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“If we can imagine it, why don’t we do it?”
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Some essays on story, community, public media, and life in general.
My older daughter, Lillie, a 10th grader, is visiting. We’ve finished dinner and are sitting around, and it feels like a good time to mention that I have finally had my first date. As I had suspected, she has a flood of questions, which I have decided in advance not to answer. Instead, I start taking notes.
A young boy molts. Tender skin falls off, or gets scraped off, and is replaced by a tougher, more permanent crust. I made a change like that standing in the back of a pickup truck when I was 15.
I ride an old motorcycle. It breaks down regularly, and the guy who used to do the repair work went bankrupt and left town. I called around, and the only place willing to do the work now is a chopper shop about an hour away where the local motorcycle gangs get their bikes fixed.
“The journalist must be facilitator, fact-checker, ethicist, but not a puppet-master”
Imagining the sounds of 90.1 and 91.1
What would you put on the clean canvas of a brand new public radio station, the first one of the new millennium?
If you are unsatisfied with the way your public radio system portrays life as you know it, consider doing the portraying yourself.
“My two-year-old daughter is caught up in a difficult health problem. I joined the Well to talk about Radio, but I found myself in the Parenting Conference late at night talking about Lillie. And little flashes of light came back– other parents, other people– responding.”