoming tornado has not been issued in some form or another.

 However, when things are running fairly smooth, with electricity up and running, no weather conditions to be dealt with, a bulletin of some kind can be issued over the radio, TV, e-mail alerts, land and cell phones and even with broadcasting over a loudspeaker in a neighborhood.  Our local community has complained loudly, in the past, over the use of the loudspeakers attached to cars; roaming the neighborhoods yelling to the top of their physical lungs and the top decibel of their microphones.  The complaints from the neighborhood must have risen to a crescendo also, for the street broadcasters  have either diminished, or they have been done away with all together. T he backlash is,  that the angry community associates the product with the awful method of advertising and they will not buy it.

Garage sailors have been another group who have re-invented the bulletin.  In our neighborhood, you can see cardboard arrows pointed towards one block, winding onto another block and still another block. Even though they say nothing, we savvy bulletin readers know that if something smells like a garage sale, it most likely will be a garage sale!   We have become accustomed to these mysterious arrows and know what they will eventually reveal. The most successful garage sales go the whole route; advertisements in the local papers, the Pennysaver ( a local specialized ad booklet) and of course , have their signs tacked onto the telephone poles.  It is a little tiring to see lots of old and outdated postings on those poles, faded to the same color as manila paper. The bulletins go the way of all trash.

The news is not limited anymore to newspapers, TV and radio!  According to the Wikipedia: " Interest in "New Media" and "Computer Mediated Communication" is growing much faster than educational institutions can assimilate it. So far, traditional classes and degree programs have not been able to accommodate new paradigm shifts in technologies. Although national standards for the study of interactive media have been in place since the mid-nineties, course work in these areas tends to vary significantly from university to university." 1   In this case, I am sure they are taking into consideration the  impact that the individual news reports on the web are having on the population.  It has become increasingly difficult to find truth in the middle of 1000's of news sites on the web.  If the news comes from a fairly reliable source such as AP World, AP National, AP etc., then we may hope that we are reading something fairly accurate.  I say 'hope,' because many times even they issue bulletins incorrectly, and we find out some incident was a prank, or a medical oddity or any other range of misnomers for the so-called event.

As I pour myself a second cup of coffee, I realize that I need to bring this subject back to its original inception.  That is, we still need the humble bulletin.  While mass media announcements have their place,  there is no real need to do away with the bulletins that are issued to specific audiences, or groups of people.  Generally, we do not need to know what a bulletin says that has been issued to the employees of McDonalds.  A newsletter to the employees of a nearby hospital would be of no interest to me.  However,  the little  bulletin that we put out in our local church each week has pertinent information for me.  This  little paper  is often dropped on the church floor after service, and for the person who has taken a certain amount of time, say an hour, or two, each week to put the information together for that bulletin; it can bring  forth a sigh of weariness from her heart.  On the other hand, that bulletin becomes old news fast!   In fact, it can become stale immediately, almost before it  is read, because one learns that there are new items which should have been included, yet they had been accidently omitted!

The church bulletin has become an extension of myself over the past  20 years.  I am actually the author-inventor of the bulletin in our church, for there was never one before I came. When I first began to put the bulletin together,  I could not adjust to the old mimeograph machine left at the church even though I gave it a few good attempts.  The computer was not yet available  in those days and in fact, we hadn't even heard of desktop publishing.  It was another 8 years before I was able to make the bulletin on  a computer.  I was very adept at cutting and pasting clipart and working with my typewriter, copying  it onto bulletin paper and finishing it all within an hour.   Times have dramatically changed the way I do the bulletin now.  Once I began making the bulletin on the computer, I was much more aware of the tidiness of my margins and lines.  I even became a little lax about the REAL reason for the bulletin, as it was so much fun finding artwork and pictures to insert in the 'bulletin.'  The word bulletin had become a corrupted word in my own little  office!  People would ask for a 'bulletin' at church, and the word 'bulletin' became synonymous with our little  church weekly paper.  Oh, of course, I had the churches' real bulletins placed in a prominent spot in the paper.  I also had cute little reminders to pay their missionary pledges, dinner after service, preacher of the day, etc. Other than those obeisance's, our weekly newsletter  became the known as the word- bulletin. Perhaps the church bulletin, should be called something else, since the word bulletin is hardly correct.  Change the name? ...….not if you value your nerves, and wish to keep them intact for a while. 

One last tidbit about our bulletin: unlike the official government announcements, or bulletins,  I could never actually call our bulletin an official publication of our church.  Why not, you may ask?  Well, every Tom, Dick or Harry could pop up and nullify my pronouncements with a quick 'correction' from the platform.  If something would have to be changed, such as the time, place or speaker, my bulletins would become immediately null and void.  I would be at the mercy of the youth president, the ladies president or whoever and whenever they changed their itineraries, ticket fees, or cancellations of their event.  So, it goes.  Why get hung up over the bulletin part of my bulletin?  I will continue to have fun with the other parts of  my bulletin: pictures, scriptures, quotes, choice of fonts, colors (color printers now days!) and cover art!

1. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_communication>