I lived, for a year, in the town of New Pekin, Indiana. It's about forty miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. The population was about 11,334: 9,000 coon dogs and 1,334 people.
We had no access to the Washington County Public Library, because our alderman wouldn't pay the fee for our district. The cable tv company didn't reach New Pekin.
The Louisville Courier Journal wasn't delivered that far. There was only a small, eight-page, local paper: more classified ads and high school sports scores, than anything else.
These were small minded, gossip-riddled people. They were dangerous; Pekin (unknown to me when I move there) is an historically Ku Klux Klan town.
I would have lost my mind without the faded signal of the local NPR and PBS affiliates, wafting over farms and fields, from Louisville.
Yet I stood in my garden, planting corn, and heard Nelson Mandela take the podium in South Africa to become its President. Just as the ceremony finished, a solar eclipse rolled over my head and pinhole dots in leaf shadows betrayed a crescent bite the moon took out of the sun.
Voices in exquisite harmony sang the previously-outlawed African National Congress song, "Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika!," now blended with the old, into the new National Anthem of South Africa.
I leaned on my hoe, sweat and dirt on my brow, corn seeds bulging my pockets, and wept openly.
A man who spent twenty seven years on Robbin Island, just for wanting the opportunity for his people to participate fully in their nation, was now their President. South African Air Force jets, the commentator described, flew overhead, spreading plumes of smoke in colors of yellow, green, black and red: the new national colors.
It was a miracle from Africa, wafting through the muggy air of a miserable town, into my ears and straight through my heart.
That's public broadcasting.
We are living in the most dangerous times I can remember. This is more insideous than Viet Nam, Nixon, El Salvador, Reagan.
And it's not foreign terrorism that threatens us nearly as much as the reactionary forces which seem hell-bent to play right into the terrorists' hands, using exactly their same tactics, but on a scale of which they'd never dreamed.
Our schools, media, churches, military services and even -- thanks to pharmeceutical companies -- our minds are being McDonaldized at an alarming rate.
I don't want to live in Pekin, Indiana anymore! I don't want to be surrounded by people whose only conversations include what's on sale at wal*mart, who's getting arrested, who's having sex with whom!
I passed a blossoming apple tree the other day. It was half dead, so I dismissed it.
I thought about that, later. I went back to that tree recently and apologized for not seeing it, not acknowledging its beauty and the urgent life flushing forth in its blossoms.
It's not half dead; it's half alive! And it's gorgeous!
These dangerous times are scaring me. I feel desperate, overwhelmed, insignificant. I'm seeing what's dead, and not acknowledging what's alive.
I struggle not to feel bitter and defeated. I work to convert my anger into action.
But I started thinking about what has improved, beyond my best fantasies, during my lifetime.
On my tv recently, I saw Gays and Lesbians get real marraige licenses.
I'm old enough to remember when so-called "laws" against biracial marriages were revoked!
I remember when single women couldn't get credit.
I was part of an Underground Railroad, taking desperate, pregnant women to illegal -- but safe -- abortions, before Roe vs. Wade. And that was in Los Angeles, California, not Pekin, Indiana!
I remember when people who recycled were considered kooks! Curbside recycling? Solar and wind power? Humane animal shelters? Those were pie-in-the-sky fantasies when I was a young woman!
Bilingual classes didn't exist. And Latino kids were tracked into vocational training, if they weren't out-right labeled "mentally retarded," for speaking Spanish.
American History classes only taught about the wealthy white male property owners. Teachers would laugh in my face, when I'd ask if they taught Black, Chicano, Gay, Native American or women's studies at their schools.
Disabled people were literally shut in. There were no ramps or curb cuts. Motorized wheel chairs and other prosthetics that facilitate independence were novelties. It was assumed the disabled wouldn't work, couldn't go to school, weren't able to participate fully in life!
Yes, we're living in frightening times.
But many things have changed for the better.
And they changed because people communicated. Systems like Community Radio, Public Television, Cable Community Access, the Internet -- even pirate radio -- brought good ideas from diverse communities into the homes, cars, schools and, in my case, gardens, of ordinary people.
They don't just broadcast complaints, either. They broadcast proposals for practicle and pragmatic solutions.
I am not powerless. I am not helpless. I am not ignorant. I can change the world.
By supporting KUNM, I'm resisting this phenomenon of McDonaldization, just as every non-genetically-modified-organism seed I plant in my garden is a revolutionary act.
I don't have to kill anybody. I don't have to terrorize. I don't have to destroy or steal property. Nobody gets deprived so others can prosper.
Supporting KUNM is a life affirming act.
That bedraggled apple tree, with its withered limbs and peeling bark, threw out hundreds of blossoms this year on its living side. And I saw a butterfly nourishing from it.
Do we want Pekin, Indiana? Or do we want Life, an opportunity to participate fully in our nation?
We are so priviledged in this country: we can still vote, we can still speak; we can still read; we can still educate ourselves; we can still eat; we can still have faith.
Please, support what supports you. Be part of the solution. Bloom.
Thank you for supporting KUNM.
This is Rogi Riverstone
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