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November 27, 2005
New Website
My redesigned website is up and running. www.rickbeyer.net There are still a few rough edges to be smoothed out, but I think it is pretty cool. CHeck it out and let me know what you think, or if you run into any problems.
Posted by rickbeyer at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2005
Image of the Week: Christmas Truce
A story in the news that the last surviving veteran of the World War I "Christmas Truce" died today. Here's an excerpt from the Retuers wire story:
LONDON (Reuters) - The last known surviving allied veteran of the Christmas Truce that saw German and British soldiers shake hands between the trenches in World War One died Monday at 109, his parish priest said.
Alfred Anderson was the oldest man in Scotland and the last known surviving Scottish veteran of the war.
"I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence," he was quoted as saying in the Observer newspaper last year, describing the day-long Christmas Truce of 1914, which began spontaneously when German soldiers sang carols in the trenches, and British soldiers responded in English.
I write about the Christmas Truce in my new book. Some people think it is a myth, but it really happened--and many of the soldiers involved took photographs of themselves with the enemy to prove it,like the picdture at right from the Imperial War Museum.
It was early in the war, and the message of "hate your enemy" hadn't quite been drilled into the two armies. Soldiers came out of the trenches to exchange toasts, trade cigarettes and liquor, even play soccer games. The men themselves were as surprised as anyone at the sudden outbreak of peace. "Most peculiar Christmas I've ever spent, and ever likely to" wrote one British soldier. "Fancy a German shaking your flapper...and then a few days later trying to plug you" said another. One German soldier wrote in delight about a soccer game played between the two armies: "We Germans really roared when a gust of wind revealed that the Scots wore no drawers under their kilts."
The next day, they got back to the important business of killing each other.
Posted by rickbeyer at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2005
Army Times Review
I just saw the review of the book from the Army Times, and the first line is a hoot:
Just when we were certain that we knew everything about everything, Rick Beyer comes along and ruins it.
Yup, that's me, ruining everything I can! It is a verypositive review, and you can read the whole thing by going to the bottom of this page.
Posted by rickbeyer at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 14, 2005
JFK Story
Last night Marilyn and I saw Dan Fenn speak at athe Lexington Historical Society event. Fenn is a longtime Lexington resident, a former staffer for JFK, and Founding Director of the Kennedy Library. He told some very amusing JFK stories I had never heard, including this one:
Nikita Khrushchev presented JFK with a beautiful hand-made model of a sailing ship. The FBI and Secret Service went over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure it didn’t conceal any bugs, after which the President put it in a place of prominence in his office. But presidential aide Kenny O’Donnell was never quite convinced that the ship was “clean,” so every time he walked past it he would lean into it and whisper loudly: “Screw You Nikita!”
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
Media Adventures
A busy week of media done. 20 interviews by my count, 17 radio and 3 TV. (Thanks to publicity mavens Beth Mellow and Lisa Sweet for making it happen.) One of the television interviews was with CNN Headline News. It was set up at the last minute on Thursday afternoon, and I did it on Friday morning, Veteran’s Day. It’s really weird to sit alone in a chilly little room staring down the barrel of a camera while chatting with a disembodied voice in your ear. (And how many ears, I wonder, has that earpiece been in? To be fair, they did have tiny disinfectant wipes, as well as plenty of spare earpieces for those more fastidious than I.) It is tough to be natural and relaxed in that situation, but it came off reasonably well.
By Friday early afternoon I had done 5 interviews, and was thinking that a nap sounded really good, when I got a call from WZMY, a television station in New Hampshire that I had been on earlier in the week. A guest had cancelled on their 9 PM talk show “My TV Prime, and since it was Veteran’s Day, they were wondering if I could come on again. The twist was that this time they hoped I could talk about the Ghost Army project, which I had mentioned (of-camera) on my previous visit.
Ghost Army is still in the super preliminary stages, but this seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. So the nap went by the boards, and Editor Eric Handley and I did some high-speed under-deadline cutting to come up with a two minute trailer we could show that night. I jumped in my car with the piece at 7:30, and made it up to Derry NH in plenty of time to do the show, which was hosted by Arnie Arnesen. Everybody really seemed to like the tape we showed, and hopefully that will help us generate some buzz. I talked to Martha Gavin afterwards, (She's the one who turned us on to this story, her Uncle John Jarvie is one of the veterans) and she was VERY excited to see the publicity the story got. Afterwards I had to hightail it back to Boston to get to WBZ by midnight for the last appointment of the day, an hour with Jordan Rich on BZ radio.
I had a similar sort of “call back” this afternoon. I did a phone interview with Norman Mark, a radio host on KNWZ Radio in Palm Springs California from 1:30 to 2. I thought I would have a chance to take a nap afterwards, but they called back at 2:15—they’re guest for the next hour had cancelled, could I come back on. So I ended up talking with him for another 45 minutes. It’s all been great, but man, am I wiped.
Posted by rickbeyer at 09:41 AM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
Headline News
Just got word from Beth Mellow, my publicity manager at Harper Collins, that I am booked to be on CNN Headline News Friday Morning (Veteran's Day) at 10:20 AM ET. National TV--very exciting!
Posted by rickbeyer at 06:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Image of the Week: My TV
I appeared on not one but two interview shows last night on WZMY-TV in Derry New Hampshire. At 7:30 I was interviewed briefly by Eric Schiener on the program "My TV Now." (See it here) Then after a quicknap (sprawled out on a couchin their conference room) I did a longer interview with Mike Deblasi, on a program called "My TV Prime."
WZMY-TV is a new station, taking over from the old WNDS. It appears as Channel 18 on many Boston area cable systems.
Posted by rickbeyer at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 02, 2005
Red Letter Day
Yesterday was the big day, the official publication date of the new book. Pretty quiet. I visited the Barnes and Noble in Burlington to see if they had any copies, and lo and behold they had 27, which seems like a huge number to me, both gratifying and a bit scary—hope they sell them all! I dutifully signed all 27 and made nice with a ll the bookstore employees I could find.
I did my first radio interview this morning, a phoner with a New Hampshire radio station. The interviewer asked me several about where I discovered the stories. I realized after I got of the phone that, duh, he didn’t really care where I found the stories, he was fishing for something interesting. People ask me this question a lot, and unfortunately the answer—research—is kinda dull. So I need to come up with an answer that quickly transitions into an interesting story, otherwise it will always fall a bit flat.
In the afternoon, I visited half a dozen Boston area bookstores and signed books.
Amazon ranking shot up today and got as low as 906...but I doubt it can sustain at that level until I do more media.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack