Episode 49: Wrapping Up 2019 With a Bright Blue Bow

This week, the gang takes stock of the year just about to pass, plays back some of our favorite stories, and learns about the antediluvian ancestor of UConn 360 itself.

Transcript

Tom Breen: Hi everyone. You’re hearing the sound of brass and not sleigh bells, but it’s still the holiday time of year here at UConn 360. The only podcast in the universe that covers the University of Connecticut from every conceivable angle. It’s the end of the year. We’re wishing you a fond holiday season to you and all your loved ones, and even people who aren’t your loved ones.

[00:00:29] They deserve a good holiday too. We’re going to have a bit of a different show for you. We’re going to take it a little easy. We know that this podcast will actually, um. Reach your podcast listening devices on December 25th

[00:00:41] Julie Bartucca: like a present.

[00:00:42] Tom Breen: Yeah, it’s, this is our present to you. And so you’ll probably put this on in the background while you’re having gifts with your family.

[00:00:48] Julie Bartucca: Just like it’s a wonderful life.

[00:00:50] Tom Breen: Yeah. So, uh, we just want to take it easy a little bit. We didn’t want to, we didn’t want to roll out our, uh, you know, hot new material because we know, you know, there’s holiday stuff, but you’re drinking

[00:01:00] Ken Best: We have hot new material?

[00:01:01]Tom Breen:  At some point we will.

[00:01:03] Julie Bartucca: But we do want to bring you a special treat. Yeah. Looking back on our favorites from the year.

[00:01:07] Tom Breen: Oh, we finally reached the point where we can do a clip show.

[00:01:11] Julie Bartucca: It’s not exactly a clip show. We’re going to rerun a couple of, one of my favorites of my segments and one of Ken’s favorites of his segments, and we have a new Tom’s history corner.

[00:01:21] Tom Breen: Yeah. It’s not a good one though, and so I like real hastily called, wow,

[00:01:23] Julie Bartucca: you’re really selling it, Kay. Great.

[00:01:26] Tom Breen: No one’s listening to this. It’s Christmas. It’s Christmas day,

[00:01:29] Julie Bartucca: Write in

[00:01:30] Ken Best: But its the big episode 49 with the big five-oh coming up

[00:01:34] Julie Bartucca: They can listen to it whenever they want. It’s out for all of eternity now.

[00:01:38] Tom Breen: Wow. Eternity,

[00:01:39] Julie Bartucca: eternity

[00:01:40] Tom Breen: shrieking into eternity. Here we are with some of our favorite stories from 2019 right. We didn’t go back any farther.

[00:01:46] Julie Bartucca: No, just 2019.

[00:01:47] Ken Best: No. And, and if we want to do a slight review of what we had restarted with women’s basketball and pain management and a raiding party to save Jonathan the forest in January of this year, and then we heard things like engineering students repairing the Keney Memorial clock,

[00:02:05] Julie Bartucca: that’s what we’re going to hear about today.

[00:02:06] Ken Best: Okay. And we heard about trash talk. At one point, and then we had the mystery of the first woman to attend classes at UConn, and then Maxine, uh, took over for Halloween and talked to us about the UConn horror club. So let’s a couple of the highlights for this.

[00:02:24] Tom Breen: We logged 24, this be our 25th episode, right in, uh, in 2019. It was a big year for us. We didn’t take any time off. We presented at two national conferences about our podcasts. We also talked with some, uh, peer institutions, um, remotely over the phone, which is what I mean also by video conference though, right?

[00:02:43] Julie Bartucca: Yes, we did video, uh, as far away as Canada, as

[00:02:46] Tom Breen: far away as Canada McGill university. Shout out to McGill university. You may have heard of it. Um. And Maxine, we were joined by a student worker who’s not here today. She’s taking a well deserved break. Finals are over classes and start up again for her until the 21st of January, I think. So, uh, it was a big year for UConn 360.

[00:03:04] Julie Bartucca: It was. Making moves,

[00:03:06] Tom Breen: making moves. Well, why don’t we relive some of our favorite. 2019 memories. We’ll start off with Julie.

[00:03:12] Julie Bartucca: So I’m going to look back on the Keney clock tower story, which is about a group of engineering seniors from last year. Every senior in the engineering program has to do a senior design project. So they’re assigned a real world problem and they work with a real company, or in this case, our real municipality and nonprofit organization.

[00:03:30] And. I really love this story because it shows the impact that UConn students are making on the world, and it also was a good opportunity to use a lot of cool different sound. We talk a lot about the real world experience UConn students get and that real world experience doesn’t just benefit these students, Tom.

[00:03:48] It benefits companies. It benefits the government benefits local neighborhoods. Like in Hartford, one of the largest efforts that allows UConn students to help real entities is the senior design project, which is something that every engineering student has to complete before they graduate. Every year, more than 800 students team up to complete more than 200 projects working with over 100 partners in industry and government to help them solve.

[00:04:09] Pressing problems through smart engineering. They’re presented with dozens of projects and they have to take personality tests and then rank their top five choices before they’re randomly assigned to groups to complete a project. This year, one of the most coveted projects for mechanical engineering majors was the Keney Memorial Clocktower restoration.

[00:04:25] The lucky students assigned to this group were Henry Courchaine,Garrett Murphy and Spencer Padgett. Before these students completed their work this April, the clock in the historic tower in the North end of Hartford had been stopped and it’s time silent for four years.

[00:04:40] Henry Hester, Friends of Keney Park: [Chimes] Do you hear it?

[00:04:46] Julie Bartucca: . That’s Henry Hester. On the day of the unveiling, this April, he’s vice president of the friends of Keney park and sponsor of the UConn senior design project to restore the Keney Memorial clock tower, the 130 foot tower on the site of Walter and Henry Keney’ wholesale grocery store is part of the brother’s lasting legacy, which also includes the nearby 693 acre Keney park.

[00:05:05] The friends of Keney park formed about three decades ago, according to Hester, and have worked with the city and other groups like the Keney park sustainability project to honor their downtown North neighborhood’s history.

[00:05:15] Henry Hester, Friends of Keney Park: This clock tower means to the city that they understand clearly what the Keney family have left them.

[00:05:23] To take care and with the collaboration of UConn is community engagement. It had worked well. I’m big on collaboration, getting people out of silos and working as a team, and this has been a great team effort and it’s all about continuing to create the energy in this city.

[00:05:41] Julie Bartucca: The students said they were drawn to the project for its hands on nature, the ability to get out of the theoretical work of the classroom and use the technical skills they’ve acquired to build and repair a tangible thing. Team member, Henry Courchaine said the fact that they can drive by the tower and point to it showing the work they did to restore this piece of history was an added bonus.

[00:05:57] Henry Courchaine: Definitely the fact that the clock tower is in the middle of Hartford or in that, in the community itself, we could work on something that helped us be a part of that and kind of improve the area as well. Was it a really special opportunity as opposed to working on something super small and niche. There’s a big, big spotlight on this, this project for years to come.

[00:06:15] Julie Bartucca: According to Hartford mayor Luke Bronin, there will literally be a big spotlight on the tower for years to come.

[00:06:20] Mayor Luke Bronin: It really is an amazing thing that as you drive down this intersection, this is the main intersection in our city. But this beautiful historic structure is right here.

[00:06:29] And I think all too often just kind of escapes notice as large as it is, as magnificent and example of, I think what they call collegiate Gothic architecture as it is. We just kind of forget it. Well now that it’s going to ring again and chime again and keep the clock, we’re going to make sure that we’re highlighting it.

[00:06:43] And so this morning I called over and said, we need to make sure that we light this power up. So then when you drive down at night and you come down Albany remain, you see this tower as a symbol of our city, of our history, of the partnerships that are moving us forward and to everybody who a part of that, I want to say thank you.

[00:06:58] Julie Bartucca: The senior design project lasts for an engineering students entire senior year. Spencer Padgett said once the team was assigned to the clock tower project in September, they started the process by getting to know each other’s strengths and to gel as a team.

[00:07:11] Spencer Padgett: We went up there several times just to look at the thing and figure out how it works, how it moved.

[00:07:16] What’s broke, what’s not broke, kind of all that stuff. So it started with a lot of, I guess, dissection of what was up there and a lot of pulling stuff apart, getting everything we needed in order over the, like late fall, winter. It was a lot of consulting with clock professionals, people who restore these things for a living, uh, companies who put together equipment packages for all the clocks, and then starting to make plans for, uh, fabricating all our own parts.

[00:07:39] And then in the spring, it was a lot of fabricating, ordering and installing,

[00:07:43] Julie Bartucca: Determining how to get the clock running again, allowed the students to employ everything they’d mastered in their engineering educations. Up to that point, it also required a fair amount of ingenuity. Garrett Murphy explained.

[00:07:53] Garrett Murphy: The parts were unfortunately missing. When we got to the clock tower, they had been removed at some point, so we had, in the sense of an original design, we had nothing to go on, so we had to kind of come up with our own design based off of what we knew they had to do rather than what an old set did. And that meant that we had to come up with a preliminary design and we actually used a three D printing to print it out of plastic first.

[00:08:16] Bring it to the tower test, fit it, notice any adjustments that need to be made, bring it back, make those adjustments in CAD, print it again, go back. Um, and we probably did that anywhere between two to three times, depending on which of the three linkage arms we were working on. And then once we had the final design, we were able to make them out of 60, 61 aluminum and put those in as the final final set.

[00:08:39] I sat in front of that  mechanism for probably. Just three hours just to figure out how it worked. Nevermind what I had to then design to make it work again, and our advisor, professor Tom mealy, towards the end of the project, when I, and I brought the finalized one, I put them in and he was there one day and I was kind of adjusting them between them and.

[00:08:57] It was funny because they had this light bulb moment where it just clicked and he went, how did you get this right on the first shot? You know? And I said, well, it didn’t, it wasn’t the first shot. And he’s like, yeah, but you got it right on the first aluminum ones you made. And he kinda just realized how much actually went into it.

[00:09:11] So that was definitely the most. Difficult part for me and as it goes through the catches, it goes tooth to tooth to tooth to tell right there where it falls and shuts it off.

[00:09:29] Professor: Nice.

[00:09:30] Spencer Padgett: That’s this side. Yeah. Everything else was, was a matter of kind of just specking out parts, you know, trying to figure out what requirements we needed.

[00:09:36] We had to change a few. Make a few design changes over all. But that was definitely, we had no documentation, no drawings, nothing to go off of there.

[00:09:43] So,

[00:09:44] Garrett Murphy: you know, before the motor reverse direction, now we don’t. So that was a consideration. But then it says,

[00:09:51] Spencer Padgett: That linking it all back up and tinkering, so it’s just right is …

[00:10:00] Garrett Murphy: You know, I spent multiple days after they were installed just making minute adjustments. You know, maybe go off a minute earlier here, go off a minute later there

[00:10:12] Henry Courchaine: Being from Connecticut, but not being from our first or the area. It was surprising to me as we were working on the project. Just how much restoring the clock in that park means to the community around it.

[00:10:23] Henry Hester, Friends of Keney Park: The working clock mean to the community that the city is alive because they can hear it is tangible and with this piece that they can see and touch.

[00:10:33] It’s a way of seeing what the Keney family left to us to take care of for them.

[00:10:38] Henry Courchaine: There was a nice number of people who are there to see the unveiling and we’re there for the event and you know, listen to the mayor speak and all that. We had a couple of people who were just walking around and going on, you know, their daily walk through the area and notice the crowd and then heard the chimes and everything and they came up to us and said, thank you.

[00:10:52] And they haven’t heard it ring for years and we’re not even sure which bells they heard ringing in the house because there’s a couple of different systems up there. But either way, it was really special to see that.

[00:11:01] These people cared.

[00:11:03] Henry Hester, Friends of Keney Park: This is a good piece to kind of emphasize some of the good stuff that’s happening in this city, and the city is alive and well.

[00:11:16] Ken Best: Well, the, the chimes are available for this holiday season in Hartford now. That’s

[00:11:21] right. That’s true.

[00:11:22] Julie Bartucca: absolutely.

[00:11:24] Tom Breen: Ken, what’s your favorite look back story?

[00:11:27]Ken Best:  Well, it’s always great to hear Terrence Mann, the Broadway star, who’s the artistic director of the Nutmeg Summer Theater, and Matt Pugliese, who was our very first guest on the podcast.

[00:11:39] Right. And who has. Recently stepped down from his position at CRT. He’s moving on. He’s now, uh, broadening his interest in community service and economic development with the Connecticut Small Business Development Center part of UConn. And he, uh, has been serving, uh, on the economic development commissioner in Old Saybrook where he lives.

[00:12:04] So he’s, he’s really, uh, getting into the nonprofit and small business area to, to help other people. So that’s, that’s great. But we did have a great discussion about jukebox musicals with Terrence Mann and Matt Pugliese. Mamma Mia is classified as a jukebox musical by those who write about it, but it’s not necessarily an accurate term all the time.

[00:12:28] Two shows on Broadway that have a pop music soundtrack that may not be connected to the songs or. Even, uh, we were talking about creations like Tommy and Hair that were original productions. They’re not just songs. They have a theme and they’re, they’re really tied together. How do you define jukebox musical, if that’s what this is

[00:12:53] Terrence Mann: To me, when you say a jukebox musical, it’s almost pejorative. It’s almost like you’re dissing it. Almost like, Oh, well it’s a jukebox musical, because the music came out of the jukebox. It came out of of source material material that’s already been written and the stories then. Then they just put a, they tried to put up a play.

[00:13:15] A book, a libretto around all of these songs and have it make sense. And you know, sometimes it succeeds and sometimes they don’t succeed. We’ve got to figure out maybe a different way to describe musicals that have come along that certainly could be classified as songs that have come out of recorded source

[00:13:34] music, uh, a la jukebox.

[00:13:36] But that it’s been, you know, take for instance, Tommy. And name some others. Yes. I seeyou’ve got your paper there.

[00:13:44] Kenest: Well, there’s the, and made America famous, which, uh, on their Wikipedia, the Harry Chapin show that was on Broadway Beatlemania, which was the second one with the Beatles.

[00:13:55] Terrence Mann: Now my question, Beatlemania has a book attached to it where they talk about

[00:14:00] their, their lives and how they became the Beatles and all of that, or is it just getting you or is it what they used to call crossovers in musical theater? How do we get, how do we say, a little something that gets us to the next song? That becomes a different concept and I think a different genre to be defined.

[00:14:16] Matt Pugliese: Because that’s like the musical reviews, like the music of Rogers and Hammerstein like a whole evening of the same.

[00:14:23] Terrence Mann: Correct. I think that’s right.

[00:14:25] Yeah.

[00:14:25] Ken Best: Ken Davenport, who’s a Broadway producer, uh, several years ago, that his definition of a jukebox musical, which you can find online, his definition is a jukebox musical is an original stage musical, not based on a film that uses previously recorded or released popular songs that have no direct relation to the story as its musical score.

[00:14:46] So it’s an original story. But the music doesn’t necessarily tie to the plot of the story. The early rock and roll films. Kind of the first videos were a very thin storyline with Chuck Berry and a lot of the contemporary rock and rollers of the fifties era that Alan Freed and some other folks looking to make a buck, uh, in, in another medium started coming out with those stories to get the music

[00:15:17] out to the public, which contrasts with what in the Wikipedia listing as the films that start out as jukebox musicals, they begin with Jimmy Cagney as George M Cohan and Yankee doodle dandy. It’s kind of a definition that is open for discussion as we’re doing. Well, I was gonna say, hasn’t there always been crossover though, between the theater in terms of music and the American popular music songbook?

[00:15:41] Matt Pugliese: If you go back to Cole Porter or

[00:15:44] Irving Berlin.

[00:15:45] Terrence Mann: Right.

[00:15:45] Used to be the popular music of the day was a lot of musical theater crossovers. A lot of, you know, songs that came out of showboat that came out of Oklahoma that came out of any Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, you know, musicals, Rogers and Hammerstein, you know, or, um, so all of that was the popular music, and that was on the radio.

[00:16:04] Then after rock and roll. Came in and took over, it crossed over into its own genre, you know, it created its own genre. So there’s a distinction there.

[00:16:14] Ken Best: Right. And if you look at the list of musical films, as they say, they start with the Yankee Doodle Dandy, but include, Meet Me in St Louis, American in Paris,Singing in the Rain.

[00:16:22] So in your mind. Mamma Mia is a jukebox musical of sorts.

[00:16:28] Terrence Mann: If we’re using that as the, the, the umbrella definition for those particular rules of engagement. Yes. That it would be considered a jukebox musical, and as much as it’s songs that were written, and then they said, let’s, let’s do it. Let’s put a story around it.

[00:16:43] You know, let’s write a play. But the thing about Mamma Mia and I saw it in London right after it opened. The thing about it was, I think separates it from. All others is that you know that they are winking and nodding at you from the stage when they’re going through this book and how they get to the next song.

[00:17:01] And that’s what’s charming and compelling about it and makes you laugh. And yet it’s still poignant and touching.

[00:17:08] Ken Best: As a form of musical, which I guess we could, if we’re going to classify different forms of, of, of the genre for the sake of argument. We went down the list again before we started talking about the number of so-called jukebox musicals that have been on Broadway.

[00:17:24] And appeared on Broadway over the years. Nine throughout the nineties eight in the year nine 2005 10 and 2006 and last year nine on Broadway. In your mind, as someone who’s been in these productions for years. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for these so-called jukebox musicals to replace the original idea of musical, which is a book and songs that are original and everything comes together nicely.

[00:17:50] Terrence Mann: I think you have to track it all the way back to the producers and the people who are putting the money up to see things happen on Broadway, when we had the British invasion and when Cameron McIntosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Trevor Nunn, and the. Columbia Schoenberg with . They all came over and they started doing these musicals that all of a sudden were sustaining themselves for not only five, 10 15 but 20 years.

[00:18:15] So all of these people that were, would have been investors, you know, all of a sudden they saw the long game in terms of investing that they could make money. So that created a whole nother community of . Investors who decided to come, he said, Oh, if I could put money into that and it runs long enough and it’s got enough cache, then we’ll be able to make money on that.

[00:18:33] So fast forward to over the last, it started in the 90s as you said, but I think you’ve got producers sitting around going, how can we find that lightning in a bottle and how can we, you know, grab that and maybe have some legs with it. And at the end of the day. It all deserves to be there. It gives jobs to people.

[00:18:51] There’s a lot of talent up there. You want to hear those songs. What you want to know more than anything else is how are you going to put that story together that’s going to make it last and that and make you care about sitting in the audience and make other people care for the next 20 years sitting in the audience.

[00:19:05] That doesn’t happen very often. It seems we’ve got a dearth of folks that don’t want to produce or go out and champion new works. And that to me is, is, is a sad commentary.

[00:19:18] Ken Best: Well, Mamma Mia is a show that has gone on. It’s been out there for a very long time now, and there’s several others that have been in that category.

[00:19:27] What is it that has captured people’s imagination, keeps it out there, because this band was only together for 10 years?

[00:19:34] Terrence Mann: Here again, it’s that lightning in a bottle, right place, right time, right sound, right combination, and you know, and somebody just took it and ran with it. Yeah. Plus they wrote great songs for what our ears wanted to hear at the time and what we wanted to feel at the time, and that still sustains us today.

[00:19:51] It’s it. We know because if you’re a baby boomer, then you grew up going through changes like we were talking about earlier. You know, you went through the rock and roll to the 50s and you went through the early stuff in the wall of sound, and then you went into rock and and led Zepplin. That changed the paradigm and then into, then you got to the mid, mid

[00:20:09] seventies did. You’ve got earth, wind, and fire every, it was just such a melting pot of an unbelievable cause. I’d kaleidoscope of, uh, of music and all of a sudden here they pop up. So to be able to be sustained that long, we just decided that they were that good.

[00:20:23] Ken Best: Another fact that, uh. Probably is not in the memory bank, but again, I find these things, and I know you like to hear this stuff.

[00:20:30] This production has been in more than 50 countries on all six continents except for Antarctica. It’s been everywhere.

[00:20:38] Matt Pugliese: We have a big announcement

[00:20:43] Terrence Mann: Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be traveling South.

[00:20:59] Tom Breen: I like those. I like those pieces very much. Those are definitely highlights of the year. Um, it’s been a good year for UConn too. We just wanna take a quick moment to sort of reflect on what we’ve accomplished at UConn president Herbst retired this year, and president Katsouleas started. Got a new president.

[00:21:14] We have a new president of the foundation. Soon we’ll have a new provost. Lots of change on a new faces, at UConn. I think it’s been overall a pretty good calendar year. Yeah. You know, I’ve been, uh, for the last several months I’ve been filling in as editor of the UConn Today website

[00:21:28] Julie Bartucca: As a lot of things.

[00:21:31] Tom Breen: True. The previous editor, Elizabeth Omara-Otunnu, took a well-deserved retirement and is hopefully enjoying post UConn life on some exotic locale.

[00:21:41] Julie Bartucca: Mansfield

[00:21:43] Tom Breen: I have not done as good a job as her, but I’ve kept the lights on. So I started to think about UConn today. What’s the history of UConn today? Right? So interestingly.

[00:21:53] The origins of UConn Today, and really this is a time of year when we think about new beginnings and beginnings, right? The beginnings of UConn Today, actually, were a newspaper of course, because the internet did not exist until I believe 2015 was when the internet. I’ll fact check

[00:22:07] that. Only facts here at UConn 360

[00:22:08] Ken Best: Um, I think that might be. Needed to be checked.

[00:22:11] Tom Breen: I don’t know about that. Um, Maxine’s not here. So who is going to do it?

[00:22:16] Uh,

[00:22:18] in 1970, the administration launched sort of the prototype of what became UConn today, a weekly newspaper. Called the university of Connecticut Chronicle or the U Chron, which is

[00:22:30] Julie Bartucca: why do we do this to ourselves constantly?

[00:22:33] Tom Breen: So there’s a story from the daily campus that I thought was pretty interesting, kind of going into the thinking behind the university. Uh. Of Connecticut Chronicle the UChron. Um, the editor was a, at the time was Donald Friedman, who was director of the office of public information. Uh, and actually he and his wife, there’s a scholarship named for them for a journalism scholarship.

[00:22:52] They sort of, uh, still very much present in the life of the university. And, uh, he talked about how it was essentially a way for the university to get information. Two people, like a freshman orientation information, uh, things about changes to the grading system, that kind of thing that he thought the daily campus, it would be too boring for the daily campus, or maybe they could do a much longer job than daily campus would.

[00:23:13] Um, there was a lot of concern that this would be like a, a mouthpiece of the administration, but a Friedman, uh, favorably set it a, an editorial, the Hartford times. Another. By God newspaper saying that the UChron had no perspective at all, which is actually kind of, when you think about it, and maybe not the best thing in the world, but it was interesting.

[00:23:28] It cost about $17,000 a year to publish that was published by the Willimantic Chronicle. I don’t know if the daily campus is still published by them, but it certainly

[00:23:35] Julie Bartucca: wasn’t. I was there recently, I mean, when I was here too,

[00:23:38] Tom Breen: so I was curious who produced the UChron because they didn’t have a dedicated staff at that point.

[00:23:43]  Friedman described the staff as makeshift, which I guess probably fits for university communications today. He said the paper is presently being published by publications, office personnel, along with one graduate student, Mary Elizabeth Dowd, undergraduate Donna Strout and Diane Cox, a faculty member’s wife

[00:24:02] Julie Bartucca: volunteer

[00:24:03] Tom Breen: volunteer.

[00:24:04] Julie Bartucca: Got it. Okay. For the university.

[00:24:06] Tom Breen: Um, but anyway, so I’ll actually try to track down some copies of the UChron later. It became the Advance, which we’re more familiar with.

[00:24:13] Ken Best: It was the Advance until the decision was made to move everything online, which was probably 10 years ago, something like that.

[00:24:25] Julie Bartucca: The UChron almost sounds like an internal newsletter, whereas the advanced is a little more.

[00:24:29] Outward

[00:24:30] facing?

[00:24:30] Ken Best: No, that was really the on campus newspaper was for faculty and staff primarily. There was some expectation that students might see it, but it was distributed in everyone’s mailbox with a label for every member of the faculty and

[00:24:45] staff.

[00:24:46] Julie Bartucca: I think what I’m getting at is that sounds like it’s more like.

[00:24:49] Things you need to know about the administration, whereas the Advance and UConn Today are a little bit more news about the university.

[00:24:56] Tom Breen: Yes. Well, I haven’t seen a copy of the UChron, so I would have to

[00:25:00] Julie Bartucca: We have to find it.

[00:25:01] Tom Breen: We have to find the UChron

[00:25:01] Julie Bartucca: but name is just so good.

[00:25:03] Tom Breen: And of course, UConn today I think is different from the advanced=, and that you can’t say is a general interest website.

[00:25:09] We’re telling our own story because there are far fewer journalists working than there used to be

[00:25:14] Julie Bartucca: unfortunately,

[00:25:15] Tom Breen: unfortunately. So really check out UConn today. That’s today.uconn.edu

[00:25:19] Julie Bartucca: shameless plug. And we’ve gone from this little newspaper to podcasts, to get the news out

[00:25:24] Tom Breen: at the U Chron was the germ, uh, that contained the seed that has blossomed into an orchard of understanding with so many different projects with radio

[00:25:35] Julie Bartucca: That

[00:25:35] That was a

[00:25:36] really good metaphor.

[00:25:36] Tom Breen: Video,

[00:25:37] podcasts, websites.

[00:25:40] Bus

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[00:25:41] Julie Bartucca: We’re just navel gazing today,

[00:25:43] Ken Best: although as we have described in our presentation, the idea was a bit ahead of its time at one point and we caught up with it.

[00:25:50] Tom Breen: It’s true. It’s true. Well, I’m sure that, uh, everyone stopped listening when I started talking, so that’s fine.

[00:25:57] Julie Bartucca: Just like every week,

[00:25:59] Tom Breen: just like every week,

[00:26:02] Julie Bartucca: happy

[00:26:02] holidays.

[00:26:03] Tom Breen: On behalf of all of us here at UConn 360 I’m Tom Breen. Of course

[00:26:07] Julie Bartucca: you didn’t introduce us. I’m Julie Bartucca happy new year everybody.

[00:26:11] Ken Best: I’m Ken Best. Happy new year. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy Hannukah. And merry Christmas

[00:26:19] Julie Bartucca: and whatever else you may celebrate

[00:26:22] KenBest: Festivus for everyone else.

[00:26:24] Julie Bartucca: I will be, um, airing my grievances in the new year.

[00:26:27] Tom Breen: Well. Great. Something to look forward to.

[00:26:29] Julie Bartucca: I’m teasing, it’s a Seinfeld reference.

[00:26:31] Ken Best: of course, the irony of this is a guy who interviewed Seinfeld didn’t like him at all and never watched the show, made the Festivus reference. That being me.

[00:26:44] Julie Bartucca: You just had to get in that you interviewed Seinfeld, didn’t you? We’re going to have a nice break from each other

[00:26:52] over winter break.

[00:26:53] Tom Breen: If you want even more of this,

[00:26:57] Julie Bartucca: I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t.

[00:26:58] Tom Breen: You can follow us on Twitter @UConnPodcast or, uh, at old underscore Main or

[00:27:04] Julie Bartucca: @Main_Old

[00:27:05] thank you. At main underscore old where uh… It’s been a long year. It’s been, I’m so tired. Um,

[00:27:14] Ken Best: we have the 50th episode to get ready for them when a couple of weeks, you know.

[00:27:18] Tom Breen: Alright, well thanks everyone.