Super Bowl Update

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

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 . . .

Benazir Bhuto

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

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.

State funding for public radio will drop by 50% in the coming fiscal year.  The General Assembly reported that it had restored 90% of funding for public broadcasting, but that figure is misleading.   

I'll try to make this brief but clear... 

The Assembly restored all of the money, more than $1 million, that Governor McDonnell had proposed cutting from the Instructional Television Service (ITS) grants to public television stations.  Then the Assembly added almost $550,000 more to those grants.  The grants are used to produce and distribute instructional programming and materials to schools, not for broadcast programming. 

The Governor also proposed cutting 50% of the Community Service Grants (CSG) that public radio and television stations use for broadcast programming.  Although the Senate countered with a smaller, 20% cut, the House-Senate conference committee finally settled on the 50% figure. 

Because the ITS grants increased so much, the Assembly was able to say that the overall cut to public broadcasting was only 10%.

However, for WMRA, we still get hit with a 50% reduction - about $43,000. 

Additionally, we are losing $10,000 that originally was budgeted for us to air messages supporting the Virginia tourism.  So our total reduction in state funding this July will be $53,000.  We expect that the remaining $43,000 will be gone in July, 2012.

I would posit that WMRA and The Little Engine That Could are cosmic first cousins. Both run on hard work, great effort, and dedication; both remain optimistic and cheerful  in the face of daunting challenges.

That hill!

Those ever-decreasing state and federal funds.

I am, of course, anthropomorphizing both a train and a public radio station, but so what? We're all friends here, aren't we? As well as fans of both that bumptious train and that bumptious WMRA?

Tracey Brown (Mrs. Bob), Carl Kassel, and WMRA's Mr. Morning Edition, Bob Leweke

I can't write anything reasoned, complex, or lengthy this morning, because I'm scheduled to be Bob Leweke's Morning Edition pitching partner today at 7 a.m. So, I've decided to just slap down a sappy little blog-ette about this screwily short fundraiser we're about to take part in again. And by we, my friends, I do mean all of us, everyone in the WMRA Community of Listeners and Workers; all of us who consider public radio an absolutely essential part of our national conversation.

So here's the deal -- at least, according to Martha . . .

Yes, WMRA, is already down $40,000 in state cuts. Yes, we're looking at quite possibly losing all state funding - half this July and the rest in a year. And yes, federal funding for public broadcasting has been completely zeroed out in the just-passed House budget bill, and faces the Senate funding guillotine next week.

What all this means is that our dearly beloved and deeply depended-upon public WMRA is possibly facing a 25% dip in revenue. Is this the time, you may well ask, to have  a short fundraiser?

Yes! I say. Yes! Loudly and enthusiastically.

It seems to me perfectly clear that there is too much going on around the world this week for us to take tons of time out of your news-listening day, for 10 days or so, to ask you to call and support the station.

I also believe that, as we are not a community of dummies, we'll quickly recognize that the station still needs supporting -- now more than ever!

I believe this short fundraiser is a great, WMRA Community-friendly idea. And I also believe that together we will raise the $125,000 needed to keep our little public radio station chugging along.

I know we can; I know we can; I know we can . . .

 I do love public radio in general, and WMRA in particular. How about you?

Are you willing to pick up the phone now, before this short fundraiser whizzes by,  and call (1-800-677-9672), e-pledge . Do whatever you can.

Yes, I was a cheerleader in a former life. And yes, I feel so lucky to work for WMRA so I still have something to cheer for!

Martha note: I'm the editor of WMRA’s Civic Soapbox, and  Hilary White Holladay ,who teaches African American Literature at James Madison University, had what I thought was a great idea. She suggested that the last two Civic Soapboxes of Black History Month feature her students reading poems that are meaningful to them. And so here is poem # 1, offered to honor all the contributions of persons of color to our nations history.

My name is Vanessa Dunn, and I chose "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou. I was in the 12th grade and we each had to chose a poem to read for our school poetry reading.  I thought this was the perfect poem. Our  society focuses on beauty on lot, and I think that this poem means being a woman is more than just beauty. We are unique in our own way. It's our personalities and what they have to offer to the world.

 

"Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou 

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me. 

--Vanessa Dunn is from Sperryville in  Rappahannock County. She attends James Madison University, where she's studying Inclusive Early Childhood  Education.

There's that circle around those crossed lines again -- the crosshairs that, according to Sarah Palin should never, ever, ever be confused with gun sights. I found this particular crosshaired image of NPR on a CrosstalkBlog posting from November of last year, which reported that "Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson today urged members of the House to vote in favor of a Republican motion to recommit on HR 1722, a motion which would eliminate federal funding for National Public Radio."

The threatened NPR de-funding didn't happen then, but maybe it's just a matter of the wheels of Congress slowly grinding on until it does. Last Sunday WMRA's General Manager Tom DuVal sent all of us who work for the station a note confirming that:

The House of Reps will most likely vote this week on the FY 11 budget continuing resolution, which includes a 100% cut of public broadcasting funding.  That is funding for FY 13, but there is also talk of rescinding some of the current FY funding. [This represents a loss of 16% of our total budget.]

Starting tonight, we are airing a brief message saying that the vote is happening and directing people to our website for lawmakers' contact info.

Yes, once again public broadcasting is back on the Endangered Government Funding List -- right there with Americorps and  The Office of Science. The reality is that times are tough, for everything there is a season, and perhaps the season of publicly funded broadcasting in this country is about to end.

I promise that sometime I'll wheedle Tom DuVal into writing about  how public funding trickles down through the public broadcasting system to be spit out as its wide diversity of programs. Today, I'm writing about public broadcasting from a purely personal point of view.

I was doing features for NPR, before I listened much, having met NPR's Wendy Kaufman at a Charlottesville party -- where I lived and where you couldn't pick up NPR very well at the time. In between rounds of a back-porch high kick contest, she and I talked about journalism. You should come work with us, Ms. Kaufman said. You'd love it. And she was right.

I  remember, as a journalist fresh from commercial television, producing my first freelance features for NPR back in the late 1980s. It made me feel as though I'd wandered into Valhalla and been invited to pull up a chair to Odin's table.



My first feature was on Ralph Sampson's adjustment to life as a pro basketball player for the Houston Rockets. It was more about the guy than the game. I was given enough on-air time to talk about the counter tops in Ralph's kitchen, which were of chest height to 5'8" me. I've always thought that this one particular detail took you straight into what it's like to go through life at 7'2".

Such telling details are, to me, what makes public broadcasting so essential to our national conversation. It's those details that, more than anything, allow us to understand what it's like to be someone else. To my mind, such understanding fuels compassion; its absence fuels judgment.

If public broadcasting loses all government funding, small stations such as WMRA will go from struggling valiantly to stay part of the community conversation to struggling pretty durn desperately. But maybe in these troubled economic times, that's as it should be. Tough federal and state choices do need to be made. My hope is that lawmakers will make them based on their value to society and not as political panders.

It's an interesting experience to be in your sixties and have attached your professional and personal economic wagon to an organization prominent on the Endangered Government Funding List. Especially when the ethics of your job prevent you from voicing your own opinion about what Congress and the General Assembly should do. It's quite liberating to realize you want to dance with the one who brung you, no matter what.

Where will I go, what will I do if public broadcasting should founder?

Well frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. Every day I get to be a part of public broadcasting is a good day.

If public broadcasting loses government funding, its most legitimate hope of survival is you -- stepping up and giving. We couldn't sell advertising even if we wanted to -- it's against the law for those broadcasting on non-profit airwaves. So, no matter how you look at it, the future of public broadcasting is in your hands.

Right now this is the pressing question: Is having public broadcasting in your life worth a call to an elected official?

U.S. Representatives in the WMRA service area: 

VA District 5 Congressman Robert Hurt                           202-225-4711   

VA District 6 Congressman Bob Goodlatte                       202-225-5431  

VA District 7 Congressman Eric Cantor                           202-225-2815   

VA District 10 Congressman Frank Wolf                          202-225-5136  

WV District 2 Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito       202-225-2711     

Hager Faisal

Martha note:  Egyptian citizen Hager Faisal became friends with WMRA's General Manager Tom DuVal and his wife, Lorie Merrow, while she was an exchange student at JMU. Now back in her native country, she works as an an English Language Instructor at Cairo's Misr International University (MIU).  

Last Friday, Hager was in the streets of Cairo when, after three decades in office, Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt and handed over power to the army. And over the weekend she sent me the following thoughts and pictures, along with a note that said: 

"I am attaching some of the photos that I have taken in Tahrir square,  which are different than those you see on TV. They show how the protestors are talented, civilized, ambitious, energetic, humorous and simple lovely Egyptians. I meant to send you this album in particular because you can only see the big crowds on TV. They also do show how peaceful those people are. The painters were drawing the faces of the martyrs. 

"The pictures that are taken at night are those of the celebration in Cairo Streets. In one picture you will see how the military are acting very nice towards people and they take pictures with them."   

Hager has promised to update us on developments. 

Martha note: Today's blog post  came in third (as judged by Scott Simon) in WMRA's short, short story contest ...

Ralph hated seeing himself in the mirror. Mostly he didn’t think of himself, of how he looked. He was just himself, a big man with tattoos on his arms. One faded blue ribbon on his bicep said “Bonnie.” Maybe he thought he looked tough, his arms thick from years of construction work. But when he passed the mirror in the Home Living section he saw a man with a gut, plaid shirttail out, weekend whiskers going gray, teeth a little yellow. His hair looked matted.

In the main aisle three young women, college girls he guessed, picked out window shades for their dorm room or apartment. He watched them sideways. They did not have guts, or matted hair.

As he started toward the hardware section he found it hard to get the young women out of his mind, and he pretended to look for something in the main aisle so he could see them again, one with long dark braids, one with blond bangs cut short. Their feet were bare, pegged to flip-flops by single thongs between their toes.

Their toenails were pink or peach-colored.

It made him ache to see their feet.

He blinked hard and headed off to get a socket for a lamp that’d burned out. Bonnie had been after him for days to fix it.

Bonnie would be kneeling now, repeating after Pastor Luke. Pale-faced Pastor Luke. Ralph just couldn’t do that anymore. Bonnie said he was becoming an atheist. He was not. Truth was that day-by-day he was filling up with something. Like that benign tumor they cut from his pancreas Christmas before last. Benign. It was a beautiful word.

Overhead fluorescent tubes burned, white light. In this cavernous space everything gleamed — clothes on their racks, towels on their shelves, automotive gear, fishing poles, hammers, wrenches, plastic toys, storage trays, canned goods, jars of olives, frozen foods.

The Walmart was his church. It was where he came to get what he needed. Maybe Jesus would have come here on Sundays, he thought. As far as Ralph understood it, Jesus was a construction worker. That was all he needed to know.

He found the lamp parts and picked one, a shiny brass-colored barrel with a black plastic switch. Then he headed for the lawn and garden section. There, for the first time in his life, he bought a bird feeder and a sack of birdseed. He put them in the cart along with the lamp socket and some groceries from Bonnie’s list.

Even on Sunday morning lines formed at the register. He saw the college girls at the end of one, and he wheeled his cart behind them. From the magazine rack movie stars stared at him, at all the regular people standing in line with their debit cards and paltry bank accounts. When he looked up, he met the eyes of the girl with the long dark braids. She stood close. Her eyes, crystal clear, seemed almost green. She looked at him and then past him. A big unshaven man with a gut. A construction worker. She turned away, showed the back of her head.

When he got home he would stick the bird-feeder out back. They would watch as they grew older, he and Bonnie, watch birds fly through the air to land in their backyard. He would fly away one day, with the birds. Then he would know for certain that all of them — the college girls, the birds, himself, everyone at all the Walmarts everywhere — were God’s own creatures.

--Jack Greer and his family have a mountain cabin near Shenandoah, Virginia, where he goes whenever he can to write. 

Martha note: Judge Scott Simon ranked Ming Ivory's story fourth among the many entries in WMRA's Short, Short Story Contest. Ming will read "Music Lessons" on-air today during the last segment of WMRA's Virginia Insight.

drawing by Jana Bouc

Between the ages of nine and thirteen, like many girls I was in the wrong key. I heard a brassy b-flat. But the string-starved orchestra teacher and my Dad conspired to put his Violin in my hand instead of valves. As I careened around the house, bows got caught in the doorjambs. They snapped in two, like dry kindling for Scout campfires, and hung ridiculously from their horsehairs. So did the ripped gathers of my dress all afternoon, after some boy had grabbed it in a game of dodge ball at recess.

How I’d chafed at my Dad’s tracking the flats and sharps from the next room, instead of the fine arc of a fly ball or a foul shot, or demonstrating pizzicato and slurs instead of pitching, a steal or a slide. By Junior High the boys had turned surly and sexist, and the girls began to practice incompetence and timidity. Gender anger ignited, lit by communities who merely beat time, or who played with matches. The teams segregated, sending the girls into eclipse, and the boys into sunshine so bright it blinded them. We wore uniforms with bows and sashes, played on courts and fields without crowds, discovering we were slightly out of tune.

Yet, it was playing with the orchestra at assemblies that could sometimes compensate for those great disappointments of the schools, the playgrounds and the pulpits. Part of a circle of notes and music, sharing the code written in clefs and incidentals, I was sheltered. I was not yet so angry with the world that the battered instrument cases snapping shut, the dog-eared music books, ripped and scribbled on, could not make defeats fade into the clear blue skies of crisp fall schooldays. At the bus stop, they were the mark of secret society.

As I grew up so many other projects and excitements, learning curves and misunderstandings accumulated over the years, that music was jettisoned with girlhood. So much occupied my mind, that for a while, the physical exertion of pass plays and lay-ups were a good full-measure rest from thought itself, even if the laughter of friends echoed off the concrete. I tasted colors and shapes, feasted on words and syntax and swallowed whole the patterns of complex functions, topology and semiotics. I left home, improvised, and repeated myself. Soon I was demanding perfection in all things, and became a spectator. The Boston Symphony or the Philadelphia; it had to be Major League, and I fell short. The clock was running out before I could score.

Then at sixty-one --the very age when his sudden death had robbed my Dad of the overtime he was due-- when I had become baffled by the accumulation of inheritance, achievement, and anger, a strange tintinitis began. The thought wafted faintly nostalgic on the crisp fall air: I could free myself from the marathon I’d been running, and take up the Violin again! And so here I am in my own house. My finger is bandaged from cutting a tomato too close. My back is sore from collecting the dead branches so the mower doesn’t pitch a dry twig and blind me. My glasses magnify that middle distance at which the notes dance on their ledger lines. I am taking delight again in the coded clefs. And when that triple play of tone, tempo, and technique combine in a sweet spot, my soul leaps to catch the fly, smack in the mitt, and my arm, relaxed and confident as it never was in my girlhood, beelines it home for the out, in perfect tune.

-- Ming Ivory is an Integrated Science and Technology professor at James Madison University. As to why she entered WMRA's short, short story contest ...

  ...when it comes to fiction, I'm a closet writer; I've written a lot, but not let much escape into the public square.   The piece I entered in the first [national] NPR contest was a fragment of something I'd written a little while back and thought I would expand into a much longer story or novel, but since I'd put it aside and never had gotten back to it, I had to edit it down to the 600 words.   

The limit of 600 really forced me to focus on what the arc of the action was going to be, and I found that I quite enjoyed the editing process! [like you said, to be a good writer you have to love the editing].  When James Wood mentioned my story on air as exhibiting "linguistic daring", I  got a big boost of confidence!  

When WMRA announced its contest, I thought "I can do that".  I wrote an entirely new piece. The size of the assignment caused me to focus on the architecture of the piece; how each image fits with the whole.  I had to be quite parsimonious about the action, and most of my time was spent editing:  changing words to intensify the metaphor, using more specific and descriptive words, and choosing which images to repeat.

This, for once, is an entirely personal essay, the musings of me, the woman in the picture to the left.

I went to work at WMRA during the waning days of the last century. Close association with the WMRA community has steadily increased both my affection and respect for my colleagues and the WMRA Community of Listeners. And, of course, my absolute, rock-solid belief in the journalistic integrity and educational value of NPR news.

We, the WMRA Community, have a big anniversary coming up this Friday: 35 years of having NPR news as part of our community conversation.

Tom DuVal, WMRA's fearless leader, put this in context recently in an e-mail to those of you who've signed up to get e-messages from us:

At high noon on November 12, 1975, WMRA blasted into the world of "public radio." 

The former 10-watt student-run station, reaching primarily the Madison College campus, fired up a 20,000 watt transmitter up on a mountain and began serving most of the Shenandoah Valley and some of the western Piedmont. 

Most importantly, WMRA became an affiliate of NPR, bringing All Things Considered to tens of thousands of Virginians for the first time.

Times passes, people change (except Cher), and this public radio station has changed as well. WMRA has received steady support from James Madison University (who holds our license) and area businesses, and glorious support from listeners. We've grown pretty steadily, changed formats, struggled financially at times (including possibly now as we await possible funding cuts), added and subtracted programs. But, no matter what, I think WMRA has stuck to its stated mission -- informing us and engaging us in worthwhile conversation.

It's 7:32 in the morning, I'm admittedly half-awake, and the day has yet to begin to peck at me like so many hungry ducks. So, as this is an entirely personal essay, what am I feeling as I type this post?

Unabashedly proud to be part of a brave public radio community that's kept itself going for 35 years.

My own membership in the WMRA Community is what I'll really be celebrating, this Friday from 5 to 7 at the WMRA studios, 983 Reservoir Street in Harrisonburg. Won't you, as a fellow community member, join me?

As Tom D. promised in his e-mail, We'll cut the cake(s), give station tours, draw for prizes, maybe even insert your voice into a Car Talk "call!"

And, most of all, congratulate ourselves for being part of  WMRA's 35 years of broadcasting NPR news.

I'd bet the farm you are as aware as I am that NPR terminated Juan Williams' contract one week ago last night. And that you've already read a considerable amount of speculation about the increasingly discordant relationship between Mr. Williams and National Public Radio. And so it seems to me there's no need for me to rehash in this blog who said what, when, and to whom vis-a-vis the events leading up to the NPR-Williams divorce.

If you do need a refresher course on what happened, there was an excellent overview compiled by Tobin Harshaw at the end of last week on the New York Times "Opinionator" column -- along with some 25 pages of comments.

Juan Williams-gate took place when WMRA was a day-and-a-half away from wrapping up our Fall Festival of Fundraising. General Manager Tom DuVal was on the phone with listeners pretty constantly for a couple of days after the news broke, explaining something that it seems as though many modern-day news consumers consider a quaint concept: NPR's code of ethics. Basically, this code states, anyone who does any kind of journalistic work for NPR is enjoined to remain publicly neutral on controversial issues.

I posted notice of the termination on the station's Facebook page, and the comments from WMRA Community members were mixed. To give you an idea of what I mean by mixed, one listener claimed Williams' firing was "insane and stupid political correctness run amok." Another commented that "NPR is one of the last remaining vestiges of actual unbiased journalism. To maintain that unbiased aura, Williams needed to go." We had a good, interesting discussion, I think -- which is why WMRA has a Facebook page in the first place.

I've not been in the office for a couple of days, but still out and about in WMRA Land. Everywhere I've gone people have wanted to know what I, personally, thought of the situation. And I think the best way for me to comment is to say that I, personally, am not going to say what I think in public. Not on the air, not giving a talk, not teaching a class, not on this blog. Neither am I going to comment on this, or any other controversy on my personal Facebook page, because that, too, is a public forum. The only comments I make about controversial issues are made in private..

Why? Because I'm bound by the same code of ethics that Juan Williams was. Airing my personal opinion on any controversial issue would automatically make me less effective at what I do.

And what is that, you ask?

My job, as a person who works and writes in the National Public Radio system, is to listen, question, explore, and challenge. And then to present whatever I discover to you in an organized and understandable way. I'm a conveyor and a convener, not a preacher. I want to inform and engage; not entertain and convert.

I believe firmly in leaving the hard work of forming your opinion entirely up to you.

Please, let me know what you think of journalistic ethics. . .

The air has a tang; the leaves have a tinge; the heart has a tingle. It's fall, my friends; high season for festivals.

Now as we public radio people are nothing if not festive, WMRA is launching its own annual Fall Festival of Fundraising toward the end of next week. And as with all festivals, WMRA's F.F. of F. represents hours and hours and hours of preparation and planning.

Our development people (Diane Halke, Debbie Reed, Ivette Churney and Susan Lamb) started weeks ago lining up both phone volunteers and the food to feed them. Debbie sent out her "matching gift" letters, asking you for money to support the Member Matching Fund (please, don't ignore her request; having a big pot of Member Matching Fund money really makes those phones ring during the on-air part of the WMRA F.F. of F.)

There's also physical and technical preparation. Next week, we'll turn our conference room into the WMRA F.F. of F. phone center. Jen Fuller of the JMU telecom office will spend a morning getting the kinks out of the system. (And, yes, there are always kinks. In fact, Jen has ridden in on her white horse many times during the fundraiser to subdue an errant kink or two.)

Diane and Debbie have spent hours wrangling with our fundraising software -- an area of fundraising I am never allowed near, because I would break it.

As for those of us who are slated to go on the air during the WMRA F.F. of F. . .

Our Program Director is Matt Bingay. He's shown left running a marathon, which is not all that far removed from what he does the month before an on-air fundraiser. Matt has been urging us for weeks to spend some time actually thinking about what we're going to say on the air during the fundraiser. Not only thinking about it, but making notes, writing out new, fresh phrases that come to mind.

For me, this involves spending time thinking about what I value about the station; why I support it; why I feel it is an absolutely essential part of my own life of the mind and spirit. My theory is that, when it comes to supporting public radio, I can best get you to pick up the phone and call by transmitting my own passionate love for WMRA. It's the same theory I use editing the WMRA Civic Soapbox; we communicate best when we communicate something of ourselves.

But, of course, there's a lot more than thought involved. Yesterday, for example, during our bi-monthly, on-air staff meeting, we actually listened to past fundraising each of us had done and critiqued ourselves;  rediscovering that we all have a tendency to go on, that we need to aim for having a conversation, not making speeches. Matt also played some new MemberCard spots -- (the MemberCard is that magic piece of plastic giving you 2-for1 dining at area restaurants). These spots feature interviews with restaurant owners and managers who participate in the program. These, along with all the "My Source" spots that Bob Leweke produces, put your voices on-the-air, which is a real goal of those of us who work at WMRA. This is, after all, your station.

Today we begin rehearsals. Yes, even though we've all been doing this for years, we still need to rehearse; go into the studio with a producer and a recording of whatever show we'll be fundraising during, talk into the microphone, and practice making the case that you benefit by supporting WMRA. I find these rehearsals absolutely essential. On-air fundraising requires a deep well of psychic energy, and, for me, these rehearsals prime my personal psychic energy  pump.

There. Enough. That's by no means all the preparation that goes into the WMRA F.F. of F., but you get the idea. Perhaps when you get up next Wednesday and hear Bob Leweke (and special WMRA F.F.of F. sidekick, Matt Bingay) asking you to call 1-800-NPR-WMRA and support the station (or go to wmra.org and do the same), you'll smile and think "Oz," knowing there's been a lot going on behind the curtain!

Okay, gang, I'm starting today's blog with a really lame, lame, lame attempt at what I would not presume to call wit . . .

Here's the deal as I, your intrepid blogger, see it: WMRA on-air folks will be cozying up to their microphones in a matter of weeks and nattering away (cheerfully, compellingly, windily) about both

• how much we all need WMRA as part of our community's conversation; and 
• how dependent WMRA is on your support.

Speaking as one of the natterers, I will be hard put to come up with anything I haven't said before. Several hundred times, most likely. I try during every fundraiser to mix things up, but let's face it, I'm working with the same brain and creative juices I've always had.

Now let me pull out my professional crystal ball, give it a good dusting, put on my oracle outfit and do a little gazing.

Hmmmmm, what do I see?

Or more importantly, what do I hear?

Wonder of wonders! I hear myself, and Bob, and Terry, and Matt, and Tom G. and Tom D. speaking words we've never used before, because they are your words!

How fresh! How compelling! What fun we are all having!

But you know, we won't have that wonderful supply of new, fresh words if you don't supply them. Yes, I am asking you to post your reasons for supporting WMRA, so we can use your words instead ours to get the phone a-ringing during the Fall Fundraiser.

I've already asked once on Facebook, and got only one (excellent) response -- thank-you, thank-you Lisa Gaudet Carter! So now, please, it's your turn.


You may post your reasons for supporting WMRA either here or on the "Why I support WMRA" Facebook discussion page I've started.

Tomorrow at 3 p.m., on WMRA's Virginia Insight, Tom Graham's guests will be three of WMRA Land's Tea Party leaders. I plan to listen.

To this blogger, the Tea Party seems more mood than political movement; a channel for peoples' righteous anger at the stubborn mess this country finds itself in; a way for people to feel less afraid that nobody in government cares.

It also seems to me that Tea Partiers feel they can draw a line in history's sands, step backwards over it, and start again in 1783.

Tea Partiers again out-voted Republicans in yesterday's Republican primaries.  They partied on in the Delaware Republican Senate primary, choosing Christine O'Donnell, founder of S.A.L.T.  (Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, an anti-lust, anti-masturbation organization) over the current Republican Representative, moderate Mike Castle.

Castle, the poor nincompoop, ran on his experience. That is not politically savvy these days.


Farther north, as NPR puts it,

Up I-95 in New York, another Tea Party choice, businessman Carl Paladino, pasted former Congressman Rick Lazio to win the Republican governor's nomination.

The results on the Republican side continued the run of successes the Tea Party movement has had this year.

Tea Party victories in Massachusetts, Utah, Nevada, Florida, Alaska and now Delaware and New York were fueled by anger towards Washington over deficits, bailouts, the health care overhaul and the economy.

I spent a fair amount of time this morning looking for anything approaching a comprehensive platform offered by either of the newly-selected candidates. All I could find is that both support the repeal of the new health care act and both support "fiscal responsibility."

I fully acknowledge Tea Party Patriot members' right to feel however they feel – whether it's angry, frustrated, scared, or truly concerned about the Constitution. Yet while I can empathize with such emotions, I still want to hear specific ideas from them about how to address this country's very real current troubles.

Saying the budget needs to be balanced doesn't balance the budget.

I see tomorrow's Virginia Insight as my chance to listen to what our area's Tea Party leaders have to say. And to ask for their specific ideas.  I do hope you will join me in both listening and asking.

We are born into this world with a finite amount of time to do both what we need to do and what we want to do.  And a lot of us are either needing or wanting to spend a tremendous amount of that allotted time on Facebook. Including me -- of course -- as WMRA's official Facebook Maven and Fan Wrangler.

Hmmmm. . .

This was posted recently on CNN Tech.

We already know that Facebook is the web's biggest time sink. If you look at the average amount of time (according to Nielsen) users spend on the social network, Facebook is a clear winner over sites such as Google or Yahoo.

Now, according to comScore, Facebook is also first when it comes to the total amount of time users are spending on the site.

In August, U.S. web users spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, which was about 9.9 percent of their entire web-surfing time in that month.