pomegranate

The Power of Radio

Taking a brief moment to pause for air before diving back down iinto my mountain of work again...

Lately, I've been catching radio in brief snippets.

Actuatlly, that's not entirely true.  I've been listening to baseball games, and realized lately that Marty Lurie does a great job with his pregame show.  I particularly enjoy "Rattling the Lumber" where he and Ken Korach kibbitz before the game..  And I was thinking driving home tonight that part of the reason why I'm so concerned about the A's current slump is because Ray Fosse sounds so worried on the air when he talks about it.

But I've caught brief moments of NPR lately, and theyve delighted me.  Here's a couple of instances:

I heard part of "Fresh Air" the other day where Terri Gross interviewed a woman whose brother murdered their entire family and then said to her, "We're free!"  This was over 20 years ago now, the brother is in jail, and the woman has written about it. Yes, she said, they were abused, her brother physically by these parents, Fundamentalists with a strong sense of right and wrong and woe to those who strayed.  But no, she said, she didn't want them dead.  She would have like to have seen them grow older, to see if they would have eventually changed.  It's funny to call this interview one that delighted me, but it captured my attention, and I've thought aout it all week.

Studs Terkel on Michael Krassneys' show.  It was taped, evidently before this presidential election, as Terkel announces that if the president is relected, the Democratic party should just dissolve.  And he says that last word so dramaticaly and dismissively.  I just loved it.

I heard part of a "Best of" Prairie Home Companion, and they had a skit where they had all different personalities play the characters in "Macbeth."  Mr. Rogers played the lead role.  It was funny, daring, and ttrue to the text.

I hear these things, and I wonder later why I don't listen to the radio more, as it pleases my ear so.  But in our inner sanctums, I think we've become so accustomed to being visually entertained, that the notion of just listening to shows seems outside the realm.  Maybe I can eventually change that habit, as I know there are some good things to hear on tthe radio.

On OCDs and Washington Nannies

Just a couple of quick thoughts, as it's late, and I just finished working, and it took longer than I imagined.

Today, when I turned on the car radio, I heard a child's voice.  A boy speaking in a matter of fact manner and then saying everything he said backwards.  He was talking about having OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and the overriding idea of having things balanced.  So, if you say something, you then want to say it backwards.  And if someone says something to you, you want to say what they say backwards.  He said it caused him to have very few conversations.  He said it wrecked his timing when he tried to tell a joke.  Then he gave an example of that.  He told a silly knock knock joke, once with every line repeated backwards, and once straight through.  It was both a thorough illustration and quite endearing.

He said that things changed one day at a fair.  His leg brushed his mother's leg, and then he felt compelled to have his other leg touch her other leg.  She complained that he almost tripped her.  He started talking to her for the first time about symmetry and how things needed to be consistent and equal.  She found him a therapist.

He said the thing he learned in therapy was "Do it wrong."  So, when he wanted to say something backwards, he would repeat it in his head forwards over and over until the urge went away.  He said it was a very hard practice. He said that some of his tendencies had gone away, but others cropped up.  He will always have OCD.  He just now has a tool kit for it.

He was a boy from Chicago, a born writer and raconteur, and I wish I knew his name, and I wish I had heard his whole piece.

Then there was a piece on a new book coming out about nannies in Washington.  All true stories, some with veiled identiies, on the rich and powerful and how the nannies perceive them.

I thought, "Didn't they have to sign a confidentiality agreement?"

I thought of work and service and the intimacy that develops between you and a client, because their work is private between you and them.  That's how I see it.

The interviewer asked this writer if she would be able to continue her nanny office in Washington.  She blithely said yes.  I think she might have a rude awakening.

Last Week's This American Life

Recently, during the last pledge drive, I renewed my subscription to NPR.

I am a radio gal.  I bleed NPR.  I have to admit that in the morning, when I go to work, I listen to Morning Sedition on Air America, because I like the two Marks, and I often enjoy their guests, and I like their closing each day--I believe it's a Top 6 list--the Liberal Agenda, what  one of the Marks calls the liberal marching papers for the day, and it's usually pretty funny.

But I don't listen to Air America much after that.  Sometimes if I'm in the car between 9 and 10 at night, I'll listen to it instead of BBC, which sometimes seems impossibly dry to me and I couldn't care less about rugby scores, but most of the time I don't like hearing people rant, regardless of whether they're red or blue.

So, I listen to NPR, and once baseball starts again, I'll tune into the A's and thrill to Bill King once again.  But in the meantime, it's KQED, the station I've listened to ever since I got my car 15 months ago, because the car before didn't have a radio, and now I'm hooked.  I know the radio schedule better than what's on TV.

And patterns are formed.  Wash dishes and listen to Teri Gross.  Clean the house to "Car Talk."  Fold laundry during "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me."  It seems like I'm always driving somewhere while I listen to "This American Life" and "Prairie Home Companion."  Listen to City Arts and Lectures, then take a Sunday afternoon nap.

So, I heard "This American Life" this past Saturday, an episode called "DIY," and it knocked me out.  I thought of trying to just recap the story, and then I thought, "Use the technology.  Let them read it from the original source.  Let them listen to it." 

So, here it is, the story of Carl King.  I think it should be a movie.

Garrison Keillor!

I listened to him the Saturday after the election.

Actually I listened to same 45 minutes twice in two days--I happened to be in the car both times for the original and then the rebroadcast, and when I heard the show beginning again, I thought, "Good.  Now I can laugh again."

He opened the show with his familiar song, and then he said something like, "Well, the election's been over for a couple of days now.  And I'm over it.  I'm truly over it.  Now I'm creating a committee to pass a Constituttional amendment to prohibit born again Christians from ever voting again."

And then he mentioned something about fundamentalist considering themselves to be citizens of heaven, and how we would be happy to grant them that citizenship if they would relinquish any rights to our country.

(That is not a verbatim transcription.  That's off the cuff remembrance, and a reminder that I really am joke telling impaired.  He said it in this deceptively casual voice, but by the end, it had punched several laughs out of me, and it was the first good laughs that I had had for days.)

It was joke night on "Prairie Home Companion," and they swung into a round of religious jokes, one after another, some biting, some just silly, and it felt oh so good to hear them all.

I listened to about an hour of  another one of his shows yesterday when I happened to be in my car when it was on.  Here's the thing about radio for me.  I still can't get myself to listen to it in my home on a regular basis.  In my home, it seems like it should be the TV or computer time.  I haven't made radio time a true option yet, but I would like to, because I would like to hear more of Garrison, for one thing.  Yesterday, he had this wild skit about the National Book Awards, where he changed into different characters--Edgar Allen Poe, Winnie the Pooh, Ethel Merman.  The actors around him can do these imitations.  And he had a choir on singing Thanksgiving sacred songs, and it sounded so lovely and spiritual and subversive all at the same time.