The Pecan Park Eagle

The Pecan Park Eagle began its WordPress blog site existence on July 21, 2009 with the following brief introductory column:

July 21, 2009

Goodbye Chron.Com! Hello WordPress.Com!

Good Morning Friends of My Chron.Com Blog!

After struggling all weekend with the failure of graphics over at Chron.Com for the umpteen hundredth time, I decided it was time to look for a new home for my future blogs. I will keep the old blog link at Chron.Com until I figure out what to do with two and one half years of mostly baseball and Houston history, but I will now be posting future blogs here, as I learn about and develop some skill with all the features offered by WordPress.Com.

I will continue to write about the two subjects dearest my researcher’s heart, the game of baseball and the City of Houston, but I will reserve the right also to go obliquely into cell phone rants from time to time, as these things occur.

WordPress.Com stresses the availability and quality of their support services to bloggers. All I can say is that anything they do will be an upgrade from zero assistance over at Chron.Com. WordPress.Com also allows for blog-polling, musical and video, and a wide array of graphics that weren’t available over at Chron.Com. I will have to grow into the use of these, but no matter what, I will remain writing content-based in my approach over developing ever-new proficiency in the use of special effects.

My attitude about Internet writing is identical to my view on movies. I’ll take the storytelling that is  available over at Turner Classic Movies over any of the new action or computer-generated movies that Hollywood now churns out like so many little new bunny rabbits – something like seven days a week!

For now, these few words of explanation about why I’ve changed blog sites will have to hang as my first post at WordPress.Com. Next we have to find out if I have enough trial and error moxie to even post the thing. (Only people my age worry about keeping their “moxie.” Younger people don’t even know what “moxie” is.) At any rate, look for me here again soon – when my energies are more available to focus on what I’m saying – and less tied up with the technicalities of how I say it.

Thank you for your past support and your ongoing patience. If I ever bore you to tears, or you just don’t want to receive further notice of my new blogs, let me know and I will remove you from my mailing list right away.

Regards,

Bill McCurdy

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September 13, 2016

Dear Readers – The graphics failures and the robotic “political correctness” editor at Chron.Com back then were more than I could tolerate back in those brief early days we we there for a short previous life. Robotic editor? Yes. In fact, that robot was the deeper reason that “The Eagle” flew the coop from its original Chron.Com roost. I was writing a column on old TV detective shows and had I listed “Boston Blackie” among them. The robot editor would not allow me to use the word “Blackie”, suggesting that I find another less offensive term to use. I couldn’t. Boston “Whitey Polar” simply sounded awful. And it wasn’t the truth. I went back to look at what the Eagle had done in its original incarnation, but I couldn’t find any evident bearings that it ever even had existed. There was nothing there among the digital remains of yesterday. I guess it must have long ago died as unimportant to their Chron.Com archives and gone to “Atheist Heaven” –  and I say that it no disrespectful swipe at atheists everywhere. We are all bound to honestly live with what we actually believe and I respect that statement as the truth. “Atheist Heaven” simply has been my private self-talk term for years as the answer to what happens to whatever we may be watching at the moment we turn off the juice to our TV sets and go to bed. – The screen goes to dark – and whatever lived prior to our pushing the off-button on our remote – no longer exists. In our case, The Pecan Park Eagle found its born-again home and true start at WordPress. I also want to thank all of you who have followed or found us and stayed with us ever since 2009. We’ve essentially remained true to our original broad subject goals as we expressed them in our first piece here. Baseball and Houston remain our favorite subjects, with a few forays into matters of culture, philosophy, psychology, humor, and parody. – Thanks again from one of the biggest producers of “TLDR” material for Millennials.  – The Pecan Park Eagle – Regards Again, Bill McCurdy

3,000 Columns Now Seems Possible. This milestone-reminder effort is Column # 2,401 for The Pecan Park Eagle at WordPress. That weighs in at about 343 columns per year for seven years. The problem is – I don’t write or publish to run up column numbers. If I did, I would need to particularize the credit to the trusty few who have contributed to the total, and notably so, with much credit to Bill Gilbert for his monthly baseball analysis work on Astros baseball, to Darrell Pittman for his streaming supply of historical material that I have used to write columns, to Rick Bush for his “inspiration by mental association”, to President Tom Keefe for asking me to contribute my “Ballad of Eddie Gaedel” to “The Eddie Gaedel Society” as their official organizational anthem on August 19, 2015, to the great broadcaster/author Greg Lucas for his always well-connected intelligent thoughts on baseball and other sports, and to Tom Hunter of Denver for being my discreetly unofficial editor on matters of error in column facts and grammatical statement. Thanks for all those timely trips you make to the mound, Tom. I love you like the brother I never got to meet.

Writing to me is the sine qua non activity of my late life years. It is both my passion and my driver. I choose to write, but sometimes I cannot refuse to do so, whether anyone reads it or not, whether anybody likes or learns from it, or not. I’m just going to do it. I still need to look into what I can do with WorkPress to archive this load of stuff. Otherwise, it could end up in Atheist Heaven too, just as that early batch of columns did at Chron.Com. If that happens, it still won’t matter. I just hope that someone steps up in the near future to make sure that the really great thinkers and writers of history don’t get mishandled by the digital data dumpers of some near future cyberspace garbage crew.

It Ain’t Baseball, But…. If Pecan Park Eagle columns were equivalently blended with career major league hits, The Pecan Park Eagle would now be # 124 on the list at 2,401 – right behind Stuffy McInnis at # 123 with 2.405 – and just ahead of Roger Connor at #125 with 2,992.

Good hits come faster, but good columns take longer.

See you next time, if and when that happens. If it’s up to me, that probably will be tomorrow.

Regards, Once More, Bill McCurdy

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Bill McCurdy

Publisher, Editor, Writer

The Pecan Park Eagle

Houston, Texas