The Bizarre Max Headroom Television Signal Hijacking That Was Never Solved

If you were watching TV in the Chicago area on the night of November 2, 1987, chances are good you would have had a front row seat to one of the greatest WTF moments in television history: the Max Headroom signal hijacking. 

This was when a mysterious person wearing a Max Headroom mask appeared not once but twice during that evening on two separate stations after intercepting the signal and said some very strange things to the camera.  

And that isn't even the craziest part of the story. It's the fact that nearly 40 years later this stunt, which stumped investigators, has never been solved. No one knows who was behind it although the most educated guess is that it was a television station employee with access to signal transmission equipment and knowledge of station pirating. All this time later, no one has ever come forward to claim responsibility. 

What Was the Max Headroom Incident? 

The Max Headroom incident was comprised of two separate programming interruptions featuring the same perpetrator(s). 

The first took place during the 9 PM news on the independent Chicago TV station WGN. In the middle of a news clip about the day's Chicago Bears football game, the screen changed to reveal a swaying person wearing a Max Headroom mask and sitting in front of a swiveling corrugated metal panel—an effect meant to emulate the animated graphic backdrop of the fictional TV character. 

There was no audio other than a buzzing noise, and the hijack lasted for 17 seconds before WGN employees were able to regain the station's signal. The screen returned to a bemused WGN sports anchor Dan Roan who attempted to explain to viewers what they just saw. "Well, if you're wondering what's happened, so am I," he chuckled. He followed this up by theorizing that the computer running the news program "took off and went wild." 

The odd moment was merely a practice run for what was to come two hours later for viewers of Chicago's PBS station WTTW. During an episode of Doctor Who the signal was intercepted for about 90 seconds, and things definitely took a turn for the weirder. 

This time "Max Headroom" spoke to the camera in a distorted voice and what came out sounded like a random stream of consciousness. Here's a list of the antics:

• He declared that he was better than WGN's sportscaster at the time, Chuck Swirsky, and referred to him as a "fricking liberal." 
• He referenced Coca-Cola's advertising slogan at the time—"Catch the Wave"—while holding up and throwing a Pepsi can to the floor). 
• He gave his middle finger to the camera. 
• He hummed the theme song to the 1959 cartoon series Clutch Cargo which was part of WGN's programming lineup.
• He pretended to do number two business (after complaining about his piles) by proclaiming, "Oh, I just made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds!" (a nod to World's Greatest Newspaper, WGN's slogan).
• He put on a glove (perhaps to emulate Michael Jackson), explaining that his brother had the other one and that it was dirty. 

But the most bizarre moment came at the end of the interception when a crude jump cut revealed a woman dressed as a French maid who could be seen hitting "Headroom's" bare bottom with a fly swatter.

The mask had been removed and was being held up, and although the signal hijacker's face could not be seen he continued his show by yelling out, "They're coming to get meeeee!" and "Please, make it stop!" before the signal faded out and returned to Doctor Who. 

You can see all this for yourself here:

And then just as quickly as he appeared "Max" vanished without a trace into the TV ethers, never to be seen or heard from again. 

Who Was Max Headroom?

Max Headroom was having his moment in the U.S. in 1987. He was the star of the ABC series Max Headroom as well as the advertising pitchman for New Coke. A literal talking head, he was an early example of AI; a wise cracking computer generated TV personality.

Max was the creation of British TV/film/music video directors and partners Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton. Together they founded Cucumber Studios and directed music videos for Elvis Costello, Rush, Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads and other musicians/bands, incorporating computer graphics—which was an emerging artform—with live action and animation. 

Together with George Stone, who conceptualized Max Headroom's dialogue and background, they envisioned the character as a parody of slick talking media personalities. The name itself was inspired by the clearance warning for truck drivers displayed on bridges in the UK. It also suggested an empty head. 

Although Max appeared on screen to be digitized, he was actually portrayed by actor Matt Frewer—chosen for the role thanks to his defined features—in heavy prosthetic makeup. CGI wasn't advanced enough by the mid-80s which means Frewer had to don a plastic and fiberglass suit, eerie blue contact lenses (later replaced by Wayfarers when the contacts started to hurt his eyes), and a latex mask to play the character. 

Frewer Having His Max Makeup Applied

The effect was pretty convincing, especially for the mid-80s. As a teen I remember when Max started appearing on American TV screens I was unsure myself if he was an animation or a real person. 

Max made his TV debut in the UK in 1985 via a made-for-TV movie called Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future. He also hosted a music video show where he introduced videos and interviewed guests. He made his American network TV debut on Late Night with David Letterman in 1986, where he stuttered, glitched, shouted, warbled, growled, echoed, and sang in a bizarre exchange. The audience didn't seem to know what to make of him. 

If someone was going to hijack a TV signal and use the opportunity to act in a bizarre manner for some laughs and to thumb his nose at authority, Max Headroom was the perfect character at that time for the disguise.

Was the Person Behind the Max Headroom Ever Caught?

Getting back to the signal hijacking, viewers may have been amused, but FCC officials were not. "A powerful video prankster could become Max Jailroom" proclaimed The Chicago Tribune the following day. An investigation was launched, with the promise that whoever was behind it could be fined up to $100,000 and receive a one-year jail sentence. 

Image via Chicago Tribune

A stunt of this magnitude could never be replicated in today's digital world. Only the pre-2009 analog television signals could be interrupted, and it required someone with access to equipment that was capable of sending a microwave transmission to the stations' broadcast towers which was more powerful than what the stations were sending themselves. 

Taking the Stunt to the Max

Whoever did had access to extremely powerful equipment, according to WGN's director of engineering, Robert Strutzell, who The Chicago Tribune interviewed about the incident. He was reluctant to talk to reporters for fear that another jokester would try to replicate the signal hijacking but did tell that paper that "the interfering signal has to be quite strong."

"It's really unfortunate," he was also quoted as saying. "I certainly wonder about the mentality of people doing this." 

It all sounds very Ghostbusters, but someone was clever enough to a. actually pull it off and b. remain anonymous to this day. Whoever was behind it must have known that there would be no engineers on duty in the Sears Tower at that time of night. This is why the second signal interruption was able to last as long as it did: technicians monitoring the broadcast at WTTW tried to take corrective measures but couldn't, and "grew increasingly stressed out" according to air director Paul Rizzo as they couldn't do anything to regain the signal. 

Although there were some leads, no one was ever identified as the person behind the prank. Lead FCC investigator Dr. Michael Marcus was convinced that it was a disgruntled former employee or contractor that held a grudge against WGN and Chuck Swirsky. 

In 2010 an anonymous poster commented on Reddit that they had acquaintances that went by the initials J and K who were brothers that bragged about pulling off a massive broadcast hijacking back in the day. 

Even if someone were caught or came forward today, the statute of limitations expired in 1992—just five years after it happened. 

It seems that "Max", whoever he is, got the last stuttering laugh in. 

Five Hobbies That No Longer Exist

Remember hobbies? Doom scrolling or playing games on your phone doesn't count. I'm talking about creative recreational activities that require you to actually use your brain and hands. 

OK, many of us do still partake in hobbies today as time allows. However, I thought it would be fun to pay homage to five hobbies that were popular at one time during the 20th century but have pretty much fallen by the wayside. How many of these did you participate in?

1. Slot Car Racing

Slot car racing parlors were a huge thing back in the 1960s. Slot car racing is exactly what it sounds like—you place an electronically controlled miniaturized race car on a groove in a track and race it against other "drivers". I'm not talking about the toy sets that were sold in Sears catalogs. Think multi-track courses that took up an entire room with several racers vying for first place. 

Cars were accelerated by pressing a button; no actual steering is involved. It sounds simple but there was real skill involved—go too fast around the curves and your car would fly off the track. Go too slow, and someone else would beat you to the finish line. 

Then there was the art of modifying your miniature race car for enhanced performance. Enthusiasts would experiment with tires and adding/subtracting weight via tiny parts so they could beat other racers. This eventually led to slot car racing's downfall, but more on that in a moment. 

The Lionel Corporation (the same company that made electric trains) produced the first electric slot cars in 1912 and made them available in their catalog. Tracks and cars underwent improvements in the following decades by several entrepreneurs and manufacturers. By the mid-60s there were over 3,000 "raceways" operating across the U.S. where enthusiasts of all ages would pit their cars against each other. 

It was a $500 million business at its peak and even the Beatles were fans. John Lennon in particular loved the Scalextric brand and combined several tracks into one huge set up in his attic and even incorporated speakers that blasted engine roars and tire screeches. He also insisted on bringing one of his sets on The Beatles' 1964 tour (George Harrison, as you may know, was a fan of the real thing when it came to racecar driving.) 

 

Photo credit: Curt Gunther

The hobby was initially accessible and enjoyed by all ages—kids, their parents, and retirees would frequent the racing venues and enjoy healthy competition as well as share their tips. 

However, some fans got a little too competitive. Those with hundreds of dollars to spend on car modifications did just that—and this eventually shut younger racers out. Their cars simply couldn't keep up. By the early '70s most slot car racing centers had shuttered their doors. 

Although they're spread pretty far apart across the country, there are some slot car raceways and hobby shops that feature slot car tracks operating in the U.S. Thanks to local clubs and online communities the hobby experienced a small resurgence after the pandemic-era lockdowns. It offers social connections and hands-on enjoyment with older adults that remember it from their childhood introducing it to younger racers. 

2. Sewing

Once a staple skill learned in girls' high school home economics classes, sewing started to fall by the wayside in the '90s. It's the rare individual now that is studying fashion design or does clothing alterations that has a sewing machine in the home. 

Wow! Singer used to offer a sewing course and competitions for teens. 

 

I come from a family of sewers—my sister worked as a seamstress for a bridal shop and my mother owned a vintage Singer sewing machine that belonged to her mother. Both were quite adept at creating clothing from tissue patterns. By the time I got the sewing bug in my 20s the cost of fabric had gone up enough that it made more sense to just buy a dress or a shirt. 

 

Speaking of Singer, the sewing machine manufacturer used to operate centers across the country where it would offer sewing classes. I can't help but think how fun it would be to take an in-person sewing course today.  

I miss tagging along with my mother to the fabric store and perusing the gigantic pattern catalogs. Many of them contained designer patterns from Calvin Klein, Liz Claiborne, Ralph Lauren, and other notable fashion designers from the '80s and '90s. 

Today those patterns are now available online as digital downloads. While I've met plenty of people that knit and crochet, I can't say I know anyone that sews in their spare time. 

3. Model and Balsa Wood Airplane Making

Back in the '60s my father opened up a hobby shop as a side job. The majority of his inventory was comprised of built-to-scale plastic and resin models: cars, boats, airplanes, animals, movie monsters, you name it. Kids would assemble these with tube glue and paint them. Many of the monster models featured glow-in-the-dark parts.

Likewise, balsa wood glider planes were another popular hands-on hobby, known by the term aeromodelling. You can still find them today—some ACE Hardware stores carry them—and they really do take flight if constructed and balanced properly. Some models can even do loops. In fact, NASA still uses them to teach aviation students how real airplanes can fly. 

You can still buy plastic models and find vintage kits from Revell, Aurora, and others online. Revell is still in business and sells plane and vehicle model kits on Amazon. 

4. Stamp, Coin, and Baseball Card Collecting

I don't think collecting has ever gone out of fashion, but what people collect now has definitely changed. And very few people today collect stamps, coins, or baseball cards. 

Stamp collecting in particular was popular with celebrities such as Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Borgnine, Willis Reed, and Ronnie Wood. Freddie Mercury amassed a collection as a child which was later sold to benefit an AIDS charity. 

The Guardian claimed in a 2020 article that millennials had fallen in love with collecting stamps, but I've personally never heard of anyone that's into it. Likewise, Pokemon card collecting seemed to replace baseball cards. 

5. Making Mix Tapes

This last hobby is something my fellow Generation Xers and I got quite skilled at decades before Spotify existed: we made our own playlists on cassette by recording songs on the radio. This required patience, luck, and a boombox or stereo with a cassette player and a record button. 

One of the most annoying things about compiling songs on cassette was listening to the DJ talk over and ruin the beginning of a song before the lyrics started. But you couldn't beat the reward: getting to listen to your favorite tunes over and over again for free! Some of us made mix tapes to give to a friend, boyfriend, or girlfriend. 

As late as the 1990s I was still recording songs, especially if I hadn't had the chance to buy the CD yet. 

Of course, there are tons more hobbies than just these five that fell out of fashion. Which ones did you enjoy or are still enjoying to this day? 

Dave Stewart's Late '80s Hit Instrumental "Lily Was Here" Was a Happy Accident

When Dave Stewart released "Lily Was Here" in 1989 Miami Vice was ending its five-season run, the Berlin Wall was about to collapse, and George H.W. Bush was President. In other words, the '80s era was just about over, but not before it gifted us with this smooth as silk instrumental.  

"Lily Was Here" is a jazz duet, with the "singers" being Stewart's guitar and Candy Dulfer's saxophone. Listening to it today with its repeating sultry rift is wistfulness overload. Like a musical TARDIS, the melody instantly transports you back to the decade of decadence. It makes you ache for a different time and place, whether your memory of the tail end of the '80s involved sniffing something you shouldn't have at a party, shopping for a Nintendo Game Boy, or making out with a date in the back of a Ford Escort. In other words, this song is a mood. Speaking of Miami Vice, it would have fit perfectly on the show. 

Something else was ending around the time this song was recorded. Stewart, of course, made up one half of The Eurythmics, the enormously successful pop/rock/New Wave band he formed with former lover Annie Lennox. The duo was on the verge of splitting up and he was starting to pursue solo projects.

What Is the Story Behind "Lily Was Here"?

His first of these was composing the soundtrack for a Dutch film called De Kassiere (Lily Was Here). The movie itself and its plot sounds really grim. It follows a supermarket cashier, Lily, who gets pregnant and then turns to a life of crime after the father of her child is killed by a gang.

The film wasn't exactly a box office smash and is virtually unknown today, but like most movies, it needed music to accompany the scenes. For this job Stewart enlisted the help of beautiful Dutch saxophone player Candy Dulfer, who had already performed with Madonna and Prince. Stewart learned of her through one of his Eurthymics bandmates, who had a cassette of her sax playing. Somewhat of a child prodigy, Dulfer had been playing the saxophone since the age of six and started her own band called Funky Stuff when she was 14 years old. Only 20 years old at the time she collaborated with Stewart, she had never recorded before.

She shares credits as the cowriter for three of the tracks on the De Kassiere soundtrack. But the one tune—credited only to Stewart—that had worldwide success turned out to be nothing more than a well-executed impromptu jam session. That's right; "Lily Was Here" was a happy accident and even more remarkably, recorded in just one take. It would have been forgotten had Stewart not decided it was good enough to not only include on the soundtrack but released as a single. 

It was a wise decision: "Lily Was Here" reached number one in the Netherlands and stayed there for five weeks. It was then released as a single in the United Kingdom, Europe, and United States. It reached number six in the UK and just shy of the top ten in the US, tapping out at number 11, which is still pretty successful for a song without lyrics. 

Virtually no one knows the movie, but the song has endured and has been covered by saxophone players all over the world, most notably Areta Chmiel and Tom Evans. 

The song's success prompted Dulfer to release her debut solo album, Saxuality, the following year. She's gone on to have a remarkable career as an in-demand saxophonist, collaborating with notable musicians such as Van Morrison and performing live with Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, and Tower of Power. Being tall, blonde, and beautiful hasn't hurt, either—Prince even paid homage to her in his song "Partyman" from the 1989 Batman soundtrack by including the tongue-in-cheek lyric, "When I want sax, I call Candy." She also appeared in the music video for the song. She worked with him again in the 1990s and lived in Minneapolis for six months, spending a lot of time at Paisley Park. 

She still performs today and her most recent album, We Never Stop, was released in 2022. But "Lily Was Here" remains her most recognizable and enduring tune thanks to Stewart. They've performed it together on stage many times since the record's release. 

Here's the official music video for the song. Kick off your Reebok pumps, pour yourself a cosmopolitan, and get ready to be transported to another time: 

Bernie Taupin, Wannabe Rock Star: A Look Back at the 1987 Album Tribe

As the long-time lyricist for Elton John, Bernie Taupin has always maintained in the occasional interview that he prefers to remain behind the scenes and have nothing to do with the spotlight, unlike his legendary business partner of nearly 60 years.

Deep down, however, I believe that ol' Bern—whose tedious 2023 memoir Shattershot: Life, Music, Elton and Me is a hodgepodge of name dropping and bar hopping—has from time to time secretly yearned for a little more notoriety beyond pounding out lyrics in private. 

Case in point: wannabe rock star Taupin released two solo records in the 1980s. Specifically, I'm taking a look at his second singing effort which was the album Tribe. Released by RCA in 1987, copies of it are now pretty tough to come by. It was a commercial flop, partially due to unfortunate (OK, tremendously awful) timing: it was released around the same time as the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing on the same label and well, we all know what a monster summer hit both the movie and its soundtrack turned out to be. 

Can we blame him for trying? Back in the '80s a lot of celebrities that weren't singers by profession were releasing albums. Actors Don Johnson, Patrick Swayze, and Bruce Willis all had top 40 songs. Eddie Murphy scored a hit with "Party All the Time" and even Billy Crystal and Rodney Dangerfield got into the game with more comical tracks that received some radio airtime. 

So why not the man responsible for writing lyrics for none other than the Rocketman? The timing also seemed right, as Elton was recovering from vocal cord surgery in 1987 and did not release an album that year. 

This also wasn't the Brown Dirt Cowboy's first rodeo in the recording studio. His 1971 debut studio album (with the very creative title Taupin) was something only that decade could conceive: a spoken word album of his own poetry set to music. One of the tracks/poems, "Ratcatcher", disturbingly narrates the tale of a rat catcher that falls victim to the very vermin he's trying to trap, but the album also gave us "The Greatest Discovery", which Elton John turned into a song. 

Not even the musical contributions of two of John's band members, Davey Johnstone and Caleb Quaye, could get copies of Taupin to move at record stores. The peculiar cover art also features a stoned looking Taupin staring into the void as a giant red candle melts all over his hands. Needless to say, this record didn't exactly race up the charts. 

Taupin later said he wasn't "pleased" with this album, not that there's really any other way to execute a spoken poetry record. I'd like to think its failure had more to do with the fact that there's not exactly a demand for that genre. So in 1980 Taupin tried his hand at singing and released He Who Rides the Tiger on the Elektra label. Since I haven't listened to any tracks from this one yet I'll reserve judgment, but at least the album cover art is a little better: it features Taupin leaning against a pool table with a lady who was his second wife at that time, Toni Lynn Russo. 

A Billboard review of the record proclaimed that Taupin wasn't a bad vocalist but that his singing becomes a "bit too stagnant". Would his 1987 Tribe album prove that the third time's a charm? 

 

 

The album's title refers not only to America's indigenous people; it's also (according to Wikipedia, anyway) the name of Taupin's backing band, which included Martin Page (who cowrote and produced the songs), Brian Fairweather, Paul Fox, and Craig Krampf. Bruce Hornsby and Fred Mandel were among the contributing musicians. Taupin, of course, wrote all of the lyrics. 

Right off the bat I find myself pondering the record's title. If Tribe is the unofficial name of the band, then why is the album not attributed to them? Instead that honor goes to Taupin. I guess someone (cough, cough) believed his name (and face) on the front would sell more copies.  

This is a very 1980s album and if you're not a fan of the decade, the requisite synth, saxophone, and electric drums may make you cringe. Speaking of cringe, it may be worth pointing out here that Taupin and Martin Page are also responsible for Starship's much maligned 1985 hit "We Built This City". Oddly enough, Taupin barely gives his solo albums a passing mention in Scattershot yet speaks at length of how proud he is of "City". 

The album contains ten tracks with a total running time of just over 48 minutes. It doesn't appear that Taupin did much promotion for the record (at least, there are no interviews discussing it to be found on YouTube as of this writing) but he did film a couple of music videos for it. The singles "Citizen Jane" and "Friend of the Flag" got the MTV treatment.     

"Citizen Jane" is the clear winner of the two and one of the album's strongest tracks. It features a suited-up Taupin doing his best Robert Palmer impersonation with two female backup "singers". You may recognize one of them as Rene Russo, his sister-in-law at the time. This was also the stronger single in my opinion, and really, one of the few tracks that is worthy of some radio airtime. "Citizen Jane" (a female counterpart to John Doe) tells the tale of a woman who leaves behind farm life to seek fame and fortune only to end up being photographed in the nude for men's magazines, while her sisters are still working the family farm and bemoan her career choice. 

"Citizen Jane" was the only track from Tribe to actually chart; it peaked at number 35 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart in the U.S. 

 

"Friend of the Flag", the album's opening track, has a patriotic message behind it, but the accompanying music video is pretty cheesy. It opens with Taupin (and sis-in-law Russo again) driving into the countryside to release a hawk. Why they have a hawk in their possession is unknown (perhaps the hawk was injured, rescued, rehabbed, and now being set free) but why a hawk and not an eagle for a song that is clearly an homage to Taupin's adopted home, the U.S.A.? Well, it was the '80s where there was never an explanation for most of the stuff that happened in music videos. 

Now cut to Taupin with a wavy mullet and a guitar accompanied by his "band" playing next to a body of water. As our view is obscured by the occasional person walking by or giant lyrics scrolling across the screen, the crowd around the band grows larger and larger with each spectator joining in. Not exactly a contender for an MTV music video award. 

Music videos aside, there are some strong moments on this album. "Corrugated Iron" is an anti-apartheid song with a pleasing beat driving it along while "Billy Fury" is an ode to English musician Ronald Wycherley who was Liverpool's answer to Elvis Presley in the early '60s. The latter has Elton helping his buddy and songwriting partner by providing backing vocals and no surprise, this track proves to be the catchiest bop on the record, almost as if it were written by Captain Fantastic himself. 

"The New Lone Ranger" is another high point on the album. Taupin, who has a lifelong love for the American West, laments the death of Old Hollywood with this track. "She Sends Shivers" is an OK duet with Martha Davis of The Motels. "Conquistador" features what are perhaps Taupin's strongest lyrics on the record, drawing parallels between Spanish explorers and modern-day corporate executives (You've got such an appetite for more / They laid down the Incas / You lay down the law). 

Taupin actually has a pretty decent singing voice especially on softer tracks such as "Citizen Jane" and "I Still Can't Believe You're Gone" which probably could have been strengthened with some vocal training. I'm guessing more than one person pointed this out to him earlier in his life, which prompted him to try his hand at recording music.

Many people have said that without Bernie Taupin, Elton John would never have become Elton John. While that is true, I would counter-argue that John has more than proven that he can still produce gold even if Taupin is not his lyrical co-pilot (The Lion King, anyone?) I mean, the man actually wrote a catchy off-the-cuff pub tune using the words from an oven manual for a TV special.  

Taupin, on the other hand, has worked with other musicians and bands such as Alice Cooper, Rod Stewart, and Heart, but none of these collaborations have produced magic to the extent he and John have created together. He never released another solo album, but he did form a band called Farm Dogs in the '90s to scratch the performing itch. 

I will admit it took a few plays for some of the songs to grow on me. None of them have that right-out-the-gate magic like most Elton John/Bernie Taupin albums, but Taupin still gets an A for effort with this one. 

Copies of Tribe are pretty hard to come by, but definitely worth adding to your collection if you're a diehard fan of all things Elton John/Taupin. 

Why I Miss In-Person Learning

Photo via Diply

Sometime in the early 2000s when I was in between jobs, I registered for a Media Bistro class on writing for women's magazines. Once a week I'd drive to Assembly station in Somerville, MA and hop onto the orange MBTA line, switch to the red line a few stops down, hop off at the Harvard stop, and walk a few blocks to a Harvard Square church where the class was held. 

Over the course of the next eight weeks, my fellow ten or so students and I got to know each other. All of us ladies came from different backgrounds with varying degrees of writing experience but we were all dedicated to the subject matter and soaking up as much knowledge as we could from our instructor Meg, who actually made a prolific living as a freelance writer for Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, Women's Day, and other publications from that time aimed at the female demographic. 

Every week we'd learn about a content format common in magazines, from the personal essay to the interview. We'd have to write an article in this format and then take turns reading it aloud in class the following week. We also learned the art of the pitch letter. 

Looking back, it's amazing that I don't recall any of us aspiring writers skipping a class or dropping out. Our email addresses were shared, and I remember we kept in touch over the next few months and celebrated each other's wins as pitches to editors were accepted. 

Media Bistro used to offer in-person writing and media classes in major cities across the country but at some point, even before COVID, switched to online learning only. And that's pretty much the norm now for adult education in the post COVID world. It's getting harder to find classes that actually take place in person, and that makes me a little sad and nostalgic for the past. 

Don't get me wrong; online learning is incredibly convenient. Even more convenient are the take-at-your-own-pace online courses where you can learn as much as you want based around your schedule and personal time. And as someone working full-time and living alone, I definitely wouldn't be able to trudge into Boston to take an in-person class once a week these days. 

However, I miss the camaraderie and socializing with other students that just can't be possible with a live streaming class or Teams training. Online classes, while convenient, can also feel alienating. 

I'm also not alone in my opinion that in person learning, overall, is better for both the instructor and students: a Reddit thread on the subject proved that an overwhelming majority prefer in person learning for the ability to retain information better. Teachers say in person classes also allow them to read body language. 

We live in a world where a lot of people admit to not having a lot of friends or have difficulty forming new friendships. In person classes provide an opportunity to meet people with shared interests. 

Lately I've been keeping my eyes open for a continuing education class that I can take in person to pique my creative juices and meet some new people. Somewhere in my desk I still have the folder containing copies of my assignments and my fellow students' assignments from that writing course along with their email addresses. I suppose it would be too weird to reach out to these ladies some 20+ years later but if anything, looking back on these memories is motivating me to look a little harder for a class that I can take in person that works with my location and schedule.