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'ONE STATION, MANY VOICES!

COMMENTARY
Give As Good As You Get

KUNM Archives Tuesday, March 30, 2004

RealAudio

Transcript

Give As Good As You Get

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 County Public Library. The cable tv company didn't reach New Pekin.

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 first 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.

I stood in my garden, planting corn, and heard Nelson Mandela take the podium in South Africa. A solar eclipse rolled over my head and pinhole dots in leaf shadows betrayed a crescent bite the moon took out of the sun.

I leaned on my hoe, sweat and dirt on my brow, corn seeds bulging my pockets, and wept openly.

I was hearing the man who spent twenty-seven years on Robbin Island, just for wanting the opportunity for his people to participate fully in their nation, become its President.

It was a miracle, wafting through the muggy air of a miserable town, into my ears and straight through my heart.

I passed a blossoming apple tree the other day. It was half dead, so I dismissed it.

I went back to that tree recently and apologized for not seeing the urgent life flushing forth in its blossoms.

These dangerous times are scaring me. I feel desperate, overwhelmed, and 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.

Yes, we're living in frightening times.

But many things have changed for the better.

They changed because people communicated good ideas from diverse communities.

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 terrorize. 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. 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?

Please, support what supports you. Be part of the solution. Bloom.

Thank you for supporting KUNM.

This is Rogi Riverstone