The WMRA Blog

Congress, It's time to be Sensible about Gun Control! a Civic Soapbox Essay by Patty Pullen

2011-07-14T16:44:00.000-04:00

In 1950, when I was twelve years old, my father decided it was time for me to learn how to shoot a gun. I was ecstatic and thought I would fire a gun that afternoon. It was days before I fired a shot.

First, I had to learn how to take apart the gun, clean it, and put it back together. Then Daddy taught me how to hand a gun to someone; how to crawl under or over a fence while holding a gun; and how to walk safely behind someone with a loaded rifle. These were long training sessions; experiences I still treasure.

At the beginning of every lesson, Daddy pointed to the rifle and said, “Patty, this is not a toy. This is a gun. And guns were made to kill.”

Times have changed. Guns are not just family bonding experiences anymore. Deaths due to misuse of guns have increased in America. Thirty-four people are murdered in United States every day with guns. Since the Tucson killing in January, more than 3,000 people have been killed with guns.

Please understand. I don’t want to ban guns. I believe people are entitled to own guns for target practice, hunting, or for their protection. But, because our current laws are weak and not strictly enforced, guns are accessible to felons, the mentally ill, and the troubled youth in our society, and as a result, innocent people get hurt.

Here’s one problem I see with our current system. Licensed gun dealers are currently required to do background checks to determine whether customers are mentally ill, or have served time in prison; and most licensed gun dealers accommodate this responsibility. But sales by private citizens at gun shows are not regulated. According to the Brady Foundation, 40% of the gun sales in the United States occur at these gun shows. I want the law changed to require everyone who purchases a gun at a gun show to have to undergo a background check.

I also want tighter regulation of large capacity ammunition magazines, which are designed to enable someone to shoot efficiently and quickly without reloading. In 15 seconds, the shooter in Tucson fired more than 30 shots from one magazine, wounding 19 people, one of whom was Gabrielle Giffords and killing 6 including a 9-year-old girl. According to the law enforcement in Tucson, “There’s absolutely no doubt the magazines increased the lethality and the body county of this attack.” (Isikoff, 2011) They should be banned.

I also want better communication in the enforcement of existing gun control laws. Four years ago, a Virginia judge designated a Virginia Tech student as mentally ill and a danger to himself. Unfortunately this important information never made it to the gun shops so he bought two semiautomatic pistols, which fired 174 rounds in twelve minutes. He killed 25 students, five teachers, and wounded seventeen people, before he killed himself.
Whenever I hear of a gun tragedy, I think about my father’s comments. “Patty, this is not a toy. This is a gun. And guns were made to kill.”

You’re right, Daddy.

--Patty Pullen lives in Charlottesville.

The Lost Art of Letter Writing, a Civic Soapbox by Val Matthews

2011-07-08T08:14:00.000-04:00

I recently handed over to my daughter four bulky old folders full of letters. These folders have over the years filled up as members of our family have moved to different parts of the globe for longer or shorter periods, and have sent back to other family members news of their lives. Often in my times of moving house or moving to another continent, I have pondered ditching the files, but in the end they would be packed up and moved with us.

I am not even sure exactly which family members are the authors of the letters or where they originated, but there is a special file for my father’s letters, because he didn’t write often, but when he did they were very detailed and often very funny. During the second World War he was stationed mainly in North Africa and the Middle East and his letters to my mother were very regular and full of intriguing facts about the countries he moved through.

Before handing the files to my daughter, I looked idly through one of the files and found a neatly handwritten letter from my late husband to his mother, written when he must have been not yet a teenager. His mother was on a visit to her native New Zealand leaving her husband in charge of the four sons, the youngest of whom was still quite a baby. The letter (to dear Mummy) was mainly a horrendous description of the four older males bathing the baby. Amazingly this was a letter I never remember seeing – my husband would be seventy nine now if he was still living.

People used to save letters. I think of all the letters of famous people through the ages whose letters are still on record. Now this form of communication is almost dead and sending letters through the mail is thought of as snailmail.

Somehow one slows down a bit, becomes a bit more thoughtful ( I think) when, pen in hand, one puts one’s words onto paper. We’re simply in a different mode when sending emails. And it is also so easy just to text someone.

I know all of it is on record somewhere in the ether, but will we ever be able to retrieve it and reread it with love and amazement sixty years on. Are we not losing something very important, as we let go of the art of letter writing? Are we not losing a magical bit of history?

--Val Matthews lives in Charlottesville

My Kind of Vegan, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Mona Williams

2011-06-30T16:38:00.005-04:00

I became a vegan after reading a leaflet about the suffering of animals raised under factory-like conditions. That day I decided to use up all the animal foods I had and not to buy any more. Eggs hadn’t suddenly become repulsive to me; I just didn’t want to contribute any longer to an industry that was packing laying hens into small cages just to increase their profits.

But I began to see that veganism was complicated. I had to read labels. Powdered whey in cookies was a reason not to buy them. But neither did I want to eat them if other people had bought them. The perfectionist aspects of veganism began to dawn on me.

I know that being a perfectionist isn’t healthy, but I am one anyway. In this respect, veganism suited me fine. I was a perfect vegan, for about a year. Then I got married to a wonderful vegetarian man, who wanted, on our honeymoon, to treat me to what he considered the world’s best cheese omelet. Never, in the preceding year, had I run up against a conflict like this one. And perfectionist that I am, I am also weak. I ate the omelet, and then began ten years of being a vegan except for when it was too hard to say no.

My wonderful vegetarian husband, who is now my ex-husband and best friend, became more of a vegan while I became less of one. We decided to be vegan in our respective homes, where we could control things, and vegetarians on the outside. I became a not-too-bad vegan cook, and introduced many guests to the wonders of tofu mayonnaise and mystery Parmesan.

But, to reveal yet another flaw in myself, I am easily bored. And I was getting bored with my culinary repertoire. Not that I wanted to cook meat again, or even seafood. That was definitely over. But I had once spent two years learning classical French cuisine and I missed, I don’t know, crème anglaise.

I thought about the reason I had originally become a vegan—to reduce, even in a small way, animal suffering. And then I thought about an organic farming conference I had attended one year out of curiosity. There I heard something I knew already—that there are plenty of farmers around who are good to their animals, who raise cage-free hens, happy goats and contented cows. You just have to find them and be willing to pay their price.

So I began to do that. I used the Internet and my formidable label-reading skills. I called 800 numbers. I asked people at the farmer’s market how they treated their animals and found that they were absolutely happy to tell me. And then I made a lemon tart for my friends that both I and the hens involved could feel good about.

Mark Bittman.
(Suzy Allman for The New York Times)

I just don’t know what to call myself these days. Mark Bittman, the New York Times food writer, made up his own category when he decided to be a vegan all day and eat whatever he wanted for dinner. He calls himself a vegan till 6. Maybe I can just call myself a kind of vegan.The kind who isn't perfect.

-- Mona Williams lives and cooks in Bridgewater

The Best Present Graduates Can Give to Themselves, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Katrien Vance

2011-06-23T15:09:00.001-04:00

Dear Graduates,

Right now, as you graduate, you probably feel like a set entity, a “you” fully formed. You are. For now.
Be ready for everything to change. And the most important, most exciting thing that will change as you grow—if you let it—is your mind.

You will change your mind about little things: what music is good, what food is good, what’s funny.

You will change your mind about big things: what you want to do, how you want to do it, and with whom.
You’ll realize your parents were wrong about things you thought they had right, and right about many things you thought they had way wrong.

You will change your mind about things that right now seem set in stone: your political views, your ideas about human nature, your sense of where you draw the line.

It can be frightening to discover that you think something different than you thought you did. History is littered with people who have hung on to what they thought in the face of evidence that those thoughts didn’t work for them any longer—and it’s littered with the remains of the people who tried to offer a new way of thinking.
You have the choice to let each experience in and let it shape you, or to shut out the experiences that don’t match the person you already think yourself to be. You have the choice to judge those whose opinions don’t match yours, or let those opinions in and learn from them. You have the choice to pre-screen your potential books, friends, and ideas by comparing them to what you already think and seeing how well they match. But I guarantee, at some point, there will be that book you thought you would hate, that you finish only out of obligation, that you find yourself weeping over at the end, wondering “Why on earth is this affecting me?” You will meet that person who is the antithesis of what you believe, and suddenly realize he is a thinking, caring, admirable person. You will have an idea that rocks everything you’ve staked your life on. And what you do in those moments, whether you shut down or open up, will make all the difference.

There is a reason people call this time “commencement.” Go out there and commence changing. You might try on 40 different opinions for some things. If you don’t let yourself try those on, you’re stuck with the one you have right now. And just as I hope you’re not wearing only the same clothes or listening to only the same music in 20 years as you are now, I hope you’re not thinking only the same thoughts 20 years from now as you are now.

You’ll probably get a lot of wonderful gifts for graduation. I hope you’ll give yourself this one amazing gift: the gift of a mind that can change. Open it up and enjoy it for a long time to come.

--Katrien Vance teaches 7th and 8th graders at North Branch School in Afton

Beach Scenes, a Civic Soapbox essay by Ellen Adams

2011-06-16T15:48:00.001-04:00

Biking three miles on the boardwalk in an early morning mist is a good beginning. Yesterday’s tracks in the sand have been swept away overnight, leaving a clean slate.

Leaning my bike against Neptune’s regal statue, I join the mythical king in looking out to sea. Rescue personnel are leaving the scene of an accident on the beach. A homeless person, sleeping in a sand chair, was overrun by a trash truck at dawn. His legacy will be a cordon of yellow ribbons and a ten second spot on the evening news.

As the sun moves across the sky, umbrellas offer circles of shade for a random mix of vacationers.
Wannabe athletes invite attention by throwing footballs. Under her grandmother’s careful eye, a youngster teases breakers splashing over her feet. The flesh colored prosthesis attached below her left knee is not as obvious as her fashionable green Crocs.

A toddler wearing a floppy pink sunhat does not clamor for anything. She nestles in her father’s lap and silently watches the others playing. He whispers in her ear, setting her down on a Barbie towel. Daddy’s little princess is a special needs child.
A threesome arrive carrying room towels. The slender teenager and portly middle-aged man frolic in the waves while the woman snaps pictures. If she viewed the scene through a wider lens, would she see his inappropriate touching of the girl?

A noisy bunch pulling coolers and overloaded wagons sets up camp. The surf is up and guys with boogie-boards run full speed ahead as mothers talk to other mothers. One lone boy idly kicks the sand, standing apart. He wears wearing a long sleeve shirt under a blue flannel hooded bathrobe printed with scenes of super heroes. A short time later, this autistic child stretches prone on the hot sand in the broiling noonday sun. The temperature has reached 98 degrees.

A young man rushes by shouting, “Have you seen my little boy with blond hair and plaid swim trunks? He’s five years old and his name is Caleb!” A terrified mother, holding a sleeping baby, scans the crowd. Strangers rise to their feet like sports fans doing the wave, and fan out, calling for Caleb. When a sniffling son is finally handed over to a jubilant dad, onlookers swallow lumps in their throats. The grateful parents pause to thank well-wishers, then turn for home.

Beach life moves on. Conversations pick up where they left off, and readers pick up their paperback novels. But, in the fading afterglow of finding Caleb, are there any among us who do not feel sense the wonder of human connectedness and its innate capacity for caring? Are there any among us who do not feel pleased in by playing a fleeting role in something larger than ourselves?

And, who among us does not love a happy ending?

-- Ellen Adams lives and writes in Gainesboro on the outskirts of Winchester.

Some Things Just Bug You, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Kim Johnson

2011-06-08T15:51:00.002-04:00

Take the townhouses at the end of my street, for example: They bug me. Over the past nine years that we have lived in our house, the townhouses nearby have wilted a bit, a missing shutter here, an overgrown shrub there. I’m not fancy, but I do fancy a neat street, and these townhouses are not passing muster anymore.

But what really bugs me is some of the townhouse residents’ lack of regard for the bulk trash pickup policy. The good city of Harrisonburg picks up bulk trash in our neighborhood on the second Wednesday of each month. I appreciate this service, and I have merrily set out junk in the past on the second Tuesday of the month to be whisked away the following day. I find this therapeutic. Some of the occupants of the townhouses, however, throw bulk items to the curb whenever the spirit moves them, and the spirit does not recognize the 2nd Wednesday of the month policy. On many a morning as I drive to work, even, on occasion, the day AFTER bulk trash day, I go by the townhouses and see a Lazy-Boy carcass or a wounded sofa, spilling its stuffing, at the curb. Then I must look at these offending objects until the next bulk trash day, while thinking dark thoughts about my house value hemorrhaging further than it already has in this wretched market.

This bugs me.

So, I’m driving home recently after a very long day, and I that see a big, ugly mattress has appeared on the curb. A mattress! I seethe as I drive by, and continue to seethe daily as I pass it, calculating the days until the next second Wednesday. On a beautiful afternoon, though, when the scarlet tulips and yellow daffodils are waving, I see that a group of children has gathered at the mattress. They shout. They giggle. They jump. Boy, do they jump, leaping, stretching, and reaching for the turquoise April sky. I can imagine the games they are playing amid the scent of the new grass: King of the mattress! Mattress Olympics! I remember a 6 year old me, and how she would have thought a mattress at the curb was the greatest thing ever. You could have a mattress club!

A mattress club: How cool is that?

What I saw as a sign of the imminent decline of civilization, they see as a gift from on high. Amazing.
Perspective is a lens that changes us, not our surroundings. Sometimes… often, in fact, perspective is the only aspect of our life that we do control in this bewildering world. Now, I still like order and I still prefer that people on our street follow the bulk trash policy; however, a group of joyous kids showed me that sometimes a mattress at the curb can be a thing of beauty that is a joy forever…or at least until the next bulk trash day.

And maybe, just maybe, I need to chill out a bit.

Kim Johnson puts her trash out in Harrisonburg.

Rolling Thunder, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Jeff Ell

2011-06-02T16:57:00.000-04:00

Two hundred and twenty-three. That’s the number of motorcycles I counted in an unbroken line heading north on I-81 last Friday morning.

A train of north bound bikes coupled together in the annual Memorial Day event held to honor the POW’s and MIA’s of the Vietnam War. The rally is called Rolling Thunder, because the sound of all those motorcycles reminds the veterans of the bombing campaign of that name waged between 1965-1968.

One by one, these bikers find their way along narrow roads and graveled dirt tracks to the interstates that flow toward Washington. They meet up with a handful friends, and together throttle up the on ramp to join in a two-wheeled migration in honor of their comrades.

Some come from places where they push automated garage door buttons and coast their shinny bikes down the drive way. Veterans who furtively leave their cul-de-sacs, trying not to disturb their neighbors slumber.

They wear body armor and full helmets with tinted visors. They protect their hearing and chat with their passenger on a wireless communication system.

Others come from places where they pull tarps off their choppers -- those bikes with elongated front ends and long low saddles; with handle bars so high the drivers have to hold their hands above their heads. These veterans rev their motors in the pre-dawn dim to wake up their neighbors in double wide down the road.

They wear embroidered leather vests, and helmets modeled after the ones worn by an enemy in another generation’s war. They and their tattooed passengers let the heavy metal roar ring their ears while their beer and Bar-B-Q handle bars hang over their blue jeans in unashamed exhibition.

As ever larger numbers of bikers link up, their voices turns from solitary thunder to the guttural rumble produced by hundreds of thousands who still remember things they wish they could forget.

Two Hundred and twenty-three of them roared by me a week ago today. That number rattled around in my skull until it pinged off a trivial storing neuron.

Two-hundred and twenty three, I recalled, is the numerical designation of the bullets used in the M-16 rifle; the infantryman’s weapon during the Vietnam war. I shook my head, and went into the house and googled the number.

Sure enough, in improbable numerical irony I had managed to count off not 224 or 222, but 223. The number given to that small high speed round that was fired millions of times during the decade or so that a generation of young men stumbled around in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Rolling Thunder, that’s what they call it, made in America engine exhaust; I stand and listen to the guttural groan that rises from the floor of our valley, up the Shenandoah and all the way to Washington. Where those gray headed veterans will quietly visit a black wall where 58, 267 silvery names are etched in stone.

Jeff Ell lives in Roanoke. He is the author of Ruth Uncensored: The Story You Thought You Knew.

After Oprah, a Civic Soapbox essay by Mariflo Stephens

2011-05-26T18:15:00.000-04:00

A woman I hadn't heard from in over 20 years sent me a Christmas card. After two decades of being out of touch, Debbie tracked me down. She’d seen me on Oprah one year earlier, in 1990. Then, my best friend from childhood, Jane, sent me a birthday card that read: "Now you're 40. Only 60 years until Willard Scott announces your birthday on T.V."

"After Oprah," she wrote, "I figure Willard's next".

After Oprah, I acquired an unearned fame, vague in scope. I say “vague” because some in Charlottesville can't quite remember the basis for my celebrity, though they remain convinced of it. "Look," a beaming woman once said to her daughter, pointing to me. "There's Mariflo. She’s the famous...uh, famous famous."
In the even smaller town where I grew up, in front of the courthouse and behind the fire station, there is a creek. I remember the lot surrounding the creek as uncleared and weedy, the kind of place that attracts broken bottles. But community activists turned it into a park and each year it is the site of an arts festival with everything from a literary contest to a doll show. In this town of 5,000, hundreds swarm the park every June. I try to go there almost every year myself for their now-annual Chatauqua festival, there in the town where I grew up.

The June I was on national television coincided with Wytheville’s Chatauqua festival. My older sister told me that someone walked the park, calling out, "Mariflo's on Oprah in 15 minutes," and the park cleared. She estimates that there were 100 video tapes made of the event.

The next year when I went to Chatauqua I caught a little, freckle-faced boy staring at me, staring in absolute wonder. I was the woman he'd seen on the T.V. And because I flashed on the screen of his television for fifteen minutes, I was more real to him than anything he'd ever experienced in his small town.

Most of us don't live where we grew up. The first thing we do to ourselves in this culture is leave. But because I went before an audience of 25 million, I reached people I hadn't seen in years: my old college suite mate, my childhood friend, a kissing cousin.

So how did I end up on Oprah?

The Oprah staff had plugged the "suppport group junkie" idea into their computer service and found my satire “I Was a Support Group Junkie” from The Washington Post. Then they asked me to appear with some real support group junkies. “We need a humorist,” they’d explained.

Not one bad thing has happened to from being on Oprah. Not one negative phrase has been uttered. No one has called me a wet blanket or a spoilsport for saying that I, myself, didn’t really believe in support groups. And after the show taped, Oprah’s people promised to ask me back.

Now this is Oprah’s last week and I’m mad, because that promise was never kept. So what’s the deal with those people? In 21 years, they never had another need for a humorist? I wonder if Ellen DeGeneres would be interested in one? Hmmm.

--Mariflo Stephens is from Charlottesville. She teaches creative writing at Hollins University.

Oprah says goodbye

7 Myths about Urban Chickens, a Civic Soapbox by Pat Foreman

2011-05-19T16:50:00.001-04:00

There are many false beliefs and prejudices about keeping chickens, and the seven issues that routinely surface are:

disease,
noise,
odor and flies,
predators and rodents,
property values,
appearances,
what will the neighbors think?

Here’s the facts about each issue.

Myth 1: Urban Chickens Carry Diseases.

Fact: Small flocks have literally no risk of avian flu transmission to humans. The 2006 Grain Report states: “When it comes to bird flu, diverse small-scale poultry is the solution, not the problem.” Why? Because small flocks have better immune systems.

Myth 2. Chickens are Noisy.

Fact: Laying hens — at their very loudest — have about the same decibel level as human conversation (65 decibels). Roosters make most of the noise and many times they're not allowed in urban areas.

Myth 3. Waste and Odor.

Fact: a forty pound dog generates more doggie-do (about ¾ of a pound) then ten chickens (two-thirds of a pound of poo daily ). Both poops are smelly. But the key is to keep the chicken manure from accumulating, and this is done by composing.Composted chicken manure is valuable as a high-nitrogen fertilizer.

Myth 4. Chickens Attract Predators, Pests and Rodents.

Fact: Predators and rodents are already living in urban areas. Wild bird feeders, pet food, gardens, fish ponds, bird baths, and trash waiting to be collected all attract raccoons, foxes, rodents and flies. Modern micro-flock coops, such as chicken tractors, elevated coops and fencing provide ways of keeping, and managing, family flocks that eliminate concerns about such pests.

And about those pests, chickens are voracious carnivores and will seek and eat just about anything that moves including ticks (think Lyme disease), fleas, mosquitoes, grasshoppers, stink bugs, slugs, and even mice, baby rats and small snakes.

Myth 5. Property Values Will Decrease.

Fact: There is not one single documented case that I know about a family flock that has decreased the value of real estate.

Myth 6. Coops are Ugly.

Fact: Micro-flock coop designs can be totally charming, upscale and even whimsical.Common design features include blending in with the local architectural, matching the slope of the roof and complementing color schemes.

Myth 7. What Will Neighbors Think?

Fact: You can’t control what anyone thinks, much less your neighbor. But in my experience, once folks experience the advantages and charms of chickens, the prejudice and fear evaporates; especially when you share some heart-healthy, good-for-you eggs from your hens.

Often overlooked is the value of chickens as clucking civic bio-recyclers. They can divert tons of “waste” from the trash collection systems. Chickens will eat just about any kitchen “waste,” including “gone-by” leftovers that have seasoned in the refrigerator. Combine their manure with grass clippings and leaves to create compost and top soil.

My chickens are charming, amicable and entertaining beings that bring so many advantages to my home garden. They are truly “pets with benefits”.

May the flock be with you!

--Patricia Foreman has kept chickens for years in Rockbridge County

What You Miss by NOT Biking to Work, a Civic Soapbox essay by Tim Godshall

2011-05-13T13:32:00.000-04:00

Tom Godshall's well-traveled bike

In 2002, I bought a new bike, hoping to ride it across the U.S. Although that trip never happened, my bike has logged more than enough commuting miles to reach the west coast.

At first, biking to work was an obvious choice. In Washington DC, it was the fastest and cheapest way to get to my office. But when my wife and I moved to Harrisonburg and I got a construction job, I questioned the feasibility of bicycle commuting in my new work situation -- hauling heavy tools to far-flung job sites in the hilly Shenandoah Valley. Even so, I gave it a try, and two years later, I’m still at it.

Here's how it works: I carry all my hand tools in saddle bags made from plastic buckets. My co-workers carry the power tools in their trucks. Most jobs are within 10 miles, but sometimes I catch a ride if we're working farther away. And occasionally, I drive our car. Yes, we own a car. So why not drive to work every day?

First, biking saves money – not only in fuel costs, but by allowing my wife and me to avoid the expense of buying and maintaining a second car.

Second, when biking, I feel more connected to my surroundings. There's nothing like the sunrise over the mountains on a cool morning ride. Even when weather makes riding unappealing, there’s something exhilarating about engaging the cold, heat, rain, or wind. I also gain a truer sense of distance between points, and a greater respect for hills that I would ignore in a car.

Third, bicycle commuting builds the health benefits of aerobic exercise into my week. Reaching work after a bike ride, I feel far more alert. Returning home, I feel the satisfaction of a good workout.

But isn't biking on the road dangerous? Like any form of transportation, cycling has risks. However, a recent study showed that transportation cycling increases life expectancy, through good health, far more than it lowers it through injuries. Freak accidents happen, but the overall benefits of bicycle commuting outweigh the risks. I also choose to focus on the risks of not cycling. What are the costs of a car-dependent society? What sort of world do I want my daughter to inherit?

Ultimately, I commute by bike as one small way to bring about the world I hope for. Each revolution of my pedals is one step toward paying the full cost of my transportation, rather than passing environmental debt to future generations. It's not enough, but it is a start.

And if this inspires you, there's no better time for you to start than the beautiful month of May. In fact, next Friday, May 20, is National Bike to Work Day. Look online to find events in your area. If nothing is organized in your town, don't let that stop you from peddling to work! You'll join tens of thousands of bicycle commuters across this country, and add your heart, soul and legs to this human-powered movement. It will enrich your life, and may just change the world as well.

-- Tim Godshall lives in Harrisonburg.

Boomerang Boy, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Bobbi Snow

2011-05-10T14:15:00.000-04:00

This year my twenty-four year old son came home to live with me. He finished college, lived with friends in a house, completed several rites of passage and then moved home. At first, there was something compelling about having some more time with this child I adore since I believed there were so many lessons I failed to teach him. Would this be my opportunity to make up for all the things I wished I had done earlier? Maybe he would learn to fold wash right from the dryer. Cook something healthy that took longer to cook than to eat. That would be nice. Perhaps he could learn to write a decent thank you note.

As time goes on, I realize we are just mother and son in real time. No going back to redo anything. Habits are set and, in fact, are even more pronounced when he slips into his old bedroom and old patterns. If I thought I ever had impact or control over his behavior, I was delusional anyway. It is clearer to me now that my son is his own person, on his own journey, and just happens to be my roommate. It is safe and comforting for him here. We have set up a routine of daily life as if he were a young dependent. But he is not so young. I did not mean to set this up; it just emerged.

I am an in-charge type of person and I took charge. I cook all the dinners. I feed his cats. I keep the calendar and assure we are responsible about appointments. I clean the house and make sure he helps by giving him his to-do list. I ask two or three times for the recycling bins to be brought back in without showing impatience or stress. This routine is just like when he was ten years old

I have always loved being Jake’s mother. I still do. But when is a good time for him to be more independent? According to the last census, 56 percent of men age 18 to 24 and 48 percent of women live with their parents. Certainly I never would have dreamed of moving in with my parents after college. I never would have expected any financial support or wanted any guidance, but then my parents did not know who I was. I kept myself hidden, had a superficial --but loving-- relationship of respect and distance. I took care of myself. In contrast, I know so much about my son Jake. My friends and relatives today know so much about their kids. We are in a different kind of culture than the one I am familiar with.

We are on speedial with our kids. They come to us for everything. Of course they want to live at home. We have worked hard to make a home that works for them. I see this glorious connection to our sons and daughters and wonder how they will ever become independent of us. How will they maneuver through the tough challenges of life outside the warm confines of the home? Are we coddling them into a connection of collusion that stunts their growth? Are they prepared to face the realities of the big world out there when we are defining the realities for them daily?

On this Mother’s Day I will celebrate how lucky I am to be Jake’s mother and will seriously consider whether I should propose that he and we might be better off if he had roommates closer to his own age. I am not sure how the conversation will go or if Jake will take me up on my suggestion but I do know I will reassure my “boomerang child” that he can stay as long as he needs to.

--- Bobbi Snow is the co-founder of the Community Public Charter School in Albemarle County

Stuff, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Devan Malore

2011-04-22T07:19:00.000-04:00

I do carpentry and construction for a living, so I think a lot about human shelter.

Sociologists call the complex system of relationships required to keep our modern world spinning along, organic solidarity. In the village, we had a butcher, baker, candle stick maker. That simpler system of work and relationships is referred to as mechanical solidarity.

After lifetimes spent in caves, dark leaky huts and walled-in castles, organic solidarity feels great. It’s a pleasure to live in conformable spaces, paint walls any color, not worry about rain or cold. However, organic solidarity tends to be consumer driven, so lots of us these days find ourselves dealing with too much stuff to pay for and care for.

Today, somewhere in rural China a factory is producing components for a phone that is smarter than last year’s. On better days this seems a good idea, one that promotes innovation, peace and prosperity through commerce. On bad days, it seems like relentless production of an avalanche of un-needed things, all clamoring to be bought and taken home. I mean, who doesn’t get tired just from imagining cleaning the garage, basement, storage sheds.

Consumer choice is an important mantra of our times. Yet why we need fifty kinds of ketchup in the supermarket is hard to understand. Of course, ketchup companies do employ good folks at their factories which are often located in struggling communities, and I do realize that our economy is almost hopelessly complex. Yet, for my own peace-of-mind, I still chose l to live by this alternative to consumerism as it’s practiced today – something from the popular Buddhist Monk, activist and writer, Thich Nhat Hanh, which he calls “Mindfulness trainings,”

It goes something like this. First I become aware of the suffering created by unmindful consumption. This might be debt, stress, poor health or negative environmental impact related to buying and consuming. Next, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental for myself, family, and society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming of all material goods. I’m also asked to consider what news, advertising and media I expose myself to, because I consume lots of information these days that has an effect on how I view life and how I act.

Thich Nhat Hanh

This simple, but not easy, training doesn’t ask me to do the impossible: It doesn’t ask me not to consume. All I’m asked to do is mindfully consider the impact of what I consume on myself the environment and community.

Imagine a culture built on an “economic system” where we place greater value on creation of healthy relationships, good health, peace, love, happiness, consciousness, and intelligence. All those simple not-things that use fewer resources, yet are often difficult to create.

Sure, our sacred stuff would still get made, but hopefully we’d create, use, and pass on that stuff in a more mindful manner.

I, for one, am convinced we’re much more than what we produce and consume. Why shouldn’t each of us consider becoming more, rather than buying more? Surely, mysterious force “the economy” will eventually shift to meet out greater needs.

-- Devan Malore lives on the Maury River, wondering what stuff will float by in the next flood . . .

The Dark, Lurking Force beneath the Valley's green lawns, a Civic Soapbox essay by Bruce Dorries

2011-04-15T07:23:00.004-04:00

I learned a lot about septic tanks during a recent chat with Gary Flory, Department of Environmental Quality, supervisor for 14 Virginia counties, including our area.

Real pro. Nice fella. Poor guy….

I peppered him with questions. You see, my family had just paid two hundred and fifty dollars to have ours cleaned. It had been about six years since the last servicing. My wallet still felt the pain.

It had seemed steep to me, especially after the suction pros joked, "Looked pretty good down there. And no noxious fumes. You must be living right, bud!"

Did this mean the tank could go longer between bills?” The previous owner had never had the tank serviced. Some neighbors operate on the “No smell, no foul, no fee,” septic maintenance program.

So, had I flushed two fifty down the drain? No, no, my new friend, the DEQ guru, told me. You invested two fifty.

And to convince me of the value of my investment, the guru told me

-- horror stories of homeowners finding themselves ankle deep in “failed systems” that took weeks to repair.

-- dark tales of replacement systems that must meet new environmental standards, sometimes costing four times as much as twenty thousand dollars.
-- blood curdling accounts of contaminated well water both near the tank and on neighboring property.

And, most shocking of all for greens such as myself –the cumulatively destructive impact of septic tank waste being flushed downstream is incalculable. Septic system failure contributes significantly to the fact that 62 percent of this region’s rivers and streams are more contaminated than water quality standards allow.
Not to mention augmenting the catastrophe that is the Chesapeake Bay.

My family lives on the Middle River in Augusta County. From a distance, the water around us looks pristine. Up close, you see slime covering the bottom. Don’t eat the fish. Don’t go swimming. It will take decades to clean. That’s a damn pity.

Many farmers in these parts have made a good faith start to improve practices that will clean our waters and save the bay. But we homeowners need to do a better job of taking care of our business, too. We can reduce storm water run off, use fertilizers sparingly, and get septic tanks emptied every five years.

The truth is that a dark force lurks beneath backyards throughout the Valley. Treated well, it is benign, even beneficial. If left unattended, these unassuming, often forgotten cement giants can foul our waterways and take massive bite out of a homeowners' bank accounts. Soil and water conservation districts have funds to help offset costs of pumping out the grit in tanks that clogs septic lines. County government can help homeowners make that connection with such funds.

Next week is Earth Week. Here’s hoping we all take it as a reminder to unearth the hatch, clean the tanks, and then reseed the soil. Let’s all join together in keeping the Valley’s backyards as green underneath as they are on the surface.

-- Bruce Dorries is a member of Friends of the Middle River and teaches at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton.

The first intermittent blog post is on the new (?) American Dream . . .

2011-04-14T08:55:00.006-04:00

My morning's reading about President Obama's deficit speech included a column in the Washington Post by frequent NPR guest pundit, E. J. Dionne. Mr. Dionne, who's what I call a thinking liberal (as opposed to a reactionary liberal) obviously liked what our president had to say, for he called his column "Obama’s deficit speech: Worthy of a president."

In it, Mr. Dionne writes that there were at least four things to like about the president's speech. The second, third, and fourth of these were:

"he was willing to talk plainly about raising taxes."
"he was right to focus on the need to cut security spending."
"he was eloquent in defending Medicare and Medicaid, and he proposed saving money by building on last year’s health-reform law."

It was E.J. Dione's first likable point about President Obama's speech that set me to thinking about the American Dream this morning. Mr.Dionne writes:

. . .First, without mentioning Rep. Paul Ryan by name, he called out Ryan’s truly reactionary budget proposal for what it is: an effort to slash government programs, in large part to preserve and expand tax cuts for the wealthy. “That’s not right,” he said, “and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m president.”

Oh, those Bush era tax cuts. I, for one, will be quick to admit that I'm not enough of an economist to talk learnedly about how extending them will help an economy that's been fairly shaky a good part of the time they've been in effect.

What has left me long baffled, however, is listening to people who are not in the least rich defend them. Does this, I wonder, imply some fundamental shift in the good old American Dream? Which I'd always construed as a dream that if one works hard, tries one's best and looks out for others, one will be rewarded with the opportunity for a decent, fulfilling life.

Has that dream become too modest for us non-rich Americans who support continuing tax cuts for the wealthy? Are we, in our heart of hearts, dreaming that someday we, too, will be rich enough to benefit from those tax cuts? Is having enough no longer enough? Furthermore, do we dream that once we get more than enough, we certainly don't want to have to use any of it to fund Medicaid?

To put it simply, has being an American come to mean we're entitled to as much as we can get our hands on without being bothered by pesky taxes?

To me, a country is morally defined by its societal dreams. Has accruing surplus personal wealth really become the great American Dream?

I've got the question. You got an answer?

Everything changes, including Martha's job . . .

2011-04-11T08:16:00.007-04:00

Martha here.

This is the 482nd post on the WMRA blog. I'm happy to report that up to 400 different people take a gander at them every day. I have loved managing and writing this on-line conversation.

To quote the Bible or the Byrds (channeling Pete Seeger), however, for everything there is a season, and my season as WMRA's blogger-in-chief is winding down.

Why?

Because I'm cooking up a new WMRA creation that will put me back on air regularly; and much as I hate to come to terms with this, there's only one of me, and I just do not have the time any more to tend to a daily blog.

I will continue to post Civic Soapbox essays on Fridays, and may occasionally still write something myself (about which I'll alert you on Facebook). Also, the blog remains at the service of any WMRAer with something to say.

All you have to do to submit a post is e-mail it the station, c/o me, Martha Woodroof.

I cannot thank enough those of you who have regularly read and responded to this blog. It has been exactly what I'd hoped it would be: a way to expand the WMRA Community conversation. And, although I'll miss that conversation, I have to admit I'm tremendously excited about this new project. Hopefully, it will involve lots of us in its production, and make compelling, entertaining and informative radio for all of us!

All my best, M

In Praise of Public Service, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Reid Wodicka

2011-04-08T07:17:00.000-04:00

I am a career public servant.

And as I watch government budgets being slashed, what disturbs me most is the ever-increasing blame being upon public employees. I stand today on WMRA’s civic soapbox to remind you of what public employees do and why it is important that our professions remains respected.

Ideally, government does that which can be accomplished better or more efficiently collectively than individually. A few of the public service professionals who keep life civilized are garbage collectors, teachers, firefighters, police officers, sewage treatment professionals, drinking water operators, highways workers, school cafeteria workers, janitors, maintenance workers, and on and on. Can you imagine life if no one were here to pick up the trash? Sure, you’d save a few dollars, but at what cost to your environment and health?

And heaven forbid your house catches fire, if no one’s around to put out the flames? What if your neighbor’s house also caught fire as well, and the whole block burned down? How about if no one treated sewage? I’ll let you imagine that one on your own.

Now about those government regulations and the people you pay to enforce them – who are perhaps the most unpopular public-sector professionals. It’s true the cost of sewage treatment is driven higher by state and federal regulations, duly enforced by regulators. Naturally, it would be much less expensive for towns, cities, and manufacturing facilities to let sewage flow into a river or a lake. And seriously, if now one were watching businesses, what do you think the possibility is that some of them might try to save money by using this less expensive method of treatment? So what if you live in the next town down river and your drinking water comes from that river? Yes, it’s a gross, but it’s also just the kind of situation regulations prevent. Regulation is not about making it more difficult to do business as some would have you believe.

As a career public servant, however, I also say to my fellow public employees: We must never forget that we serve the people. We can expect to be valued only to the extent that we do our jobs well. Just as with any profession, a career in public service requires continual improvement. Also, we public servants should accept that constant organizational change is our way of life. It takes a dynamic culture to provide quality public service.

As we move further into recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression, I call on you to stop for a moment to imagine a world in which there are no public servants; no one to pick up trash, to fight fires, to teach children history and calculus. I would argue that without me and my fellow public servants, our quality of life would tumble drastically.

Public service is my calling and in one capacity or another, I will spend my life working towards a higher quality of life for all people. I also hope that public policymakers will stop blanket vilification of those of us who’ve chosen careers in public service, and instead to value our dedication to building an even stronger social fabric.

--- Reid Wodicka lives in Harrisonburg and is the Town Manager of Elkton. He will receive a Master of Public Administration degree from James Madison University in May.

The Na-Na-Na Factor . . .

2011-04-07T08:54:00.004-04:00

I'm starting today with Congress, although I could just as easily start with Glenn Beck. Because both

talk a lot; and
taunt a lot, while they're talking.

About Congress . . .

A shockingly humorous study came to light yesterday in the waning hours of funded Federal government. As members of Congress postured and squabbled over a tiny fraction of the federal budget, Harvard Professor Gary King announced he's discovered that these people use 27% of their written communications to taunt colleagues. Members with so-called "safe" seats are the worst (best?) taunters.

From the Washington Post:

Prof. Gary King

“It’s jarring and surprising,” said Prof. Gary King, an expert in using computers to find patterns in large amounts of data. And, King said, probably counterproductive if we want Congress’s members to trust one another enough to make deals.

“The entire government may go bankrupt, I guess. This week, right?” King said in a telephone interview. “We probably want our representatives to be listening to each other rather than calling each other names.”

There's really no need for me to comment on this. I'm sure you can come up with plenty of pithy observations of your own. And maybe, heaven forbid, a few taunts, as well!

On to Glenn Beck, arguably the Grand Master of Taunting ...

As David Folkenflik reported last night on All Things Considered and writes on NPR.org:

At long last, we have an answer to the enduring question: Is it possible for someone to be too incendiary, even for the Fox News Channel?

And the answer is yes.

Glenn Beck's daily spot on the nation's leading cable news station is coming to a close little more than two years after his start on Fox News. While his contract runs through December, his show is not expected to last that long. . . .

Photo credit: Jose Luis Magana/AP

It was about ratings and revenue, rather than about ethics or anything to do with ignoring that pesky journalistic mandate for confirming the truth of one's assertions. The LA Times writes:

... Less than three years after joining Fox News from CNN's Headline News amid a burst of publicity, Beck is being booted off the air. His sinking ratings certainly didn't help — they fell 32% for the first three months of this year, to 1.9 million total viewers, according to the Nielsen Co.

And after months of reported friction between the host and Fox News as well as an aggressive advertiser boycott after Beck dubbed President Obama a racist, analysts professed little surprise. ...

"The ratings drop was significant and couldn't be ignored," McCall continued. "The advertiser boycott didn't hurt the program or FNC as much in terms of dollars as it did in terms of bad publicity. Beck was no longer just a personality with a show on FNC. He became an easy target for Fox News critics to characterize him as representative of the entire channel."

Calling President Obama a racist certainly qualifies as taunting, don't you think? Does this mean that Glenn Beck, in effect, taunted himself off the Fox News air?

If so, does this mean that Americans, across the board, are finally tired of people constantly and unproductively na-na-na-ing away at each other?

Perhaps it would behoove our elected representatives to use Glenn Beck as a role model for how not to keep a job -- no matter how "safe" it is considered.

Keeping the faith and growing potatoes . . .

2011-04-06T09:33:00.004-04:00

Rep. Ryan and his optimistically named budget proposal

I started my day about 7 a.m.trying to come to terms with Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis., House Budget Committee Chair) "Path to Prosperity" Budget Plan. I quickly moved on to wishing that I trusted people in power to really, truly mean what they say when they claim to have the interest of the poor, sick, or the elderly -- or even the middle class -- at heart.

Most politicians look so glossy. It's hard to imagine them having much concept of the struggles and troubles of the less-glossy.

I moved on to take a look Tom Graham's morning e-mail (a.k.a. the Graham News Service). This led me to open a link to Anita Kumar's "On Politics " post, which begins:

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) told reporters at a Tuesday news conference that he opposes proposed regulations developed by his Democratic predecessor that would for the first time allow gay couples to adopt children in Virginia.

Oh dear! As a parent (and a lifelong sucker for anything small and helpless), I had to wonder if our governor was letting the political ramifications of supporting gay anything in Virginia trump consideration of the welfare of the legions of parentless children around the world. How did we let adoption get tangled up in politics in the first place? Shouldn't it be about giving abandoned kids a better life? What is wrong with us?

To stop thinking about parentless children, I started thinking about Japan off-loading radioactive water into the ocean, Terry Jones' firebug proclivities, all those federal government employees facing what appears to be mainly politically-motivated temporary job loss, all the bombs people are dropping on other people.

And then I just ground to a blogging halt.

To paraphrase Lena Lamont (Jean Hagan, Singin' in the Rain), I couldn't stan' it. I could not stand spending this particular April morning blogging about things that tempt me to wallow in cynicism and hopelessness. Once I give in to those two temptations, I've resigned my larger humanity for the day for the ranks of the glossy self-interested; the what's-in-it-for-me crowd.

Snarkiness has always been easier than optimism. Pessimism has long been the chief characteristic of all former humans who still have beating hearts.

Well, phooey on that! Today, in open defiance of the depressing news of the day, I'm going to write about something that isn't news at all. I'm going to write about Dan Easley's garden.

Dan, the Man

Dan Easley is a 21st Century Geek Supreme, as well as a former and much-missed WMRAer. He speaks computer as fluently as I speak English. Dan's expertise is in technology, but he's ambivalent, at best, about fully embracing the pace and apparent values of 21st Century America. And, he's refreshingly unafraid of living that ambivalence; i.e. he has mixed feelings about spending 40 hours a week at a conventional job and is willing to live with the financial consequences. Dan does not need to acquire stuff -- except for musical instruments. Charlie, my husband, steals from the late George Carlin by referring to Dan as the High Tech Low Life.

What I'm saying is that Mr. Easley's heart and energy (outside of his personal relationships) appear to be firmly invested in his music and his garden. About the latter, he e-mailed me last week that

as the weather gets warmer i get more and more cranky sitting at a computer. at least i got my yellow potatoes in the ground yesterday, and a heckuva lot of certified organic seeds ordered. and 2 1/2 pounds of seed potatoes of the All Blue variety. delicious!

I'm going to use Dan and his garden this morning as an antidote to my temporary attack of the World View Blues, for it takes true optimism for Dan to plant his garden. He has to have faith down to his toes that, despite humanity's energetic efforts to self-destruct, the sun will keep shining, the rain will keep falling, the world will keep spinning. Also, as a garden is a lot of work, planting one isn't about feeling hopeful; it's about being hopeful. It's about actively keeping the faith that we flawed human beings -- including those glossy politicians -- will somehow find our way forward together.

Holy seed potato, Batman! Surely I can follow Dan's example today: Surely, I can find something hopeful, embrace it, and get to work making it happen.

You with us?

Arms and the college student . . .

2011-04-05T08:55:00.008-04:00

Once again, I was all set to blog about some entirely different subject before I read my e-mail. Always risky. . .

Sure enough, there was a note from Liz Nutt who runs the website matchacollege.com (which mainly gives information about online college education, about which I know nothing). Ms. Nutt sent me a link to a post she'd done on "10 Colleges That Allow Guns on Campus," and wrote, "Considering this overlap in subject matter with your blog; I thought perhaps you would be interested in sharing the article with your readers?"

States where guns are allowed on some college campuses armedcampuses.org

Which is exactly what I'm doing by posting it below. To me, Liz's list, (although incomplete as 25 colleges allow guns on campus according to armedcampuses.org), provides enough information for a reality check: Guns are allowed on campus in this country; it is possible to go to class and sit next to someone who's packing.

And there's nothing like a good reality check to make us face some really hard questions. Here, my friends, is Liz's list:

10 Colleges That Allow Guns on Campuss

Unfortunately, shootings at high schools and on college campuses punctuate recent American history. But while some students and teachers feel vulnerable if they’re unarmed and unable to strike back should another tragedy occur, others believe that the more guns that are on campus, the higher the risk for accidents and shootings. The debate is going strong in state legislatures, on Facebook, and at school, and if you’re a prospective college student, you should know the existing gun laws at the schools you want to attend. Besides the schools listed below, even more colleges do allow guns — these are some of the biggest, well-known schools and ones that represent different states and regions.

Colorado State University: Colorado schools have the option to allow or prohibit guns on campus, and the large CSU in Fort Collins has granted students permission to carry guns since 2003.
Dixie State College of Utah: This four-year university in St. George, Utah, allows of-age concealed handgun permit holders — they must be 21 — to carry guns on campus.
University of Utah: Located in Salt Lake City, the U of U has a total enrollment of over 29,000, and approved permit holders can carry concealed guns on campus.
Utah State University: Another large state school, Utah State is the number one public university in the West — and one that allows students to carry guns.
Weber State University: Located in Ogden, UT, Weber State is an attractive choice for nontraditional and traditional students alike, but students can carry guns on its 500-acre Ogden campus.
Michigan State University: As more states debate allowing guns on campus, Michigan’s largest state school — one of the largest universities in the country — does allow guns on campus. The ruling isn’t statewide yet, though.
Southern Utah University: Cedar City’s SUU offers technical through graduate programs, allowing approved students to carry guns.
Blue Ridge Community College: Virginia’s Blue Ridge Community College, a Shenandoah Valley-area school, is a rare East Coast school that allows students to have guns. [more on this later from Martha]
Utah Valley University: Utah Valley is the second largest institution in the Utah System of Higher Education, and it, too, allows guns on campus.
Community College of Denver: Denver’s community college has also chosen to allow guns on campus. The school actually has four campuses scattered throughout the city.

Liz's list represents , if you will, the piecemeal approach to allowing guns on campus. Texas, however, is poised to pass a bill that would allow guns on the campuses of all state schools. Utah already has such a measure -- as you might surmise from the number of Utah state schools on Liz Nutt's list.

As to Virginia:

Virginia law already prohibits students or visitors from carrying guns onto the grounds of public and private K-12 schools. The state also prohibits concealed weapons in courthouses, places of worship during a service, jails and on any private property where the owner has posted a "no guns" notice. State employees are barred from possessing guns while at work unless needed for their job.

But Virginia code is silent on guns and public colleges. And two bills seeking to give college governing boards the authority to regulate firearms on campus died in committee during this year's General Assembly session.

About guns and Blue Ridge Community College (that lone eastern college on Liz's list). Guns are there because of David Briggman, who lives in Keezletown (Rockingham County), Virginia. Mr. Briggman appears to take arming Virginia's college students as his personal mission.

David Briggman

Briggman, who is a former police officer, said he forced Blue Ridge Community College to allow him to carry a gun onto campus while a student. And he sued James Madison University over its ban on concealed weapons even among permit holders. While JMU's policy still stands, Briggman said he has been told by campus police officials that they will not arrest visitors who carry a gun legally.

"It's extremely easy to challenge university policy by looking at ... whether they are given the statutory authority to regulate firearms on campus, and of course, they're not," Briggman said. ...

Virginia Tech survivor Collin Goddard, who was shot 4 times on April 16, 2007, appears to have a different mission: Keeping guns out of college. Goddard testified before the General Assembly against allowing students to carry on campus, a message he willingly carries across the country.

Collin Goddard's argument: "The fear is in the wrong place, the fear needs to be at the point of sale when people are getting these guns, because we do a horrible job of keeping them from dangerous people."

Colin Goddard 21, lays in his hospital room at Carilion New River Valley Medical Center in Christiansburg, VA, a few miles from Virginia Tech. Sean Dougherty, USA TODAY

So now, with the reality check duly absorbed, it's on to the hard questions:

What to do about guns in this country? What does our Constitution allow us to do? Nothing? Something? If so, what?
Are college campuses different legal animals when it comes to gun control?
If arming students on campus is about personal safety, does this mean the campus police are incompetent?
Whenever we consider college students, like it or not we have to consider college students out of control on alcohol and drugs. Is it possible to allow guns on campus and keep them in the hands of rational people only?

You got any answers?

Negro League baseball and Virginia's redistricting

2011-04-04T09:35:00.008-04:00

As far as I can tell, WMRA's Tom Graham gets up at an indecently early hour (for anyone who doesn't have to milk cows) just to read newspapers. Then every morning about 7:30, he sends out links to Virginia news stories. I always look forward to getting Tom's morning e-mail, and regularly poke through as many stories as time permits. So, first let me start with a public thanks to Tom for the Graham News Service.

A lot of this weekend's and mornings stories from the GNS concerned Virginia's struggles to redistrict itself. This morning's Staunton News Leader ran an AP story about redistricting reflecting the population growth in Northern Virginia. UVA's Larry Sabato is quoted as saying, "Southside, southwestern Virginia, the Valley, they're all going to lose seats, and that's the bottom line. After this, the rural legislators are the outsiders looking in."

Okay, that sounds reasonable, don't you think? Aren't we supposed to parcel out Virginia's political districts so as to best represent Virginia's people?

The GNS, however, also sent out a link to an article written by the Washington Post's Anita Kumar (Tom's frequent guest on Virginia Insight) that begins:

RICHMOND — A decade ago, the last time Virginia embarked on redrawing boundaries for its legislative districts, lawmakers created maps that protected incumbents and punished challengers, leading observers to complain that the process lacked outside input.

George Barker

This year, despite the appointment of a bipartisan commission to advise legislators, the lines were largely drawn by two men: Sen. George L. Barker (D), a health-care planner from Prince William County, and Rep. S. Chris Jones (R), a pharmacist from Suffolk.

Chris Jones

The pair was part of a small cadre of legislators who worked quietly to draw the maps with input primarily from the majority party in each house. Fewer than 10 of the state’s 140 legislators were privy to the lines before they were made public last week, according to lawmakers and aides.

The General Assembly, which returns to the Capitol on Monday for a special session on redistricting, expects to approve the proposed maps with few alterations and within days.

The Republican-led House of Delegates and the Democratic-controlled Senate have already agreed to vote for their own plans, and then each other’s, as part of a deal between the chamber’s leaders.

The result? Lines that protect incumbents and punish challengers, observers say.

Is it just me, or does this imply that Virginia's politicians have made the redistricting process more about themselves than our well-being? Doesn't this represent yet another sad example of self-interest trumping what's right?

I was thinking about powerful people and self-interest and the blight it has visited on our country yesterday, as I stood in a church yard in Buena, Virginia, watching the new Pete Hill historical marker being unveiled.

If you've just asked who's Pete Hill, then you've just helped me make my point du jour. And for what it's worth, I helped make it as well. I didn't have a clue who Pete Hill was until I got an e-mail from Randy Jones of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources telling me about him. It was so interesting that I immediately asked to do a story on both him and his marker for Virginia Public Radio.

As to who Pete Hill was, he was arguably one of the greatest baseball players ever. You and I have never heard of him because he was also black and ignored. Pete Hill spent his long and staggeringly brilliant career playing in American Negro, Cuban, and Mexican leagues; his prowess unacknowledged by the white and the powerful. Those who decreed what was baseball and what wasn't simply chose not to notice the inconvenient reality that there were black players who could take on any group of white players in the land, and on any given day, beat the tar out of them.

Pete Hill was finally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006, 55 years after his death at the age of 69. Here is Pete Hill's Hall of Fame bio:

A standout center fielder with a rifle arm, Pete Hill was one of the greatest line-drive hitters of his era. From the turn of the century to the early 1920s, Hill was a giant among Giants, starring with legendary clubs such as the Cuban X Giants, Philadelphia Giants, Leland Giants and Chicago American Giants. Playing alongside baseball greats Rube Foster, Pop Lloyd and Bruce Petway, Hill captained the legendary Leland Giants of 1910, credited with a record of 123 wins and just six losses. For eight seasons with the Chicago American Giants, Hill tormented opposing moundsmen with his knack of fouling off pitch after pitch. Hill wound down his stellar career as player-manager for the Detroit Stars during their early days in the newly formed Negro National League.

The historical marker unveiled yesterday corrects an historical mistake: Pete Hill's name and place of birth were wrong on his original Hall of Fame plague. The great outfielder was not Joseph Preston Hill, born in Pittsburg; he was John Preston Hill born in Buena, a tiny dot on the map in Culpeper County. This information was uncovered by a group of people, led by the redoubtable Zann Nelson. The Hall of Fame ceremonially hung a corrected plaque honoring Pete Hill last September.

Researcher Zann Nelson (front, center) poses with Pete Hill's family members in front of his new recast plaque at the Hall of Fame. (Milo Stewart Jr.)

Yesterday's ceremony in Buena was a homecoming.

I'll be reporting about Pete Hill and his homecoming in full in a later radio story, but today I just want to make the point (particularly to those incumbents in the Virginia General Assembly) that we play games with what's right and honest at our own cost. I've always loved baseball history, but today I wonder if all those white-only baseball stats from the Ruth and Gehrig era mean anything.

Yesterday in Buena, I met two retired Negro League players who are old now. They claim to be at peace with their race-related obscurity, and I hope they are. It would be a shame to be denied your rightful place in sports history and also be stuck toting buckets of anger around for a lifetime.

I also listened to white politicians and bureaucrats voice regret for past mistakes and then talk about how well we all get along these days, regardless of the color of our skins. Hmmmmmm, I thought.

Then this morning, I read about how Virginia politicians have taken it upon themselves to re-district our state, not based on fairness, but to protect their power. Why, I have to ask, do we let politicians get away with such shenanigans? But then, why did early generations let baseball historians get away with ignoring Pete Hill?

It took close to a century for us to partially undo the neglect of Pete Hill. How long will it take us to do the same for those challenging voices in state politics about to be effectively silenced by redistricting?

Any thoughts?

The Physiology of Love, a Civic Soapbox essay by Christian Early

2011-04-01T07:15:00.000-04:00

I am a philosopher by trade and a romantic by disposition. I currently teach a course called "Love and Evolution," in which I argue the best way to tell the story of life...no the story of the universe...is as a love story.

image from Scientific American

On Valentines Day, Scientific American published a picture of a brain on love. Researchers discovered two things about Cupid's Arrow. The first is that it is a particularly potent and addictive cocktail of dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin. And the second is that it only takes a fraction of a second to hit its target. It may take a whole life and then some to figure out what just happened, but we really do fall in love in a moment in time.

Antonia Damasio

That picture and the research behind it is part of what neuroscientist Antonio Damasio calls the Emotion Revolution. Damasio argues that all living things that move about, from the amoeba to the human, do so using emotion to navigate their world. For human beings the brain systems required by reason are enmeshed in those needed by emotion and interwoven with the systems which regulate the body. In short, we are always "emotional" and if our systems become dis-integrated, when they can't make contact or communicate, we lose our ability to navigate our natural and social environment successfully.

Humans, then, are on a continuum of all creatures and living things. We are not so different after all. Flies get angry, snails get scared, and dogs get happy. They don't have consciousness awareness, but they do have emotions. This may seem like fanciful projection, but I suspect that metaphors we inherited from the industrial revolution have veiled how freaky cool, as a friend of mine likes to say, life really is.

Mary Gordon

Recently I learned of Mary Gordon and her the Roots of Empathy program in which expecting mothers visit a classroom over the course of a year. The program is producing a wealth of data showing a direct correlation between empathic maturity, or emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. Summing up the findings, Gordon says "Love grows brains." Humans are rational not because brains are calculators, but because brains are emotional.

Staying alive while moving about is primarily, though not only, a matter of sorting for safety and danger. When we fall in love, our whole being tells us that this person is safe, but it very rarely stays that way. When we have a bodied sense of danger, when our internal alarm bell goes off, we engage in all sorts of behavior ranging from seeking and clinging to cutting off and attacking. There is a disorienting shadow side to love: broken hearts, betrayal, loss, and loneliness. We suffer in part because we are creatures who care.

We are just now beginning to put love under the microscope, and some might want to reduce love to mere chemicals, but I think it is not only fair, but also true, to say that the lived experience of love leaves us with a wonderful though often tragic mystery.

--Christian Early is a Danish immigrant who teaches philosophy at Eastern Mennonite University.

G.E.'s tax-free year and the news that wasn't on NBC: Hmmmmm on two fronts . . .

2011-03-31T09:28:00.009-04:00

In January, President Obama named Jeffrey R. Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, to head the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. “He understands what it takes for America to compete in the global economy,” Mr. Obama said.

Late last week, The New York Times broke the news this way:

G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

The Times goes on to explain that G.E.'s ...

Mr. Samuels

...extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

As to what G.E.'s non-payment of Federal taxes means, both to shareholders and the rest of us, the Times writes as part of its very long article on big businesses' small tax bills:

The assortment of tax breaks G.E. has won in Washington has provided a significant short-term gain for the company’s executives and shareholders. While the financial crisis led G.E. to post a loss in the United States in 2009, regulatory filings show that in the last five years, G.E. has accumulated $26 billion in American profits, and received a net tax benefit from the I.R.S. of $4.1 billion.

But critics say the use of so many shelters amounts to corporate welfare, allowing G.E. not just to avoid taxes on profitable overseas lending but also to amass tax credits and write-offs that can be used to reduce taxes on billions of dollars of profit from domestic manufacturing. They say that the assertive tax avoidance of multinationals like G.E. not only shortchanges the Treasury, but also harms the economy by discouraging investment and hiring in the United States.

The hoopla resulting from this announcement was fairly predictable. An opinion piece in Waterbury, Connecticut's Republican American says that "some people are up in arms over the New York Times' fact-challenged report that General Electric paid no taxes on its $14.2 billion profit in 2010." After a swipe at the Obama administration, the paper editorializes, in part:

Absent from the Times' piece were some inconvenient facts. GE is among the best-run corporations in the world. Its stock price rose 20.9 percent in 2010 vs. 12.9 percent for the S&P 500. At last report, it had 10.6 billion shares outstanding, so last year's run-up in its stock price plus the dividend totaled almost $40 billion in new wealth. Governments shared in GE's sterling performance through taxes on capital gains and dividends that weren't held in tax-deferred accounts; Connecticut took its cut through its income tax. GE's stock is up a further 8 percent this year because investors big and small, including managers of government pension funds, remain confident in its continued profitability. ...

Interestingly, GE was able to reduce its federal tax liability to $0 with help from renewable-energy tax credits, which the Times adores because they helped "jump-start hundreds of projects — mostly wind and solar — and created thousands of new jobs" while combating global warming and other environmental scourges. But for this narrative, the credits morphed into "loopholes." GE also got $3.2 billion in credits for federal taxes it overpaid in other years.

ABC news, however, offered this opinion:

"Two things are disconcerting. One is, there's a disproportionate amount of profits being reported offshore. And then, even for the profits that are reported onshore, they're paying less than 35 percent," said Martin Sullivan, a contributing editor for Tax Analysts.

MoveOn.org and Progressives United sent sent out an e-mail calling for CEO Jeffrey Immelt to step down as Chair of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, pointing out that, “One of the chief ways GE avoids paying taxes is by shifting a large portion of its profits overseas, and jobs follow. Now GE’s CEO is the person charged with helping the President create jobs here in America. That’s just perverse."

Google "GE and taxes" and you'll find that the story garnered widespread coverage-- and also galvanized a great many economic opinionators into action. People everywhere have been in a flap -- everywhere, that is, except on NBC News, where, since the story broke, Brian Williams et al. have maintained a thundering silence on the subject.

The National Review, among many news organizations, took note of the network's choice not to cover the GE story, by writing that:

During its Friday broadcast, “NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” had no time to mention that America’s largest corporation had essentially avoided paying federal taxes in 2010. Or its Saturday, Sunday or Monday broadcasts, either.

Brian Williams

Did NBC’s silence have anything to do with the fact that one of its parent companies is General Electric?

NBC News representatives say that it didn’t. “This was a straightforward editorial decision, the kind we make daily around here,” said Lauren Kapp, spokeswoman for NBC News. Kapp declined to discuss how NBC decides what’s news or, in this case, what isn’t.

So, are we to understand from Ms. Kapp's comment that NBC has decided that the fact that the largest US corporation isn't paying any 2010 taxes isn't news?

All I can say is what I said in today's post's title: Hmmmmmmm ...

How about you?

About that $55,000 Virginia Tech fine: Josh, you got questions? We've got answers ... sort of . . .

2011-03-30T10:23:00.006-04:00

Late yesterday afternoon, I posted on the WMRA Facebook page that Virginia Tech would be fined $55,000 by the federal government for its handling of the events of April 16th, 2007.

Kevin Sterne is carried out of Norris Hall at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007
(Alan Kim, Roanoke Times, via, AP file photo

The Chronicle of Higher Education began this morning's article on that fine by writing:

The U.S. Department of Education informed Virginia Tech on Tuesday that it intends to fine the institution $55,000 for violations of a federal campus crime-reporting law in its response to the shootings that claimed 33 lives on the Blacksburg, Va., campus four years ago.
The university plans to appeal the fines.

The department's announcement, in a letter to Virginia Tech's president, Charles W. Steger, affirms the findings in a final ruling issued in December that determined Virginia Tech had violated the Clery Act by failing to provide a "timely warning" on the day of the shootings, April 16, 2007.

Early that morning, a student, Seung-Hui Cho, fatally shot two other students in a residence hall. The university sent a campuswide e-mail about the incident more than two hours later, at 9:26 a.m. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Cho entered an academic building and began shooting at students and professors. Thirty more people were killed before the gunman killed himself.

The Education Department's report said that the e-mail alert that went out at 9:26 was too vague—it mentioned a "shooting incident" but not any fatalities—and too late. The report also asserts that the university failed to follow its own policy for issuing timely warnings.

Virginia Tech has announced that it will appeal the ruling.

Back to the WMRA Facebook Page.. .

Josh Avni responded to news of the fine by writing: "I'd like to know what changes were made to VT policy after-the-fact. Regardless of whether or not they believe that they acted appropriately under their system, 33 deaths (or any) are unacceptable. Period."

Good question, I thought. So here, sort of, is an answer...

A lot of campus security procedures appear to hang on the Jeanne Clery Act, passed by Congress in 1990. The Act was named for a Lehigh University first year student who, in 1986, had been raped and murdered by a fellow student in her residence hall.. (And yes, the squabbling halls of Congress did take four years to respond.)

The original Clery Act basically required colleges and universities who accept any kind of federal funding to make their security policies and statistics on certain specified crime freely available to the public. Those specified crimes are homicide, murder, manslaughter, sexual offenses, aggravated assault, robbery and burglary, drug and alcohol violations, arson, possession of illegal weapons.

The Act also included these rather vague instructions for providing Special Alerts.

• Special Alerts: If circumstances warrant, special crime alerts and notifications can be prepared and distributed throughout the campus.

Virginia Tech's responses on April 16th were criticized by many as a bit sluggish. In response the the shootings., President George W. Bush signed amendments to the Clery Act in 2008. Among them, as summarized by Security on Campus, was one that addressed the sluggishness of the Virginia Tech's actions on the day of the shooting:

The Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) adds a statement of “emergency response and evacuation procedures” to the Clery Act annual security report (ASR) produced by institutions of postsecondary education. The policy disclosure “shall include” a statement that the institution will “immediately notify the campus community upon the confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or staff” on campus (as defined in the Act). Warnings may only be withheld if they would compromise efforts to contain the emergency. Accompanying “report” language calls for warnings to be issued “without any delay” following confirmation of an emergency.

Addressing the gun control laws in effect at the time -- the ones that allowed Seun-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, to purchase a gun -- I found this annotated entry in Wikipedia:

The massacre prompted the state of Virginia to close legal loopholes that had previously allowed Cho, an individual adjudicated as mentally unsound, to purchase handguns without detection by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). It also led to passage of the first major federal gun control measure in more than 13 years. The law strengthening the NICS was signed by President George W. Bush on January 5, 2008.^[10]

The Virginia Tech Review Panel, a state-appointed body assigned to review the incident, criticized Virginia Tech administrators for failing to take action that might have reduced the number of casualties. The panel's report also reviewed gun laws and pointed out gaps in mental health care as well as privacy laws that left Cho's deteriorating condition in college untreated.

Colleges have also slowly begun to address the prickly balance between safety and privacy when it comes to concerns about their students' mental health. For example, North Carolina's State Board of Community Colleges recently amended its admissions policy to include a mental health clause. According to Kinston.com

The amendment to the state’s admission policy reads: a college’s board of trustees may refuse “admission to any applicant if it is necessary to protect the health or safety of the applicant or other individuals … when there is an articulable, imminent, and significant threat.”

Finally, I found this interchange as a "best answer" on Ask.com. It was posted 4 months ago in response to a less Tech-centered version of the same question Josh asked yesterday on the WMRA Facebook page: What has changed at colleges and universities after the Virginia Tech shootings?

Oddly, very little.

In Virginia (where the shooting occurred) many schools have instituted new warning systems and have incorporated text messaging into the system. If there is an alert you will get a text message.
Most schools now practice fire drills more often. Now, a fire drill involves the evacuation of a building so it can be used in case of a fire or in case something occurs that requires the evacuation of the building.

However, there have been drawbacks. Virginia Commonwealth University actually got a law passed making it illegal to possess a weapon on school grounds. This is problematic because VCU is an urban campus and you have a mix of private property in between the school buildings. So, lots of non-VCU people are in the area and it's very spread out so you can go days without seeing a campus police officer. Also, VCU used to have one of the top criminal justice programs there and the law has made it difficult for many part time students who are currently in various aspects of the LE field. This can be suggested as a concept of focusing on the law abiding (which is easily regulated) as opposed to focusing on those active in breaking the law. Thus this is considered a "Mala Prohibita" argument (Bad because it is not allowed) versus a "Mala In Se" (Bad in itself) situation.

With the recent budget crisis, many schools have cut back on their manpower in their security/police departments. In any budget issue, employee pay and benefits is the biggest budget issue and the one most easily managed by laying off personnel.

Now a lot of the security is done just to make people feel safe but really does not offer very strong protection or it is security that is easily avoided. This is a situation of creating a "show" and having the appearance of providing safety which gets a larger response from the public. However, there was a paradigm shift in which law enforcement will now actively engage a shooter as opposed to setting up a perimeter and attempting to treat it as a hostage situation.

This is both good and bad. This creates a police intervention of the situation as soon as they get on scene but is bad because the situation is confronted without proper intelligence on the issue and also without proper backup giving the advantage to the criminal.

I hope this helps.

I could find very little specifically addressing changes at Virginia Tech, probably because Tech is perceived as fighting an ongoing public relations battle about the shootings, as well as lawsuits filed by families of the victims.

Josh et al, this make anything any clearer?

Oh, what a tangled web we create, whenever we start to litigate . . .

2011-03-29T09:21:00.004-04:00

Forget morality. Is it legal, under the Constitution of the United States, to lie? Is speech that's completely unattached to reality still guaranteed free under the First Amendment?

The 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco says, yep, it sure is. The reason: We all do it.

The New Criterion offers this quotation from 9th Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski's opinion, which offered 28 reasons why we all lie:

Judge Kozinski

"We lie to protect our privacy (‘No, I don’t live around here’); to avoid hurt feelings (‘Friday is my study night’); to make others feel better (‘Gee, you’ve gotten skinny’); to avoid recriminations (‘I only lost $10 at poker’)," Kozinski wrote recently in a case about an inveterate liar named Xavier Alvarez who, just to drive home the point, is also known as Javier Alvarez. Kozinski listed 28 other reasons we avoid the truth, including to "avoid a nudnick" and to "defeat an objective (‘I’m allergic to latex’)," and ending sweetly with "to maintain innocence (‘There are eight tiny reindeer on the rooftop’)." Judge Kozinski concludes that "If all untruthful speech is unprotected . . . we could all be made into criminals, depending on which lies those making the laws find offensive."

The case considered by the 9th Circuit Court of San Francisco involved Xavier Alvarez who was convicted under the Stolen Valor Act, a law passed by Congress in 2005 to stem an apparent tide of people making up heroic military pasts.

Courthouse News Service describes Mr. Alvarez' situation this way:

Xavier (or Javier) Alvarez
Faced with a criminal indictment, Xavier Alvarez pleaded guilty to violating the Stolen Valor Act . . .Alvarez had apparently made a habit of lying about his military exploits, telling people that he had won the Medal of Honor for rescuing the American ambassador during the Iranian hostage crisis, and that he had been shot in the back as he returned to the Embassy to save the American flag, according to the initial 9th Circuit ruling.

A federal judge ordered him to pay $5,000, serve three years of probation and do community service.

The aforementioned Stolen Valor Act levies a fine and/or a prison term upon conviction on anyone who “falsely represents himself or herself, verbally or in writing, to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States.” If you claim a Purple Heart, a Medal of Honor or any other particularly venerated decoration/medal that you didn't earn, you can get a longer prison term.

The Washington Post, writing about the 9th Circuit Court's recent ruling, reiterated that Alvarez's lying is an established fact.

There’s no question Alvarez lied. After winning a seat on Southern California’s Three Valleys Municipal Water District board of directors in 2007, he introduced himself by saying: “I’m a retired Marine of 25 years. I retired in the year 2001. Back in 1987, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy.”

None of that was true. But a district judge overturned Alvarez’s conviction by declaring the law a violation of the First Amendment. A panel of the 9th Circuit agreed, and earlier this month the full court refused to reconsider the panel’s decision.

The Post story goes on to tell us that the decision was far from unanimous.

Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain and six other 9th Circuit judges said their colleagues were wrong. He said the decision to find the law unconstitutional “runs counter to nearly forty years of Supreme Court precedent” in which the court “has steadfastly instructed that false statements of fact are not protected by the First Amendment.”

Both sides cite the court’s landmark free-speech cases. Judge Milan D. Smith Jr., who agreed the law was unconstitutional, said 1964’s New York Times Co. v. Sullivan made clear that “false speech is not subject to a blanket exemption from constitutional protection.”

He said the court has never included “false statements of fact” to be among the classes of speech unprotected by the First Amendment. He noted that as recently as last year’s decision in United States v. Stevens, the court’s list of “well-defined” unprotected speech included only “obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and speech integral to criminal conduct.”

O’Scannlain and the dissenters point to cases decided after Sullivan, including Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., in which the court said that “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact."

The Denver Post opined about the 9th Circuit Court's decision on Sunday, writing that:

Sometimes defending the First Amendment involves standing up for miscreants, no matter how distasteful. ... The truly sad part of this, we acknowledge, is that free speech has never been free. It has been achieved by the spilled blood of war heroes — the same people these scoundrels are impersonating.

Ay me, as Juliette said from her balcony. Never has it been more obvious that the law and morality are the most distant of relatives.

I'm sure politicians everywhere are holding their breath, waiting to hear whether the U.S. Supreme Court upholds our legal right to lie.

"A Burden Rightly Lifted." This political cartoon was printed in "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper," December 4, 1880. James Garfield had won the presidential election in November. Garfield is shown lying on the ground. Justice, with her scales and blindfold, lifts a heavy weight off Garfield, which is labeled "Calumny." This may be a reference to the Credit Mobilier scandal which haunted Garfield.

As the Dixie Chicks said, you gotta loosen up those chains and Dance!!

2011-03-28T09:13:00.003-04:00

2003 magazine cover

Personal confession time . . .

I, Martha Woodroof, love the Dixie Chicks; both for their music and their outspoken refusal to toe the country music political line.

Imagine being country music singers from Texas and breaking bad on President George W. Bush about the Iraq War in 2003. It was, at the time, considered downright shocking

Back to their music, though, the Chicks had this to say about dancing:

Some days you gotta dance
Live it up when you get the chance.
'Cause when the world doesn't make no sense
And you're feeling just a little to tense
Gotta loosen up those chains and dance.

You gotta just do it, they're saying. Get out there and move, even when the dance in question is the Big Dance; the Men's NCAA basketball tournament. Forget Dancing with the Stars. My nominees for 2011's best dancers -- the ones who loosened the chains of almost everyone's expectations -- are the members of the Virginia Commonwealth University's Rams.

VCU yesterday, dancing on the odds, which had Kansas as an 11 pt. favorite (AP Photo/Michael Thomas)

Mike Wise put it this way in this morning's Washington Post:

Point guard Joey Rodriguez

Their 155-pound point guard, dribbling madly around the basketball court, would need a phone book under his sneakers to clear 6 feet. Their center, who decided life at one of the nation’s most esteemed programs was not for him, appears to be better at three-point shots than the ones he takes closer to the basket. Even their cocksure young leader who preaches controlled chaos — he turns 34 in two weeks — seems unorthodox, almost out of place among the giants of college basketball.

The good thing is, pedigree and power conferences don’t always dictate who gets a chance to play in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Coach Shaka Smart in victory garb
(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

The good thing is, Joey Rodriguez, Jamie Skeen, Coach Shaka Smart and Virginia Commonwealth got in.

And once that happened, the improbable followed in lockstep.

In case you were napping and missed the most scintillating NCAA tournament upset in five years, the Rams from Richmond pulled a George Mason on Sunday, blowing out top-seeded Kansas in the first half of the tournament’s Southwest Region final before repelling a wild second-half rally and pulling away at the end.

And if a college's men basketball team is dancing, you can bet the students are as well.

VCU student Taylor Ricketts (top) celebrates VCU's win over Kansas as fellow student Reid Mownray supports him at VCU's Siegel Center as a thousand students celebrate at the moment the Rams won.

So how improbable is VCU's dancing their way into the Men's Final Four? According to ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning, if you had placed a $10.00 bet on VCU to win its first game against Southern California and then let that bet ride, you would have won over $13,000 dollars.

So why should we experienced, worldly-wise, over-burdened adults care that the VCU Rams are going to the Men's Final Four? Why am I writing about this rather than more serious subjects such as Japan or Libya or our own Supreme Court?

Because VCU's gloriously joyful and improbable victory is just as real as those other things. And, speaking for myself, it makes me realize that if hard work and guts and teamwork can shake off all the chains of expectations and set the VCU Rams to dancing in the Final Four, who knows where the rest of ourselves could find ourselves if we gave ourselves a good shake as well. Maybe all we need to do is "loosen up those chains and dance!"

Go Rams! Go world!

Hope for Charlie Sheen, a Civic Soapbox essay by RB Horsley

2011-03-24T21:35:00.001-04:00

I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict and seeing Charlie Sheen unravel on television disturbed and fascinated me. Fascinated me because although Sheen states, "You can’t process me with a normal brain," I can process him with my addict’s brain. Disturbed because it reminded me of where I came from and where I could go if I choose to pick up a drink or drug.

I don’t have Charlie Sheen’s talent, money, or Hollywood pedigree. And I have to say I am thankful for that. I’m not sure I’d be alive if I’d had the means to satisfy all my desires. But it wasn’t lack of funds that drove me to stop drinking and using drugs. It was a moment of clarity, a few seconds when I literally paused on the threshold of my home, my back to the August sunshine, my face to the unlit interior of the mud room. While my pupils adjusted to the dimness, I thought I am nothing, nobody. I am a shell of a human being.

I was astonishingly lonely, depressed and suicidal. I passed through the door to the kitchen and I told my husband I thought I was going crazy. I scheduled an appointment with a counselor. Little did I know that a few days later I would experience my last humiliating drunken binge and at the counselor's I was able to connect the dots between my drinking and my suicidal thinking. She introduced me to the Charlottesville recovery community.

That was twenty-two years ago.

Since then I have learned to live fully without the aid of alcohol or drugs. With my husband, I have raised three children, experienced the death of one from cancer, emotionally supported the other two through their own struggles with substance abuse. I had to accept the fact that my surviving children could die from their disease too, an especially painful acknowledgment. I have answered the phone to hear an emergency room nurse inform me of a drug overdose; a police officer give me directions to the hospital ICU where my severely beaten and intoxicated child was being treated.

Happily, each of my children has chosen, while still in their twenties, to change their lives.

I was thirty-three and didn’t have many expectations when I stopped drinking. Mostly I just wanted to stop hating myself and I didn’t want to lose custody of my kids. My marriage was on the rocks; I didn’t know if I wanted to save it.

This year, my husband and I will celebrate thirty-four years of marriage. I earned a BA in English from UVA at the tender age of forty-five. The same age Charlie Sheen is today. I can’t ridicule the man. I want him to get better. I want to watch his transformation. I’m afraid he may not have a moment of clarity but I pray he does.

I have a good life due to the counselor who opened my eyes, my family who has loved me despite my addictions all these years, and most of all, the people in recovery who were there to teach me, without judgment, how to really live.

When I was ready.

-- RB Horsley lives in North Garden. She is a writer and poet.

It's historical déjà vu all over again , , ,

2011-03-24T08:41:00.005-04:00

This year marks the 100th anniversary of air bombings. And history has probably never celebrated such a momentous event more tidily.

What country was bombed 100 years ago?

Libya.

Is that tidy, or what?

Italian dirigibles bomb Turkish positions on Libyan Territory. The Italian–Turkish war of 1911–1912 was the first in history that featured air attacks by airplanes and dirigible airships.

Ian Patterson, writing in the London Review of Books, had this to say:

The world’s first aerial bombing mission took place 100 years ago, over Libya. It was an attack on Turkish positions in Tripoli. On 1 November 1911, Lieutenant Cavotti of the Italian Air Fleet dropped four two-kilogramme bombs, by hand, over the side of his aeroplane. In the days that followed, several more attacks took place on nearby Arab bases. Some of them, inaugurating a pattern all too familiar in the century since then, fell on a field hospital, at Ain Zara, provoking heated argument in the international press about the ethics of dropping bombs from the air, and what is now known as ‘collateral damage’. (In those days it was called ‘frightfulness’.) The Italians, however, were much cheered by the ‘wonderful moral effect’ of bombing, its capacity to demoralise and panic those on the receiving end.

A hundred years on, as missiles rain down on Gaddafi’s defences and sleeping Libyan soldiers are blasted and burned, we hear claims of a similar kind: the might of the western onslaught will dissipate all support for Gaddafi’s regime and usher in a new golden age for everyone. Just as Shock and Awe were meant to in Iraq. Or bombing and defoliation were meant to in Vietnam. Or as the London Blitz was meant to break Britain’s spirit. Yet all the evidence suggests that dropping high explosive on places where people live increases their opposition, their solidarity and their resolve. Happy Anniversary.

As we all know, Libya is again being bombed. This, today, from Radio Free Europe:

Fighting is continuing in Libya for key cities after a fifth night of coalition air strikes.

Several explosions were heard overnight as antiaircraft fire lit up the sky in Tripoli, where coalition aircraft reportedly hit a fuel depot.

Witnesses also reported a huge blast at a military base in the Tajura neighborhood east of the capital.

The official JANA news agency said coalition raids on Tajura killed "a large number" of civilians, while Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim late on March 23 pleaded for a halt of the aerial bombardment. . . .

French fighter jets return from operations over Libya.(Reuters)

Air Strikes 'As Long As Necessary'

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said today that coalition air strikes against Libya had been a "success" and would "continue as long as necessary."

Juppe [said there] had been no reports of civilian casualties caused by allied action, adding that the strikes were "only targeting military sites and nothing else." . . .

On March 21st, two days after the current Libyan bombings began, Eric Margolis, writing in the Huffington Post, had this to say about U.S. participation:

America's glaring double standard in the Mideast and Muslim world is a major reason for growing hatred of our nation.

Events in Libya may end up further enflaming such feelings.

America would be hailed as [a] genuine liberator of long-suffering Libyans if it also intervened in Bahrain and Yemen -- and perhaps Saudi Arabia -- to protect civilians from the ferocity of their despotic governments and promote real democracy.

But it's only oil-rich Libya that is getting the "humanitarian" treatment from the US and oil-hungry western European former colonial powers.

A fractured Libya will not only curtail oil exports, it will open the gates to a flood of African emigration to southern Europe. Gaddafi has long been cooperating with France, Italy and Spain to halt the flow of such economic refugees. He now threatens to open the flood gates. There is also a risk that the Libyan conflict could spread into neighboring Mali, Chad, Niger and Sudan.
Turkey has been proposing sensible diplomatic solutions but no one is yet listening to peaceful plans. Once again, the west is gripped by that old crusading fever, a combination of moral outrage at the wickedness of the unspeakable Saracens, combined with a pulsating lust for their riches.

The question President Obama should be asking himself is: given our $1.4 trillion deficit, can we really afford another little war whose rationale is unclear and outcome uncertain?

As for that outcome, at least from a U.S. point-of-view. . . this, from a March 20th updated AP article taken from the Denver Post:

"No one can say for certain how this change will end, but I do know that change is not something that we should fear. When young people insist that the currents of history are on the move, the burdens of the past can be washed away." Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was pressed repeatedly during a round of Sunday television interviews to explain the mission's objectives. He said the main goal is to protect civilians from further violence.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is welcomed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy before a crisis summit on Libya at Elysee Palace on Saturday. (Franck Prevel, Getty Images Europe)

"I think circumstances will drive where this goes in the future," the admiral said on ABC's "This Week." "I wouldn't speculate in terms of length at this particular point in time." Asked whether it was possible that the military goals might be met without Gadhafi being ousted, Mullen replied, "That's certainly potentially one outcome." He described the Libyan strongman as more isolated than ever, adding that Gadhafi is "going to have to make some choices about his own future" at some point.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that although ousting Gadhafi is not an explicit goal of the campaign, his departure might be hastened as the conflict continues.

"The opposition is largely led by those who defected from the Gadhafi regime or who formerly served it, and it is certainly to be wished for that there will be even more such defections, that people will put the future of Libya and the interests of the Libyan people above their service to Col. Gadhafi," she said.

So, I guess all that means the questions of what, precisely, we're doing in Libya, and why we're doing it, are still being debated. But that does not take away from the historical symmetry of Libyan bombing, then and now.

Wishing you a belated happy anniversary of one problematic day in history. . .

2011-03-24T08:31:00.002-04:00

Yesterday marked 100th anniversary of one of humanity's most contentious accomplishments: Air bombings.

Italian dirigibles bomb Turkish positions on Libyan Territory. The Italian–Turkish war of 1911–1912 was the first in history that featured air attacks by airplanes and dirigible airships.^[7]

Ian Patterson, writing in the London Review of Books, had this to say:

The world’s first aerial bombing mission took place 100 years ago, over Libya. It was an attack on Turkish positions in Tripoli. On 1 November 1911, Lieutenant Cavotti of the Italian Air Fleet dropped four two-kilogramme bombs, by hand, over the side of his aeroplane. In the days that followed, several more attacks took place on nearby Arab bases. Some of them, inaugurating a pattern all too familiar in the century since then, fell on a field hospital, at Ain Zara, provoking heated argument in the international press about the ethics of dropping bombs from the air, and what is now known as ‘collateral damage’. (In those days it was called ‘frightfulness’.) The Italians, however, were much cheered by the ‘wonderful moral effect’ of bombing, its capacity to demoralise and panic those on the receiving end.

A hundred years on, as missiles rain down on Gaddafi’s defences and sleeping Libyan soldiers are blasted and burned, we hear claims of a similar kind: the might of the western onslaught will dissipate all support for Gaddafi’s regime and usher in a new golden age for everyone. Just as Shock and Awe were meant to in Iraq. Or bombing and defoliation were meant to in in Vietnam. Or as the London Blitz was meant to break Britain’s spirit. Yet all the evidence suggests that dropping high explosive on places where people live increases their opposition, their solidarity and their resolve. Happy Anniversary.

Ironically, history is marking this anniversary by bombing Libya, again. This, today, from Radio Free Europe:

Fighting is continuing in Libya for key cities after a fifth night of coalition air strikes.

Several explosions were heard overnight as antiaircraft fire lit up the sky in Tripoli, where coalition aircraft reportedly hit a fuel depot.

Witnesses also reported a huge blast at a military base in the Tajura neighborhood east of the capital.

The official JANA news agency said coalition raids on Tajura killed "a large number" of civilians, while Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim late on March 23 pleaded for a halt of the aerial bombardment. . . .

French fighter jets return from operations over Libya.(Reuters)

Air Strikes 'As Long As Necessary'

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said today that coalition air strikes against Libya had been a "success" and would "continue as long as necessary."

Juppe told RTL that there had been no reports of civilian casualties caused by allied action, adding that the strikes were "only targeting military sites and nothing else." . . .

On March 21st, two days after the current Libyan bombings began, Eric Margolis, writing in the Huffington Post, had this to say about U.S. participation:

America's glaring double standard in the Mideast and Muslim world is a major reason for growing hatred of our nation.

Events in Libya may end up further enflaming such feelings.

America would be hailed as genuine liberator of long-suffering Libyans if it also intervened in Bahrain and Yemen -- and perhaps Saudi Arabia -- to protect civilians from the ferocity of their despotic governments and promote real democracy.

But it's only oil-rich Libya that is getting the "humanitarian" treatment from the US and oil-hungry western European former colonial powers.

A fractured Libya will not only curtail oil exports, it will open the gates to a flood of African emigration to southern Europe. Gaddafi has long been cooperating with France, Italy and Spain to halt the flow of such economic refugees. He now threatens to open the flood gates. There is also a risk that the Libyan conflict could spread into neighboring Mali, Chad, Niger and Sudan.
Turkey has been proposing sensible diplomatic solutions but no one is yet listening to peaceful plans. Once again, the west is gripped by that old crusading fever, a combination of moral outrage at the wickedness of the unspeakable Saracens, combined with a pulsating lust for their riches.

The question President Obama should be asking himself is: given our $1.4 trillion deficit, can we really afford another little war whose rational is unclear and outcome uncertain?

As that outcome, at least from a U.S. point-of-view. . . this, from an March 20th updated AP article taken from the Denver Post

"No one can say for certain how this change will end, but I do know that change is not something that we should fear. When young people insist that the currents of history are on the move, the burdens of the past can be washed away." Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was pressed repeatedly during a round of Sunday television interviews to explain the mission's objectives. He said the main goal is to protect civilians from further violence.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is welcomed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy before a crisis summit on Libya at Elysee Palace on Saturday. (Franck Prevel, Getty Images Europe)

"I think circumstances will drive where this goes in the future," the admiral said on ABC's "This Week." "I wouldn't speculate in terms of length at this particular point in time." Asked whether it was possible that the military goals might be met without Gadhafi being ousted, Mullen replied, "That's certainly potentially one outcome." He described the Libyan strongman as more isolated than ever, adding that Gadhafi is "going to have to make some choices about his own future" at some point.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that although ousting Gadhafi is not an explicit goal of the campaign, his departure might be hastened as the conflict continues.

"The opposition is largely led by those who defected from the Gadhafi regime or who formerly served it, and it is certainly to be wished for that there will be even more such defections, that people will put the future of Libya and the interests of the Libyan people above their service to Col. Gadhafi," she said.

So, I guess all that means the question of what, exactly, we're doing in Libya, and why we're doing it, is still being debated.

So, about last night? Who knew that . . .

2011-03-23T09:38:00.008-04:00

... Weekend Edition Sunday host Liane Hansen possesses a wonderful, comedic stage presence?

photo: Marie Adele Christopher

Here's what I mean.

If you're honest, I'm betting that the first thought that crosses your mind when you meet someone you've listened to on the radio is: Oh, so that's what you look like.

Last night at about 8:05, Liane Hansen took the stage at Blackfriars Playhouse, sat herself down, got comfortable, gazed out at us and said: Oh, so that's what you look like.

It was the first of many, many laughs with which she gifted us during the next couple of hours.

Liane Hansen doesn't give talks; she tells stories, ranging from the harrowing to the comedic. The harrowing included the tale of hearing that her husband (Neal Conan) had been captured by the Iraqi Republican Guard in 1991 while covering the Gulf War for NPR. She told of the days of uncertainty; spent as worried wife bent on professionally reporting her own family crisis. She refused to run with unconfirmed news, even though other news outlets were bandying inaccurate information about with abandon. Her message for us last night: At NPR reporting a news story means the information must be confirmed by two independent, reliable sources. NPR may not be first; but it is accurate.

Liane Hansen came on stage holding a sheaf of papers, NPR's talking points on managements'-- shall we say -- little foo-foos, the Congressional funding debate, and other delicate subjects about which we curious listeners might be -- well -- curious. It was, she said, the first time in her 35 years with NPR that they sent her out equipped with what to say. Liane then promised that if someone asked a question that was covered in those talking points, she'd first read the answer and then tell us what she really thought. Then, with perfect comic timing, she added that maybe she'd hold off on the what-she-really-thought part until after her retirement at the end of May.

Later, someone asked her to read the talking point with which she most disagreed. Liane proceeded to sit on the stage and read the talking points to herself in a stage mumble, frowning, rejecting, turning pages, while our chuckles grew into guffaws. At just the right theatrical moment, she closed up the talking points and said, "Would you mind terribly if I didn't?"

You probably had to be there to really appreciate the comedy of this little bit of theatrical business, but trust me, it was was very, very funny.

photo: Marie Adele Christopher

Liane Hansen spoke to us for about 40 minutes, then answered questions for an hour; and yes, she talked about Juan Williams, Congress, NPR management, as well as the past, present and future of NPR journalism.

Diane Halke, our Development Director (and the person we all have to thank for last night's wonderful time) asked me to introduce Liane Hansen last night. In preparation I e-mailed Liane and asked if there was anything in particular she'd like me to say. She e-mailed back just to "speak from your heart, or head, or soul, or whatever."

So that's what I did.

For the head part I listed a few of Liane Hansen's accomplishments, including NPR-related ones and the fact that back in the mid-eighties she'd worked as an archivist in London's acclaimed Maybox Theatres, where other duties included babysitting Princess Margaret's coat and serving coffee to Sir Richard Attenborough.

But it was while addressing the heart and soul part that I really got down to what I wanted to say about this remarkable woman. As someone who went to high school when women were deemed too delicate physically and mentally for full-court basketball, Liane Hansen symbolizes to me the full-court press the women of our generation executed upon all those “traditionally” male professional bastions.

Liane Hansen not only took on the news business, she got to the top of it. Her life is many things, among them a gift to other women.

I don't know about you, but I will miss her participation in my Sunday mornings.

Calling on the Defense Department to do right by Bradley Manning: one participant's view of last Sunday's demonstration at Quantico

2011-03-22T08:30:00.004-04:00

Martha note: Harrisonburg's indefatigable Harvey Yoder sent out a notice last week that Diana Woodall would be driving to Quantico to join last Sunday's protest against the treatment of detained army private Bradley Manning, who's accused of giving classified information to Wikileaks (which, as you can see if you click on the link, is no longer available.)

I immediately e-mailed Diana and asked her to write about her experience at the protest for the WMRA blog.

I think of this time of year when forsythia is in bloom as the very tender beginnings of spring. I could have easily talked myself out of going to Quantico. I would have preferred to work in my garden than drive to a demonstration. After all, what difference could one person make?

The call to end the prison mistreatment of private Bradley Manning has been picked up by Amnesty International, as well as supporters in Australia, the UK, and more. Last week, State Department spokesman PJ Crowley resigned after calling Manning's treatment, “Counterproductive, stupid and ridiculous.” I believe we all need to “Think Globally—Act Locally.” Here was a local action—in Virginia at least—that now has global significance.

Bradley Manning is the soldier alleged to have leaked documents to Wikileaks about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But here's the thing: He has not yet been tried or convicted. Yet, he has been held for 300 days in a military brig in Quantico, in solitary confinement, forced to stay in his cell for 23 hours a day.

Now I am not a fan of Julian Assange and have mixed feelings about Wikileaks. But several months ago I heard on NPR that because of the treatment Manning was receiving, his condition had declined. That had me concerned.

So, on Sunday March 20, 8 years to the day after the beginning of the Iraq War, I drove the 2 ½ hours to Quantico to join between 400-500 others in support of Bradley Manning. Quantico base is at the intersection of Route 1 and Anderson Rd, in Triangle, VA, about 30 miles south of DC, and north of Fredericksburg. Just south of the base is the Marine Museum, and instructions on the BradleyManning.org website prior to the event were to park in the museum lot, which is open to the public.

I arrived at just past 1:30pm to find this was not going to be an “ordinary” demonstration. Police had parked perhaps 50 of their cars in the lot, and some sections of the lot were blocked. Soon, a white van with Florida tags parked, and out came 7 or 8 Veterans for Peace members. We walked back to the intersection of Route 1 and Anderson, and by now the demonstrators had moved north to a section of land between the road and a small church, where they set up for a rally.

photo: Diana Woodall

The crowd of between 400-500 people was young and old, white and black and other people of color. I'd say the median age was above 40 if not 50, and the gathering was largely white. Several bus loads of folks had come from DC. Others came from as far away as Harrisburg, PA and of course yours truly from Harrisonburg, VA. People generally seemed to be in good spirits, and some signs had a tinge of humor: “Briefs for Bradley” and “The Emperor has no clothes” referred to the reports of Manning being forced to strip naked at night, even stand at attention in the morning with no clothes. [The “official” version is that Manning is given a suicide-proof gown to wear.] Apparently his underwear was taken from him after Manning made a sarcastic remark about it to the guards. Yet, even the military psychologists do not think Manning is a suicide risk.

In addition to Veterans for Peace, other groups represented included Code Pink, Courage to Resist, Answer Coalition and Richmond Defenders.

Speakers included Daniel Ellsburg, who said his only regret was that he waited as long as he did to leak the Pentagon Papers—which exposed top secret government handling of the war in Vietnam.

After the rally ended, about 3:15, the plan was to march peacefully to the entrance of the base. On the south side of the entrance is a replica of the famous Iwo Jima memorial—Marines lifting the flag after a decisive battle in the Pacific during WW 2.

Normally open to the public, today the memorial was barricaded. At first, no one was going to be allowed to go near. Then, word was that 6 veterans would be allowed to place flowers at the memorial. I went ahead, and crossed the intersection in order to get a photo. A police woman told me I could not stay on the sidewalk, it was federal property. I didn't think she was correct, but moved on ahead away from the demonstrators about 50 yards.

photo: Diana Woodall

It was then I noticed at least 50 police men and women in full riot gear, standing hidden from the main road, on an access road in the woods. There were also 8 mounted police, and at least 2 canine units, and 2 helicopters. By this time, all traffic, all directions, had been stopped and re-routed by police. The veterans walked to the barricades around the memorial and placed their flowers, and then four of them sat down in the road. The signal was given to the riot police, who then came out and formed a “V” formation facing the group. Two were arrested, then more sat down. It was not clear to me whether the demonstrators were blocked from being able to cross the street to return to where they had parked their cars or not.

Finally, at about 4:10pm, after about 40 minutes at the intersection, some of the demonstrators began walking back toward the museum, and I walked back with them. I felt a bit too much adrenaline, in my own blood and others'. One woman told how when she bent down to pick up a bottle, trash on the street, one of the police jumped. But I saw no sign of any violence on the part of the demonstrators.

What would happen? Surely there were too many cameras for it to turn too ugly. . .but noticeably absent were any TV stations, local or otherwise. Also absent, by the way, were any counter-demonstrators.

Daniel Ellsberg was one of the 35 people arrested outside the Quantico marine base

In the end, I found out what happened on the Internet: 30 demonstrators were arrested, according to an AP wire story filed by the Washington Post Sunday evening. Other rallies in support of Manning were held in Minnesota, Oregon, California, the UK and Australia.

It's fascinating to me that now it doesn't matter if there is a media blackout on an event or not. People were tweeting from the rally, and one man attempted a live stream of the event using a laptop and cell phone. I don't have a Facebook or twitter account, my phone is not smart. I have thought of it all as a great time-waster. But if it can help in the exercise of our first amendment rights to peacefully assemble to address grievances against our government, then it is fine by me.

Not since Cindy Sheehan, the woman who tried to get an audience with George W. Bush on why her son had died in Iraq, has the current anti-war movement had a name or a symbol. Whether or not you think Bradley Manning is a war hero or war criminal, he has done two things: disrupted the machinery of war as usual, and provided a cause to rally behind for those of us who believe in freedom.

-- Diana Woodall lives, thinks globally, writes, and acts locally from her home in Harrisonburg.

Thoughts about comfort and leaders . . .

2011-03-21T10:55:00.004-04:00

Our leaders have so many opportunities to not meet our expectations. And it seems to me that the most remembered presidential failures and successes are the ones that, in the grand scheme of things, matter least.

President Bush reading "The Pet Goat"

We Americans all remember President Bush’s decision to keep reading “The Pet Goat” with an elementary class after being informed of the September 11 attacks, and to fly over the wake of destruction left by Hurricane Katrina, instead of wading into it. Those actions, I think it's fair to say, did not bring great comfort to the American People.

But President Bush also walked out alone into the center of a packed Yankee stadium shortly after the September 11th attacks, which was a terrific message to all of us that the American spirit was undaunted. I don't know about you, but I thought it was very brave of our president.

Our American culture is big on ceremony that masks itself as non-ceremonial action. In times of trouble, we expect our leaders to swing into action, throw balls, get down to the business of leading us through whatever Eve of Destruction we've landed in toward whatever brighter days lies ahead.

We expect leaders to go to whatever part of the country is in trouble and take a good look around. And we take great comfort from our president swinging into Head Cheerleader Mode, giving speeches about how, sure, times are tough, but the tough have gotten going, the American Spirit is undimmed and indomitable, and we, the American People, are going to get through this together.

In my lifetime, America has never had to deal with as destructive and desperate a situation as the current one in Japan. The country's death toll is likely to exceed 18,000; radiation has reached the food chain; the World Bank estimates $235 billion in damages.

To put these numbers in perspective:

Though estimates vary, Hurricane Katrina caused $81.2 billion in damages in 2005, according to a widely cited study by the National Hurricane Center. Last year, the costs of natural disasters soared to a worldwide total of $109 billion, three times the total in 2009, according to the United Nations. In 2010, the Haiti quake cost $8 billion, floods in Pakistan $9.5 billion and an 8.8-magnitude quake in Chile $30 billion.

The Japanese people have received high praise for their resiliency amidst this mega-crisis; the government, high praise for the effectiveness of its nuclear disaster plan. But its hard to imagine a more comforting action for the Japanese people than that made last week by Emperor Akihito. And it wasn't brave; it wasn't decisive; and there was nothing "can-do" about it.

To put Emperor Akihito's position into perspective, until 1945, the Japanese Emporer was considered a god, but World War II put an end to that way of thinking. Now, according to the Japanese Constitution, Emperor Akihito is a "symbol of the state and the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power."

Last Wednesday, this symbol spoke publicly to his people about his country's crisis, something he has never done in his entire twenty year reign.

The Guardian reported the news this way:

When the emperor of Japan addresses his nation, you know there is a crisis. On 15 August 1945, a week after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hirohito's radio address announcing the surrender of Japan was broadcast across the country. Until last week, however, no event in the country's history was considered traumatic enough for his son, Akihito, to perform a similar task.

Emporer Akihito (AP photo)

All that changed last Wednesday when the consequences of Japan's biggest-ever recorded earthquake spurred the 77-year-old emperor into action with a televised call for concerted national action. For those old enough to remember Hirohito's Gyokuon-hoso ("Jewel Voice Broadcast"), it was a stark reminder of the gravity of Japan's situation. And in contrast to Hirohito's address, which had been couched in language familiar only to the well-educated and notable for a confusing lack of detail about the surrender itself, Akihito was clear in his message of hope.

Emperor Akihito spoke simply for about five minutes, saying, among other things:

"I truly hope the victims of the disaster never give up hope, take care of themselves, and live strong for tomorrow. Also, I want all citizens of Japan to remember everyone who has been affected by the devastation, not only today but for a long time afterwards -- and help with the recovery"

"Currently, the entire nation is putting forth its best effort to save all suffering people. However, under the severe cold weather, evacuees are having a very difficult time because they lack food, water, and energy sources. Also, I am deeply concerned that the current nuclear plant situation is critical. I truly hope that with so many people working together to help, the situation will not worsen."

"I am deeply impressed to see people who have survived, and are suffering from the biggest disaster, encourage themselves to live for tomorrow. This is so courageous."

Emperor Akihito's words perhaps sound a tad uninspiring to us. There's no cheerleading, energizing, loin-girding rhetoric.

We are such a casual, noisy people -- and long may we remain so. A quiet, heart-felt, five minute speech from a "symbol of the state and the unity of the people" might not bring us much comfort in the face of disaster.

But we are not the Japanese. And, given this rather glaring distinction, this one particularly noisy and casual American found something tremendously moving -- and comforting -- in Emperor Akihito's speech.

No True Patriot, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Andrew Bard Schmookler

2011-03-18T06:53:00.001-04:00

Many conservatives nowadays have been persuaded that the liberal approach to governance deserves no respect, that it is something alien to the real America and that “No compromise!” is an appropriate stance to take when dealing with liberal proposals.

No true patriot should support this dismissive attitude—not if patriotism requires honoring the vision of our nation’s founders.

Our Founders did not give us a government of ayatollahs, possessing some exclusive truth. Rather, they gave us a democratic process by which we as a people can search together for our best way forward.
They believed that out of that conversation –out of the competition in the marketplace of ideas—we the people, endowed with the capacity for reason, could reach good decisions.

Over generations of that competition of ideas, roughly half the American body politic has embraced the liberal approach to the organization of society—a mixture of market forces and government policy, a belief that government has a necessary role to play in shaping our society.

This has been no fleeting whim. American liberalism has unfolded with great continuity: Obama’s health care reform is of the same cloth as FDR’s Social Security and LBJ’s Medicare.

Liberalism is an enduring part of America’s body of thought and values, just like the persistent principles of American conservatism. To treat either as unworthy of respect, as an alien element suitable only to be fought and defeated, is to betray our Founder’s concept of how the will of the people is to emerge from the democratic process.

To hate liberalism is to hate a part of America’s heart.

It is also to ignore American history. When some conservatives bewail the loss of the America they grew up in, what is that America they’re hankering for? Chances are, the America they long for is one in which the liberal spirit was ascendant.

If it is conservatism that has dominated for the past thirty years, surely it was liberalism that was dominant from the beginnings of the FDR presidency in 1933 onward for some four decades. And that time of liberalism’s ascendancy may also have been the time of America’s greatest glory.

Was there ever an era of greater achievement than after the triumph of World War II, when America led the creation of a wise international order. Never was America more beloved in the world than in the era of the Marshall Plan, which revived war-torn Europe and saved it from communism. Never did America invest more wisely in its people than with the G.I. Bill of rights, building a strong middle class.

It is because of the fruits of American liberalism that the old are not destitute, that the sick are not left untended, that the children of the poor are educated, that whole races are not condemned to second-class citizenship.

That’s why no true patriot should show contempt for the liberal part of America’s political life—not if a patriot is someone who takes pride in the glories of his country.

--Andy Schmookler lives west of Mount Jackson. His writings can be found at nonesoblind.org

Liane Hansen, up close and professionally . . .

2011-03-17T09:04:00.010-04:00

Martha note: WMRA is giving about 300 WMRA-ers a chance to get to know Weekend Edition Sunday's retiring host, Liane Hansen, by bringing her to Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton next Tuesday evening.

Liane's been at NPR for 35 years. I don't know about you, but I, personally, wanted a sense of what it's been like to work with her. So naturally, I thought of Becky . . .

Becky Martinez's alter-ego, Talula Bankrobber, ready to rumble with the Rocktown Rollers

Long ago before Rebecca Martinez became a reporter for the Staunton News Leader, she interned at WMRA. From there she went up to NPR as a summer intern. After that she spent a couple of years at NPR, working in what's fondly called "Temp Hell," working for whatever NPR News show needed temporary help.

One of her most frequent (and, as you will read below, rewarding) stops was working with Liane Hansen on Weekend Edition Sunday.

To celebrate next week's visit and to address my own curiosity about what Liane Hansen's like as a colleague, I asked Becky to jot down some reminiscences about what it was like to work alongside The Woman! Here's what Becky had to say . . .

It was bizarre, at first, actually working with Liane Hansen at Weekend Edition Sunday. Well, at WESUN, as everybody in “the building” calls it. But it was also my most rewarding time there.

I had interned at WESAT — yes, Weekend Edition Saturday — the summer after graduating from JMU, but the large intern pool dissipates at the end of each season. Most of my peers went on to grad school or other jobs, but a few of us held on for dear life as temps. Temps at NPR are at the mercy of the shows, filling in for editors and producers who are gone on vacation, maternity leave, etc. A week here, a month there. Once a contract ended, we’d scramble around the shows looking for new work.

WESUN was my first temp gig, and I worked there for six blessed months. I was a bit star struck meeting Liane, who was gracious and welcoming to me. I’d been introduced to the people belonging to famous voices around the building including Robert Siegel, Nina Totenberg and Scott Simon, but it was working under Liane's example that I learned the ropes of public radio production.

The first thing I noticed was how incredibly versatile she was in her work. She could jump around among arts and culture and war and politics, becoming equally engrossed in each and springing back to her feet. In a given day, she could pre-record the week’s Puzzle segment with Will Shortz and a guest, joking and playing along, and move into another studio to conduct interviews — presidential candidates, pundits —in a far more sober tone.

Benazir Bhuto

After a week of trying to book former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, I received confirmation at 4 a.m. on a Sunday that she was ready to talk. By the time I got to the office, Liane was in the studio, chatting with one of the most famous and controversial female leaders in the world. Bhutto was assassinated the following month.

Transcript: Liane Hansen interview with Benazir Bhutto

Behind every great radio host is a team of people with varying skills working to make her look good, to write the scripts in her voice, to accommodate her feedback. Liane was a team player, who was open to suggestion, and could make an inspired idea into an engaging reality. She also worked her way up from the bottom and treated me as a professional from the first day, even as I was unsure of my skills.

She jumped on my idea of exploring Maryland’s program to let people live in historic buildings if they pay for the upkeep. We were driving to a farm house by the end of the week.

Listen: "Living History in a Maryland Farmhouse"

Hazelwood in Upper Marlboro MD is a Resident Curator property of the Maryland National Park and Planning Commission

Liane is a woman of faith and progressive values. It’s because of her that I’ve grown to admire Benedictine nun and activist Sister Joan Chittister. After work one day, Liane took me to see C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters” at the Lansburgh Theater.

Liane loves life. I had so much fun working on stories about food and music with her. She loves her children. She loves tap dancing. She loves stories and people. And I loved getting to know her during my formative time at WESUN.

Chickens, PepsiCo, and the greening of our future

2011-03-16T09:22:00.007-04:00

Is it possible that greenies have finally shouted loud and long enough about saving the planet that business is being forced to pay attention? Is green manufacturing (at least to some degree) becoming a marketing necessity?

Hmmmm...

I had lunch yesterday with my friend, green activist and WMRA listener Pat Foreman who, I think it's safe to say, is helping save the planet with chickens.

Pat, I hasten to add, can back up whatever she says with both experience and data. She is the author of the fabulously readable and inspiring City Chicks and the about-to-released third edition of Chicken Tractor.

Pat Foreman also co-hosts, along with the Chicken Whisperer, the weekly blogtalk radio show, Backyard Poultry.

I always find it impossible to have lunch with Pat Foreman and not have my respect for chickens increased. These birds, it seems, not only produce eggs and the best garden fertilizer, they are also two-legged clean plate clubs. If I had chickens, Pat said, they would happily eat all the left-overs I don't.

True to her mission to fuel chickens and thus help save the world, Pat took home my lunch leavings to feed her flock. "Potato chips," she says, "are a real treat!"

Chicken on potato chips? drawing by Pat Foreman

So anyway, after lunching yesterday with Pat, I was thinking about the creative use of left-overs as I turned on today's Morning Edition. And lo-and-behold, there was Linda Werthheimer informing me that PepsiCo, (whom I assume would be unmoved by other than market pressures) has done something with its own left-overs that has huge potential to help save our sweet old world.

Here the PepsiCo ta-da!, according to FoxNews.

PepsiCo Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a bottle made entirely of plant material, which it says bests the technology of competitor Coca-Cola and reduces its potential carbon footprint.

The bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business.

Left-overs again; I would bet this time being recycled solely in the interests of a multinational company's bottom line.

Thirdage.com reports this truly giant step in the greening of American society this way:

Pepsi bottles have gone green by using 100% non-plastic, plant-based material that they say reduces their carbon footprint. ...They add that their new bottle bests the efforts of Coca-Cola, which only uses 30 percent plant-based material in their bottles.

"This is the beginning of the end of petroleum-based plastics," said Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council and director of its waste management project. "When you have a company of this size making a commitment to a plant-based plastic, the market is going to respond."

Rocco Papalia, senior vice president of advanced research at Pepsi, adds that the bottle is “indistinguishable” from traditionally-made plastic bottles.

So, we are to have our "plastic," our corporate profits, and get a bit greener, as well? It's almost too good to believe, isn't it?

In November of last year, Martha Dudley held forth from atop WMRA's Civic Soapbox about the evil inherent in a plastic water bottle. She focused on two points:

First: It never goes away but spends its eternal life in our landfills. In 2008 seventy percent of plastic water bottles went to those landfills. No one seems to be counting how many ended up clogging our waterways, floating in our oceans, and killing marine life.

And second: Plastic is made from the very same oil that spilled so disastrously in the Gulf of Mexico.

I think we can all agree that the future of our planet looks a tiny bit greener today, thanks to PepsiCo.

Not to mention, Pat Foreman and her chickens. . .

Is that Glenn Beck riding that white-ish horse: the story of The O'Keefe Sting that at Least Partially Wasn't . . .

2011-03-15T10:07:00.004-04:00

Not since prideful Elizabeth Bennett accepted help from prejudiced Mr. Darcy, has there been such a satisfyingly bamboozling alliance.

NPR's humiliated (and "rickety") management, caught last week in a front-page making James O'Keefe gotcha sting, has been partially vindicated by . . . Glenn Beck! Or at least the journalistic wing of Glenn Beck's enterprises, which he calls The Blaze.

Holy Jane Austen!

Here's a bit of back-story on The Blaze/O'Keefe/NPR affair.

When The Blaze launched in September of 2010, Mr. Beck had this to say about his website's name:

The image of flame is powerful. It has long stood for a burning truth. A truth that is not consumed. The Blaze will pursue truth. Of course we will make mistakes. Honest mistakes. And we’ll be quick with corrections. We intend to earn your trust and keep it day in and day out with hard work and a lot of transparency.

And don’t expect everything to be deadly serious. Boring is bad. We intend to have plenty of fun.

We’ve put together a solid team of writers and reporters. I intend to keep them busy by sending a zillion story ideas at all hours.

Hmmmmmm. Okay. Pretty high-falutin' morality from the man who commented as forest fires raged in California:

"I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today."

Zip forward to last week. The story of O'Keefe's NPR sting on hapless Ron Schiller breaks big-time, garnering all kinds of splashy, front-page news coverage on both the Washington Post and the New York Times. At the time, I noted Glenn Beck's comments that included this rather diabolically gleeful description of the stingee, former NPR executive Ron Schiller:

"... this guy Schiller is not a leader of anything. He's a coward. He's an effeminate little waif sitting up there waxing eloquent about how woe is the country because not everybody is as smart as he is -- while he's being duped! He's in the middle of being duped here by a couple of people who have set him up royally. ..."

David Folkenflik

I tend to give myself a break from the news on Sunday, so the next major development I became aware of came yesterday, when I heard David Folkenflik's report on Morning Edition. According to research done by the staff at Glenn Beck's The Blaze, Mr. Fokenflik tells us, the O'Keefe sting tape had been seriously edited. Some of the statements on it are presented completely out of context. Thus, in many minds, the tape is a partial lie: David quotes Al Tompkins:

Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member for broadcasting and online at the Poynter Institute, says to David that he tells his children there are "two ways to lie. One is to tell me something that didn't happen. And the other is not to tell me something that did happen." After comparing O'Keefe's edited tape to the longer version, "I think that they employed both techniques in this," Tompkins says.

One "big warning flag" Tompkins saw in the shorter tape was the way it made it appear that Schiller had laughed and commented "really, that's what they said?" after being told that the fake Muslim group advocates for sharia law. In fact, the longer tape shows that Schiller made that comment during an "innocuous exchange" that had nothing to do with the supposed group's position on sharia law, David reports.

Wow! Glenn Beck providing a soupçon of vindication for the antics of NPR's senior management! Off I go to The Blaze (for the first time ever, I blush to admit), where I read* this posted by Blaze Editor-in-Chief Scott Baker,

Plenty of readers felt the new NPR exposé justified any ethical misgivings involved in producing it. Others felt that those seeking truths should hold to higher standards.

When undercover video like the NPR story first surfaces, we often look to see if there is raw video of the material used to produce the report as a basis for evaluating the accuracy of the representations made.

And we decided to do that in this case.

Pam Key

The Blaze’s Pam Key, who produces most of our original videos, is experienced in reviewing hours and hours of raw audio/video to find key sections that can then be used in proper context.

Her review of the NPR exposé identifies a number of areas to examine.

Do these areas reveal problematic editing choices? Are assertions made in the video misleading? Are the tactics used by the video producers unethical?

Clearly the NPR executives, particularly Ron Schiller, show poor and, at times, despicable judgment. Do any of the revelations from the raw video ameliorate that? Do [sic] their wrongdoing justify any wrongdoing by the video producers?

These are sometimes difficult matters to consider, especially for those who are pleased with the outcomes produced by the release of video reports like this; however, the ethical implications can be significant. And as we say around The Blaze watercooler…the truth has no agenda. Perspective and context are essential elements in bringing truth to the forefront. To exclude or alter them can obscure truths rather than reveal them.

Glenn Beck does have a point, doesn't he, from his perch (at least for the moment) atop the High Moral Ground? I like that he admits that plenty of his readers would delight in anything that helps take down NPR.

I find nothing about this story on the front page of either yesterday's Washington Post or New York Times.

Of course, quite a lot has happened since the story of the sting was plastered all over those papers' front pages.

Yesterday afternoon Andy Schmookler (of blog and Civic Soapbox fame) sent me a link to an article in the Huffington Post, which did cover the story.

The Blaze's partial unraveling of the O'Keefe undercover sting did garner considerable blog coverage -- which The Blaze has conveniently compiled on its site. There I found a reference to NYTimes Editor Patrick LaForge's tweet that "seems to hint at one of the most common reactions: bewilderment over why, out of all the sites out there, we were one of the only ones to take the time to comb through the video and ask tough questions."

The Blaze also re-posts the following:

“It’s either depressing or sort of wonderful that Glenn Beck’s The Blaze was the one to catch some really serious, dishonest lily-gilding in the NPR sting,” Politico’s Ben Smith writes on his blog from Friday, adding a mild mea culpa: “I regret having, even in what I thought was a cautious way, picked up the story.”

I do wonder why the story of The Sting That at Least Partially Wasn't didn't (as far as I can tell) make the front pages of two of the big city newspapers that spent days covering that same sting when it was. Did NPR simply get bumped off the front page by Japan? Did mainstream newspapers simply not know what to do with a story broken by Glenn Beck? Were they unwilling to say, as Politico's Ben Smith put it, that they regretted having gone with such a flawed story with so much gusto?

You got any thoughts?

* This site also contains the edited and raw tape of the O'Keefe sting, should you care to compare the two.

One world

2011-03-14T09:11:00.003-04:00

All the other news today seems so – so small, next to the news from Japan. I cannot stop thinking about how, while my life trundles on in its pleasantly cocoon-like, middle-class rut, the lives of thousands, maybe millions, of Japanese have been reduced to a long-odds struggle for survival. And that the difference between those people's Monday mornings and mine is an arbitrary shake of the earth.

This post is about what those weekend thoughts made me feel. I rarely write about personal feelings in this blog, but today I'm going to.

As I'm sure you noticed, it was beautiful here in WMRA Land; warm enough and calm enough on Saturday and Sunday to get outside and do some serious early-spring weeding. Here is a picture of me in my back yard yesterday.

Below is a picture of a Japanese woman around my age, presumably taken this weekend, maybe in her backyard.

What I want very hard to keep in mind today, and tomorrow, and for a long, long time, is that I share a world with that woman.

I also want to keep in mind that hovering and happening nuclear meltdowns threaten the viability of life in Japan. The unfolding nuclear disaster there is science fiction made real; and it makes me feel subhuman to pretend for a moment that anything else matters in the same way that situation matters.

NHK, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An explosion Monday at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station blew the roof off the containment building of reactor No. 3, right. Reactor No. 1’s containment building, left, was damaged in an explosion on Saturday.

Here's an update on the nuclear situation from this morning's New York Times:

As the scale of Japan’s nuclear crisis begins to come to light, experts in Japan and the United States say the country is now facing a cascade of accumulating problems that suggest that radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months.

The emergency flooding of two stricken reactors with seawater and the resulting steam releases are a desperate step intended to avoid a much bigger problem: a full meltdown of the nuclear cores in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. On Monday, an explosion blew the roof off the second reactor, not damaging the core, officials said, but presumably leaking more radiation.

So far, Japanese officials have said the melting of the nuclear cores in the two plants is assumed to be “partial,” and the amount of radioactivity measured outside the plants, though twice the level Japan considers safe, has been relatively modest.

But Pentagon officials reported Sunday that helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates — still being analyzed, but presumed to include cesium-137 and iodine-121 — suggesting widening environmental contamination.

So there we are. At the moment. And you and I will just have to wait to know where things stand tonight, tomorrow, and for the rest of a long, long time.

Such impersonally cataclysmic occurrences always make me think of the day in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was killed.

I was holed up in an isolated boarding school in Massachusetts. Rumors of Kennedy’s assassination had gone flying around Northfield School for Girls all afternoon, but I’d paid them no attention – rumors were always flying around my boarding school. Then I saw the school’s flag lowered to half-mast and knew this particular rumor was true. I also knew that a far-away action had irrevocably changed the world. Meaning my personal world, isolated as it was by its remoteness and an insular intellectual focus. It was probably the first time I realized that we humans are inescapably intertwined.

What I also remember about that day is how passionately I wanted to do something to help, and how I couldn’t think of anything at all useful to do. The world had been severely wounded, and I had no power to help it heal. I have never, before or since, felt quite so emotionally isolated and impotent as I did that day at Northfield.

Over the weekend, I found found myself feeling quite differently to the post-earthquake/tsunami situation in Japan; to the realization that the world is enduring what I can only (old hippie that I am) describe as another jolt of cosmic mayhem. Instead of feeling emotionally isolated by this physically far-removed disaster, I've felt united – with the Japanese, with you, with everyone else who gives a damn about something other than her/his own survival as one of the fittest.

The reality is that those of us without specific disaster expertise probably can’t really help Japan or its people in any way other than to give a few bucks, but you and I can help the world by simply resolving to live more decently; to be as kind and useful as we can toward everyone who comes our way. We can resolve to do more quiet good in this troubled, obstreperous, mendacious world; to tone down the mean-spirited shouting we do about stuff that doesn't seem to matter nearly as much this Monday morning as it did last Monday morning.

I feel so strongly today (and most days, actually) that the hard truth is we can only do what we can do to help the world be a kinder, more helpful place, but we must take care to do that. We simply must.

An open letter from journalists at NPR

2011-03-11T07:52:00.001-05:00

Martha note: This letter was in this morning's Washington Post. It meant a lot to me, as someone who works as a public radio journalist, and I just thought I'd pass it along.

The text of Cathy Rec's Civic Soapbox, "Personal Problems," is posted immediately below the letter.

Thursday, March 10, 2011; 8:17 PM

Below is the full text of an open letter signed by journalists at National Public Radio.

Dear Listeners and Supporters,

We, and our colleagues at NPR News, strive every day to bring you the highest quality news programs possible. So, like you, we were appalled by the offensive comments made recently by NPR's now former Senior Vice President for Development. His words violated the basic principles by which we live and work: accuracy and open-mindedness, fairness and respect.

Those comments have done real damage to NPR. But we're confident that the culture of professionalism we have built, and the journalistic values we have upheld for the past four decades, will prevail. We are determined to continue bringing you the daily journalism that you've come to expect and rely upon: fair, fact-based, in-depth reporting from at home and around the world.

With your support we have no doubt NPR will come out of this difficult period stronger than ever.

Thank you,

Robert Siegel
Michele Norris
Melissa Block
Renee Montagne
Scott Simon
Liane Hansen
Guy Raz
Michel Martin
Neal Conan
Susan Stamberg
Nina Totenberg
Linda Wertheimer
Daniel Zwerdling
John Ydstie
Richard Harris
Tom Gjelten
Howard Berkes
Mike Shuster
Laura Sullivan
Lynn Neary
Jacki Lyden
Mara Liasson
Cokie Roberts
John Burnett

Personal Problems, a Civic Soapbox essay by Cathy Rec

2011-03-11T07:22:00.004-05:00

Martha note: In the wake of this week's final Discovery flight, Cathy Rec reflects upon her own brush with the 1986 Challenger explosion.

I’m on the Civic Soapbox today to speak on Personal Problems. Everybody has them. Everybody has different ways of dealing with them. And the reason I decided to talk about this issue at this particular time was because of January’s anniversary stories of the Challenger Disaster. How these fit together is my story:

I was working for AT&;T in downtown Houston, Texas on January 28, 1986, the day we lost the shuttle. And I did say “the day WE lost the shuttle,” because I was born in Houston and grew up in the suburbs in and around Johnson Space Center. I went to church with people who worked there and hung out with their kids. NASA was a major part of my life and my friends and co-workers at AT&T that day were heavily involved with the post-accident broadcasts, as this was the time when AT&;T handled much of the television broadcasts for Houston. I had to watch the explosion over and over again all that day. That’s the back story.

Well, 1986 was a big year for me in other ways. I was married and had my first baby that year and had a great job that was taking very good care of me. I thought I had a great future in front of me. But by 1989, I had a second child, my marriage was not doing well and AT&T was laying me off. Even my second line supervisor knew I was in trouble, since I had been working for the company for 15 years and really had no other skills. He referred me to his therapist who sent me to group therapy – right down the street from Johnson Space Center!

I have to admit that I felt like the most pitiful person on the planet. I had two babies, no husband and no job. I was mad as hell and blamed the world for what was happening to me. There were other people in my group with their own major problems, drugs, abuse, and alcohol – the usual suspects. Then one evening a woman walks in, dressed impeccably, and drives away in her Mercedes Benz!

I HATED her! What on earth could she possibly have a problem with!? She would complain a bit about her mom, but nothing more major than that. I would steam every time I saw her. How could she possibly be as bad off as the rest of us? Then her last day in session came and the counselor asked if the mystery woman’s identity could finally be revealed. And since we all took a vow of secrecy, I will not be able to give you her exact name, but you don’t need to know it to get the point … she was a Challenger widow.

That’s all I needed to know … and wanted to kick myself for all my evil thoughts. It was on that day that my own problems feel into perspective, and even though I didn’t have her monetary security, my husband wasn’t killed in front of the whole world!

Now I STILL have problems and life has never gone back to being as perfect as I thought it was in 1986, but every once and awhile I remember that day and think, “No matter how bad you think you have it, there is always someone, somewhere who is worse off than you.”

Now for the disclaimer: Many people have hard lives because of medical reasons, and I am not discounting that. They are not going to be able to pull themselves up with that thought. And I know I’m sounding a bit Pollyanna-ish, but it’s what helps me get through some days - not all, by some - and it’s what I believe. Maybe it will help someone else as well. I hope so.

-- Cathy Rec lives close to Quicksburg, where she is self employed as a computer technician and does a little bookkeeping as well.

Putting a face on that "no" vote in Wisconsin. . .

2011-03-10T08:57:00.008-05:00

The Battle of Bargaining Rights ended last night in Wisconsin.

This morning's New York Times describes what happened this way:

The Republicans control the Senate but had been blocked from voting on the issue after Senate Democrats left the state last month to prevent a quorum. But the Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday to force the collective bargaining measure through: they removed elements of Governor Walker’s bill that were technically related to appropriating funds, thus lifting a requirement that 20 senators be present for a vote. In the end, the Senate’s 19 Republicans approved the measure, 18 to 1, without any debate on the floor or a single Democrat in the room.

That single "no" vote intrigued me. It takes guts at any age to be the only person who won't go along. So who was he/she who dared to dissent?

He is Dale Schultz, born in Madison, currently living in Richland Center, Wisconsin. A farm manager and real estate broker, Mr. Schultz has represented Wisconsin's 17th Senate District since 1991. He has spent the last few weeks encouraging his fellow Republicans to be slightly less intransigent on their position that state employees be stripped of their collective bargaining rights; i.e. he was willing to compromise with Democrats.

Dale Schultz voting "no"

Mr. Schultz issued the following statement after his dissenting vote last night:

As someone who as spent the better part of the last four weeks working toward and hoping for a compromise, this is a difficult night.

I've had the honor and privilege of representing folks in Southwest and South Central Wisconsin for 28 years, and where I come from ‘compromise' isn't a dirty word.

I've received tens of thousands of e-mails, thousands of phone calls and letters, and spent hours meeting with thousands of citizens in my district. I've heard personal and heartfelt stories of friends and neighbors, and they ask for just two things.

First, be inclusive by listening and working with your colleagues on both sides of the aisle to reach a compromise which addresses our fiscal crisis. Second, public employees are willing to make sacrifices on things like wages and benefits, but we need to preserve collective bargaining as a tool which has helped keep labor peace in this state for decades.

Ultimately, I voted my conscience which I feel reflects the core beliefs of the majority of voters who sent me here to represent them.

I look forward to working with my colleagues in the days ahead as we now need to join together to work through what promises to be a difficult budget.

The gallery reaction to those18 other Republican senators' maneuver was reported in this morning's Idaho Statesman:

"You are cowards!" spectators in the Senate gallery screamed as lawmakers voted. Within hours, a crowd of a few hundred protesters inside the Capitol had grown to an estimated 7,000, more than had been in the building at any point during weeks of protests.

"The whole world is watching!" they shouted as they pressed up against the heavily guarded entrance to the Senate chamber.

Gallery view of last night's vote courtesy Madison.com

The Wisconsin State Journal reported:

Thousands of protesters rushed to the state Capitol Wednesday night, forcing their way through doors, crawling through windows and jamming corridors, as word spread of hastily called votes on Gov. Scott Walker's controversial bill limiting collective bargaining rights for public workers.

While State Senator Dale Schultz' vote may have been lonely, it really wasn't a surprise. On February 22nd, the Wall Street Journal reported that he had floated a compromise proposal "...in the Republican caucus early last week, [that] calls for most collective bargaining rights of public-employee unions to be eliminated—per Mr. Walker's bill—but then reinstated in 2013. ..." In that same article, the WSJ described Mr. Schultz as having " ... earned a reputation for working across party lines and was endorsed in his 2010 re-election bid by the state's largest teachers' employee union. He won with nearly 65% of the vote."

So how have his Republican senate colleagues reacted to Dale Schultz' flirtations with compromise and his decision last night to vote "no"? And how's Mr. Schultz viewed by the state's Republican party, outside the Senate halls? Greg Sargent writes in this morning's Washington Post's "The Plum Line:"

Here's a pretty good indicator of just how resistant Republicans allied with Governor Scott Walker have become to reaching a compromise of any kind with labor and Dems to end the standoff in Wisconsin over the Governor's proposal to roll back public employee bargaining rights.
I'm told that some Republicans in the state senate were so angry at fellow Republican senator Dale Schultz for proposing a modest compromise with unions and senate Dems that they actually threatened at a private meeting to kick him out of the state senate GOP caucus.
This comes to me by way of a source close to the situation. While the idea didn't go anywhere, and it didn't appear to have the support of Wisconsin GOP leaders, it shows how high tensions are running among Wisconsin Republicans who are under heavy pressure from unions, Dems and mass demonstrations to break with Walker.

So how did Dale Schultz come to be the only Republican Senator in Wisconsin willing to support compromising with Democrats? In a March 3rd radio interview on WEKZ-AM (1260) in Monroe, Wisconsin, Mr. Schultz said, among other things that:

Both political parties have a tendency, at least in these days, to kind of overreach, and people are tired of it, I think. ... I'm proud to be a Republican. I've been a Republican for 40 years. I want to do good things. But I also know that each political party needs people that are going to hold them to the highest standard.

Politics as a willingness to compromise. Hmmmmmm ...

It made me think back to a weekend seminar on the Constitution I attended last year at Montpelier's Center for the Constitution. I came out of that seminar impressed with how dependent the success of our American form of democracy has been from the get-go on the ability of measured, intelligent, informed lawmakers to compromise. I think it's safe to say that the American Constitution resulted from our much ballyhooed Founding Fathers' much less ballyhooed willingness to compromise.

Reading about Wisconsin Senator Dale Schultz this morning, I was glad to know that there is still at least one Wisconsin lawmaker who remembers that.

The bad apple's dirty laundry, thoroughly and publicly washed . . .

2011-03-09T09:35:00.008-05:00

It occurred to me that before I took a look at reaction to Ron Schiller's now-infamous lunch conversation, I should first report what the man said. This was lifted from npr.org's constantly updated blog, two-way, which covers breaking news.:

Ron Schiller, at THE lunch

NPR's soon-to-be-departing senior vice president for fundraising Ron Schiller is seen and heard on a videotape released this morning telling two men who were posing as members of a fictitious Muslim Education Action Center Trust that:

— "The Tea Party is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian

— I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move."

— "Tea Party people" aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."

— "I think what we all believe is if we don't have Muslim voices in our schools, on the air ... it's the same thing we faced as a nation when we didn't have female voices." In the heavily edited tape, that comment followed Schiller being told by one of the men that their organization "was originally founded by a few members of the Muslim Brotherhood in America." There's no sign in the edited tape that Schiller reacted in any way after being told of the group's alleged connection to an Islamic group that appeared to be connected with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

— That NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding," a position in direct conflict with the organization's official position.

Schiller is also heard laughing when one of the men jokes that NPR should be known as "National Palestinian Radio."

There was also a David Folkenflik story last night on All Things Considered, and Larry Abramson reports about it today on Morning Edition. NPR has pledged to cover continue following developments.

Early last evening, Slate reported:

NPR has released more statements. First, Schiller walks the plank and says he resigned.
While the meeting I participated in turned out to be a ruse, I made statements during the course of the meeting that are counter to NPR’s values and also not reflective of my own beliefs. I offer my sincere apology to those I offended. I resigned from NPR, previously effective May 6th, to accept another job. In an effort to put this unfortunate matter behind us, NPR and I have agreed that my resignation is effective today
Next, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller -- no relation -- tries to wrap a bow around this.
Ron Schiller’s remarks are contrary to what NPR stands for and deeply distressing to reporters, editors and others who bring fairness, civility and respect for a wide variety of viewpoints to their work every day.

So here are a sprinkling of conservative reactions to the "Mr. Schilller Does Lunch" video . . .

Cybercast News Service (CSN, founded as Conservative News Service) reports this reaction from Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group:

Leo Brent Bozell III

“NPR hates Middle America, plain and simple,” said Bozell in his statement. “This week’s utterances from NPR officials underline that these taxpayer-funded bureaucrats loathe most of the taxpayers who feather their comfortable nest. Their contempt for ‘scary’ Middle Americans belies their ridiculous claims of concern for rural stations and their absurd declaration that somehow NPR is the epitome of fairness and balance.”

No wonder the radical left-wing billionaire George Soros has funneled $1.8 million into NPR,” said Bozell. “They are doing his bidding and calling it ‘news.’”

Rush Limbaugh played the tape of Mr. Shiller's lunch conversation live on his radio program yesterday, sprinkling in such comments as

Rush Limbaugh

"... this guy Schiller is not a leader of anything. He's a coward. He's an effeminate little waif sitting up there waxing eloquent about how woe is the country because not everybody is as smart as he is -- while he's being duped! He's in the middle of being duped here by a couple of people who have set him up royally. ..."

"...That is what's gonna come back and bite his tiny little geisha ah -- uh, butt. We'd be better off without federal funding. Ha! Now, he's out there admitting it, but his excuse will be, "Well, look, I'm trying to separate $5 million from these guys." Of course I'm gonna tell 'em -- but this, behind closed doors, this is what's gonna gnaw at this guy's geisha butt, I guarantee you. You're listening here to the intellectual Ron Schiller. ..."

Fox News reported that:

Jenny Beth Martin

The Tea Party Patriots slammed NPR for the Schiller comments Tuesday, calling on Congress to de-fund the radio network in light of the remarks.

"Mr. Schiller's latest comments provoke a larger question -- how long will we as a nation be willing to tolerate the arrogance of the self-appointed ruling elite?" Tea Party Patriots coordinator Jenny Beth Martin said in a statement.

Talking Points Memo, TPM, ("commentary on political events from a politically left perspective, by Joshua Micah Marshall") reported in its story, "Tea Party Patriots Rally Against NPR," that:

In addition to his comments on the Tea Party, Schiller is shown in the video saying that NPR does not need federal funding, which the Patriots argue demonstrates that House Republican efforts to cut the news organization's funds are on the mark.

"Mr. Schiller himself candidly admits in the video that NPR doesn't need federal funding, and welcomes the opportunity to slant their reporting without the oversight of the taxpayer," Mark Meckler, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots wrote in an e-mail to supporters today. "At a time when the country is upside down by more than a trillion dollars, can we really afford to provide huge subsidies to entities that openly state that they don't need the money? Let's take his advice and pass legislation that would defund the clearly biased news organization that is out of touch with Americans across the country."

The House, as I'm sure you're aware, recently passed a bill* that would defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is a major source of funding for NPR affiliates such as WMRA. Without its network of affiliates broadcasting its programs, NPR would struggle to survive.

However, after googling "reaction Ron Shilller NPR," I was surprised to find that while the story of Mr. Schiller's lunch was everywhere, reaction to it was mostly confined to those who, like Mr. Limbaugh, react for a living.

To me this means that those who would defund NPR are contented to sit quietly and let NPR make their case for them. Right now, NPR's current worst enemy appears to be its own management.

The public's reaction to the straight reporting of Mr. Schiller's lunch makes a pretty good case for this view of the situation.

This was posted by imkingdad on CNS:

If you've seen the video there is no way one can justify another dime of Taxpayer Money to these Left-wing criminals at PBS & NPR.

About as Anti-American a bunch of folks as you'll ever find outside of a CPUSA meeting.

And this came from New York Times reader TomFl,

"I like NPR.

After the Williams /Fox incident, how could an NPR executive be so dumb?

Unbelievable. Another self inflicted wound."

Your thoughts?

*link leads to an article posted this morning in The Atlantic on the same subject as this blog.

The view from the top . . . of NPR, that is!

2011-03-08T08:58:00.005-05:00

Martha note: I was about half-way through my daily blog post this morning, when Tom DuVal sent out an e-mail -- which is always a big event in my professional life.

This particular e-mail contained the text of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller's speech last Monday before the National Press Club, during which, in my opinion, she makes a pretty good case for keeping NPR (and NPR stations) as part of our national conversation.

So, on this day when we're asking you to put your money where your ears are by calling 1-800-677-9672 and helping us chip away at WMRA's recent fundraiser shortfall, Ms. Schiller's words seemed somehow more compelling than mine. It's long, but informative; well-worth reading if you're invested in NPR (and WMRA!) surviving these fiscally and politically challenging times.

Particularly interesting to me is the part Ms. Schiller didn't write: the e-mail from Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro at work

I want to begin by reading an email from NPR reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro – Lulu we call her. She sent it to her editor after she and a newspaper colleague made their way into Eastern Libya. They were the second team of Western journalists to make it through.

She writes:

We basically pushed our way in. We walked across the border and were incredibly lucky to find people to drive us and guide us. Yes, we had an unfortunate incident at a looted army base where people were nervous about being photographed and we were surrounded and a photographer from the WSJ had his camera smashed. But that has proved to be the exception.

Everywhere else we've gone we've been greeted with tears and shouts. This is a country that hasn’t been exposed to the western media. And everyone just said they were so relieved to see us. They were desperate to have their story told…

In Bayda, we were led to a huge hall that used to be the People's Revolutionary Council building where the first meeting of the new local government was being held. Everyone was stunned to see us. They gave us a standing ovation and started shouting and crying.

I know it’s corny, but I’ve never been prouder to be a journalist.

Lulu’s note is a potent reminder of the meaning and impact of a free press – and it’s at the core of NPR’s mission: powerful journalism in the public interest.

This is what I’d like talk about today. What NPR and public radio stand for. How we think about our audience. The nature of our funding model. And a vision for the future.

For well over a decade, the media conversation has been dominated by reports of shrinking newsrooms, collapsing business models, game-changing technologies.

But the breathlessness over the shifting media landscape can blur what the work of journalists is really about -- reporters on the ground. Working sources and chasing leads to tell stories that have meaning and impact. And bearing witness -- often at great personal risk.

All good news organizations, whether public or private, share in that critical work. For those of us in public media, it is our only mission.

It’s been 44 years since the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act, which established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Vivan Schiller addresses the audience at the NPC

For those too young to remember, that was a time when the big three broadcast networks had foreign bureaus all over the world – not to mention deep reporting staffs, and slots on the network schedule for hour-long documentaries. Yet even then, there was concern that commercial interests would drive the networks away from quality news and cultural programming.

And so public broadcasting was born.

NPR EXPANDS ITS REPORTING

I don’t need to tell this audience about the changes that have happened in our industry in the last 10 years – let alone the last 40. The economics of the news business are undergoing seismic change. Demand for news has never been higher. And yet mainstream news organizations continue to cut back the number of journalists available to report the news - particularly at the local level.

And so NPR has worked to try to fill that void in newsgathering capacity, and we’re working with our member stations that do the same.

What does this look like today?

17 bureaus overseas - far more than any of those “big three” has today. We are opening new bureaus – while still retaining a full-time presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jerusalem, Cairo, East Africa, West Africa, China (two bureaus there actually) and other spots around the world. As we speak NPR journalists are in: Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar and, as you heard a moment ago Libya – covering the world-altering events unfolding in the Middle East and North Africa.

Closer to home: we have reporters on just about every beat imaginable - race and demographics, food safety, education, religion, rural affairs.

We have entire units dedicated to science. To the arts – to books and music.

Last year we launched NPR’s first investigative unit. It now has nine full-time staff.

We stay on the story when everyone else moves on.

NPR’s Howard Berkes is still reporting on the Upper Big Branch mine of West Virginia --- where 29 workers died nearly a year ago.

NPR’s Debbie Elliot lives near the Gulf of Mexico and continues to follow developments since the BP disaster.

Danny Zwerdling has stayed with the story of returning soldiers suffering from traumatic brain injury.

We are the opposite of parachute journalism … our reporters have subject-matter expertise built up over years – sometimes decades.

And member stations have the same, filling the growing void in local reporting.

Over 900 journalists spread across nearly 800 NPR member stations, serving communities large and small. And very small.

In fact, one-third of the stories you hear on NPR are produced by member station reporters. They define the character of public radio.

In Nashville, WPLN's Blake Farmer covers Fort Campbell – and the role it has played in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

In Stillwater, OK, KOSU's Gail Banzet has reported on the resurgence of meth labs in the Midwest; cut-backs in rural police departments, and cattle rustling, which has made a comeback in this tough economy.

Frank Morris of KCUR in Kansas City is NPR’s go-to guy for agriculture – reporting on land prices, ethanol, and the rivalry between 'family-owned' and 'corporate' farms.

Later this spring we are launching a project -- called the “Impact of Government” -- that aims to put at least two reporters in every state to examine the role of state government and its real impact on people’s lives.

But stations contribute more than just reporting. They provide critical, life-saving information in times of disaster – on the Gulf Coast, tornado alley, and the fire and landslide zones of California.

This past January, a severe winter storm blanketed much of northern Arizona with as much as six feet of snow. NPR member station KUYI on the Hopi reservation lost power for 48 hours. The Flagstaff station – 120 miles away – was knocked off the air. BUT KUYI stayed on the air thanks to two diesel generators that were funded -- with federal dollars. Without it, nearly 100,000 people over four counties would not have had access to vital information on emergency relief efforts, weather, and road conditions. That’s just one story – there are hundreds more like it.

With journalists on the ground and transmitters that reach far beyond major population centers – they provide the kind of vital service that only free over-the-air broadcasting can deliver.

GROWING AUDIENCE

The result of this work -- is an expanding and deeply engaged audience.

Almost unique in American media, NPR’s audience – the audience for our traditional core service, radio – is growing. And has been growing for the past decade.

We just got our ratings for last Fall – and I’m pleased to report they mark another ALL TIME HIGH in the top 50 markets. That’s now four consecutive quarters of record ratings for NPR. 34 million people listen to an NPR member station every week. 34 million.

In the digital arena, we now reach 17 million people a month – 100 percent growth in the last two years. They come to us on npr.org, iPhone, iPad, Android and mobile. They connect to us on Facebook where we have a larger audience than any other American news outlet. And on Twitter – where we reach over 3 million. And it’s not just about the numbers, but about the impact. NPR’s social media strategist Andy Carvin has become something of a one-man news platform – serving as a hub for eyewitness reports out of hot spots like Libya and Egypt and anywhere else that news breaks.

We are also growing in TRUST. According to a recent Pew report, NPR is the ONLY national news organization to see a meaningful increase in public trust over the last decade.

NPR’s audience is not a left and right coast phenomenon. We are urban and rural; north and south, red state and blue state. Our listeners are equally distributed throughout every part of America – because of our unique network of local member stations. Rooted in their communities, locally owned, operated, and staffed. These are citizens serving citizens.

Our listeners feel a personal connection to what we do. Not too long ago I was walking around a reception with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep. Of course people don’t know who he is by looking at him -- we’re radio after all. But as we mingled and introduced ourselves, I was struck by the reaction people had when they realized who he was. Not merely a media celebrity, but someone with whom they feel a deep personal connection. And always the same joke: “Steve Inskeep! I wake up with you every morning!” He’s a good sport about it – he laughs each time like it’s the first time he’s heard it. (By the way, Steve just arrived in Cairo this morning. You’ll hear his reports from the region for the next two weeks.)

Our listeners tell us they appreciate the fact that our reporters -- report! (In fact, as you just heard – so do our hosts.) Our listeners tell us they come to us for the craftsmanship, the civility of our programming, the range of opinions, and diversity of stories.

Our reach has its limits of course, and our coverage -- its critics. We are working to expand the diversity of our audience, our staff, sources, and stories -- to do a better job speaking to people across the spectrum of thought, experience, and background.

And we’re paying aggressive attention to our ethical decision-making -- the standards and practices that journalism at our level demands.

In doing so we hope to develop an even larger following in the country – and better serve our mission to inform and enlighten.

REVENUE MODEL/DE-FUNDING

Let me now shift to our funding model. I want to do this not because I think you’re so fascinated with our balance sheet, but because it points to the depth and variety of our public support.

It is a success story – though often misunderstood.

NPR is successful, not because we’re smarter than anyone else -- we aren't. Nor because we have different values -- we don't. And certainly not because we don’t have to worry about the bottom line. Believe me, we do.

We are successful because of the investment that the American public has made in public media over 40 years and – this is critical– the way in which we’ve gradually been able to leverage that investment to build other sources of support.

Those sources include:

Listeners, whose contributions make up the largest share of station revenue.

Corporate underwriters, whose support is not simply a transaction; they want to be associated with the credibility and value of the NPR name.

We are supported by philanthropic individuals and institutions – who share our vision of an informed society.

And finally, we rely on continued government funding. Grants to stations from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting represent 10% of the public radio station economy. It is not the largest share of the revenue – but it is a critical cornerstone of public media. [Note: it is about 17% of WMRA's budget.]

This money is particularly important for stations in rural areas. Their government funding is a larger share of revenue – 30%, 40%, 50% or more. These are areas where listeners may have no other access to free over-the-air news and information.

Modest as it is – government funding is critical because it allows taxpayers to leverage a small investment into a very large one. It is seed money. Station managers tell me that 10 percent plays a critical role in generating the other 90 percent that makes their broadcasts possible.

The fact that we have four sources of revenue – listeners, philanthropy, corporate, and government -- helps ensure that public media is not beholden to any one source of revenue. Indeed it is through this diversity of funding that we are able to maintain our journalistic independence.

With the nation facing continuing economic uncertainty, it is both right and necessary to scrutinize all federal spending. But if the public value for the money spent is the prism through which spending decisions are made -- public broadcasting stands strong.

The American people believe in federal funding for public broadcasting. A national survey conducted last month by a bipartisan polling team shows that 69% of Americans oppose the elimination of federal funding for public media.

CONCLUSION

At a time when our industry is cutting back; when punditry is drowning real news and thoughtful analysis, NPR is moving continuously forward with quality reporting and storytelling delivered with respect for the audience -- what columnist James Wolcott recently called “The Sound of Sanity.”

When original reporting is in increasingly short supply – we continue to build – and not retreat from – a 44-year investment.

As guardians of that public trust, we have an obligation to address the current crisis in journalism and not simply fall victim to the turbulence of these times.

I’d like to acknowledge that NPR is not alone in this mission. Here at the head table with me are my colleagues from public broadcasting:

Paula Kerger, the President & CEO of PBS which presents programming unique in the television landscape. Programming that expands the minds of children, documentaries that open up new worlds, and cultural content that exposes America to the worlds of music, theater, dance, and art.

Patrick Butler, the President & CEO of APTS whose job it is to advocate for public television and why it is more vital now than even 44 years ago. More recently Pat has also taken on the mantle of president of the Public Media Association - which represents both television AND radio stations.

Pat Harrison - the President & CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The private corporation created by Congress to serve as a steward of the federal government’s investment in public media.

I’d like to thank all of them and my other NPR, public media and journalism colleagues for joining us here today.

In closing…

At NPR, we have charted a vision for the future – one built around high-quality journalism, radio craftsmanship, and storytelling, smart use of social media, a seamless user experience across platforms – one that combines strong local and global reporting. It is a work in progress and always will be – but our growth in audience tells us we’re on the right track.

I’d like to end where we started -- in Libya. Recently on All Things Considered, Host Michele Norris spoke to a entrepreneur named Mohammed in the midst of a major protest in Zawiya, about 25 miles outside Tripoli. Throughout the conversation you could hear gunfire and chaos unfolding. It was riveting to hear and brought the story home with clarity and immediacy.

When the interview was finished, Mohammed asked what “radio station” he was talking to. Michele told him she was with National Public Radio.

“Oh,” said the man. “NPR! I listen to that station most of the time. I have it on my waking clock!”

I love that phrase: a waking clock. Every day the women and men of NPR get up and go out into the world to bring back news that matters to people like Mohammed and people like you, and me. That is both a privilege and a responsibility. It's sometimes good to have a waking clock to remind us that what we do, matters.

Thank you.

Martha note #2: And thank-you for your support of WMRA. It does take a village to keep the station on the air! That number again 1-800-677-9672 or click here to support on-line.

Bear-baiting, 21st Century style . . .

2011-03-07T08:46:00.007-05:00

Wikipedia begins its article on bear-baiting this way:

Bear-baiting in the 17th Century
(image from Wikipedia)

"Bear-baiting is a blood sport involving the worrying or tormenting (baiting) of bears. ...Bear-baiting was popular in England until the nineteenth century. From the sixteenth century, many herds of bears were maintained for baiting. In its best-known form, arenas for this purpose were called bear-gardens, consisting of a circular high fenced area, the 'pit', and raised seating for spectators."

How demeaning and degrading for all concerned! We civilized, 21st Century citizens would never, ever find such an activity entertaining. I mean, just look at how we rained fury down on Michael Vick for his treatment of dogs.

I've occasionally blogged about my own long-term addiction recovery. As someone speaking from the trenches, I'd like to suggest that it's perfectly appropriate to substitute the term "celebrity-baiting" for "bear-baiting," and so give a name to one of our society's favorite blood sports.

And please, make no mistake, celebrity-baiting is a blood sport. Addicts, no matter how rich or famous or talented, die cruelly and squalidly from their addictions. Whenever we find ourselves entertained by the symptoms of their addictions, we are participating in a blood sport.

I'm reacting to the obsessive coverage of Charlie Sheen, admitted alcoholic and addict, whose symptomatic sad and bad behavior has kept the American public "entertained" for weeks.

Charlie Sheen on ABC's 20-20

Mr. Sheen has been everywhere -- on the tube, on the radio, whizzing around the social media sphere; goaded by whomever's got a camera or a mic on him into spitting out whatever irrational, manic, outrageous thought is boomeranging around his head at the moment.

On a blog called "Guinivere Gets Sober" I found the following excerpt from Mr. Sheen's 20/20 interview with ABC's Andrea Canning. The subject was the actor's drug usage.

Q: When was the last time you used?

A: I don’t know. . ..

Q: What are we talking about? How much?

A: I dunno, man, I was banging 7-gram rocks and finishing them, because that’s how I roll. I have one speed, I have one gear: GO.

Q: How DO you survive that?

A: Because I’m me. I’m different. I have a different brain, a different constitution, I have a different heart, I have a different—you know, I got Tiger Blood, man.

That Friday night segment of 20/20 brought the show its best ratings for more than two years. (Since 2/13/09 for Diane Sawyer’s Peabody-winning special on the children of Appalachia). I watched it this morning on my computer, and saw a terribly sick person at bay, baited by a reporter in the cause of ratings.

Yesterday's seemingly obligatory Charlie Sheen article in the New York Times began this way:

Sheen Is Surrounded by a Coterie of Enablers

By BROOKS BARNES, BILL CARTER and MICHAEL CIEPLY Published: March 6, 2011

LOS ANGELES — Since getting sober more than two decades ago, Tom Arnold, the actor and comedian, has been a quiet force in Hollywood’s recovery community, helping stage a number of interventions for drug-addicted executives and alcoholic stars.

But even a seen-it-all show business survivor like Mr. Arnold was stunned by what happened when he tried to pull his friend and former neighbor, Charlie Sheen, back from the brink.

“I went to a person close to him and said, ‘This guy is in serious trouble with serious drugs. We’ve got to help him,’ ” Mr. Arnold recalled in an interview. “And this person flat-out told me to my face, ‘We make a lot of money from him. I can’t be part of it.’ That tells you everything you need to know."

Bear-baiting, in the form of celebrity-baiting, is alive and well in the 21st Century.

Your thoughts?

The Wisconsin Labor Dispute, a Civic Soapbox Essay by Larry Stopper

2011-03-04T07:19:00.003-05:00

It’s time to be frank about what’s happening in Wisconsin right now. The fight Governor Walker has picked with some of the public employee unions is nothing more than blaming the little guy for the big problems. The governor is trying to portray the rights of teachers and nurses to bargain as a union as the cause of the state budget shortfall. It is utterly false and designed by some very clever people to pit one group of middle class people against another.

Let’s be clear about how the governor in Wisconsin is operating. Just weeks before precipitating this crisis, the governor pushed through the legislature 117 million dollars in corporate tax breaks. Now, the current shortfall in the budget is 137 million dollars.

Let’s also not forget that this push to end collective bargaining for the teachers and other state employees does not include the firefighters union or the police since, coincidentally, they supported the governor in the recent election. It seems if you supported the governor during the election then your right to collective bargaining is not a threat to the state budget.

The real problem in this country is vastly unequal income distribution and it is only getting worse. How is it that hedge fund managers have their income taxed at a 15% rate as if it were capital gains, but the rest of us in the middle class have to pay 28% of our income? The difference is that they are able to hire lobbyists who push Congress to rewrite the tax code in their favor.

This is but one example among many that point out the inequality rampant in our tax code. Let’s face it, the super rich are happy to see the various parts of the middle class fighting over a small portion of the pie. So long as we leave their half alone.

The fact that many state governments are in bad financial shape is not fiction and must be treated seriously. It is also quite true that there are no painless remedies. We want the services we have, we just don’t want to pay for them. But do we really want to cut teachers pay or benefits? Could it really be true that the reason state budgets are busted is because public employees have too generous a health care plan? While it’s true, as a self employed business owner I am envious of the benefits public workers have, I’m just not naïve enough to think this is the reason states are in poor financial condition.

Solving state budget problems will take sacrifice, including higher taxes on all who can afford it. Let’s just not delude ourselves into thinking that the rights of folks in our schools and hospitals and courthouses to bargain collectively are the problem. They are only the problem to governors who hate unions and don’t really care to see that unions and collective bargaining have brought millions into the middle class.

--Larry Stopper is an entrepreneur and strong union supporter from Afton