Being regular.

I'm driving along minding my own business the other day and Herman Cain comes on my radio and says first thing he'd do is get rid of the E.P.A. Really?
In the last couple of weeks I've heard proposals of doing away with the Department of Education, the F.D.A., The National Weather Service, the Federal Reserve and other banking regulatory agencies. In short The Federal Government.
Cool, we'll let business and State governments set the rules and standards for society. What could possibly go wrong?

Regulations are crippling this Country. That is a very popular clarion call being belted out across the airwaves these days.
Hell, I'm up to my chinny chin chin in regulations every time I go to work.
The Federal Government tells me I can only work 14 hours a day and 70 hours in a week so I don't fall asleep at the wheel and run over a bus full of nuns.
They also say I can only have a load weight of 80,000 lbs so I don't pulverize bridges and roads as I'm tooling around. What an assault on my freedom!!
Hang on, being a fatigued menace to society and destroyer of infrastructure is a bad thing. Oh dear, regulations good?
Let's face it even with regulations we can be devious little shits.
Business is always going to try and get away with the cheapest bottom line even if it means dumping toxins in the water or air or paying women less than men just because they can.
We are always going to try and do more than the speed limit because we need to. Screw public safety.
Fishermen will over fish, farmers will waste the soil, coal miners will be valued about as much as shovels. And this is WITH regulations!
You want to get rid of regulations and Government? It's very easy.
DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE.
That's it. Not just for driving anymore. A Mantra for our times.
Regulations are like another set of physical laws to protect ourselves from our dumb ass selves. We can be pretty myopic when it comes to profits and our best interests.You don't catch a river on fire or make a Love Canal by doing the right thing.
Be sweet. Do good work. Look out for others needs and the impact of our actions on ourselves and generations to come. How hard is that?
I'm thinking we might need the regulations till we get over this whole asshole stage.
Changing Government starts with us changing our minds.

You can stop me from breathing but you can't stop me from loving.

"If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind"

Personally I'd like to see a beanery where a fella could get a bowl of soup with a side of greens and bread for $2.00 and a pint of Guinness for a nickle. Above it I'd love to have three floors for the different realms brought on by good beer and full bellies.
One floor for fist fights
One floor for arguments
one floor for the hugs and kisses that come to those who make it through the first two floors.
On the floors above that I'd like a Library of the dead, for the dead so the ghosts of clear thinkers can sit in fine chairs, sipping bourbon and laugh at the living.
Studs Terkel can share cigars with Edward R. Murrow and Daniel Schorr while James Baldwin and Richard Feynman discuss Physics. Hunter S. Thompson is around here some where looking for Brautigan.
That's my idea for 51 W. Park Place.
A place to be human. Warts and all.

So maybe a Mosque is an o.k. second choice.
Before you burst a blood vessel and walk around with a droopy smirk and sinister limp for the rest of your life hear me out.

Trinity Church is just a couple of blocks away.
I would hope there is a Synagogue near by, if not perhaps one could be built or even better perhaps the building at 51 W. Park Place could house sanctuaries for two of the three branches of Abraham. Nice touch don't you think.
I like the idea of each faith having a beautiful house of worship to praise God and share their love and scriptures for a better world.
I like even more the idea that after services all these folks can go down the street and picnic together on the grounds of a park that is a monument to what happens when people warp the words of God and somehow come up with a liturgy of hate.
Hate don't put food on the table
Hate can't help you think yourself out of a jamb.
Hate complicates every little thing we do.
Lose the reigns on that horse and there is Hell to pay.

The only way we "Lose" in this case is if we let Fear, hurt and anger change our basic rules that make this country great. Criminals cloaked in the name of Islam broke that part of New York and I don't mind if the good folks of Islam want to help put it back together better and stronger.

I am an avid follower of the Devoutly Baffled. There are at least three of us that I know of and one is a fictional character but I'm not going to hold that against a guy especially when trying to boost the numbers.
I think there are over a billion Muslims, Hundreds of millions of Christians and despite a history of annihilation, millions of Jews. So I guess a mass conversion to blissful Wonder is probably statistically out of the question.
So what the Hell, Let's all try to get along and follow the one rule that is in everyone's book of rules: Love Thy neighbor, Do unto others,
Be well Cousins......

A short hurricane story.

Remembering Floyd

Dateline Cleburne TX: August 2008.

Once upon a time there was a hurricane named Floyd.

It was a giant storm that was going to erase Florida in a torrent of wind and rain.

I was in Baltimore when Floyd decided to spare Florida and come roaring ashore on the Jersey coast.

I was one of the last trucks to pass over the Key bridge before it was shut down. The wind was howling a duet with the cables of the bridge. The sea was boiling. Yes the sea does boil in a hurricane.

Physics gone wild.

I spent a white knuckle evening driving from Baltimore to Albany NY. Trees kept blowing onto the road flying out of the darkness into the beams of my headlamps.

By the time I slowly plodded through the sheets of rain poor Albany was flooded. The downtown streets were rivers of white water and garbage. The night was furious. Every object was alive dancing or straining in the wind.

Most of the streets were blocked off but there were no police to be found. In fact i was the only person out on the road. Almost.

At the top of a hill by a barricade was a man in a yellow slicker and rubber boots. He looked like a public works official.

I pulled over to ask him which way was safe to go. The man stepped out of the flooding street onto my running board and leaned in my window. "what do you want?" he asked. "I need to know how to get to the bottom of the hill safely". He looked at me and cocked his head. "What do you need?"

Hmm... what an odd time for philosophical questions I thought.

Then I noticed that even though it was dark, in the middle of a torrential rain, the public works man was wearing pitch black sunglasses."What are you looking for?"

Duh. Man was I astounded by the guys work ethic. Neither wind nor rain nor dark of night or even a full blown hurricane was going to stop this friendly neighborhood dope man.

I thanked him for his concern but assured him all i needed was safe passage to the bottom of the hill

Pride and things we love. A short story.

I'd rather talk about puppies or even cranky smelly old beagles that tell you how they really feel by pissing on the bed.
In truth I'd like to spend the next ten minutes gushing about the cutest little red cheeked Russian ever to set foot on a pitch. Arshavin is so cute I want to put him in my pocket and carry him pulling him out now and then to tussle his hair and watch him run around on his magic feet.
I know what you're thinking, "Is he Gay?"
No, but that does bring us to today's story........

On Saturday I heard a news report from Riverside California about rallies the National Socialists (That's NAZIS for you kids playing along at home) are having and the violence that is breaking out in the dusty streets of that town.
The NAZIS are showing up in full uniform along with swastika flags and taking back their White Pride from the Mud people, Jews, Catholics, Queers and Commies.

Now I'm all for White Pride, hell I thought that was the whole idea behind Oktoberfest , Morris dancing, hockey, and yodeling in general. We do have our moments. Mmmm sausages and sauerkraut.

So I'm not really sure these nimrods quite understand the concept of pride. Hard to be proud when you're shouting how much you hate everyone, but hey that's just me.

The story did remind me of a great day in Atlanta back around 1988.
One spring day the Grand Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and a half dozen of his minions decided to pay a visit to the Little Five Points neighborhood.
L5P was a perfect spot for a rally. The community was home to Hippies, Punks and Queers. A receptive audience for some down home hateful condemnation.

The Wizard had broken out his finest silky robe which was something you just didn't see that much anymore. His cohorts were dressed in snappy looking fatigues and had truncheons strapped in their belts.

In L5P you never knew how people would react on a given day. One day a person could get mugged in broad daylight and people would walk right by the stick up without pause. On another day folks would come storming to your aid like pissed off Amish farmers.

This day the"Farmers" were pissed. Before the klan could unfurl the Stars and Bars an angry mob had pinned them up against the liquor store.
By the time Mr. Wizard started his spiel the parking lot was full of hundreds of people who were not taking kindly to his line of reasoning.
The whole scene was about to turn violent which is what the baton wielding klansmen were waiting for. And then came Benjamin.

Ben was our own little William Burroughs. Heroin thin, with a gravel voice and a whit that comes from a dark journey that one takes alone leaving the rest of us behind in the comfort of the known world.
"I LOVE YOUR DRESS!" Ben screamed this above all the shouting and it was as if a bomb had gone off. Everyone froze on on the improbable words.
"OHH, HOW SILKY. Oh, I WANT YOUR DRESS. IT MAKES ME HORNY JUST LOOKING AT YOU IN IT. DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL HORNY?
The crowd started to howl with laughter which fueled Ben's propositions towards the Grand Wizard. It was about the time Ben was screaming his desire for hot oral sex that the klan knew they were in over their heads.
Angry mobs were one thing but a flaming homosexual in heat was way past their frame of reference. They scurried to their truck completely humiliated. NAZI's and the Klan don't do well with laughter. Hmm, who knew?

So it's moral time..... As much as I despise NAZIS and Supremacists in general they do have a constitutional right to say what they want. Hell they even have the right to marry, breed and raise little NAZIS.
Ironic that Ben does not enjoy these same rights because he likes men.

Because of his sexual orientation he is marginalized by both Church and State and in some states the general public on election day.
I don't get it. We will die for the rights of hateful shits that would love to exterminate marginalized citizens given half the chance but deny basic human rights to people because of who they love. Weird.You can hate anyone but you have to be careful of who you love. Welcome to Crazy World.

love thy neighborhood.

Funny how a neighborhood can change.A turn of a valve and your world is floating.
A little long time ago I lived in Cabbagetown which back then was a run down community on the wrong side of the tracks in Atlanta. On Saturday nights the rowdys on the corner would fight with shovels and picks. No fooling, it was like watching a live performance of "Braveheart".There were blood feuds that went back generations and in the heat of summer nights blood would flow freely on Berean st.
The combatants couldn't have cared less for the new arrivals to the neighborhood. We were like just plain old Palestinians amongst the waring factions of Hamas and Fatah. Stay out of the way and you won't get hurt.
This was the only neighborhood I've ever seen where crack heads would steal 90lb bags of cement (estimated value $5.00)off of someone's porch and lug them off down the street to some deranged fence who specialized in worthless overweight swag.
Over time the old mill families were over run by brave young yuppies that knew a hip new location when they saw one. The shotgun shacks sprouted second stories and burst forth with bright designer colors overwhelming the dingy old white clapboards.
The police and higher rent cleared out the old timers leaving a cute in-town neighborhood.
Then came the C.S.X. rail yard at the north end of the hood. There was always a rail yard at the north end. Hell this was the rail yard that caught fire in "Gone with the Wind" and burnt Atlanta to the ground.But it was a quiet rail yard till C.S.X came in with their grand plan. A transfer yard where thousands of trucks could pick up thousands of trailers that came in on trains.Brilliant!
The new Cabbageheads lost their minds. All the trucks and trains and giant cranes and nonstop 24 hour a day crashing and banging which sounded like the soundtrack to a Godzilla VS. Mothra movie was going to seriously bring down their home values.
Well Duh... you live in a inner city neighborhood next to a century old established transportation line. It might get noisy. What did Sam Kinison say...."Don't live in the fucking desert!" You want quiet move to Snellvile.
Of course there are always surprises to every neighborhood.
In Florida we did a sex offender search of our area and learned that there were 45 predators within a five mile radius of our happy home. Zoiks! lock up the livestock.
And sometimes you find you yourself as the agent of chaos in an otherwise happy block.
In the summer of '88 we, which is to say most of the members of our very loud psychedelic reggae band lived in a quiet corner of Little Five Points in an enormous forest green house on the corner of streets I cannot remember....It was the best of times... We were benign as neighbors I thought at the time. Well ok, we did practice in the house some times and did keep very late hours with an odd assortment of people coming and going at any given moment.
Our neighbor was a business journalist from France named Sophie. There were other neighbors but they never really interacted with us and rarely came out of their homes, at least not during our business hours.
Sophie would acknowledge us, gazing at us like she was witnessing a time warp to a hairier, freer time. We missed much of the Reaganomic revolution she was reporting on.
She finally snapped during our big Little Rascals moment when we found a pile of scaffolding in the basement and thought "Hey these look like amplifier towers. ya know like at Woodstock...Hey kids, lets put on a show." In the vacant sunken lot next to the house we built a subterranean amphitheater complete with 15 foot high towers for the p.a. and all invisible from the street. We put on a day long festival of music, love and happiness, well except for Sophie who was beyond pissed. She called the cops. They told her as long as we stopped the music by 6:00p.m. we could play all day. We had the forethought to hire an off duty cop that put us in square with all the working blues. So for 7 hours we had a grand performance complete with naked dancers and a scandalous amount of fun. During a break in playing we met Sophie up at street level. She crossed the street with her arms flailing. "What the hell is wrong with you people? You don't belong in the city. You need to be in the country where you can be uncivilized all you want."
She was not expecting such madness in such a quaint location.
But there you go, some things you can figure. Living next to Wrigley Field. Living above an Hawaiian drum school.Living in Carteret N.J. Life is going to be loud and sometimes smelly depending on which way the wind is blowing or how bad the Cubs are playing.
Life in a flood plain is a guarantee that sooner or later the creek is going to rise and the river is going to get up out it's banks and just meander all over the place. If it's where you live you gotta love it. No place is perfect (San Diego was burning like Hell last time I was there)so you best make peace with where you are and love it like home.
"Ah Loki, was Wisconsin all that bad?"

The Basic Skill.

Woah! That first draft was WAY too big. Anytime Cleveland, Dinosaurs, Cod fish and some asshole on the Dan Ryan expressway make it into the same blog you know you might have to focus a bit tighter on what the hell it is your trying to say....try again.
I'm still upset about Fred. Despite the coordinated efforts of a half dozen vets and hours upon hours of research on the Net and hundreds of people praying, Fred didn't make it. We know so little about what makes us tick and sometimes have no answers when our bodies break down. It is a humbling experience to have no control over the fate of a loved one.We care and love and learn through these times so that we may become more skilled at living a good and graceful life.

The basic skill of of caring and nurturing for what we love is a skill we still struggle with as a species.
War and killing we have down to a science. Hell on a good day we could wipe out almost everyone...at least back in the good old days before nuclear disarmament.
It's funny how hard we struggle to keep people housed and fed and healthy sometimes barely pulling it off and yet we can kill people half way round the world by remote control. I guess it is harder to make a life than it is to take a life.
Nobody said this was going to be easy but I am positive if we put our minds and hearts together we can become as skilled at living as we are at dying.
I've heard it said today that it is a dangerous world we live in. Very true.
I also believe the world is what we make it and I know we have the skills to make it a better place.
Amigos,I'm all for trying.

Gifts from my Mother.

Gifts from my Mother.
I am forever in debt to my mother for my joi de vie and miscellaneous other odd bits that make life worth living. Mom, you are a Jewell.
#1. My given name pretty much ensures that I will never become a terrorist, mad bomber or assassin. News reports of such people always use your full three given names. Lee Harvey Oswald. John Wilkes Boothe. Somehow Kristopher Robin Ludwig doesn't strike fear into the hearts of men. I am always delighted that Mom was such a fan of A.A. Milne that she would name her last born after such a gentle character. Thank God she did not name me Pooh.
Mom let me read anything. When I was a teen my brother had a copy of Jerry Rubin's "Do It" which was a bit of a manifesto on turning on and dropping out maaaannn. In retrospect it was a bit of self indulgent hogwash from an asshole but still at the time my Mom said "sure go ahead and read it". In an age where Huckleberry Finn is being banned I am forever in debt to my Mom for allowing me the freedom to sort through the horseshit and the truth on my own. Really the only way to find the truth. Let your children dig for themselves because it makes them stronger and if truth cannot stand on its own then maybe questions need to be asked.
This was a brave stance to take coming from a depression era housewife. Revolutionary if I may say so myself.
Mom taught me to believe in ghosts and the gentle guidance of spirits. This came in handy when I indulged in mushrooms and therefore was not surprised to find a coursing river of reality that surges around us as we float on only the surface of a miraculous universe. How does a simple girl from Chillicothe Mo. know such things?
She gave me the gifts of a proper tea and champagne, Pogo and Ingmar Bergman.
An appreciation Classical music and N.P.R. I owe to Mom.
My sense of freedom and all the peril and joy that comes with it I owe to Mom.
Her advice to me once was "whatever you do, don't be boring. Life is much too short for boredom".
Amen! Love while we can and embrace the bits that make us think. There is so much going on and it's a shame to miss any of it.

The end of the world and other bits.

2012?
Wrath o' God?
Global warming?
Why oh why are such catastrophes happening?
Hmmm, let's look at the facts. We are easily bruiseable animals hurtling through space at an alarming rate of speed in a universe that isn't always moving in the same direction. Oh yes and we are riding on a molten rock with a thin bit of crust on the outer edge that keeps getting folded back into the molten core AND most of the rock's surface is covered in water which the last time I checked gets rather jiggly and sloshes about when agitated.
What could possibly go wrong?
I can see the marketability of religion on such a planet. Something to make you feel a tad bit less exposed and keep you safe while riding on "Mr. God's wild flaming rock and water flume with special guest appearances by the four horsemen."

You would think being fragile creatures in such a precarious existence would make us love each other and cherish every moment we are not immediately about to be done in. Oddly enough this is not the case. At least not the last time I was in traffic. I think we tend to miss the big picture while attending our appointed rounds.Then the planet burps and squashes thousands of us and we think "hey maybe we should come together to help one another survive." Que no, amigos? Why not indeed.

I've spent the last week at home sleeping in my bed. What luxury!
Millie insists on sleeping right next to me, preferably against my chest.

I've noticed that every night she has fitful dreams which leave her whimpering and kicking. I can only imagine what terrors go through her doggy brain.
Since she is almost blind she can freeze at the sight of a garbage can or stray box thinking them lions or tigers or bears.
Remodeling the house is torture for her. Nothing is in it's right place and to her the noise of construction sounds like the last day of Pompeii.
This girl can run full speed through a field without fear of hitting a tree, rock, or brier (o.k. she does just smash through bushes) but balk at coming down the hallway if the broom is against the wall.
I can't stop her dreams but can assure her that everything is o.k. right now.
This is one hell of a ride we are on and more enjoyable if we don't paralyze ourselves with fear.
End of the world. Could be but what else do you have to do today.
Love em like there is no tomorrow.

In defense of Boston police.

I swore I would write this the next time I heard some jack ass compare the Wisconsin state employees to the Boston police strikers of 1919.
Over and over again pundits are using the Boston riots as a reason why public employees cannot unionize "lest our country start down the road to Sovietization."-Calvin Coolidge.
The Boston police had a damned good reason to strike. The Boston Policeman's Association had asked the city for better working conditions for years. Since 1904 the city claimed it was broke. Then came W.W.I and the city promised that after the war conditions and wages would improve.
By 1919 all negotiations between the B.P.A. and the city were for naught so in an attempt to strengthen their position the Boston police applied for recognition into the A.F.L. They were granted a membership into the union which the City of Boston and the State of Massachusetts deemed an illegal action. In order to protect public safety policemen could not form a union.

This is the difference between then and now...The Wisconsin public employees are fairly well paid and have benefits. Truth be told most public employees are paid only slightly less than comparable positions in the private sector and given the good benefit packages it comes out about even.
The Wisconsin public employees agreed to all pay cuts proposed by the Governor but they want the right to keep their union. For good reason.

In 1919 the wage for a Boston police officer was the same as it was in 1857. Over 60 years without a pay raise!!!
Officers worked 7 days a week with one day off every other week in which they were still on call. They worked between 73 to 98 hours a week.
Officers had to buy their own uniforms,equipment and guns.
There was no health benefits or benefits for dependents if an officer was killed.
During the Great flu pandemic of 1919 at least a quarter of the force died or was severely ill. One of the duties of the police was to collect the thousands of corpses from the flu in the city. You could make almost three times the wage of a policeman by working as a street car conductor.

State attorney Albert Pilsbury said at the time, "Organized man has taken us by the throat and has us at his mercy."
Seriously? You beat down workers for so long that in an attempt to survive they organize and somehow they are the threat to America.
Calvin Coolidge milked this all the way to the White House.
J. Edgar Hoover used this to become the most dangerous man in America.
And the Market is still using this threat today.
The country ain't broke and workers wanting to watch their backs isn't bad.

BONUS FEATURE: How bout a book plug..."The Given Day" by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River. Shutter Island). A great book about Boston and the wild years of 1918-19.

Angels and Demons.

It's not often I cry for 300 miles.
I've had breakups with girlfriends and deaths of family members that have brought on brief torrential tears but these clouds pass as the natural order of life keeps moving.
War, genocide, famine, these things tend to get me mad rather than cry. You'd think we would get tired of behaving badly and live like descent mammals. I know we can.

This story had me in tears all the way across Virginia and still is bugging me. So in lieu of a therapist here it goes.....

In 1964 a doctor and his wife wanted to experiment on a baby and learn about child development. They found a mother who had just given birth to a baby girl in a hospital and after two days of careful planning the good Doctors stole the baby from the mother.
The doctors raised the baby as their "own" daughter as they observed and documented her development. They conducted experiments on her cognitive understanding of language and the pattern of her social development as a child.
She was cloistered in the Doctors home where she had limited visitors and was always under observation. She lived this way for 12 years.

She grew into a thoughtful child who delighted in the civil ritual of making tea for her parents and teachers and other guest that would visit. She had a happy childhood.
Ah but puberty brought on changes that made the doctors most uncomfortable.
She became extremely strong willed and prone to fits in which she damaged their possessions and made them wonder of their own safety.
Her budding sexuality was overwhelming and uninhibited.
Their sweet little daughter had grown into a hellion.

In a throw back to Victorian times the doctors made plans to send her away.
They found a nanny to watch after the child while they looked for a suitable exile.After six months they settled on leaving the girl in Gambia, Africa.
At 12 years old the girl and her nanny, Janice Carter were left in what Ms. Carter describes as "a tropical hell".
Janice Carter had instructions to stay with the girl for three weeks to make sure she was accepted into the local society and her new family.
The doctors went back to the States. Janice has never left Gambia.
And for Lucy...(fuck .I'm crying again) The child Lucy was left to face a world in which she did not fit in. Why had her parents left her? Why after being raised as a normal girl had her parents left her to live among chimpanzees?
You see, Lucy was a chimp who was raised as a human girl.

I think this is one of the most monstrously EVIL acts ever done by humans.
Dr. Maurice and Jane Temerlin created a lost soul through their arrogance and lack of foresight in the care for Lucy.
Lucy did not adapt to her new situation. For all she knew she was not a chimp. She became gravely ill from the stress of her abandonment.
Thank God for Janice Carter. She stayed with Lucy at her original sanctuary then took it upon herself to find a better sanctuary and bought a small island in a river in which she moved Lucy and several other chimps to live.
It took a year of insane dedication on Janice's part to socialize Lucy enough that she could survive as a chimp on the island.
Janice Carter has devoted her life to the care and well being of chimpanzees and still runs sanctuaries in Gambia. She is an Angel.

After being away for a year Janice returned to the island to check on Lucy and was approached by the chimps and Lucy. Lucy hugged the tearful Ms Carter and comforted her before joining the other chimps in the bush.
A year later Janice Carter returned to the island and found the mutilated skeletal corpse of Lucy. She had been killed by poachers who she probably approached as fellow "Humans".

I reckon this story tears me up because of the broken covenants that I see every day. We domesticate animals and invite them into our families and then when they become an inconvenience abandon them to a cruel world.
You can get rid of an old sofa but how the hell can you throw out someone you raise as family?
This story aired on the radio programs "This American Life" and "Radio Lab".and can be found on line in their archives. (yet another reason for funding public radio.)

Axis of evil. Bob Ross and Garrison Keillor?

O.K, I'll admit Bob Ross was perhaps the most mesmerizingly mellow painter of "happy trees" in all of human history but I don't think that makes him a pariah. Hell, i suspect his blissful demeanor wasn't even drug induced. Never saw him lick the brushes.
As for Garrison Keillor...well he did have a grudge against George II, and he does wear red socks but i doubt that makes him a Commie. I think people from Minnesota are just a little odd. A cold winter brings out the quirks in folks.

These guys epitomize P.B.S.(Public Broadcasting Corporation) and N.P.R.(National Public Radio).Both could be viewed as boring beyond belief and tone deaf to boot
but by God both have cult followings and are utterly unpitchable to commercial media.
Congress has a very serious vote next week which could have a devastating effect on how we view ourselves as a Nation.
In the course of this last year N.P.R. news has pissed off some very vocal Conservatives to the point that they are rallying Congress to cut the funding for Public Broadcasting. Why should American tax payers pay for liberal bed wetting, tree hugging programing when we are in a fiscal state of emergency.
Why indeed.
Because there are millions of Americans from coast to coast that rely on 4 hours of uninterrupted non commercial news a day to keep up with all the events of the world. 4 hours!! No Network is going to give a news agency that much time to cover news. It's not economically viable. No, but it is priceless.
Add to this many stations broadcast the B.B.C. world news at night and even a truck driver from Podunk Indiana can get a good perspective on how things are going on this Planet.
Information is power and I prefer to get it as unfiltered and unedited as possible. I don't need nattering nitwits commenting on news like it is a football game. Give me the news as in depth as possible and not just the big story of the moment, how bout following up on stories that have slipped from the headlines. N.P.R. has the time to explore the news and follows stories for years if need be.

There needs to be an outlet for 16th century chamber music,short stories read aloud, rare music from Africa, odd stories about odd Americans, Jazz, book reviews,American heritage music,two brothers from Cambridge who laugh more than give car advice, and even a red stockinged giant Lutheran from Minnesota who can't sing and isn't overly funny but like lutefisk has people who adore him.
Thank God we are a nation of diversity and not bound by what is only popular and marketable. Our strength is in our unique and different strands.
N.P.R and P.B.S. give a stage to voices that otherwise would not be heard.
Cut all funding for Public Broadcasting?
I say HELL NO. Crank up the Bach cantata and party like you're Nina Totenberg covering the Supreme Court. We need public access to the airwaves.

We have some thinkin' to do.

This has been a rough week for folks who speak their minds.
Monday Salmaan Taseer, Governor of Punjab Province, Pakistan was assassinated by a bodyguard. Shot 27 times because of his stance against Pakistan's Blasphemy laws.
Taseer called the laws "Draconian" and he was pleading the case of a woman sentenced to death for blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad.(A charge brought against her by her neighbors who had refused water from her because she was "unclean".)
500 clerics across Pakistan praised the courage of the assassin and thousands of fundamentalists took to the streets to celebrate his killing of an infidel.
The fear of reprisal or perhaps sympathy to the assassin made it impossible to find a cleric willing to perform the funeral. A cleric from a far off Provence was flown in to conduct the funeral. FOR THE GOVERNOR, who is seen as a criminal and his assassin a hero.
Salmaan Taseer knew his life was in danger because of the thoughts he held and his courage to speak them to a violent opposition.If common sense and an honest look at how things stand can get you killed do you keep your mouth shut or throw caution to the wind and speak?
I reckon Fundamental Clerics see it the same way....we have The Truth and must have the courage to act on our convictions.

And somehow all this horse shit winds up leaving a sad desert scene on one side of the World and popping up in another tragic desert backdrop.
Folks wail non stop about threats to our Democracy and take overs and hidden evil agendas that will undermine our way of life and then are shocked when some nimrod shoots up the Safeway.
If we argue over ideas using the rhetoric of violence then it is only a matter of time before the more zealous amongst us take such language literally.
What we say and think have tremendous power on those around us.
What we believe can change the world.
We reap what we sow. So how bout a bit more civility?

I've been having this escalating feeling that Human consciousness is hitting a pivotal point of awareness and we are at a tricky bit of our path which if we keep our footing can lead to a great age of balance or we slip and fall into something akin to the Dark Ages. Nothing new in this thought, same thing said when the printing press was invented, hell probably when fire was first captured....."Grock, you see, whole world change. Ow hair on fire..."
But now we have the science to measure the effect of our thoughts on the physical world and the closer we look at the very fabric of the universe we learn that just by our looking at and contemplating of this fabric we bring on quantum changes.
By Jimminny there is magic all around us so lets say we knock off the evil self destructive crap and get busy putting up the party decorations.
Guess who just learned about Noetics.