NPR Responds!

I got an email response to my pointed letter to NPR over there allowing David Horowitz to offer a rebuttal to Howard  Zinn’s obituary. Well of course I didn’t get a personalized response. And of course that would have made me feel quite pompous and self important. As it is I do feel like I was a part of a wonderful effort of people who created “a fire storm” for NPR.

I got an email from Dana Davis Rehm Senior Vice President for Marketing, Communications, and External Relations. She says that “NPR News management has concluded that the quote from David Horowitz is harsh in tone, but that doesn’t undermine the legitimacy of using his point of view” She also apologizes that NPR’s reporting has failed to live up to me, a loyal listeners, standards.

Boo! Fail! Apology not accepted. The email links to a letter written by The NPR Ombudsman. After much heming and hawing and making of elaborate excuses as well as admitting that what Horowitz said was harsh and inappropriate she finally admits “Critics are right that NPR was not respectful of Zinn. It would have been better to wait a day and find a more nuanced critic — as the Washington Post did two days after Zinn died –than rushing a flawed obituary on air.” So just say that then. Admit it and dispense with the excuses.

Horowitz on Howard Zinn and Honoring the Obit

After quotes Noam Chomsky and Julian Bond, NPR let the droll voice of right wing activist David Horowitz to spew from my radio and as one person put it “symbolically spit on Zinn’s grave.” This is what he had to say “There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn’s intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect. Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse.”

NPR! You should not have done that! So I wrote a nice little note to All Things Considered and other names at NPR in which yes, I used the world codswallop. It seemed appropriate. I encourage you all to write notes of a similar tone.

Dear All Things Considered, NPR staff, etc. etc,

NPR did a great kindness when it ran an obituary for my father, the late folk musician Utah Phillips. It was a sweet, sentimental obituary done by another folk musician. I still have it saved on my computer should I want to listen to it.

My father was a radical, a leftist and like Howard Zinn, not in the party way but in a fierce and independent way. Both men strove to be a part of social movements for change and in turn became many of those movements de facto historians and teachers. There are so many individuals mourning the loss of Howard Zinn. His life’s work is a treasured volume to so many working to right the wrongs in the world. Not to mention that his work is also tirelessly researched, accurate and damn well written.

David Horowitz contribution to our society is codswallop and shouldn’t be given more the second glance when all is said and done. When those who have mattered to the world are measured against those who merely worked to be a distraction to what is really going on we will see the likes of Howard Zinn and not David Horowitz rise to the top.

How could you allow that vapid man to speak a rebuttal to an obituary? Political ideology aside Howard Zinn deserves to be mourned.

I do not think his family will have the great pleasure of book marking his NPR obituary to listen to in the future as I have. That is a shame NPR should carry and feel greatly uneasy about. You missed an excellent opportunity to not only retain some semblance of class but to also convey to your listeners the meaning of the death of Howard Zinn.

Full Body Revolt Quelled with a Cupcake

Tonight I tested the uneasy truce I’ve made with my body. Tonight on my way home from the YMCA I stopped at a bakery and bought the biggest, badest cupcake they had and stuffed it in my face. It was delightful. Sure it was wheat free and vegan so it was kind of dry and a little over sweet. Sure I had to eat it so fast so as to get my glove back on as soon as possible that I almost can’t remember how it tasted. But I know in my heart it was glorious!

After over a month of trying to tame my wild and reckless innards I have struck a precarious balance. An old flame of mine, interstitial cystitis has come back into my life. And much like the return of other old flames it is unwelcome, unannounced and a real drag on my social life. IC is why I stopped eating wheat, tomatoes, cranberries…essentially all really acidic or spicy foods. Over the years I’ve been able to return to eating something’s and (gasp!) even drinking coffee and black tea. IC is a chronic condition that Affects my bladder.

Ya, I’m embarrassed to talk about it and often don’t tell people what it really is. I just make up wildly interesting disorders and call them IC. Why is it embarrassing? Because for some reason telling people something is wrong with my bladder, even saying the word bladder is embarrassing. In fact it’s infinitely more embarrassing then talking about the regularity of my bowel movements, which my friends and I talk of often. It is more embarrassing the say, talking about epic menstrual cramps that make me feel like a semi-truck is trying to tear through my uterine lining. I’ll say vagina. But I can’t say bladder. But fuck it! That’s what’s wrong with me. My bladder gets cysts in it, it gets irritated and in tern works it’s hardest to irritate me. I suppose it’s embarrassing because I’m self conscious about it. I mean, everyone poops and cramps are pretty average so what’s to be self conscious about? But bladder problems conjure up images of old ladies in diapers. Its not like I pee my pants. That’s not what IC is about. It’s pain.

Road Trip Through the Washington Palouse and the Channeled Scablands of my Childhood

That ribbon of highway

This morning my mom and I woke up bright and early  to head out on a small road trip to Portland, Oregon (Full slide show at the bottom). My older brother, who lives in Portland, is moving into a new house. We are to help in the effort. Rather then take the hum drum usual rout to Portland from Spokane we consulted our atlas, guide books and road maps. We sought to make a rout that would take us through the dramatic and awe inspiring landscapes of the Palouse.

The Two Sisters

The Palouse and the scablands are the large amounts of land that is most of south eastern Washington State and south-central Idaho. Formed by the cataclismic Missoula Glacier floods of about 14 million years ago, the Palouse is a rolling, rocky and absolutely stunning landscape. The floods moved millions upon millions of gallons of water across the land. The hills are actually wave lines. If  you can picture a wave in the ocean pulling back leaving small ripples in the sand. The hills of the Palouse are like that, but only huge.  So if you sit back and take in the vista, you can start to imagine the size of the waves and the strengths of the currents that could create such immense wave lines.The Palouse was also shaped by lava flows which add striking rock formations that seem to come out of nowhere.

Grain Silos and transport site

The Palouse is also the heart of Washington’s agricultural industry. On the Palouse is ranching and mostly wheat farming. The small towns that dot the landscape primarily exist because of the grain silos and the trains that pass through picking up the grain.

We plotted a course which took us south to Ritzville then to Washtucna, the Palouse Falls, Stark and a many small towns in between. The highway is narrow and lies like a dark ribbon across the hills. The frost held tight to every bush, tree, shrub and stalk of wheat making everything look crystallized. The clouds where heavy with snow and before long it started to come down and a fog rolled in as we hit Walla Walla.

We made a pit stop at the Palouse falls, a stunning 200 foot fall. It was

The Palouse Falls

moving but the pool the water falls to was nearly frozen as was the foam. The deep canyon surrounding the falls was lined with row upon row of long icicles.

After passing through Walla Walla we hit the Wallula Gap. This is where the millions of gallons of water in the Missoula Flood was forced through a narrow channel. It is a dramatic entrance into the Columbia River. I can not fully describe how much I love and long for the Columbia River. To see it is to feel joy and great

Wallula Gap and the Columbia River

sadness. The daming of the Columbia is one of the great acts of cruelty done by Indo-Europeans to the land and to the Natives people of this region. The Columbia is, for some reason, so very special to me and its inability to flow freely has always made me feel remorse as well as anger and fear. There are Native elders who can tell the story of sitting by the river near The Dalles as the rising water from the newly built dam up in Boredman quieted the rapids and ragging current.

Passing through The Dalles my mom pointed out a very small Native American settlement along the highway. She has a friend who is a lawyer and a number of years ago he negotiated new fishing rights for the tribe that traditionally fished along that stretch of the Columbia River, which before the dams was a rolling and tumbling Cielo Falls. For years the men of the tribe would be arrested trying to regain fishing rights to the shores of the Columbia. Finally they were granted such a small piece of land which to settle. But the Columbia does not rage past. It slops ashore like a lake.

The snow really began to fall around this time. It was near white out conditions. Across the river I could see a train making its way along the far bank, chugging away. It made me smile and think of my train ride out here and the train ride to come when I head home to Boston.

We inched our way towards Portland, arriving at 6pm. Portlanders really don’t know what to do when it snows except slam on the breaks and go absurdly slow.

Here is a full slide show