(no subject)

[joebanks]

Our local NPR outlet engineered a hostile takeover of a college station. Long story short; the local classical station calved off a jazz station, real jazz, not the smooth crap. The broadcast was on HD radio and it could be streamed. I don't like streaming it at work because it sucks up my battery and I can't afford an HD radio. A multimillionaire couple came to the NPR office and said they wanted to donate millions for a jazz station. NPR shopped around different universities and the offer was accepted by Cleveland State.
Let me stop and say that WCSB was a genuinely quirky station. I didn't listen to it regularly but over the past 40 years when I did tune it in, it was always something different.
While students were broadcasting, they started getting calls that the station was off the air. Not long afterword, campus police came and escorted them out of the building. Management of NPR and the administration at Cleveland State have been not helpful in answering questions about this, while offering vague statements about internship opportunities.
While Cleveland State seems to have done the most evil, it has been disappointing to see an NPR (the good guys?) be part of a takeover of a local, student run radio station.



I am trying to get some pictures from the wedding posted separately, but it isn't working so far.


No frost in sight, but the growing season is over. I have a pepper plant with some hottish peppers that aren't quite ripe. I don't like hot peppers. but I want to make a home grown dish of Chili Colorado. I also have about half a dozen pumpkins, which are mostly ripe. Something ate the best part of my Bok choy, so there goes my winter garden.


I think my hair is starting to come out.
I mentioned to my therapist - I am still having zoom? meetings with her every few weeks, until the end of the year because insurance is paying for it - that while looking in the mirror, I've noticed that I've aged and she didn't dispute, she just said I've had a tough few years.
I didn't think' I'd start losing hair.
Turns out I am somewhat vane.

Comments

[rafqa]

RE: pictures, if you can just pick a couple of your family and send them to me, that would be great.

The radio station story is simply disgusting. Are these human beings we're living with? what did their mothers teach them. That NPR, and their own college, would treat them with such contempt. Everything is being made into a for-profit business, the most horrible model on earth. I passed it on to my ex-Clevelander friend-- he'd already heard about it.

When I lived in Southern Connecticut, every local college and university had a radio station, it was wonderful. And I won so many tickets from them!

Impressed by your pumpkins. They take so long to grow, anything can happen to them. I'll be waiting to see the chili.

Ageing--I'll follow up. It's hit me hard too. Nobody likes to lose their hair! not to mention everything else that comes in its wake...

[joebanks]

Working on a work around for the pictures.

[joebanks]

More on the radio station coup. Since I read a couple of things on facebook about the station takeover, I am seeing anything related to it on the feed. The ousted students have started an alternative page called XCSB; the actual radio call letters are WCSB. Also anytime Cleveland NPR posts a news story, it is flooded with comments about the coup. Good for them.

Mentally, I've been feeling a little better, a little less under the cloud. Just for the past few days; I don't know why.

[rafqa]

Time to bring back Pirate radio. I once read a book called 40 Watts From Nowhere that was all about it. When I was a kid, we listened to XERB at night, broadcasting supposedly from a ship off the coast of Baja California. Their signal was so insane they probably couldn't be on land. They had a rosary, and then it would stop abruptly and... Wolfman Jack! That, of course, was what we were waiting for.

[joebanks]

I don't think the authorities would allow pirate radio, this administration would bomb the boat.

I caught Wolfman a few times in the 70's but I think he was legit by that time, maybe even syndicated (horrors).

[rafqa]

The supposed boat was actually a Mexican station, so outside their jurisdiction, though obviously at this point it wouldn't stop them. The pirate radio I read about (and occasionally heard on short wave) used small personal transmitters, with a very limited range--this lady had it on her apartment building roof. Maybe we all need to look into it.

[joebanks]

Yeah, but who would listen to your pirate radio? You could do a cloying podcast.