Just to see how it would work, I shot and edited a quick video featuring my kids on their return from camp. When I think about how much work this would have been when I first started editing video tape back in the early 1980s, it’s kind of amazing.

And yes, it’s a bit silly.

Okay, it’s not like I’ve ever been a big fan of Best Buy.

Back in my old Home Theater/E-Gear days, I’d stop in my local version and play dumb with the video guys and ask questions to see how poorly and incorrectly they’d answer them.

My point wasn’t to be mean or just to have fun, but to gauge the kind of strange information being put out there to my readers and what mistakes and misconceptions we needed to make an extra effort to correct.

And yet, like most tech-loving people, I’ve spent my share of spare change at Best Buy.

But during the last couple of weeks, though, my wife and I have gone through a surreal experience with them. Read the rest of this entry »

My son Kenny at the New Garden Air Show

One of the many perks of doing what I’m doing for a living is getting to share a little of it with my kids. Last week, I got to take my son Kenny to the New Garden Air Show, which is pretty close to heaven for a nine-year-old boy.

I think he had a pretty good day. I know I did.

You may notice a new look. This is the first entirely designed from the ground up Word Press template I’ve written, called, oddly Mcgann. I’m oddly proud of it, and plan to do more things like this in the coming months.

It’s been a little more than a month since I returned to newspapering, writing for the Chester County PRESS.

Although a lot of stuff is the same, writing about school budgeting and development issues and so on isn’t much different than the last time I did it back in the early 1990s, it’s interesting to see how technology has changed things. I guess I’m a little like the old-timers who used to regale me with stories about working with typewriters and how spoiled I was being able to use a computer back when I was a kid in the 1980s. Read the rest of this entry »

In some ways it seems like it’s been about 20 minutes since Election Day and in others like 20 years.

I’ve spent the last few months working and thinking, trying to figure out what’s next, where I fit in and how I can make a difference. I hoped, maybe naively, that I could do something to make the world a better place in politics. I think that it’s been proven at this point, though, that’s not where my future lies.

So what, then? Read the rest of this entry »

Nothing longwinded or deep today. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported me and my running mates — especially those in the Chester County Democratic Party who worked so hard. We didn’t get the result we hoped for, but the fight goes on.

We will be back. I will be back. Count on it.

And expect to hear from me in the coming weeks, both in terms of politics and a new Chester County media outlet that I expect to have a role with.

President Barack Obama. Val DiGiorgio says the budget deficit and the bad economy is all his fault, as if Bush was never president.

It was a pleasant enough night at Tel Hei, up in Honey Brook. The audience was reasonably receptive in what was to be the final forum for county-wide candidates.

It was, though, at times a bit like falling through Alice’s looking glass. First, only Val DiGiorgio and Mimi Sack showed up for the GOP, while all five Democrats attended. Sack, of whom virtually no one has anything unpleasant to say was her usual polite, civil self.

DiGiorgio — clearly rattled by mailers sent out by his opponent, Jim Reilly, went on the attack, trying to defend the both his lack of fiscal training and experience as well as the county’s giant debt load. That was to be expected. But then DiGiorgio dropped this bombshell:

All of our current economic problems have been caused by President Obama and the Democrats. When he said that, I really began wondering whether it was Val who took a shot to the head Monday night instead of Brian Westbrook. Read the rest of this entry »

One week to go.

You may not know that Election Day is one week away and it is understandable. It’s not like there’s been a lot of coverage in the media; more on that later. But these are tough times and frankly, an election might be the last thing crossing people’s minds right now.

Recently, I saw a government estimate that roughly 21 percent of working age people are either unemployed or working just part time while wanting a full-time job. That’s one in five people in our country. And with Pennsylvania lagging the rest of the country in terms of economic recovery, that number could be worse here. Read the rest of this entry »

I guess you could call it a fundamental lack of respect. Not for me, mind you, but for the voters of Chester County.

I was delighted to spend a half hour on the air with Mike Pincus of WCHE the other day — as will be the case with my running mates Kipp Stone and Jim Reilly over the next couple of Wednesdays. The Republicans? Suddenly, they have scheduling conflicts.

Scheduling conflicts? Why not claim that they had to wash their hair? I mean, come on. While there’s been some suggestion that the Chester County GOP is mad because some at WCHE have been critical of Chester County’s own would-be Lt. Governor, Carol Aichele. I’m skeptical myself.

I think it has a lot more to do with the same reason my opponent doesn’t have his own Web site: the GOP apparently thinks the less you know about him — or any of their candidates — the more likely you’ll be to vote for them. That’s along the same lines as the sudden disappearance of the Chester County ACTION Website — only for it to be replaced by a sanitized, less scary version (thanks to Wayback Machine, however, the original scary content is saved for all to see ).
Read the rest of this entry »

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. 1932-2009.

“The dream shall never die.” But the man behind the dream passed away today after a valiant battle against cancer, Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy.

For my entire life, “Ted” Kennedy was the senator from Massachusetts and a true lion of the senate and for many of us called to public service, both an example and an inspiration. As the icon of a legendary and tragic Irish-American family, Kennedy fascinated me from an early age.

His death this morning, although expected for some time now, hit me hard and in a deeply personal way.

Make no mistake, Kennedy was a flawed man — although few of us could live through what he lived through without losing touch with reality — it is his public life that we celebrate today.

When someone asks any of us why we are Democrats, invariably, it is because of the issues that Kennedy often spotlighted and championed — including more than 30 years of fighting for affordable and universal health care coverage for Americans. He fought for those who had little voice and little power, the average person struggling to get by. In the end, he fought for us.

He fought for voting rights — something still under attack here in Chester County, as we saw in Lower Oxford Township in 2008 — he fought for civil rights, workers rights. education reform and immigration reform and issue after issue that matter to all of us and he strove tirelessly to improve the lives of average people. Read the rest of this entry »