August 13, 2025 • 63 mins
What does a life of creative reinvention really look like #45Forward #BillWilliams In this episode of 45 Forward, host Ron Roel sits down with writer–producer–editor Bill Williams—a military brat turned TV/film consultant, presidential slide-maker, registered lobbyist, disaster-relief communicator, finance pro, and creator of the long-running email series “Thought for the Day.” Bill shares funny, startling, and deeply human stories: inventing a 90-second USPS PSA that stations actually wanted to air, launching the Benjamin Franklin Stamp Club in schools, documenting floods and recovery efforts, a week among the Hopi after historic rains, a Poland bicentennial film shoot, and what digital photography taught him about change. His timeless advice for creatives: “Don’t try to do everything. Do something, do it well—then try the next thing.” You’ll learn: How to build a career by stacking specialties—not chasing everything at once Why the right format (and length) can make or break a message How institutional perspective sharpen your questions What travel, failure, and finishing actually teach you in the long run Explore more: • 45 Forward archive: 45Forward.org • Caregiving resources: CaregivingNav.com • Bill’s site & signup for Thought for the Day: Internet-Humor.com • Bill’s book: "20 Years of Internet Humor" (available via major booksellers)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
People have asked me to you whiz.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
You've written for a film, you've written for TV, you've
written for magazines, you've written everything. What would you tell
a writer that wanted to do it all? I'd say,
don't try to do it all. Do something, do it well.
Once you've done something well, try something else. If you
like it to try it, but you know, keep it up.
(00:23):
But don't try to do everything, because you won't be able,
you won't be successful in any of it.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hello.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Everyone, this is Ron Rowell, the host of forty five Forward,
where our mission is to help make your second half
of life even better than the first Antony's podcast. My
guest is Bill Williams, a remarkable man whom I met
through a good friend Bonnie Graham, a fellow podcaster also
known as Radio Red, who does a show called Cool
Conversations with Creatives, and Bill was a guest in her show,
(00:56):
which I heard Bill. Bill's himself a writer and editor,
but that hardly describes him. And we could fill out
of the show just going through your various steps, but
let's just, you know, give us a quick recap and
we'll go into various steps along the way. So let's
give us a little bit a sense of you know,
I know you had a you know, a itinerary career.
(01:17):
Your dad was in the military. So let's just give
us a quick recap and then we'll take deeper dive
as we go along.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Starting as you mentioned, I grew up as a military
brat around the country. As a matter of fact, I
went to something like fourteen schools before I.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Got out of high school. Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So I saw a lot of the country and had
a lot of experiences. I originally thought, having grown up
on air Force bases, that I wanted to be an
aeronautical engineer.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I applied for a job but what was then New
Mexico A and M because they had a program with
White Sands Missile Range, where he went to school for
six months and went to work at the missile range
for six months.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Mmm.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I didn't get excited.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So I went to Texas Tech and enrolled in their
engineering program, and after about a semester, I realized this
is probably not a good career for choice because.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I hate math. OK.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So I started traveling, you know, moving around from major
to major and to major, and after five years as
an undergraduate, I was sitting in the Union with a
friend on the faculty, and he said, I was looking
at one of your transcripts, and you know you've got
enough hours to graduate next semester. I jumped up and
grabbed him by the collar and said, in what you said,
(02:38):
you'd take three more classes in speech and you can
graduate as a speech major.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Since the radio and television program was.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Part of speech department, I said, sure, I'm already doing
managing the radio station, so why not. So I got
a bachelor's in that and then a master's in that,
and then I went to the University of Texas where
I was on the faculty there and worked on a PhD.
Never finished it, but worked on it and wound up
(03:08):
managing Forst City Television Network at Instructional Television, who had
seven different universities that were all part of the program.
And as a result of that, I was offered a
job at Bowling Green State University and held head of
their educator Instructional Television department in a brand new television station.
(03:29):
They're just putting it on the air. It was channel
seventy highest in the nation, A fun thing. I had
never heard of Bowling Green, Ohio. I thought it was
going to Bowling Green, West or Bowling Green, Kentucky. I
thought I'd always liked to live in the mountains, but
Bowling Green, Ohio's as flat as where I'd been in
West Texas. I had three great years there and moved
(03:54):
to Washington, d C. Where I set up my own
business as a communications consultant. Did a lot of work
for or well everything from Carter administration up through the
first Bush administration at all President Reagan's slide shows for him, and.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Had a lot of fun doing what he was doing.
He's a registered lobbyist.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I was head of the director or president of the
Independent Media Producers Association, got some bills passed to make
life easier for TV and film producers working for the government.
And then I became a father and thought, she whiz.
You know, I never had a hometown. I thought my
(04:36):
daughters would probably like to have a hometown, and Washington.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Is not really a great local hometown.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And so my wife had family back in Ohio, and
we moved back to Ohio and been here ever since.
Let's face that, there's not a lot of demand for
TV producers in northwest Ohio. So I decided to change
careers and got into finance. Something I thought I was
going to hate, but I did anyway, But turned out
I liked it. Turned out I was good at it.
(05:05):
So been doing that for the last thirty five years.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Wow, wow, very interesting. Yeah, you know, accidental careers filled
with intention once you figured out what's really going on. Yeah,
so let's let's look a little bit more about this,
the communications aspect before you got into the finance. So
so you've seen a lot of changes over the years.
(05:30):
I mean, you know, and certainly I think we both
got you and I certainly remember the days of well
certainly typewriters, you know, and when I was started in journalism,
you know, it was we had to be just the
first the first paragraph of the story was one page,
(05:51):
one paragraph, you put it in there, and and you
had to make copies for different slots in the newsroom,
so you used carbon paper, know, and uh, you know,
and then I think you've mentioned to me before days
when you got called and you got a pager and like,
oh now I got to find a phone booth, you know,
(06:14):
to find a quarter, got to find a corner right
right right, So this you know, this, you know, like
like your thought for the day. But what are some
of your random thoughts about you know, what you've seen
in communications and where do you think we're headed.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well. I started in photography, okay.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Working for the university public relations office, and very soon
wound up on the staff of the local newspaper. And
of course we had to do all the developing and
printing and everything else. And I wound up writing for
a bunch of the professional photography magazines. As a matter
(06:55):
of fact, uh, technical photography is edited by a good
friend of ours.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I wound up doing entire issues of them. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I did an entire issue on photography at the White House.
I did an issue on photography at the Smithsonian. I
did an issue on photography at NASA, all the different
ways they used photography. When I finally got out of
Washington and came back to Ohio, I got a call saying, Hey, Bill,
could you do a special issue for us on this
new digital photography. That was one of the reasons I
(07:28):
got out of it, was because I didn't want to
have to change everything new cameras and new equipment and
never ring.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I said, sure, I'll do an issue for you.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
About three weeks later I called him up and said Dave,
You're going to have to find somebody else to do
this for you because I've been out of it for
six months and I'm at the point where I don't
even know the right questions to ask anything. That's how
much it's changed. You know, who would have ever thought
Kodak would have been out of business?
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah, that's that's that was stunning, you know.
And I had a good friend from college who you know,
just went out and he was, uh, I think it
was a philosophy major, but he ended up saying, you know,
creating his own commercial photography business, and then all of
a sudden, digital photography, and then people felt like, hey,
(08:21):
what do I need a photographer for.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
I can just do this on my camera.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
So there are lots of you know, interesting, you know,
advantages to that, And I guess part of it is
that you have to adapt to the fact that he
was a real craftsman and realize, okay, people are are
not looking for that level of craft you know, so
you really have to adapt, you know. And and but
(08:45):
but I think what I liked about, you know, you know,
reading about your career is that you went in a
lot of different places. He got a lot of different perspectives.
And that's something that I felt in being in the
newspaper business that there are a number of you know,
it used to be when you you know, in the
old days, whenever those were you know, when you you know,
(09:07):
you became a reporter, you came in from lots of
different aspects, different previous careers, and you sort of stumbled
in there, whereas then it became professionalized. But then people
sort of stayed in that, you know, in that role,
and they didn't get different perspectives. And I think that
that's an important thing, you know, even as a reporter,
even though you're doing it from that perspective. I remember
(09:29):
doing before in my eclective career, you know, I would
I spend some time outside journalism and in institutions like
you did, and then I got a sense of to
your point before about asking the right questions, you know,
I would sometimes you know, then i'd see from the
other side of reporters talking to institutions like you guys
(09:52):
aren't even asking the right questions. It's hard to know
what they are if you're not in these institutions. So
I think that's one of the things. But I learned
that that you really need to change perspectives to get
a sense of things you can't see from one position.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Absolutely, absolutely, So.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
You did travel around a lot, and and you know
there are advantages and disadvantages of that. You know, again,
one of the things about you know that I observe
a lot, even though I've moved around some, but have
been fairly stable for the well situated for a number
(10:32):
of years. But what what so part of it is
you know, we are moving Americans, That's what we do.
So what are the what are the losses in doing that?
I mean, I know that you felt that that there
was you know, you didn't moved around a lot, but
what were some of the things you gained from doing that?
And then you mentioned you you did want something stable
(10:55):
for your daughters. But what do you think you learned
and how did that shape your life?
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Well? I found you know, moving around. You know, sixth grade,
I was in three different schools. Let's face it.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I never had a chance to make friends long term reps, okay,
because as soon as I'd make a friend, I get
a notice, Hey we're moving next week, so all gone
start over again. And I learned to make friends fast, okay,
meet people, but then don't get too close because you're
going to be leaving very soon.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It's a different way of doing it, which is.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Why I wanted to give my girls a hometown because
now they're thirty five and forty and they have friends
that they've known since they were, you know, pre teens,
and it's not something I ever had a chance to do.
My oldest friend is from high school, so as a
matter of fact, I got an email from them this.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Morning, which is nice.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
So it's a whole different way of growing up because
so many people I know here in Ohio. Ohio, by
the way, has the highest percentage of people who have
never left.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And I know people who have spent their entire lives
within twenty miles of where they're living right now. Now today,
they've had a opportunity to travel and get around and
see the rest of the world. But I know, growing
up in Texas, there were an awful lot of people
I met that, you know, they'd never been out of
(12:37):
the state. It was a shock to see what else
is going on. I remember a trip when I took
a couple of friends from our fraternity up to a
fraternity convention from Texas to Bloomington, Indiana, and one of
the girls was sitting in the back seat and you know, love,
but Texas is out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
(13:03):
The nearest hill is three hundred miles away, let's face it.
And while the girls were sitting in the back seat,
and she spent most of the day there, and then
late in the day she looked up and looked out
the window and said.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Oh, my god, look at all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
There was a total shock to her that there was
actually something to look at.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
You know, so I'm on Long Island, New York, and
one might think, well, you're in a high need mobile state.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
You know, people get around.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
They you know, they diverse lives and different experiences they're
New Yorkers. But in fact I find that it's pretty
much the same in the sense that where I am
there are lots of little communities, and people are interestingly parochial.
They really don't move around that much, even though they
(14:00):
can go into the I know people who live, you know,
not that far within you know, within an hour of
New York City, and you ask them when when was
the last time you were in Manhattan. They're like I'll
go to Manhattan, you know, like really oh in the
cultural capitals, and you barely go well people. You know,
(14:21):
there's this interesting balance in life, an interesting you know,
desire for real roots and stability, and it's easy to
get really sedentary, which is, you know, in spite of
our mobile society, it's interesting that we still are kind
of home bodies, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
That's very true.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And I find that I haven't traveled all that much
in the last few years because I've got other things
going on, right, you know, And there's even.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Prior to that.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
I've visited all the forty nine states on the continent. Okay,
I've been to all of them, and the had written
in a bunch of them, you know, I want assignments
and all.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And I thoroughly enjoyed traveling.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
And I can honestly say that just about every place
I've lived, I enjoyed living there. I live in California,
I've lived in Colorado, I've lived in New Mexico. I've
lived in Pennsylvania, Georgia, all over Texas for Ohio, Virginia,
you know, and hey, I've liked them all.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
I want to pick up on that in terms of
you know, some of your observations on traveling around. We
are going to take a quick break though, Bill, So,
folks were coming up to a short break, but let
me come back. We'll have much more to talk about
with Bill Williams, and we'll get into his Thought for
their Day and his book and a lot of more experiences.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So don't go away, We'll be right back.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
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(16:17):
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Speaker 4 (16:38):
Welcome back to forty five Forward, folks. We're talking today
with Bill Williams, the producer of Thought for the Day
email and the author of twenty Years of Internet Humor
and some other interesting things.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Well, we'll be talking.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
About some of those aspects in a minute or so,
but I just wanted to cap our previous conversation because
I think that One of the things you've mentioned me
in a is this, you know, in terms of making
these changes in life that you really needed to learn
as you put it to roll with the punches.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
As a matter of fact, the reason I started the
Thought for the Day was change. Okay, it was in
the nineteen nineties. We had this new thing called the internet.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
What's that? How's that working? My god?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Email came along and I was managing a group of
sales folks in the Midwest, and I made sure they
all had a laptop and they all had email, but
nobody ever read it because what's out there is nothing there.
So that's how I started doing a Thought for the Day.
I'd send something interesting for them and they started reading
(17:43):
their emails, which was what I was looking for, and
then they started sharing it with their clients and the
client said, Hey, that's really good. Could I get on
that list too? No postage? So why not add somebody
to it?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Thirty years later, as you mentioned, I'm still setting it
out and I've got people all over the country, ninety
percent of them I've never met. I've got people in Europe,
I've got people in Australia that are getting this thing,
and The list changes on a daily basis because people say,
you put me on, and then people drop off and
all that sort of thing, So I never know who
(18:17):
all's getting it, but hey, I enjoy putting it out.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
And the book is twenty years of Internet humor instead
of thirty okay, because let's face it, the.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Computers back in the nineteen nineties were not nearly as
good as they are now, and frankly, for the first
bunch of years, I never gave a thought to saving
what I was sending out.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So when I finally said, hey, I need to be
you know, doing this, I.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Didn't really start it till two thousand and five, so
I've got most of the things from two thousand and
five on up till today. So hey, there's twenty years.
That makes a good number, so use that for a title.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
So you started this thing as basically a way to
connect with your sales force, and so what was some
your thoughts about thought for day? Like what do you
want to put in there? What's uh?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
When I first started it, I had a couple of
books on my desk of you know, quotations from famous
people and that sort of stuff, and a joke er too,
and I was doing it myself, and it was not
a daily thing because I just hadn't developed the habit yet, right,
But it was frequent. Then as people started listening to
(19:30):
it and listening to it reading it started sending me material.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Why don't you try this or why don't you use that?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
And I got to the point where today I'm more
of an editor than a creator because I have stuff
that are literally twenty years old that I just haven't
gotten around.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
To editing yet. Wow.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
You know, as a matter of fact, this past weekend,
I went into a couple of those and said, hey,
these are really good.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I'm sorry I missed them. They're vintage. Yeah, well their vintage,
but they're also good and mostly timeless. Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And if you if you get the book, the book
actually not only gives you the title of what it is.
The title I made up based upon the content, tells
who submitted it to me, you know, who originated it, and.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
It tells when I first used it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
You can see that, hey, this isn't from yesterday, this
is from you know, two thousand and six, Okay, And
that helps put these things into perspective. Okay, because some
of it's political, and it talks about who's in the
white House. I can almost guarantee it's not who's in
the white House today, it was who's in the white
House back then?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
M hm.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
And so I guess it gives you a sense of
perspective to people go, I, oh, that's interesting, you know.
They it may seem temporary, but it's timeless in some ways.
Have you seen any kinds of patterns or trends and
put people like most or or what they you know,
or would some of your favorites have been world I have.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So many favorites, but yes, one of the things that
I have seen that I almost never saw in the
early days was memes, you know, these little one one
box thought which is great and frankly, I find myself
now sending out, you know, lists of memes two or
(21:26):
three days a week, simply because so many people send
me these things, and they are so good for the
most part, for the most part, because like I say,
I'm an editor and there's a lot of stuff that
I'll pull out before it, you know, sees the light
of day. But that is a big difference because twenty
years ago, thirty years ago, we never saw those things,
(21:49):
you know, so that's different. But then, you know, yeah,
I've got some favorite things. Like one from twenty ten
was called The New Teacher. That was a popular one
was about a former Marine Corps sergeant who took a
new job as a school teacher. However, before the school
year started, he injured his back and was required to
wear a plaster cast all over the upper part of
(22:11):
his body. Now, fortunately it fit him so that his
shirt went over it and nobody really noticed the cast.
On the first day of.
Speaker 6 (22:19):
School, he found himself assigned to the toughest kids in
the school. They knew he was a marine, and they
wanted to say how this guy was really going to
handle him. You know, they put the most disruptive students
they had in this class, and they were really watching
what he did.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Well.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
He walked into the classroom the very first day, new teacher,
and he opened the window in the school.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
We didn't have air conditioner back then.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Let's fat and sat down at his desk and a
breeze came in and blew a bunch of papers around
it blew a tie up, okay, and he simply reached over,
grabbed a stapler and stapled his tie to his chest.
Didn't have any trouble for the rest of the year.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
That's good, and that's good. Yeah, it was that one
of yours. That was a submission from someone.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
That was a submission from a college friend named Julius Graw.
Julius retired as a Navy captain. We were both in
school together. I had tried to get into the Air
Force through Air Force ROTC and they didn't like me
because I couldn't see well enough. So I never did
get into the Air Force. But Julius got into the
(23:37):
Navy kicking and screaming. But he thought he was just
going to go for a quick term and be gone,
but he made it a career soon. He had been
planning to make a career in broadcasting and I'd been
planning to make a career in the military. So we
traded careers.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Okay, so I like to one. Uh, let's see, I
think this was just thought. It says seven. So I'm
on your list.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
So I get them.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
I enjoy them. So I one of the recent ones
you sent me was can you fix this? Which is
I guess it's this is a true true story. Right
about I wouldn't hold my breath, but okay, it could be.
It could be ups pilots filling out forms called grape sheets, and.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yes, that one is supposedly that one is supposedly true.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
So the grip sheets tell mechanics about problems with the aircraft.
The mechanics correct the problems, document the repairs on the forum.
Then the pilots will do the gripe sheets before the
next flight. Never let up, you said the ground crews
lack a sense of humor. So here are some actual
maintenance complaints, and here are some of their responses. You know,
so I love some of them. It's a it's a
(24:56):
tough thing, but you need to be ready for it,
and you need to adapt to it, need to roll
those punches.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And laugh at it.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Okay, yeah, absolutely absolutely. So let's so you collected these
things and they put it together.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
In the book.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
And let's talk a little bit about the book. So
when did it come out.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It came out the first of the year.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Technically, it came out in December fourteenth, I think was
the public official publication date, which was a surprise to
me because I wasn't expecting it until the middle or
end of January. I was delighted to have gotten it
in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Yeah, nice, nice. How long did it take you to
put it together?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Twenty years? Okay, right, there we go.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
No, actually, when I sat down and decided I wanted
to do it, it was, you know, maybe a couple
of weeks. I was just picking the ones I wanted
to do and cleaning them up and putting together an
introduction and you know, deciding, yeah, this is what I
want to do. One of the things that I have
found is in comments is the fact that it's too big.
(26:11):
There's too many pages for a humor book. They say
it should be half that size. So volume two will
probably be half that size.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
The need of people today is humor, So I'm not
sure about that. We'll have to see how your sales go.
I would it seems like too much that humor ain't
enough from my experience. Yeah, so you sell it basically
online or I can people buy it in the stores
as well?
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well. It's basically online.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It's available through Barnes and Noble and Books a Million
and most of the major bookstores, good Reads and.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
All that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
But very often people just order it from the bookstore
and have a chip to them, or order an ebook
copy from the bookstore wherever they'd like to get it.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Amazon obviously is the big dealer.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Right right, Well it's interesting, you know. So I do
find that they know, as as we get older and
there's increased longevity, that more people like you and me
are coming out with books better in life, and it's
just like, you know, it's accumulation of life, and it's
not really a memoir, but it is accumulation of experiences
and we can keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
So never thought of calling this a memoir, but I
guess it could be a memoir because memoirs are the
biggest selling category, so maybe I had to change my category.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Well that's a good point.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Maybe you know, it's it's a different kind of memoir,
but it is, you know, you know they I I
helped an attorney friend of mine put out his memoir,
so to speak. What but he what we did with
him is that he said, you know what, it isn't
so much my life that's interesting, but the people, the
(28:01):
clients that represented were interesting. So it's really a memoir
through his clients, you know, and his experiences with his clients.
And he had some pretty clet and prominent clients, so
it made it worthwhile to read about it and sort
of the inside story, nothing you know, untoward, but but
just interesting details about their lives and his assisting with
(28:24):
them so that to fulfill their needs. But they're interesting details,
you know, from people like Joy who's this person who
came out with the swiffer who now is there's a
Broadway play about her too. He represented souls and eats
(28:46):
and and so we had plenty of books about him,
but not sort of the inside stories. So you can,
you know, telling your life through you know, your relationships
with other people is an interesting perspective and through you know.
So I think that I think you should put in
the memoir category at the bottom line. Oh god, So
(29:08):
so you did the book and you've done these you
keep doing these thoughts for the day. But you've done
a lot of other interesting projects, so we'll talk a
little bit more about them. One of these sneak in
one before the break, and that is some of your interest,
you know, unusual projects over the year and to your consulting.
And one of the stories I liked that you tell
before was you know, doing PSAs with postal service, which
(29:31):
I thought was interesting. So tell us that story.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Well, the Postal Service was one of my biggest clients
and one of the things that back in the early seventies,
whenever they came out with a new commemorative stamp, there'd
be a big promotion on it, and TV spots would
be run on it, so.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Collectors would buy them, not use them, okay, And they
they came asked me to do one.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I guess the first one I did was on the
Robert Frost stamp okay, And they said, can you think
of a way that we could get more play on
this thing? And I said, yeah, make it longer, okay, seriously,
because back then PSAs were typically thirty seconds okay, public
service announcements PSAs some were even fifteen seconds. And I said,
(30:22):
let's do a ninety second one, okay. And the reason
I said that was because I'd worked on TV stations
whenever they would need to run public service announcements, they'd
come in on film and the people in the back
in the telesiny or the film room would have to
splice these things together, right, and would you rather splice
(30:43):
four fill four together?
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Or maybe two?
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So I figured if we had a long one, they'd
probably run that one a whole bunch more than they
would three thirty second one and it worked, and that
was that got better play than anything they've done in years,
simply because it was longer, okay, and they could get
ninety seconds worth of public service time without much less.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Effort, right right, So sometimes longer is better. I mean, now,
I you know, we're going in the opposite direction, seems
to be, but sometimes it's there. They're so short that
I can hardly focus on it, any of these things,
and it's it's just like, you know, image, image, image, image, immage,
And I think it's that, I think.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
You know something I was far before that time.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, let's do nice easy things going smoothly and go
from one to another.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And I haven't done a TV spot in.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Forty years, okay, and I don't miss it. I don't
miss it at all.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Well, we're gonna come back, and I just want to
pick up a couple more points about that. But when
we come back, we're going to take another short break.
We come back, though, don't go anywhere. We have a
lot more to talk about with Bill Williams, the author
of twenty Years of Internet Humor and some other interesting things.
So come right back.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Do you like what you're hearing? Well, we've got plenty
more where that came from. Head over to forty five
Forward dot org, where you'll find a full archive of
over two hundred episodes of the forty five Forward podcast,
all hosted by Ron. Each week, Ron talks with fascinating guests, experts, advocates,
(32:40):
and everyday folks, sharing insights and stories to help you
live a better, fuller life in your second half. We
cover everything from health and care giving to careers, relationships,
and finding purpose. Whatever helps you move forward with clarity
and confidence. That's forty five Forward dot org. Check it
(33:05):
out and keep moving forward. Forty five Forward.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
Welcome back to forty five Forward, folks. This is Ron Rowell,
your host. We're talking to you with Bill Williams, the
producer of Thought for the Day email and author of
twenty years of Internet humor and some other interesting things.
Before the break, we were talking about some of Bill's projects.
Besides his writing, he had a lot of different projects
as a communications consultant. We were talking about the postal
(33:39):
service and his PSAs, but he had some other interesting
experiences with the postal service, specifically about stamps, So talk
about that.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Bill, now.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
They came to me and said, do you have any
ideas what we could do to increase the number of
stamp collectors.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
And I said, yeah, I'm going to be real simple.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Let's start getting people collecting staf when they're young, starting school.
So we came up with the idea of starting stamp
clubs throughout schools around the country. We called it the
Benjamin Franklin Stamp Club. And what we did to make
it useful was to create a teaching kit for teachers
(34:19):
which included posters about stamps, which included teaching material about stamps,
which includes a lot of additional material film strips okay,
a series of film strips and what. We put this
together in a nice package, and they said, well, why
(34:39):
don't we sell it? And I said, yeah, I think
we could ought to be about ten twelve bucks.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
They said no, let's sell it for five.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
They said, well, that's really below your cost, and they
said yeah, but we want to get a few people
to use it. So the idea was to sell it
for five dollars so that teachers would just buy it
out of their pocket and not submit purchase order.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
So they then set out a great publicity thing to
teachers all over the country, and they gave me a goal.
If I could sell fifteen hundred of these things, it
would be considered a great success. It was a disaster
because we sold twenty thousand and ninety nine percent of
(35:29):
them got purchased on purchase orders.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Which made a huge problem for the post office, which
drove the cost up so much that they were losing
money on every one of them. They canceled the whole
project after the first It was supposed to be for
you know, four different series, but they canceled the whole
project after the first one because just cost them too
(35:54):
much money.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Wow. So killed by success by success.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, yeah, but it's interesting that, you know, sometimes they
just don't it's like value the product for what it
really is. You know, people would have paid more, but
the schools.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Would pay more, but they didn't want to go through
the hassle of pevnty school's order them. But then they
also weren't really thinking in terms of commercial because let's
face it, they never had to make up right right, right,
and so that just wasn't part of their mindset and
they weren't thinking that way.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah, Well, they probably would be more thinking about that today.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Well, I'm sure they would, but you know, since they canceled,
what I then turned around and did was set up
my own series of things American history on stamps. Okay,
and set that up is did a whole series of
four or eight I don't even remember now, different film strips,
and that film strip series won a bunch of awards
(36:59):
for the best educational programs, and I sold a ton
of those. They definitely charged enough to make a profit
on them.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Yeah, yeah, well you do that. That is sometimes the
problem with the you know, he needs some sort of
profit motive. He needs some sort of you know, entrepreneurial
incentives behind something. So the shame I think that they're
you know, it's well, now that they're in trouble, let's say,
you know, with the competition and with costs, they really
(37:29):
need a little bit more of that, you know. And
I'm not sure that selling SpongeBob SquarePants stamps will pail
them out, but who knows.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I don't know. Working for the government was a whole
different world.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Talk about that a little bit more. Yeah, it's about
some of those things.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I had a contract from one of the government agencies.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
They had developed a new piece of.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Equipment and it was being built in Downingtown, Pennsylvania at boroughs, Okay,
and it wasn't working. It didn't do what it was
supposed to do. It was not working. So I got
a contract to send a film crew up to do
mechanical film on what is the problem? So high speed
(38:17):
stuff that you know, so we could see where the
problems were and getting it back. And I got back
to Washington, there was somebody standing on my door.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I'm from the Postal Service. I want to see your film.
I said, it's still in the can. We haven't processed
it yet. I mean, it's well.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
As soon as you get it done, I want to
see it right now. So we got it processed, got
it printed, and called him in and he.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Looked at it and said this is terrible. I said,
what do you mean.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
He says, it's not working, and I said that was
what we're supposed to show you.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Well, it's not working. I said, you don't understand.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
We want to use this film as a promotion to
show what a great device this is. So I got
a second contract to send a film group back to
the same place to photograph the same machine. But this
time behind the scenes, I had people pulling strings and
making it work.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Oh man, So it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Bad for me, but the taxpayer got stuck for you know,
a bunch of money on that one.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, whew.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
So what what are some of your I know you
did a number of other projects for company agencies. What
were some of the other ones?
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Well, one was near and dear to my heart was
a series of television spots on lead based paint prevention
because this was again back in the seventies, and they
sent us down to a school in New Orleans. It
was being renovated to the photograph how they were getting
(39:56):
the paint out of the school. But a a great,
great reason for getting a PSA out there to show
the dangers of lead based.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Paint, and people say, well, hey, it's paint.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Well, the problem that people don't realize, particularly in schools,
is a lead based paint flakes offt and lead based
paint tastes good. Oh and kids were eating these paint
flakes and getting lead poisoning, which is why you don't
find lead based paint anymore, certainly not in school right.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, well I didn't. I didn't know that aspect that
it actually tastes good. That's interesting. Well, all right, we
needed to turn for that, all right, okay, okay, so
this is switched a little bit too. Your you're visiting
forty nine fifty states, so you're really of the United States.
(40:58):
What are some of your memories about where the country
parts of the country didn't expect, didn't you were surprised by,
or are some of the favorite ones or some of
the experiences that you glad you had or didn't expect.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
I like the desert.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Big growing out in West Texas, it's not desert, but
as you go a little bit further west, it definitely is.
And one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen
is Death Valley, Okay, hottest place in the US. But
occasionally it rains. If you're fortunate enough to get there
(41:36):
after a rain, the entire desert is in bloom because
nothing grows there. But if water comes you can see
these miles and miles of flower.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Just absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
I did a lot of work for the Federal Disaster
Assistance Administration, and back in the late seventies there were
some major, major floods down in Arizona. I got this
call seeing if I would be able to go and
do a job for them because I was a freelancer.
I was handled their public relations on a contract basin.
(42:17):
And they said, there's been some flooding in Phoenix, so
we'd like for you to go down there. And I said,
you're joking, right, Phoenix flooding And they said, yeah, definitely
a major problem because there's a salt river going through town.
There were twenty seven bridges across the salt River and
(42:37):
only three were left. And the flooding was caused not
so much by rain in Phoenix, but by rain in
the mountains because the rain and the mountains overfilled the
reservoirs and they had to release water from the reservoirs
to keep the dams from breaking, and so this water
came flooding down through Phoenix and caused flooding and Phoenix.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
On top of that.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
They said, we don't know how you're going to get
there for sure, because last we heard the airport was
two thirds underwater. And furthermore, we don't know who you're
going to be talking to. I said, will I go
in and report to the governor. They said, that's the problem,
we don't know who the governor is. I said, well,
tell me. They said, Well, the governor flew across the
(43:26):
area to see if in fact, this was a disaster.
He got back to the office, requested a disaster declaration
and died. He had been the governor because the original
governor had been assigned as ambassador to Argentina. And frankly,
we don't know right now who the new governor is
(43:48):
going to be. We haven't done the research. So I
got out to Arizona and went up to the governor's office, went.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Up in the elevator in the lobby. I was talking
with it, one of the guys in there.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
We got up to the governor's floor and he went
into the governor's office. Turns out he was the new governor.
He went up on the public elevator because he didn't
know where his private elevator was. But the best, the
most interesting part of that particular thing is the fact
that if you can remember that back in the news
(44:22):
that that long ago, there was a lot of news
stories about Operation Mudhole, where we had the army helicopters
flying hay and all out to cattle on the Navajo Indian.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Reservation because it was so muddy.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
As a result of all this rain, they couldn't get
out to their cattle. Wow, the army was helping them
with that. And somebody asked, well, what about the Hopies, said,
we haven't heard from the Hopeis said, well, they have
some problems too. So I made arrangements to take a
helicopter up and to the Hope Reservation just east of
(44:59):
the Navajo reservation. Next he's surrounded by the Navajo reservation
and met with the tribal chairman and he took me
on a tour of the Hope Reservation. They did, in
fact have major problems because the their whole tribe is
up on a series of three maces that are about
seven hundred feet above.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
The normal ground level.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
And they've been there for over a thousand years and
they have basically all these homes build out of adobe,
which is dried mud. And what happens when a lot
of rain hits dried mud, it melts, right, So these houses.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Basically had melted and they needed help getting rebuilt.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
And so I offered to give them help, and they
said we don't want it.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
I said, I beg your pardon.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
They said, whenever we've asked for help on something like this,
hud has come in and said you have to build
the houses according to HUD's specification.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Oh wow, And he.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Said, we look down there. There's a village down there.
It's all nice houses. Nobody lives there. Those are all
HUD houses that we've had to build in the past.
But none of our people want to live there. They
want to be up here with our rest of the tribe,
so we don't want to want it. So we came
up with an idea that instead of giving them money
(46:20):
through HUD, we got the money through State Department as
aid to a foreign nation.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Oh wow, So HUD wasn't involved, right, And I asked
the chairman.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I said, you know, once you get started, I'd love
to come out and take pictures and document your recovery.
He said, no, if that's part of the deal, keep
your money, we don't want it. And I said, okay,
that's not part of the deal because we need to
get this fixed right right.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
And so.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
About three or four weeks later, I was back in
Washington and I got a call from a tribal chairman said,
mister Williams, if you know you had just said you'd
like to take some pictures, if you'd still like to
take some pictures. We'd love to have you. Oh and
so I said, I can be there in two or
three days.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
He said, you'll be our guest. So I came out
and spent a week with the Hopies. I turned out.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
I learned I was the first white man ever allowed
to photograph on the reservation, learned a lot about the
Hope He's met a tremendous number of really great people.
And before I left, I asked the chairman, h I said,
you know, why did you change your mind?
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (47:31):
And he said, well, in the entire.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
History of our tribe, this is the first time the
white man who's ever made a promise to it and
kept Oh.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Yes, there have been a lot of broken promises over
the years, you know, treaty after trading after trading. But
so that's so you're here and you're mark will exception that.
So you definitely made me feel good.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (48:02):
Yeah, So we're going to just take another quick break
and we'll have a wrap up Bill, So folks don't
go away. We have one more good section coming up
with Bill Williams, the producer of Thought for a Day,
So don't go anywhere.
Speaker 7 (48:17):
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Speaker 4 (49:17):
Welcome back, folks to forty five Forward. I'm Ron Rowell,
your host again. We're talking with Bill Williams, producer Thought
for a Day and numerous other things of interest which
we've been talking about over the course of the last hour.
So Bill was mentioning an interesting story about his experience
with the Hopey Indian Hoping Native Americans, and during the
(49:40):
break you mentioned another story that is interesting. There are
a couple more stories I'd like to sneak in, but
tell this one Bill about you know this comes out
of your instructional film experience.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
Well, I was had a contract to go with a
for a government agency to go to Richmond, Virginia to
shoot a piece of equipment that apparently is used all
over the country, but almost no place was it set
up properly. He had to go to Richmond because that
was the one place they could locate that it was
all set up properly. So we're down there filming and
(50:15):
how it works and all that sort of stuff, and
one of the old tiers came over and said what
you doing And I said, well, we're shooting this instructional
film on the equipment on how to set it up properly.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
And he says, yeah, but why are you doing that?
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Said, do they need a training program to teach people
how to do it right? He said, but why are
you doing it because they're taking it out of operation
nationwide in the next ninety.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Days arrested development. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:49):
Yeah, so yeah, so this is There are lots of
experience like this, but some of them are better than others.
So you travel a lot. And I seem to recall
that you did a film about the impact of America
on Poland?
Speaker 1 (51:04):
Is that right? This was? Yeah, So that's interesting. That
was an absolutely delightful project which I never saw the
results of. Okay, I had a.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
Contract to provide script and photography for a film on
the effect of American America on life in Poland during
the bi centennial. This was for the bi centennial, and
(51:38):
I had myself and two other people, the writer and
an assistant, and we flew over to Poland and spent
some absolutely delightful time visiting Warsaw and all over the country.
We photographed at Chopin's birthplace, photographed at the biggest steel
(51:59):
mill in in Europe, which is in Warsaw, or in Crackow.
We photographed at a Fiat manufacturing plan. We photographed all
over the place, and one of the ones with the
Chopin's birthplace, which was so much fun, was the fact
(52:20):
that I talked to my guide and translator and I said, Terry,
would you see if you could go out and find
some people that could just walk through the picture just
they won't say anything. I just need to see some
picture some people walking through. And so he came back
and said, I think you'll like this people. I said why,
(52:42):
He said, well, I'll let them introduce themselves to you.
It turned out to be the Muskingham College basketball team
for the Singham Ohio.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Back to your hometown or a home state, Yeah not
at the time. Yeah, it was fun. Did have to
admit that we visited Auschwitz. That was one of the most.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
Draining thing I've ever done. I could not make it
all the way through. It was just so impactful. But
we visited the photograph the largest steel plant in Europe,
and the manager came over and asked, us, now, there's
two lines here. Please only photograph the one on the right.
(53:33):
Do not photograph anything on the left.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
So we did.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Turned out as looking at the labels on the thing.
This was made by Abbietna from Perrysburg, Ohio, which is
where I live now. This was back in nineteen seventy three,
and I when we were done, I asked him, he said,
why did you not want us to show the one
on the left? He said, well, the two lines. The
one on the right, the one you photographed, was given
(53:59):
to us by the United States and it runs perfectly.
The one on the left was given to us by
the Soviet Union and we have never been able to get.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
It to run. That's funny, that's funny. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
Yeah, So this is a film for the Bison tending
was that right for.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
The bi centennial, but it was also for Europe, Okay,
I mean for Poland. And the reason I say I
never saw it was that we turned over the film.
We turned over the script to the company that hired us,
and I never heard another word from them. Got paid,
but I never saw the end results or anything. I've
got some great still photos that I took, but I
(54:41):
don't even know if the film was ever completed and released.
Speaker 4 (54:45):
Was it part of a larger project to show the
impact so the impact of America on Poland, But it
seems to me to tells the reverse about, you know what,
the influences of other cultures, you know, in interaction with
the US.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
It was long enough go to where I couldn't even
tell you who the contract was with at this point.
You know, it was just one of my favorite projects,
but unfortunately I don't have anything to show for it
except some still.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
Pictures interesting memories. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (55:16):
Yeah, So in wrapping up Bill, so you've had a
lot of experiences, what some of the takeaways you know,
for you personally in terms.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
Of what what you learned.
Speaker 4 (55:28):
Along the way, things that you expected or didn't expect
sort of the lessons learned and uh and unexpected experiences
and accidents that turned into real, you know, real insights
about both yourself and and the life around you.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
Boy, that's a tough question, m Ron.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
One of the things that I did, I mentioned I'd
worked for the Federal Disaster Assistant Administration that.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
Later became FEMA.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Right. I was the director of News and Information for
FEMA for the first year of that organization, and.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
One of the things I learned was that.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I enjoyed working in that business more than anything I've
ever done in my life. Interesting, given the opportunity, I
would have never left. Unfortunately I was a member of
the wrong political party when the election came in, and
do you whiz, get the hell out of here, because
we want to put our people in right. But it's
(56:39):
the thing where we could go into any place in
the country and people were welcoming us, okay, because we
could help them when they really really needed help. Which
is why it has torn my heart out to see
the current administration get rid of FEMA and say, well,
we don't need that anymore, because that has done more
(57:02):
good than any other organization I can think of, except
maybe the American Red Cross, and the Red Cross was
part of you know, all the FEMA efforts that they did.
Speaker 4 (57:11):
Right, Well, that's interesting, that's the same. I mean, I
you know, you can criticize it, but you know, I
think that clearly when they're disasters, people don't care about partisanship.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
They just they need help. Well.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
And another thing about it is the fact that the
vast majority of the FEMA people who go out to
those things are not regular government employees. They're freelancers like
I was. They're called waes. While actually employed, they get
no benefits, no nothing, just an hourly wage.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
And they do it because they like to do it.
They want to do.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
It, and they can go out and you know, spend well.
For Hurricane Frederick, I was down in Alabama for three months. Wow, Okay,
And these other people do it, and I met people
all over the country because they all get together for
the big disasters and we see them periodically over the
years at different places, and they're there because they like
(58:15):
to help.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Well, yeah, there's no more there there now, right, Okay.
Speaker 4 (58:22):
So I know in previous conversations you had some thoughts
that I liked about advice to younger people.
Speaker 1 (58:30):
About.
Speaker 4 (58:30):
I mean, you tried a lot of things. You've what's
some of your advice to people about trying things?
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Try it, okay, try it, try it you'll like it. Okay,
that was what commercial many years ago.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
Try it, you'll like it, and if you don't like it,
try something else.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
You know, people have asked me, you whiz.
Speaker 2 (58:52):
You've written for a film, you've written for TV, you've
written for magazines, you've written everything. What would you tell
a writer that wanted to do it all? I'd said,
don't try to do it all. Do something, do it well.
Once you've done something well, try something else to try it.
(59:13):
But you know, keep it up, but don't try to
do everything, because you won't be able.
Speaker 4 (59:18):
You won't be successful in any of them. So I'm
sure you're you're still learning. But what lessons do you
think you're still learning in life?
Speaker 1 (59:29):
Anything? Except to keep trying things.
Speaker 2 (59:32):
Many years of Internet Humor is my first book. I've
written for sixty years. But I've never written a book before.
And I thought I knew about publishing, and I discovered
I was a total and complete novice. I've made so
many mistakes with this I can't believe how badly.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
Have screwed it up in some ways, but I'm learning. Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
It's just like it would advise somebody, try it, try
it till you get better at it. But I've discovered
that it's not your father's publishing world. I mean, things
are not at all like they were five, ten, fifteen,
certainly twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Well, I'm glad you did Bill.
Speaker 4 (01:00:20):
And to that point, I published a book recently, you
know again. It's a caregiving guide for families called Caregiving Navigator.
And I think the lesson is that I tried it,
and the most important thing is I finished it. I
did it, And you're always going to make mistakes. But
the point is finish something and try something else. And
(01:00:44):
you know it's not You can always revise it. You
can always make a better book. And so I think people,
you know, get so worried about it not being perfect,
you know that doubt saying, you know, don't let the
perfectly the enemy of the good. And so I'm glad
you did it. And and so once again I want to,
you know, tell people how they can get it. I
(01:01:04):
guess they can get it on your website, right, what
is your website?
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
My website is www dot Internet Humor dot com. Okay, okay,
And no they can't get the book there, but they'll
tell them to go to Amazon or Boxing, Noble or
book you know, you can get them any places like
that good Reads. But my email if somebody would like
to get my thoughts for the day, is built at
(01:01:29):
Internet Humor dot com. Okay, or if I go to
the website, they can sign up there for it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Nice. Okay, Good.
Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
Well, Bill, it's been a it's been a very fun,
enjoyable conversation with you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
Delightful to be with you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
I've got to say you're a great podcast or interviewer.
Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
Well, it's my pleasure, it's always it's It makes it
easy when I have someone who's as engaging as you.
So I want to thank you for a thoughtful show
with lots of interesting stories. And again, folks, thank you
for spending time with me and Bill and learning how
we can make our journey through the second half of
(01:02:12):
life even better.
Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Than the first.
Speaker 4 (01:02:13):
And certainly, Bill, as many you've got about three or
four halves you built into the second half. So it's
a great it's a great in spending this time with you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Folks.
Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
If you want to see an archive of all my shows.
Go to forty five forward dot org and you can
see a whole listing of all my shows. You want
to send me comments or questions or suggestions, you can
email me at Ron dot Roel at email at gmail
dot com. And you can also if you email me,
I can sign you up for my monthly news that
(01:02:48):
you can get a sense of what my upcoming shows are.
So thanks again, Bill and folks. Until my next episode
next week, keep moving forward. Forty five Forwards ass
People have asked me to you whiz.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
You've written for a film, you've written for TV, you've
written for magazines, you've written everything. What would you tell
a writer that wanted to do it all? I'd say,
don't try to do it all. Do something, do it well.
Once you've done something well, try something else. If you
like it to try it, but you know, keep it up.
(00:23):
But don't try to do everything, because you won't be able,
you won't be successful in any of it.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Hello.
Speaker 4 (00:34):
Everyone, this is Ron Rowell, the host of forty five Forward,
where our mission is to help make your second half
of life even better than the first Antony's podcast. My
guest is Bill Williams, a remarkable man whom I met
through a good friend Bonnie Graham, a fellow podcaster also
known as Radio Red, who does a show called Cool
Conversations with Creatives, and Bill was a guest in her show,
(00:56):
which I heard Bill. Bill's himself a writer and editor,
but that hardly describes him. And we could fill out
of the show just going through your various steps, but
let's just, you know, give us a quick recap and
we'll go into various steps along the way. So let's
give us a little bit a sense of you know,
I know you had a you know, a itinerary career.
(01:17):
Your dad was in the military. So let's just give
us a quick recap and then we'll take deeper dive
as we go along.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Starting as you mentioned, I grew up as a military
brat around the country. As a matter of fact, I
went to something like fourteen schools before I.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Got out of high school. Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So I saw a lot of the country and had
a lot of experiences. I originally thought, having grown up
on air Force bases, that I wanted to be an
aeronautical engineer.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I applied for a job but what was then New
Mexico A and M because they had a program with
White Sands Missile Range, where he went to school for
six months and went to work at the missile range
for six months.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Mmm.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I didn't get excited.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So I went to Texas Tech and enrolled in their
engineering program, and after about a semester, I realized this
is probably not a good career for choice because.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I hate math. OK.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
So I started traveling, you know, moving around from major
to major and to major, and after five years as
an undergraduate, I was sitting in the Union with a
friend on the faculty, and he said, I was looking
at one of your transcripts, and you know you've got
enough hours to graduate next semester. I jumped up and
grabbed him by the collar and said, in what you said,
(02:38):
you'd take three more classes in speech and you can
graduate as a speech major.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Since the radio and television program was.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Part of speech department, I said, sure, I'm already doing
managing the radio station, so why not. So I got
a bachelor's in that and then a master's in that,
and then I went to the University of Texas where
I was on the faculty there and worked on a PhD.
Never finished it, but worked on it and wound up
(03:08):
managing Forst City Television Network at Instructional Television, who had
seven different universities that were all part of the program.
And as a result of that, I was offered a
job at Bowling Green State University and held head of
their educator Instructional Television department in a brand new television station.
(03:29):
They're just putting it on the air. It was channel
seventy highest in the nation, A fun thing. I had
never heard of Bowling Green, Ohio. I thought it was
going to Bowling Green, West or Bowling Green, Kentucky. I
thought I'd always liked to live in the mountains, but
Bowling Green, Ohio's as flat as where I'd been in
West Texas. I had three great years there and moved
(03:54):
to Washington, d C. Where I set up my own
business as a communications consultant. Did a lot of work
for or well everything from Carter administration up through the
first Bush administration at all President Reagan's slide shows for him, and.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Had a lot of fun doing what he was doing.
He's a registered lobbyist.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I was head of the director or president of the
Independent Media Producers Association, got some bills passed to make
life easier for TV and film producers working for the government.
And then I became a father and thought, she whiz.
You know, I never had a hometown. I thought my
(04:36):
daughters would probably like to have a hometown, and Washington.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Is not really a great local hometown.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And so my wife had family back in Ohio, and
we moved back to Ohio and been here ever since.
Let's face that, there's not a lot of demand for
TV producers in northwest Ohio. So I decided to change
careers and got into finance. Something I thought I was
going to hate, but I did anyway, But turned out
I liked it. Turned out I was good at it.
(05:05):
So been doing that for the last thirty five years.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Wow, wow, very interesting. Yeah, you know, accidental careers filled
with intention once you figured out what's really going on. Yeah,
so let's let's look a little bit more about this,
the communications aspect before you got into the finance. So
so you've seen a lot of changes over the years.
(05:30):
I mean, you know, and certainly I think we both
got you and I certainly remember the days of well
certainly typewriters, you know, and when I was started in journalism,
you know, it was we had to be just the
first the first paragraph of the story was one page,
(05:51):
one paragraph, you put it in there, and and you
had to make copies for different slots in the newsroom,
so you used carbon paper, know, and uh, you know,
and then I think you've mentioned to me before days
when you got called and you got a pager and like,
oh now I got to find a phone booth, you know,
(06:14):
to find a quarter, got to find a corner right
right right, So this you know, this, you know, like
like your thought for the day. But what are some
of your random thoughts about you know, what you've seen
in communications and where do you think we're headed.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Well. I started in photography, okay.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Working for the university public relations office, and very soon
wound up on the staff of the local newspaper. And
of course we had to do all the developing and
printing and everything else. And I wound up writing for
a bunch of the professional photography magazines. As a matter
(06:55):
of fact, uh, technical photography is edited by a good
friend of ours.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I wound up doing entire issues of them. You know.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I did an entire issue on photography at the White House.
I did an issue on photography at the Smithsonian. I
did an issue on photography at NASA, all the different
ways they used photography. When I finally got out of
Washington and came back to Ohio, I got a call saying, Hey, Bill,
could you do a special issue for us on this
new digital photography. That was one of the reasons I
(07:28):
got out of it, was because I didn't want to
have to change everything new cameras and new equipment and
never ring.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I said, sure, I'll do an issue for you.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
About three weeks later I called him up and said Dave,
You're going to have to find somebody else to do
this for you because I've been out of it for
six months and I'm at the point where I don't
even know the right questions to ask anything. That's how
much it's changed. You know, who would have ever thought
Kodak would have been out of business?
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Yeah? Absolutely, Yeah, that's that's that was stunning, you know.
And I had a good friend from college who you know,
just went out and he was, uh, I think it
was a philosophy major, but he ended up saying, you know,
creating his own commercial photography business, and then all of
a sudden, digital photography, and then people felt like, hey,
(08:21):
what do I need a photographer for.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
I can just do this on my camera.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
So there are lots of you know, interesting, you know,
advantages to that, And I guess part of it is
that you have to adapt to the fact that he
was a real craftsman and realize, okay, people are are
not looking for that level of craft you know, so
you really have to adapt, you know. And and but
(08:45):
but I think what I liked about, you know, you know,
reading about your career is that you went in a
lot of different places. He got a lot of different perspectives.
And that's something that I felt in being in the
newspaper business that there are a number of you know,
it used to be when you you know, in the
old days, whenever those were you know, when you you know,
(09:07):
you became a reporter, you came in from lots of
different aspects, different previous careers, and you sort of stumbled
in there, whereas then it became professionalized. But then people
sort of stayed in that, you know, in that role,
and they didn't get different perspectives. And I think that
that's an important thing, you know, even as a reporter,
even though you're doing it from that perspective. I remember
(09:29):
doing before in my eclective career, you know, I would
I spend some time outside journalism and in institutions like
you did, and then I got a sense of to
your point before about asking the right questions, you know,
I would sometimes you know, then i'd see from the
other side of reporters talking to institutions like you guys
(09:52):
aren't even asking the right questions. It's hard to know
what they are if you're not in these institutions. So
I think that's one of the things. But I learned
that that you really need to change perspectives to get
a sense of things you can't see from one position.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Absolutely, absolutely, So.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
You did travel around a lot, and and you know
there are advantages and disadvantages of that. You know, again,
one of the things about you know that I observe
a lot, even though I've moved around some, but have
been fairly stable for the well situated for a number
(10:32):
of years. But what what so part of it is
you know, we are moving Americans, That's what we do.
So what are the what are the losses in doing that?
I mean, I know that you felt that that there
was you know, you didn't moved around a lot, but
what were some of the things you gained from doing that?
And then you mentioned you you did want something stable
(10:55):
for your daughters. But what do you think you learned
and how did that shape your life?
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Well? I found you know, moving around. You know, sixth grade,
I was in three different schools. Let's face it.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I never had a chance to make friends long term reps, okay,
because as soon as I'd make a friend, I get
a notice, Hey we're moving next week, so all gone
start over again. And I learned to make friends fast, okay,
meet people, but then don't get too close because you're
going to be leaving very soon.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It's a different way of doing it, which is.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Why I wanted to give my girls a hometown because
now they're thirty five and forty and they have friends
that they've known since they were, you know, pre teens,
and it's not something I ever had a chance to do.
My oldest friend is from high school, so as a
matter of fact, I got an email from them this.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Morning, which is nice.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
So it's a whole different way of growing up because
so many people I know here in Ohio. Ohio, by
the way, has the highest percentage of people who have
never left.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:16):
And I know people who have spent their entire lives
within twenty miles of where they're living right now. Now today,
they've had a opportunity to travel and get around and
see the rest of the world. But I know, growing
up in Texas, there were an awful lot of people
I met that, you know, they'd never been out of
(12:37):
the state. It was a shock to see what else
is going on. I remember a trip when I took
a couple of friends from our fraternity up to a
fraternity convention from Texas to Bloomington, Indiana, and one of
the girls was sitting in the back seat and you know, love,
but Texas is out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
(13:03):
The nearest hill is three hundred miles away, let's face it.
And while the girls were sitting in the back seat,
and she spent most of the day there, and then
late in the day she looked up and looked out
the window and said.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Oh, my god, look at all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
There was a total shock to her that there was
actually something to look at.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
You know, so I'm on Long Island, New York, and
one might think, well, you're in a high need mobile state.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
You know, people get around.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
They you know, they diverse lives and different experiences they're
New Yorkers. But in fact I find that it's pretty
much the same in the sense that where I am
there are lots of little communities, and people are interestingly parochial.
They really don't move around that much, even though they
(14:00):
can go into the I know people who live, you know,
not that far within you know, within an hour of
New York City, and you ask them when when was
the last time you were in Manhattan. They're like I'll
go to Manhattan, you know, like really oh in the
cultural capitals, and you barely go well people. You know,
(14:21):
there's this interesting balance in life, an interesting you know,
desire for real roots and stability, and it's easy to
get really sedentary, which is, you know, in spite of
our mobile society, it's interesting that we still are kind
of home bodies, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
That's very true.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And I find that I haven't traveled all that much
in the last few years because I've got other things
going on, right, you know, And there's even.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Prior to that.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
I've visited all the forty nine states on the continent. Okay,
I've been to all of them, and the had written
in a bunch of them, you know, I want assignments
and all.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And I thoroughly enjoyed traveling.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
And I can honestly say that just about every place
I've lived, I enjoyed living there. I live in California,
I've lived in Colorado, I've lived in New Mexico. I've
lived in Pennsylvania, Georgia, all over Texas for Ohio, Virginia,
you know, and hey, I've liked them all.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
I want to pick up on that in terms of
you know, some of your observations on traveling around. We
are going to take a quick break though, Bill, So,
folks were coming up to a short break, but let
me come back. We'll have much more to talk about
with Bill Williams, and we'll get into his Thought for
their Day and his book and a lot of more experiences.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So don't go away, We'll be right back.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
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but you don't have to do it alone. Ron's book,
The Caregiving Navigator is a step by step guide designed
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from organizing family conversations to navigating long term care and
(16:17):
finding support for yourself the caregiver. It's all here. Find
The Caregiving Navigator now on Amazon and take the first
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Speaker 4 (16:38):
Welcome back to forty five Forward, folks. We're talking today
with Bill Williams, the producer of Thought for the Day
email and the author of twenty Years of Internet Humor
and some other interesting things.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Well, we'll be talking.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
About some of those aspects in a minute or so,
but I just wanted to cap our previous conversation because
I think that One of the things you've mentioned me
in a is this, you know, in terms of making
these changes in life that you really needed to learn
as you put it to roll with the punches.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
As a matter of fact, the reason I started the
Thought for the Day was change. Okay, it was in
the nineteen nineties. We had this new thing called the internet.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
What's that? How's that working? My god?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Email came along and I was managing a group of
sales folks in the Midwest, and I made sure they
all had a laptop and they all had email, but
nobody ever read it because what's out there is nothing there.
So that's how I started doing a Thought for the Day.
I'd send something interesting for them and they started reading
(17:43):
their emails, which was what I was looking for, and
then they started sharing it with their clients and the
client said, Hey, that's really good. Could I get on
that list too? No postage? So why not add somebody
to it?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Thirty years later, as you mentioned, I'm still setting it
out and I've got people all over the country, ninety
percent of them I've never met. I've got people in Europe,
I've got people in Australia that are getting this thing,
and The list changes on a daily basis because people say,
you put me on, and then people drop off and
all that sort of thing, So I never know who
(18:17):
all's getting it, but hey, I enjoy putting it out.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
And the book is twenty years of Internet humor instead
of thirty okay, because let's face it, the.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Computers back in the nineteen nineties were not nearly as
good as they are now, and frankly, for the first
bunch of years, I never gave a thought to saving
what I was sending out.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So when I finally said, hey, I need to be
you know, doing this, I.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Didn't really start it till two thousand and five, so
I've got most of the things from two thousand and
five on up till today. So hey, there's twenty years.
That makes a good number, so use that for a title.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
So you started this thing as basically a way to
connect with your sales force, and so what was some
your thoughts about thought for day? Like what do you
want to put in there? What's uh?
Speaker 2 (19:07):
When I first started it, I had a couple of
books on my desk of you know, quotations from famous
people and that sort of stuff, and a joke er too,
and I was doing it myself, and it was not
a daily thing because I just hadn't developed the habit yet, right,
But it was frequent. Then as people started listening to
(19:30):
it and listening to it reading it started sending me material.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Why don't you try this or why don't you use that?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
And I got to the point where today I'm more
of an editor than a creator because I have stuff
that are literally twenty years old that I just haven't
gotten around.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
To editing yet. Wow.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
You know, as a matter of fact, this past weekend,
I went into a couple of those and said, hey,
these are really good.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I'm sorry I missed them. They're vintage. Yeah, well their vintage,
but they're also good and mostly timeless. Okay.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
And if you if you get the book, the book
actually not only gives you the title of what it is.
The title I made up based upon the content, tells
who submitted it to me, you know, who originated it, and.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
It tells when I first used it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
You can see that, hey, this isn't from yesterday, this
is from you know, two thousand and six, Okay, And
that helps put these things into perspective. Okay, because some
of it's political, and it talks about who's in the
white House. I can almost guarantee it's not who's in
the white House today, it was who's in the white
House back then?
Speaker 3 (20:44):
M hm.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
And so I guess it gives you a sense of
perspective to people go, I, oh, that's interesting, you know.
They it may seem temporary, but it's timeless in some ways.
Have you seen any kinds of patterns or trends and
put people like most or or what they you know,
or would some of your favorites have been world I have.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So many favorites, but yes, one of the things that
I have seen that I almost never saw in the
early days was memes, you know, these little one one
box thought which is great and frankly, I find myself
now sending out, you know, lists of memes two or
(21:26):
three days a week, simply because so many people send
me these things, and they are so good for the
most part, for the most part, because like I say,
I'm an editor and there's a lot of stuff that
I'll pull out before it, you know, sees the light
of day. But that is a big difference because twenty
years ago, thirty years ago, we never saw those things,
(21:49):
you know, so that's different. But then, you know, yeah,
I've got some favorite things. Like one from twenty ten
was called The New Teacher. That was a popular one
was about a former Marine Corps sergeant who took a
new job as a school teacher. However, before the school
year started, he injured his back and was required to
wear a plaster cast all over the upper part of
(22:11):
his body. Now, fortunately it fit him so that his
shirt went over it and nobody really noticed the cast.
On the first day of.
Speaker 6 (22:19):
School, he found himself assigned to the toughest kids in
the school. They knew he was a marine, and they
wanted to say how this guy was really going to
handle him. You know, they put the most disruptive students
they had in this class, and they were really watching
what he did.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Well.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
He walked into the classroom the very first day, new teacher,
and he opened the window in the school.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
We didn't have air conditioner back then.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Let's fat and sat down at his desk and a
breeze came in and blew a bunch of papers around
it blew a tie up, okay, and he simply reached over,
grabbed a stapler and stapled his tie to his chest.
Didn't have any trouble for the rest of the year.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
That's good, and that's good. Yeah, it was that one
of yours. That was a submission from someone.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
That was a submission from a college friend named Julius Graw.
Julius retired as a Navy captain. We were both in
school together. I had tried to get into the Air
Force through Air Force ROTC and they didn't like me
because I couldn't see well enough. So I never did
get into the Air Force. But Julius got into the
(23:37):
Navy kicking and screaming. But he thought he was just
going to go for a quick term and be gone,
but he made it a career soon. He had been
planning to make a career in broadcasting and I'd been
planning to make a career in the military. So we
traded careers.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Okay, so I like to one. Uh, let's see, I
think this was just thought. It says seven. So I'm
on your list.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
So I get them.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
I enjoy them. So I one of the recent ones
you sent me was can you fix this? Which is
I guess it's this is a true true story. Right
about I wouldn't hold my breath, but okay, it could be.
It could be ups pilots filling out forms called grape sheets, and.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yes, that one is supposedly that one is supposedly true.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
So the grip sheets tell mechanics about problems with the aircraft.
The mechanics correct the problems, document the repairs on the forum.
Then the pilots will do the gripe sheets before the
next flight. Never let up, you said the ground crews
lack a sense of humor. So here are some actual
maintenance complaints, and here are some of their responses. You know,
so I love some of them. It's a it's a
(24:56):
tough thing, but you need to be ready for it,
and you need to adapt to it, need to roll
those punches.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And laugh at it.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Okay, yeah, absolutely absolutely. So let's so you collected these
things and they put it together.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
In the book.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
And let's talk a little bit about the book. So
when did it come out.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
It came out the first of the year.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Technically, it came out in December fourteenth, I think was
the public official publication date, which was a surprise to
me because I wasn't expecting it until the middle or
end of January. I was delighted to have gotten it
in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Yeah, nice, nice. How long did it take you to
put it together?
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Twenty years? Okay, right, there we go.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
No, actually, when I sat down and decided I wanted
to do it, it was, you know, maybe a couple
of weeks. I was just picking the ones I wanted
to do and cleaning them up and putting together an
introduction and you know, deciding, yeah, this is what I
want to do. One of the things that I have
found is in comments is the fact that it's too big.
(26:11):
There's too many pages for a humor book. They say
it should be half that size. So volume two will
probably be half that size.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
The need of people today is humor, So I'm not
sure about that. We'll have to see how your sales go.
I would it seems like too much that humor ain't
enough from my experience. Yeah, so you sell it basically
online or I can people buy it in the stores
as well?
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Well. It's basically online.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It's available through Barnes and Noble and Books a Million
and most of the major bookstores, good Reads and.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
All that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
But very often people just order it from the bookstore
and have a chip to them, or order an ebook
copy from the bookstore wherever they'd like to get it.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Amazon obviously is the big dealer.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Right right, Well it's interesting, you know. So I do
find that they know, as as we get older and
there's increased longevity, that more people like you and me
are coming out with books better in life, and it's
just like, you know, it's accumulation of life, and it's
not really a memoir, but it is accumulation of experiences
and we can keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
So never thought of calling this a memoir, but I
guess it could be a memoir because memoirs are the
biggest selling category, so maybe I had to change my category.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Well that's a good point.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Maybe you know, it's it's a different kind of memoir,
but it is, you know, you know they I I
helped an attorney friend of mine put out his memoir,
so to speak. What but he what we did with
him is that he said, you know what, it isn't
so much my life that's interesting, but the people, the
(28:01):
clients that represented were interesting. So it's really a memoir
through his clients, you know, and his experiences with his clients.
And he had some pretty clet and prominent clients, so
it made it worthwhile to read about it and sort
of the inside story, nothing you know, untoward, but but
just interesting details about their lives and his assisting with
(28:24):
them so that to fulfill their needs. But they're interesting details,
you know, from people like Joy who's this person who
came out with the swiffer who now is there's a
Broadway play about her too. He represented souls and eats
(28:46):
and and so we had plenty of books about him,
but not sort of the inside stories. So you can,
you know, telling your life through you know, your relationships
with other people is an interesting perspective and through you know.
So I think that I think you should put in
the memoir category at the bottom line. Oh god, So
(29:08):
so you did the book and you've done these you
keep doing these thoughts for the day. But you've done
a lot of other interesting projects, so we'll talk a
little bit more about them. One of these sneak in
one before the break, and that is some of your interest,
you know, unusual projects over the year and to your consulting.
And one of the stories I liked that you tell
before was you know, doing PSAs with postal service, which
(29:31):
I thought was interesting. So tell us that story.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Well, the Postal Service was one of my biggest clients
and one of the things that back in the early seventies,
whenever they came out with a new commemorative stamp, there'd
be a big promotion on it, and TV spots would
be run on it, so.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Collectors would buy them, not use them, okay, And they
they came asked me to do one.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I guess the first one I did was on the
Robert Frost stamp okay, And they said, can you think
of a way that we could get more play on
this thing? And I said, yeah, make it longer, okay, seriously,
because back then PSAs were typically thirty seconds okay, public
service announcements PSAs some were even fifteen seconds. And I said,
(30:22):
let's do a ninety second one, okay. And the reason
I said that was because I'd worked on TV stations
whenever they would need to run public service announcements, they'd
come in on film and the people in the back
in the telesiny or the film room would have to
splice these things together, right, and would you rather splice
(30:43):
four fill four together?
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Or maybe two?
Speaker 2 (30:48):
So I figured if we had a long one, they'd
probably run that one a whole bunch more than they
would three thirty second one and it worked, and that
was that got better play than anything they've done in years,
simply because it was longer, okay, and they could get
ninety seconds worth of public service time without much less.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Effort, right right, So sometimes longer is better. I mean, now,
I you know, we're going in the opposite direction, seems
to be, but sometimes it's there. They're so short that
I can hardly focus on it, any of these things,
and it's it's just like, you know, image, image, image, image, immage,
And I think it's that, I think.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
You know something I was far before that time.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, let's do nice easy things going smoothly and go
from one to another.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And I haven't done a TV spot in.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Forty years, okay, and I don't miss it. I don't
miss it at all.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
Well, we're gonna come back, and I just want to
pick up a couple more points about that. But when
we come back, we're going to take another short break.
We come back, though, don't go anywhere. We have a
lot more to talk about with Bill Williams, the author
of twenty Years of Internet Humor and some other interesting things.
So come right back.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Do you like what you're hearing? Well, we've got plenty
more where that came from. Head over to forty five
Forward dot org, where you'll find a full archive of
over two hundred episodes of the forty five Forward podcast,
all hosted by Ron. Each week, Ron talks with fascinating guests, experts, advocates,
(32:40):
and everyday folks, sharing insights and stories to help you
live a better, fuller life in your second half. We
cover everything from health and care giving to careers, relationships,
and finding purpose. Whatever helps you move forward with clarity
and confidence. That's forty five Forward dot org. Check it
(33:05):
out and keep moving forward. Forty five Forward.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
Welcome back to forty five Forward, folks. This is Ron Rowell,
your host. We're talking to you with Bill Williams, the
producer of Thought for the Day email and author of
twenty years of Internet humor and some other interesting things.
Before the break, we were talking about some of Bill's projects.
Besides his writing, he had a lot of different projects
as a communications consultant. We were talking about the postal
(33:39):
service and his PSAs, but he had some other interesting
experiences with the postal service, specifically about stamps, So talk
about that.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Bill, now.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
They came to me and said, do you have any
ideas what we could do to increase the number of
stamp collectors.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
And I said, yeah, I'm going to be real simple.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Let's start getting people collecting staf when they're young, starting school.
So we came up with the idea of starting stamp
clubs throughout schools around the country. We called it the
Benjamin Franklin Stamp Club. And what we did to make
it useful was to create a teaching kit for teachers
(34:19):
which included posters about stamps, which included teaching material about stamps,
which includes a lot of additional material film strips okay,
a series of film strips and what. We put this
together in a nice package, and they said, well, why
(34:39):
don't we sell it? And I said, yeah, I think
we could ought to be about ten twelve bucks.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
They said no, let's sell it for five.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
They said, well, that's really below your cost, and they
said yeah, but we want to get a few people
to use it. So the idea was to sell it
for five dollars so that teachers would just buy it
out of their pocket and not submit purchase order.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Oh okay.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
So they then set out a great publicity thing to
teachers all over the country, and they gave me a goal.
If I could sell fifteen hundred of these things, it
would be considered a great success. It was a disaster
because we sold twenty thousand and ninety nine percent of
(35:29):
them got purchased on purchase orders.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Which made a huge problem for the post office, which
drove the cost up so much that they were losing
money on every one of them. They canceled the whole
project after the first It was supposed to be for
you know, four different series, but they canceled the whole
project after the first one because just cost them too
(35:54):
much money.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Wow. So killed by success by success.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
Yeah, yeah, but it's interesting that, you know, sometimes they
just don't it's like value the product for what it
really is. You know, people would have paid more, but
the schools.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Would pay more, but they didn't want to go through
the hassle of pevnty school's order them. But then they
also weren't really thinking in terms of commercial because let's
face it, they never had to make up right right, right,
and so that just wasn't part of their mindset and
they weren't thinking that way.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah, Well, they probably would be more thinking about that today.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Well, I'm sure they would, but you know, since they canceled,
what I then turned around and did was set up
my own series of things American history on stamps. Okay,
and set that up is did a whole series of
four or eight I don't even remember now, different film strips,
and that film strip series won a bunch of awards
(36:59):
for the best educational programs, and I sold a ton
of those. They definitely charged enough to make a profit
on them.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Yeah, yeah, well you do that. That is sometimes the
problem with the you know, he needs some sort of
profit motive. He needs some sort of you know, entrepreneurial
incentives behind something. So the shame I think that they're
you know, it's well, now that they're in trouble, let's say,
you know, with the competition and with costs, they really
(37:29):
need a little bit more of that, you know. And
I'm not sure that selling SpongeBob SquarePants stamps will pail
them out, but who knows.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
I don't know. Working for the government was a whole
different world.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
Talk about that a little bit more. Yeah, it's about
some of those things.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
I had a contract from one of the government agencies.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
They had developed a new piece of.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Equipment and it was being built in Downingtown, Pennsylvania at boroughs, Okay,
and it wasn't working. It didn't do what it was
supposed to do. It was not working. So I got
a contract to send a film crew up to do
mechanical film on what is the problem? So high speed
(38:17):
stuff that you know, so we could see where the
problems were and getting it back. And I got back
to Washington, there was somebody standing on my door.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I'm from the Postal Service. I want to see your film.
I said, it's still in the can. We haven't processed
it yet. I mean, it's well.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
As soon as you get it done, I want to
see it right now. So we got it processed, got
it printed, and called him in and he.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Looked at it and said this is terrible. I said,
what do you mean.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
He says, it's not working, and I said that was
what we're supposed to show you.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Well, it's not working. I said, you don't understand.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
We want to use this film as a promotion to
show what a great device this is. So I got
a second contract to send a film group back to
the same place to photograph the same machine. But this
time behind the scenes, I had people pulling strings and
making it work.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Oh man, So it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Bad for me, but the taxpayer got stuck for you know,
a bunch of money on that one.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, whew.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
So what what are some of your I know you
did a number of other projects for company agencies. What
were some of the other ones?
Speaker 2 (39:34):
Well, one was near and dear to my heart was
a series of television spots on lead based paint prevention
because this was again back in the seventies, and they
sent us down to a school in New Orleans. It
was being renovated to the photograph how they were getting
(39:56):
the paint out of the school. But a a great,
great reason for getting a PSA out there to show
the dangers of lead based.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Paint, and people say, well, hey, it's paint.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Well, the problem that people don't realize, particularly in schools,
is a lead based paint flakes offt and lead based
paint tastes good. Oh and kids were eating these paint
flakes and getting lead poisoning, which is why you don't
find lead based paint anymore, certainly not in school right.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah, well I didn't. I didn't know that aspect that
it actually tastes good. That's interesting. Well, all right, we
needed to turn for that, all right, okay, okay, so
this is switched a little bit too. Your you're visiting
forty nine fifty states, so you're really of the United States.
(40:58):
What are some of your memories about where the country
parts of the country didn't expect, didn't you were surprised by,
or are some of the favorite ones or some of
the experiences that you glad you had or didn't expect.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
I like the desert.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Big growing out in West Texas, it's not desert, but
as you go a little bit further west, it definitely is.
And one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen
is Death Valley, Okay, hottest place in the US. But
occasionally it rains. If you're fortunate enough to get there
(41:36):
after a rain, the entire desert is in bloom because
nothing grows there. But if water comes you can see
these miles and miles of flower.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Just absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
I did a lot of work for the Federal Disaster
Assistance Administration, and back in the late seventies there were
some major, major floods down in Arizona. I got this
call seeing if I would be able to go and
do a job for them because I was a freelancer.
I was handled their public relations on a contract basin.
(42:17):
And they said, there's been some flooding in Phoenix, so
we'd like for you to go down there. And I said,
you're joking, right, Phoenix flooding And they said, yeah, definitely
a major problem because there's a salt river going through town.
There were twenty seven bridges across the salt River and
(42:37):
only three were left. And the flooding was caused not
so much by rain in Phoenix, but by rain in
the mountains because the rain and the mountains overfilled the
reservoirs and they had to release water from the reservoirs
to keep the dams from breaking, and so this water
came flooding down through Phoenix and caused flooding and Phoenix.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
On top of that.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
They said, we don't know how you're going to get
there for sure, because last we heard the airport was
two thirds underwater. And furthermore, we don't know who you're
going to be talking to. I said, will I go
in and report to the governor. They said, that's the problem,
we don't know who the governor is. I said, well,
tell me. They said, Well, the governor flew across the
(43:26):
area to see if in fact, this was a disaster.
He got back to the office, requested a disaster declaration
and died. He had been the governor because the original
governor had been assigned as ambassador to Argentina. And frankly,
we don't know right now who the new governor is
(43:48):
going to be. We haven't done the research. So I
got out to Arizona and went up to the governor's office, went.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Up in the elevator in the lobby. I was talking
with it, one of the guys in there.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
We got up to the governor's floor and he went
into the governor's office. Turns out he was the new governor.
He went up on the public elevator because he didn't
know where his private elevator was. But the best, the
most interesting part of that particular thing is the fact
that if you can remember that back in the news
(44:22):
that that long ago, there was a lot of news
stories about Operation Mudhole, where we had the army helicopters
flying hay and all out to cattle on the Navajo Indian.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
Reservation because it was so muddy.
Speaker 2 (44:37):
As a result of all this rain, they couldn't get
out to their cattle. Wow, the army was helping them
with that. And somebody asked, well, what about the Hopies, said,
we haven't heard from the Hopeis said, well, they have
some problems too. So I made arrangements to take a
helicopter up and to the Hope Reservation just east of
(44:59):
the Navajo reservation. Next he's surrounded by the Navajo reservation
and met with the tribal chairman and he took me
on a tour of the Hope Reservation. They did, in
fact have major problems because the their whole tribe is
up on a series of three maces that are about
seven hundred feet above.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
The normal ground level.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
And they've been there for over a thousand years and
they have basically all these homes build out of adobe,
which is dried mud. And what happens when a lot
of rain hits dried mud, it melts, right, So these houses.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Basically had melted and they needed help getting rebuilt.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
And so I offered to give them help, and they
said we don't want it.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
I said, I beg your pardon.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
They said, whenever we've asked for help on something like this,
hud has come in and said you have to build
the houses according to HUD's specification.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
Oh wow, And he.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Said, we look down there. There's a village down there.
It's all nice houses. Nobody lives there. Those are all
HUD houses that we've had to build in the past.
But none of our people want to live there. They
want to be up here with our rest of the tribe,
so we don't want to want it. So we came
up with an idea that instead of giving them money
(46:20):
through HUD, we got the money through State Department as
aid to a foreign nation.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Oh wow, So HUD wasn't involved, right, And I asked
the chairman.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I said, you know, once you get started, I'd love
to come out and take pictures and document your recovery.
He said, no, if that's part of the deal, keep
your money, we don't want it. And I said, okay,
that's not part of the deal because we need to
get this fixed right right.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
And so.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
About three or four weeks later, I was back in
Washington and I got a call from a tribal chairman said,
mister Williams, if you know you had just said you'd
like to take some pictures, if you'd still like to
take some pictures. We'd love to have you. Oh and
so I said, I can be there in two or
three days.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
He said, you'll be our guest. So I came out
and spent a week with the Hopies. I turned out.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
I learned I was the first white man ever allowed
to photograph on the reservation, learned a lot about the
Hope He's met a tremendous number of really great people.
And before I left, I asked the chairman, h I said,
you know, why did you change your mind?
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Right?
Speaker 1 (47:31):
And he said, well, in the entire.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
History of our tribe, this is the first time the
white man who's ever made a promise to it and
kept Oh.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
Yes, there have been a lot of broken promises over
the years, you know, treaty after trading after trading. But
so that's so you're here and you're mark will exception that.
So you definitely made me feel good.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (48:02):
Yeah, So we're going to just take another quick break
and we'll have a wrap up Bill, So folks don't
go away. We have one more good section coming up
with Bill Williams, the producer of Thought for a Day,
So don't go anywhere.
Speaker 7 (48:17):
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Speaker 4 (49:17):
Welcome back, folks to forty five Forward. I'm Ron Rowell,
your host again. We're talking with Bill Williams, producer Thought
for a Day and numerous other things of interest which
we've been talking about over the course of the last hour.
So Bill was mentioning an interesting story about his experience
with the Hopey Indian Hoping Native Americans, and during the
(49:40):
break you mentioned another story that is interesting. There are
a couple more stories I'd like to sneak in, but
tell this one Bill about you know this comes out
of your instructional film experience.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
Well, I was had a contract to go with a
for a government agency to go to Richmond, Virginia to
shoot a piece of equipment that apparently is used all
over the country, but almost no place was it set
up properly. He had to go to Richmond because that
was the one place they could locate that it was
all set up properly. So we're down there filming and
(50:15):
how it works and all that sort of stuff, and
one of the old tiers came over and said what
you doing And I said, well, we're shooting this instructional
film on the equipment on how to set it up properly.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
And he says, yeah, but why are you doing that?
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Said, do they need a training program to teach people
how to do it right? He said, but why are
you doing it because they're taking it out of operation
nationwide in the next ninety.
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Days arrested development. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (50:49):
Yeah, so yeah, so this is There are lots of
experience like this, but some of them are better than others.
So you travel a lot. And I seem to recall
that you did a film about the impact of America
on Poland?
Speaker 1 (51:04):
Is that right? This was? Yeah, So that's interesting. That
was an absolutely delightful project which I never saw the
results of. Okay, I had a.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
Contract to provide script and photography for a film on
the effect of American America on life in Poland during
the bi centennial. This was for the bi centennial, and
(51:38):
I had myself and two other people, the writer and
an assistant, and we flew over to Poland and spent
some absolutely delightful time visiting Warsaw and all over the country.
We photographed at Chopin's birthplace, photographed at the biggest steel
(51:59):
mill in in Europe, which is in Warsaw, or in Crackow.
We photographed at a Fiat manufacturing plan. We photographed all
over the place, and one of the ones with the
Chopin's birthplace, which was so much fun, was the fact
(52:20):
that I talked to my guide and translator and I said, Terry,
would you see if you could go out and find
some people that could just walk through the picture just
they won't say anything. I just need to see some
picture some people walking through. And so he came back
and said, I think you'll like this people. I said why,
(52:42):
He said, well, I'll let them introduce themselves to you.
It turned out to be the Muskingham College basketball team
for the Singham Ohio.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Back to your hometown or a home state, Yeah not
at the time. Yeah, it was fun. Did have to
admit that we visited Auschwitz. That was one of the most.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
Draining thing I've ever done. I could not make it
all the way through. It was just so impactful. But
we visited the photograph the largest steel plant in Europe,
and the manager came over and asked, us, now, there's
two lines here. Please only photograph the one on the right.
(53:33):
Do not photograph anything on the left.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
So we did.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
Turned out as looking at the labels on the thing.
This was made by Abbietna from Perrysburg, Ohio, which is
where I live now. This was back in nineteen seventy three,
and I when we were done, I asked him, he said,
why did you not want us to show the one
on the left? He said, well, the two lines. The
one on the right, the one you photographed, was given
(53:59):
to us by the United States and it runs perfectly.
The one on the left was given to us by
the Soviet Union and we have never been able to get.
Speaker 1 (54:09):
It to run. That's funny, that's funny. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
Yeah, So this is a film for the Bison tending
was that right for.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
The bi centennial, but it was also for Europe, Okay,
I mean for Poland. And the reason I say I
never saw it was that we turned over the film.
We turned over the script to the company that hired us,
and I never heard another word from them. Got paid,
but I never saw the end results or anything. I've
got some great still photos that I took, but I
(54:41):
don't even know if the film was ever completed and released.
Speaker 4 (54:45):
Was it part of a larger project to show the
impact so the impact of America on Poland, But it
seems to me to tells the reverse about, you know what,
the influences of other cultures, you know, in interaction with
the US.
Speaker 1 (54:57):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
It was long enough go to where I couldn't even
tell you who the contract was with at this point.
You know, it was just one of my favorite projects,
but unfortunately I don't have anything to show for it
except some still.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
Pictures interesting memories. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (55:16):
Yeah, So in wrapping up Bill, so you've had a
lot of experiences, what some of the takeaways you know,
for you personally in terms.
Speaker 1 (55:25):
Of what what you learned.
Speaker 4 (55:28):
Along the way, things that you expected or didn't expect
sort of the lessons learned and uh and unexpected experiences
and accidents that turned into real, you know, real insights
about both yourself and and the life around you.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
Boy, that's a tough question, m Ron.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
One of the things that I did, I mentioned I'd
worked for the Federal Disaster Assistant Administration that.
Speaker 1 (56:04):
Later became FEMA.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Right. I was the director of News and Information for
FEMA for the first year of that organization, and.
Speaker 1 (56:12):
One of the things I learned was that.
Speaker 2 (56:16):
I enjoyed working in that business more than anything I've
ever done in my life. Interesting, given the opportunity, I
would have never left. Unfortunately I was a member of
the wrong political party when the election came in, and
do you whiz, get the hell out of here, because
we want to put our people in right. But it's
(56:39):
the thing where we could go into any place in
the country and people were welcoming us, okay, because we
could help them when they really really needed help. Which
is why it has torn my heart out to see
the current administration get rid of FEMA and say, well,
we don't need that anymore, because that has done more
(57:02):
good than any other organization I can think of, except
maybe the American Red Cross, and the Red Cross was
part of you know, all the FEMA efforts that they did.
Speaker 4 (57:11):
Right, Well, that's interesting, that's the same. I mean, I
you know, you can criticize it, but you know, I
think that clearly when they're disasters, people don't care about partisanship.
Speaker 1 (57:26):
They just they need help. Well.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
And another thing about it is the fact that the
vast majority of the FEMA people who go out to
those things are not regular government employees. They're freelancers like
I was. They're called waes. While actually employed, they get
no benefits, no nothing, just an hourly wage.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
And they do it because they like to do it.
They want to do.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
It, and they can go out and you know, spend well.
For Hurricane Frederick, I was down in Alabama for three months. Wow, Okay,
And these other people do it, and I met people
all over the country because they all get together for
the big disasters and we see them periodically over the
years at different places, and they're there because they like
(58:15):
to help.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Well, yeah, there's no more there there now, right, Okay.
Speaker 4 (58:22):
So I know in previous conversations you had some thoughts
that I liked about advice to younger people.
Speaker 1 (58:30):
About.
Speaker 4 (58:30):
I mean, you tried a lot of things. You've what's
some of your advice to people about trying things?
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Try it, okay, try it, try it you'll like it. Okay,
that was what commercial many years ago.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
Try it, you'll like it, and if you don't like it,
try something else.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
You know, people have asked me, you whiz.
Speaker 2 (58:52):
You've written for a film, you've written for TV, you've
written for magazines, you've written everything. What would you tell
a writer that wanted to do it all? I'd said,
don't try to do it all. Do something, do it well.
Once you've done something well, try something else to try it.
(59:13):
But you know, keep it up, but don't try to
do everything, because you won't be able.
Speaker 4 (59:18):
You won't be successful in any of them. So I'm
sure you're you're still learning. But what lessons do you
think you're still learning in life?
Speaker 1 (59:29):
Anything? Except to keep trying things.
Speaker 2 (59:32):
Many years of Internet Humor is my first book. I've
written for sixty years. But I've never written a book before.
And I thought I knew about publishing, and I discovered
I was a total and complete novice. I've made so
many mistakes with this I can't believe how badly.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
Have screwed it up in some ways, but I'm learning. Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
It's just like it would advise somebody, try it, try
it till you get better at it. But I've discovered
that it's not your father's publishing world. I mean, things
are not at all like they were five, ten, fifteen,
certainly twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Well, I'm glad you did Bill.
Speaker 4 (01:00:20):
And to that point, I published a book recently, you
know again. It's a caregiving guide for families called Caregiving Navigator.
And I think the lesson is that I tried it,
and the most important thing is I finished it. I
did it, And you're always going to make mistakes. But
the point is finish something and try something else. And
(01:00:44):
you know it's not You can always revise it. You
can always make a better book. And so I think people,
you know, get so worried about it not being perfect,
you know that doubt saying, you know, don't let the
perfectly the enemy of the good. And so I'm glad
you did it. And and so once again I want to,
you know, tell people how they can get it. I
(01:01:04):
guess they can get it on your website, right, what
is your website?
Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
My website is www dot Internet Humor dot com. Okay, okay,
And no they can't get the book there, but they'll
tell them to go to Amazon or Boxing, Noble or
book you know, you can get them any places like
that good Reads. But my email if somebody would like
to get my thoughts for the day, is built at
(01:01:29):
Internet Humor dot com. Okay, or if I go to
the website, they can sign up there for it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Nice. Okay, Good.
Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
Well, Bill, it's been a it's been a very fun,
enjoyable conversation with you.
Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
Delightful to be with you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
I've got to say you're a great podcast or interviewer.
Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
Well, it's my pleasure, it's always it's It makes it
easy when I have someone who's as engaging as you.
So I want to thank you for a thoughtful show
with lots of interesting stories. And again, folks, thank you
for spending time with me and Bill and learning how
we can make our journey through the second half of
(01:02:12):
life even better.
Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Than the first.
Speaker 4 (01:02:13):
And certainly, Bill, as many you've got about three or
four halves you built into the second half. So it's
a great it's a great in spending this time with you.
Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Folks.
Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
If you want to see an archive of all my shows.
Go to forty five forward dot org and you can
see a whole listing of all my shows. You want
to send me comments or questions or suggestions, you can
email me at Ron dot Roel at email at gmail
dot com. And you can also if you email me,
I can sign you up for my monthly news that
(01:02:48):
you can get a sense of what my upcoming shows are.
So thanks again, Bill and folks. Until my next episode
next week, keep moving forward. Forty five Forwards ass
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