[CQ-Contest] Room Reservations for Dayton 2020 at the CrownePlaza hotel in downtown Dayton

[Jim Brown]

Thanks Hans and others. Life is hard for those left behind by 
automation, the migration of jobs to other places, and of money to the 
richest. There are many homeless folks all over our country, and many 
with homes that they're likely to lose because they've lost jobs or had 
medical catastrophe. I know a bit about that -- my mother was born in KY 
coal country, her father was from MD coal country, and I was born and 
raised in WV. Dayton has been on hard times for many years -- among 
other things, downtown and the surrounding area had been wiped out by a 
major flood. I learned about this when I had client in downtown Dayton 
about 15 years ago, a church for whom I designed a sound system. Walking 
distance from the Crown Plaza.

There are homeless encampments in Santa Cruz, CA, ten miles from me, and 
in many major cities. As a student in 1962, I worked for a small radio 
station and broadcast consultant in Charleston, WV. I walked a bit less 
than a mile from a rented room to sign on the station at 6 am and sign 
it off at 1 am. I often encountered panhandlers, but never felt 
threatened. When I visited Chicago for a job interview in 1964, and 
later moved there for 42 years, I regularly patronized jazz clubs in the 
heart of the Black community, and never felt threatened.

Sadly, things have gotten much worse for those left behind by our 
economy, and to add to that, the ravages of opioids. A long time ham 
friend lost his son to this.

73, Jim K9YC

On 9/16/2019 8:01 PM, Radio KØHB wrote:
> I’m only familiar with the area immediately adjacent to the CrownPlaza, so I can’t speak about the “Oregon area”.
> 
> In my (mis-spent) youth in the Navy I navigated a lot of dark and sketchy waterfronts in down-scale foreign ports.
> 
> In none of them was I ever so apprehensive for my safety as I was this last May after the Contest Dinner walking 2 blocks from CP to where my vehicle was parked in a surface lot.  Approached twice with offers of intimate horizontal refreshment and once by a pair of fellows desiring “money for the bus”.