More radio = better radio.

From Prometheus Radio Project:
IMPORTANT UPDATE IN THE CAMPAIGN TO EXPAND LOCAL COMMUNITY RADIO

Hello Community Radio Fans!

The Prometheus Campaign team has moved into an office in Washington D.C. to make sure 2009 is the year that we expand community radio! The Local Community Radio Act' will be re-introduced shortly and with changes in the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House of Reps, with the FCC and in the White House prospects look good for LPFM!

Prometheans kicked off the "LPFM Now!" Postcard Campaign at the Inauguration!

With millions of people descending on DC, members of the Prometheus Radio Project braved the cold temperatures and talked to people from all over the country who are working to get more local voices onto the airwaves. Our Hope for Change comes with plans for Action and we are working hard to let Congress know that NOW is the time to expand LPFM! Please join us in our postcard campaign and let your Representative and Senators know that we demand More Community Radio Now!

Our 'Expand LPFM' postcards come in sets of four: three letters of support for the Local Community Radio Act to Representatives and Senators, and 1 that has our schedule for action for the upcoming months. If you'd like to have a stack sent to you so you can advocate for expanded community radio in your hometown, write to: expandlpfm@prometheusradio.org

The postcard lists our campaign calendar for the next few months:

*January: EDUCATE*
Educate your community about Low Power FM radio
Learn more about LPFM from the Prometheus Radio Project
(http://www.prometheusradio.org) and Free Press
(http://www.freepress.net/lpfm) where you can find tools, tips,
factsheets, and flyers

*February: SPEAK UP & TAKE LOCAL ACTION*
Call or write your Representatives and tell them that you support LPFM!
Tear off these postcards and mail them to your Representatives and Senators in Washington – calling on them to co-sponsor and represent their constituents’ demands to pass the Local Community Radio Act.
If you’d like an organizing packet mailed to you contact expandlpfm@prometheusradio.org
Work to pass local city council Resolutions
Visit http://prometheusradio/toolkit for a comprehensive organizing toolkit.

*March: MOBILIZE & INFORM*
Meet with your Representative
The Prometheus Radio Project and Free Press are teaming up to coordinate
in-district meetings with Representatives about LPFM across the country.
Visit http://prometheusradio.org or http://freepress.net/lpfm for more
details.

Bring the campaign to expand LPFM to the Media and demand accurate coverage. Write opinion-editorial pieces for your daily paper, create radio stories, blog and hold newsworthy events. Find sample op-eds online at: http://prometheusradio.org/take_action/

*April: NATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION*
Join community members from all across the country who are organizing to get their own LPFM stations and demand that Congress pass the Local Community Radio Act now!

If you are interested in coming to Washington D.C. April 22nd to April 24th to participate in coordinated days of lobbying, action, education, information-sharing and movement building contact us at
expandlpfm@prometheusradio.org.

It took me a while, but I finally turned into a "Lost" freak.

Locke: "Everything that is happening in our hatch isn't real. It's just a test. A psychological test."

Desmond: "If you're so sure it's not real, then stop pushing the button."

Our culture begins to confront its spiritual youth and cluelessness ... through the medium of a TV show with a lot of JCrew shirts! We are so bizarre!

I wanted to post the Dharma Initiative logo here, but when I went to look for it, I found that it had been scrubbed from the Internet because of copyright violations. I don't really know if I need to make a comment here on a corporation copyrighting the dharma wheel. (Especially a communications corporation.)... I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

Anyways, someone at DeviantArt.com has designed hatch wallpaper!

DTV Transition

more animals

And someone tell me why the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has to do what the broadcasters should be paying for???

Time to Send the Angels of the Public Interest Back In!

Now that we have a new FCC commissioner-to-be, I am wondering if we as a community should set the tone early, and send in the angels.

From Medialife Magazine in 2002:

"In 1998, FCC chairman Michael Powell, who was then a mere commissioner, gave a speech to the American Bar Association in which he talked about divining the public interest. In it, he said, "the night after I was sworn in, I waited all night for the angel of public interest to come to me, I waited and waited and waited, but she never appeared."

By the end of the speech, it becomes clear that he has no interest whatsoever in trying to grasp what the public interest is, or what the public really wants and what the role of a government agency is in that process."

During the egregious ownership hearings in 2002, that's exactly what the media change movement did. Dressed up in angel costumes, and went to the FCC.

Worked on the Third Circuit court!

Article here.

Looking for Housing In DC

If you happen upon this blog randomly: I am looking for housing in DC and am quite nice, social, kind, smart, workandtalkaholic (aka never home), and completely disinterested in upsetting other peoples' interior decor situations. I am looking to move soon and would prefer to live in U Street corridor, the affordable part of Capitol Hill or whatever is the closest D.C. equivalent of 9th Street or a similar place, if DC resembles Philadelphia in any respect.

Thanks for any and all help!

L.A. Public Access Goes Dark - Please Take Action

Yep, they really did.

Time Warner Cable and the L.A. City Council pulled the plug on 11 stations and 12 access centers.

Please email through Common Cause California - they are seeking an injunction:

This is a really big deal.

Georgie Woods Documentary in the Works

Thanks to Philebrity -



Legendary broadcaster and civil rights activist of Philadelphia.

New Year Cleaning!

Everyone should do a new year's cleaning. By this you will realize that even from the shittiest campaigns come occasional wonderful things.

Casino Free gets the original Dicker puppet backdrop. Gregg Potter of the Lehigh-Norco AFL-CIO who is RIPPING IT UP for healthcare gets the Lehigh Valley Hillary for President volunteer list. Antoinette Kraus at PUP gets the Dominic Pileggi for Senate lawn sign I stole. And I get to keep the picture of the bagpipers who randomly stumbled into our miserable little February fundraiser for Bennett for Congress and asked us if they could play us a couple of tunes to warm up.

Bagpipes were originally military music. It was the first time I'd heard them close up, and they were so unbelievably powerful, and I turned to Sam and said, "we need to have those guys come and play at 6 am on Election Day!!!"

Video about the Scottish Army School of Bagpipe Music and Highland Drumming:

In the Tunnel At Night

There is a tunnel that runs from center city to West Philly on the 34 Trolley. It emerges around 42nd Street at Baltimore.

I take it often. But tonight was a passage.

At night, tonight, the sleep of winter, it seemed, as I passed through this tunnel in my glass, watching the steel beams meander by in their finery of graffiti flounces, silent clothes that say nothing, that perhaps in fact I have already died, and all of this is really the underworld. That I have chosen to bury myself here, in this city, under all these layers of age and death and dust, and I will never emerge. That my whole life will be like this, this slow death-glide in the dark in this tunnel underground.

I thought of writing my friend tonight and saying I didn't want to go out because of "an existential crisis." But that was silly, and I didn't write it.

There is no existential crisis. No one should have an existential crisis. Anyone who has an existential crisis should commit suicide directly because they are wasting all of our time. I have never had an existential crisis because I love existing, and I would rather exist morosely than not at all.

I didn't meant it as it is commonly meant. I meant - is there a way for me to exist? Is there, at all, anywhere, a little carved-out space in the ceiling somewhere, through which I might glimpse the sunlight? Or bars, perhaps. A grate of bars. There is this word oubliette, and for all I know it could have been invented in Philadelphia. This whole place is a damn oubliette, except that nothing is really completely forgotten, one only hears its soft aching cries from the stones below, and smells the smell of old, old wrongs.

My First Trip to Acadiana

I figured I'd start by going to where the music comes from!

Video above, shot at the club in the back of the Blue Moon hostel, where I stayed: NEW FIND FOR ME!!!

Cedric Watson is an amazing musician who plays Cajun/Creole music... there were a lot of other tunes that were more romantic and waltzy. He's at www.cedricwatson.com.

KOCZ is the low-power station in Opelousas, LA, about 20 miles north of Layfette - a center for zydeco music. Built by Prometheus Radio Project, it is run by the Southern Development Foundation and is a part of the local Mardi Gras celebration in the Lafayette area.

You can listen to it here.