The Progressive Voice of the Mountains

In this historic election year, MAIN and WPVM are working on two critical and related issues:

*Solving the rural broadband problem and preserving Internet freedom

*Fixing the WPVM signal problem and expanding local voices on the public airwaves.

We need your help! Both of these battles to “Free the Airwaves” are happening NOW in Washington.

We need your tax-deductible donations to ensure that our voices are heard in Congress and at the FCC.

Please give today and help MAIN and WPVM continue our record of media reform achievements!

Current MAIN/WPVM efforts your dollars will support:

*MAIN is working with the Media & Democracy Coalition and the Wireless Innovation Coalition to get FCC approval in October for use of the vacant TV channels, which come available next February when TV goes digital. This spectrum is critical for solving the rural broadband problem and providing a high-speed alternative to the cable and telco duopoly.

*MAIN is working to pass the Community Radio Act in Congress, which would free the airwaves and allow WPVM to fix its signal problem - and allow more communities to launch low-power FM radio stations.

*MAIN is working to make Asheville a “Wi-Fi City” to boost economic development, small business incubation, digital job training - and to reach low-wealth, underserved neighborhoods.
*MAIN is perfecting one of the nation’s first alternative media business models based on a simple principle: Give citizens the option of spending their Internet dollars to support local, independent media.

More on MAIN

The Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) is a non-profit, community-based provider of wireless Internet services. Since 1996, MAIN’s public-service achievements include:

*the first local Internet access in 14 counties of Western North Carolina
*the first public Internet access in libraries and community centers in 12 counties of WNC
*recycled computers and free or reduced-fee Internet access for more than 400 citizens with disabilities
*helped create the local nonprofit fiber network, ERC Broadband
*boosted disaster-recovery efforts via a pioneering partnership with local ham radio operators
*is leading the fight in Congress and at the FCC for high-speed Internet access in rural North Carolina - and the nation
*a national leader in preserving Internet freedom and online privacy
*led the decade-long effort to create URTV, the first and only public access TV station in WNC
*returned local voices to the airwaves via radio station WPVM 103.5 FM -”the Progressive Voice of the Mountains”
*unique business model: allow citizens to spend their Internet dollars to support local voices, privacy, and community self-help.

Hillsborough poet Jeffery Beam was in town last weekend for Loco Logodaedalist, the celebration of Jonathan Williams’ work hosted Saturday night by the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, so I talked him into coming into the micro-studio at WPVM to talk about his work. He read a few poems from his Visions of Dame Kind (Jargon, 1995), a book whose vision I’ve long admired, but we spent much of the program reading and discussing poems from his new (as in brand new) The Beautiful Tendons, Uncollected Queer Poems 1969-2007 (White Crane Books, 2008). It’s a fine, emotionally searching and honest, collection of love poems - when we’re in the kingdom of love, it doesn’t matter whom we see as the other, the same rules pertain, and this book limns them with a forthright grace.

Several of Jeffery’s poems have found musical settings, so we discussed the relation of music and poem, and Jeffery, in honor of his lifetime love of the old songs he grew up in Kannapolis singing, and which he feels still inform his work, closed the show with a remarkable rendition of the old Methodist hymn “In the Garden”.

If you don’t yet know his work, here are three poems from Beautiful Tendons that he read on the show, just to give you a glimpse:

TWO LOVES

This is my lesson in humility.
My lesson in grief.
My lesson in the cruelty of the human heart, my own.
Trudging through deep southern snow:
finding both of your faces frozen in the white.
Sparrows still singing in the shrubbery.

I could not say it then.
I cannot say it now.
My heart split in two.
A tree limb weighted by ice.
A white        quiet and protective.
A white        dangerously warm.
My hands spiritless in the drifts.

Why do birds continue to sing?

LOVE COMES

not silent,
   but noisy and indiscreet,
           rowdy and persistent.
He comes in leaf fall.
   musty earth in his palms.

           Held out to me
I can do nothing but take it,
   and take it gladly,
           earth being the one coolness
other than water
   to be enjoyed.

           The fact of the matter is this:
tomorrow he may come silent.
   Tomorrow may be love quiet as mist,
           but today,
his cheeks rough with new hairs,
   I smell furrows of new fields.
           I turn over fertile soil.
I hear burrowing insects, happy worms.

   I taste the gentle, crude, excavating damp.
           The stain of love upon the earth!
Stain of love!
   His sleep rattling me.
           His sunrise and breath awakening me.

THAT NIGHT

That body        tree on a misty hill
That face        fawn with dark eyes
That full moon       surrounded by evening skies
That hour        pavement ending in dust
That grass        green with summer's black-green
That night        coming over us with its breath
That sound        crickets singing at eye level
That body        me on the ground with their song
That body        another touching me with fire
That fire              round as the moon burning as the sun
That face        fawn with dark eyes
That you        speaking in tongues unknown and green
That sound        crickets singing in my ear
That body        tree on a misty hill

There were many more, so give the show a listen. Given that Asheville will be in the throes of Bele chere this weekend, it’ll be available through Sunday, August 3rd, at WPVM’s Archive page (just scroll down to Wordplay) as on-demand stream and download.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The show opened with McCoy Tyner playing “Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit” from the 2007 release McCoy Tyner Quartet. We also heard three of Billy Holiday’s classic performances, “Easy to Love,” “Life Begins When You’re in Love,” and “Summertime,” all from Lady Day: The Master Takes and Singles. Keith Jarrett’s “Paint My heart Red,” from the 2006 The Carnegie Hall Concert: Selections for Radio, took the show out.

Enjoy,

Jeff

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The photo of Jeffery is by M. J. Sharp.

Cross-posted at Natures.

When I dip, you dip, we dip.

That’s right, kids. Doctor Awesome sitting in with Simone on Seven Layer Dip tonight. Pop some corn, put down the paperwork, light up.. it’s time to kick back and get your awesome on. We’re gonna take some calls, spin some tunes, get crazy on a beautiful Friday night.

Tune in, rip the knob off. 103.5 FM in your car - wpvm.org at your desk.. Simone and Jason are HERE FOR YOU.

Be there. 8:00 PM

This week on Veterans’ Voices we discuss Depleted Uranium and the illegal occupation of Iraq with Retired Col. Ann Wright. She retired from the State Department during the run up to the Iraq war.

Join Jason Hurd, Ronald Harayda and Kindra Phillips as they discuss recent news and views with Ann Wright.

Retired Army Col. Ann Wright is removed by Capitol Hill Police on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007, as Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified on the future course of the war in Iraq before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Tune in at 5 pm every Wednesday or stream/podcast here.

Coming up on Veterans’ Voices, Mike Ferrel, actor (Former star of M*A*S*H) turned activist and acclaimed author and historian, Howard Zinn.

—

I would like to brag today about receiving
the Least Commercial Potential Award for
stunt cipher mayhem during the recent
WPVM Spring 2008 Listener Supported
fund drive.

For those who don’t know, stunt cipher
mayhem is a radio show which airs every
Sunday from 7-9 PM on WPVM. As it is
obliquely described in the WPVM archival
list, stunt cipher mayhem seeks to dodge
habitual terms through an exploration of
“Sound poiesis, phonemes, feedback,
electronic or acoustic, broken speaker, bad
ear, static plus, garbage theoretical and,
[...], un sound invert as negative force” and
(ahem) so on.

I should add that stunt cipher mayhem has also featured divers interviews with none other than Charlie Louvin and CA Conrad, among others.

In any case, this is a notable award considering the number of superb shows on WPVM which likewise exhibit scant commercial possibilities; thus, I am especially proud of this trophy.

Many thanks are due to all discerning WPVM volunteers who voted, while particular thanks also go out to Meegan Kelly, Gillian Coats and Lou Anne Jordan for actually organizing this vote and then making all the splendid trophies.

Thanks as well to Rachel Mitchell for providing this photograph of my cherished trophy.

And last but never least, of course, huge thanks to all of those less visible supporters who contributed to WPVM during our onair fund drive. Without you, none of this would be possible.

—

An image is worth 2000 words .

The French government has started to relook the Eiffel tower top to accomodate the growing numbers of visitors and add a new interest to the monument .
In exclusivity for WPVM and courtesy of RFI we will go to Paris and listen to an interview of the architect Jean Nouvel describing the project (that has created quite a controversy already ) .
Don’t miss THE PARIS OF THE SOUTH RADIO HOUR : Wednesday(tomorrow) live at 9am .

We’ll be serving up a special Valentine’s Day menu this evening on 7 Layer Dip. Join Bella and Simone for a melange of tasty recipes, favorite love songs, interviews from the bar at Hooter’s, cautionary tales, personal ads and a special segment of music that is impossible to make love to.

Tune in to 7 Layer dip every Monday night from 10 to midnight