Memo 2024

IF I CHANGED the name of this page to “Blog” would I write here more often? Probably not. At one time, prior to the inception of this website (2016), I had over 40 blogs—though some only had one entry before I lost interest. But perhaps the blog ship has sailed.

I named this page “Memo” after the Garbage Memo (c.1981) (see the Strawberry Ice Cream Soda page, under the MEMOIR tab). That was an experiment in day-to-day writing, by a large group of people (we won’t mention intoxicants)—good stuff, bad stuff, but a lot of fun. Maybe this Memo was fun as well, but lately… nothing. (Last post was 8 months ago.) So maybe it’s time for a new approach. It is. Scrolling back through the posts (and years) I see some good stuff, and some long-winded stuff. I’ll leave it up. Feel free to check it out—if you’re bored!

Next… here, however, will be an entirely new approach by the newest member of the R. Speen staff—Kenneth Oates. The less we bother with biography the better—you’ll get plenty of that moving forward! (No doubt.)

Ken will be writing about… I don’t know. Anything he feels like. The only rules I’m giving him are: Try not to be too long-winded (like I’ve become), and… Nothing too offensive. Have fun. So… he’ll be getting the key to the Memo page, so to speak. And we’ll see how long it takes him to total it. Ha!

That’s a joke. He’ll be signing his posts, so you’ll know it’s him, but you’ll still see my name (Editor: Randy Russell) at the bottom of the page, since I’ll still be “editing.” Hopefully not much—ideally he’ll email me the post and I’ll just put it up. (We may be giving him the “keys”—but not the passwords! Ha!)

So… check back soon, obsessively, with anticipation and dread and hopeful wonder, and see what’s up with Kenneth Oates!

—Randy Russell 1.10.24