Shot in the Dark

Cap’n Jim

Word came this past week of the passing of broadcasting legend Jim Rohn – or, if you grew up within 100 miles of Fargo in the sixties and early seventies, “Captain Jim”:

Rohn got his start in 1946 on the radio at KSJB-AM in Jamestown following his service in World War II.

He was radioman/gunner on Navy dive bombers during the war.

A very young Rohn, in a KSJB head shot.

KSJB was the “enemy”, the station across Main Street from the station I grew up at.

After a few years, he moved to Fargo when sisterstation KXJB-TV was launched, where he was a fixture for many years as a weatherman, among other roles.

He was known to viewers who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s as “Captain Jim,” his persona in a children’s show, a name that stuck among viewers of a certain age for years afterward.

Captain Jim. It ran every afternoon from long before I was born until sometime after I had school in the afternoon.

 

Rohn also hosted “Polka Party” on Saturdays, dressed in a Bavarian lederhosen outfit.

“He was a real character,” said Al Aamodt, a veteran broadcaster at KVLY and KXJB’s Valley News Live.

I had lost track of Rohn when he left KXJB when I was in probably second grade – and was amazed to hear him on the air when I was driving through the Lakes area probably ten years back.

Posted

in

by

Mitch Berg

Tags:

Comments

12 responses to “Cap’n Jim”

  1. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Mitch, you may enjoy this…check IowaHawk. The guy in the new Hillary ad also appears in a syphilis ad. It looks like its even the same photo (stock photo from an ad agency?). Our country may be f’d with our choices this November, but at the same time it will be entertaining.

  2. Dog Gone Avatar
    Dog Gone

    Sorry about the loss from your childhood; very nostalgic. When you wrote earlier about the building ‘your’ station was in, it was so vivid, I could almost hear the echos and other sounds, and imagine the smells of the old building…. the kind of evocative writing you do that I so thoroughly enjoy.

    Since Chuck has already veered off-topic, I hope I might be excused a similar digression. Remember an exchange we had over a couple of posts regarding the transgender and Y chromosomes — and whether someone who was identified as male might NOT have a Y chromosome?

    I couldn’t find the sources I was looking for last time, but Y chromosomes can be LOST over time — you might have one at one point in life, but not have them when tested later (blood tests being one of the most common and definitive tests for genetic components).

    I hope you find this of interest; it is consistent with the conservatives that they ignore more recent science, and also over-simplify older and more established science. Chromosomes are NOT the definitive factor for gender, and should not be relied on, particularly as so often those chromosomes are defective or inactive if they are not missing. It is only one of the many things wrong with the conservative position on transgender and gender identity, bathrooms, and anything related to sex and sexuality generally being backward.

    http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20160523/loss-of-y-chromosome-in-men-tied-to-alzheimers-risk

    “But recent studies have shown that the Y chromosome contains a large number of genes, whose jobs are not fully understood yet.

    Similarly, researchers have long known that as men age, they can lose the Y chromosome from some of their body cells. It was seen as a normal part of aging. Some recent studies, however, have suggested otherwise.”

    “…Another question is, when does loss of Y begin? “We speculate that whatever cellular mechanisms fail and lead to Alzheimer’s, they start in our young adult life, not in our 70s,” Giliberto said. “Is loss of Y a process that starts that early?”

    …But Forsberg speculated that impaired immune function could play a role — since loss of Y has been tied to cancer risk as well.

    Giliberto agreed. He noted that loss of Y has also been seen in certain autoimmune diseases — where the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissue. ”

    Something as individual and complex as gender identity — like many reproductive issues such as contraception and abortion — should be left to the individual and their medical professionals, and to the prevailing science. Not to ignorant conservative politicians trying to cram everyone into a one-size-fits-all too-narrow formula set in law; that is too intrusive and just poor public health policy.

    You might also find the following two links pertinent which deal with other sources of DNA than parent-to-offspring. If you are wondering how this relates to the issues of gender, I would refer you to other determining influences, like the masculinizing that occurs in freemartins, where a calf that is conceived as xx acquires a y chromosome in utero. It occurs in other species than bovine.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemartin

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-03/snake-genes-27hitchhike27-into-cow-dna/4451308

    Professor Adelson says the research contradicts the traditional understanding of how genes are inherited.

    “We tend to think of genetic material being transmitted vertically from parent to offspring or in the case of things like bacteria there can be lateral transfer,” he said.

    “There’s potential to see there’s a lot more room for horizontal transfer than we previously supposed. We already knew that viruses could do this. At some point HIV jumped from other primates into humans so it jumped species.

    “But in higher organisms, vertebrates, mammals and so on we tend to believe that later or horizontal transfer of genetic material just doesn’t really happen, but what we’ve shown is that there are DNA segments which are essentially jumping, what are called jumping genes, retrotransposons, which are able to jump between species.”

    Professor Adelson says his next project is to see whether DNA sequences in humans may also have originated in other species.

    “Our DNA is about 50 per cent what we call repetitive,” he said.

    All those bone-ignorant anti-science conservative evangelicals who keep insisting that God determines a straight-up straight-only gender assignment clearly don’t know how the real world works (as discovered by science). Whether you consider this God working in mysterious ways, or are atheist or agnostic, not assigning God any role in the process, clearly there are individuals who don’t fit that mold, and we need to acknowledge them as full and equal human beings — because they are. Let them be who they need to be, and stop peddling sex-based hysteria.

    I have yet to see any significant problem with sexual predators among the transgender in public restrooms or locker rooms. Yet you lot keep — as a group — pushing that lie. Conservative is just another word for intolerant, intrusive, (and too frequently for ignorant). It is the opposite of liberty.

    And I trust, old friend, that I have demonstrated once again that when I make a statement here, I can back it up — that I don’t make it up.

  3. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    DG,

    I don’t especially have an issue with transgendered people; I have a transgender friend (indeed, this blog nearly became the first conservative blog in America with a transgender correspondent, although it didn’t pan out), a transgender political associate (long story) and a former co-worker. I don’t think transgenders are any more of a public safety threat than anyone else, and never have.

    However:

    And I trust, old friend, that I have demonstrated once again that when I make a statement here, I can back it up — that I don’t make it up.

    I do suggest you look back through, well, pretty much every comment you’ve made in the past three years. We’ve repeatedly found yawning gaps in your assertions. I’d be interested in seeing your responses, although I strongly suspect you’re not even reading this.

  4. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    The guy in the new Hillary ad also appears in a syphilis ad. It looks like its even the same photo (stock photo from an ad agency?).

    I’ve seen this. It is in fact a Shutterstock photo.

    Hilarious.

  5. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    It’s worth noting that Doggone’s link says that the Y chromosome is being lost from some (not all) blood cells towards the end of life due to Alzheimer’s. It says absolutely NOTHING about the transgender. Verdict: BS on DG’s part.

    And yes, she’s unaware of problems with the nation’s 843000 people on Megan’s List. Except for the ones that have been mentioned here while she was commenting….obviously we cannot make logical conclusions that are unfavorable to her favored politicians.

  6. Loren Avatar
    Loren

    Not mine, but saw this recently:

    I am looking forward to hunting season but I do have a question. If I shoot a buck, but I only have a doe tag, can I claim that the buck wasn’t really a buck?

    I mean … maybe he’d always wanted to be a doe, but with no choice of his own he was born with the physical attributes of a male. And yet … on the inside he’d always known he was truly a female.

    I’m just wondering if the game warden will buy it,…….. because society and the Supreme Court do

  7. Bento Guzman Avatar
    Bento Guzman

    You don’t need to farther than this to run into Dog Gone’s impenetrable wall of ignorance:
    “Chromosomes are NOT the definitive factor for gender, and should not be relied on, particularly as so often those chromosomes are defective or inactive if they are not missing.”
    Gender is a language and social construct. Chromosomes determine biological sex.
    Gender is like the word “phylum” which is a useful language construct used to classify animals. ‘chordata’ is the subclass of phylum that describes animals with spinal cords. ‘Nematode’ is the subclass of phylum that describes earthworms. A human being does not become a worm because you decide to call the human being a nematode, any more than a biological male becomes a biological female because it has formed the opinion that it is a female.
    QED.

  8. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    “Radioman/gunner in dive bombers”?!

    That was one brave s.o.b. I think the life expectancy for those guys was like 2 missions if they tangled with Japanese fighters.

    Color me totally humbled. May he rest in honored glory!

  9. Troy Avatar
    Troy

    There is so much wrong with her comment here I have to wonder: how did Dog Gone get so rude?

  10. swiftee Avatar
    swiftee

    And I trust, old friend, that I have demonstrated once again that when I make a statement here, I can back it up — that I don’t make it up

    Right. And she’s got Alzheimer’s, snake genes and Wikipedia to prove it.

    Chortle

  11. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    DG,

    On the extreme off-chance you read this (or anything after you post), please read this and apply it to your statement above.

    Also – what Bento said. Chromosomes DO provide the only concrete definition of gender. Personal feeling is as valid as, well, any personal feeling – like, say, the sense I have that Scarlett Johannson digs me above all others.

  12. Bento Guzman Avatar
    Bento Guzman

    Mitch-
    Not gender, sex!
    Words have gender. Human beings have a sex.
    Look, I am trying to avoid rolling my eyes here . . . .

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.