[Kzyxtalk] Fwd: The forgotten arm.

[Marco McClean]

On 1/9/2016 4:15 PM, Bruce at the AVA wrote:
 > Hola, Marco!
 > Do you have any opinions of the management change at KZYX? Ms. 
Dechter, preliminarily, seems like more of the same.
 > Happy New Year, Bruce at the AVA

     Bruce, the resume that I read makes her sound pretty good, but 
that's the job of a resume. I'd like to talk with her; that involves a 
half-day side-trip and a visit to a place full of bad memories for me. I 
don't believe in ghosts and curses or any supernatural nonsense, but to 
me the place has always been electric with menace, entirely the opposite 
of the way KMFB felt, or the way KNYO or KMEC feel.

     Even if Ms. Dechter is the right sort of person, she's boxed in by 
the obfuscatory organizational apparatus around her.

     The problem is, the people we're all glad are gone are not gone at 
all. Mary Aigner is on the programming committee. I think Stuart 
Campbell is on the personnel committee. John Coate is still controlling 
the web site. The cheerleader/pimp/thugs are still cheerleading and 
pimping and thugging. And there's still no way to be certain that email 
to the trustees actually reaches them, nor to explain where half a 
million dollars-plus really goes to (or comes from, for that matter) 
every year there, except for two faked-up sheets of paper for the annual 
report. It's an educational band nonprofit station, meaning that the law 
requiring that letters to a radio station go into the public inspection 
file doesn't apply; they don't have to disseminate or keep or even 
acknowledge any correspondence. To the recommendation that they add an 
open forum to the website so listeners and members and the public and 
the airpeople can communicate regarding the station, its operation, 
opinions, dreams, aspirations, complaints, etc., without interference, 
and let a little light in, Meg Courtney's response was to write, and I 
quote: /"It would take staff time to moderate a kzyx.org interactive 
forum, because we could not just allow anyone to post anything they 
wanted; it could become a free-for-all. As for posting information about 
the KZYXTalk listserv on our station webpage, wouldn't this establish a 
bad precedent? Wouldn't we then have to do the same for any other group? 
What would the standard be? The station webpage should be for official 
station business only."/ Meaning, no.

     Meg, here's how you do it. Cut and paste.

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     When I talked to Mary Aigner four years ago, I told her that the 
way I determine whether a radio station is worthwhile or crap is, can I 
play with it? Is there anyone there who is at all like me? If yes, 
worthwhile; if no, crap. And she said, pursed-lipped, calculating, 
cementing this moment and her evaluation of me in her mind: "Crap."

     Long ago I reached the point of not being able to even glancingly 
think about KZYX without going /unngh/. Today I was thinking about 
solving problems with the radio stations that I /can/ happily play with, 
and other things, and KZYX crossed my mind, result: /unngh/. Juanita 
said, "What's the matter?" I said, "Three things. My mother wants me to 
drive her all over California next week so she can visit Mimi's new 
grandkids in Fresno and go to the dentist she likes in Sacramento (!) 
and I don't want to do it but of course I have to. And the telephone 
company promised they'd have your phone line fixed by Wednesday and last 
night it was still fucked up and I could tell by the buffer graph while 
I was doing my show that it was clicking on and off like a crazy monkey. 
And I was just reading about KZYX--"

     Juanita said, "Marco, what would you do if a meteor fell on KZYX?"  
I thought, "Depends on who was inside," but I said, "I see your point, 
but still-- /unngh/."

     She called the phone company, used some trick she knows to actually 
talk to the right real person right now, talked gently but firmly about 
what she expected them to do, and fifteen minutes later a phone truck 
man named Jeff knocked on the door. I described the symptoms (phone 
ringing, nobody there but torrents of static; police visits to several 
people in the neighborhood at 3am answering 911 calls nobody made; 
erratic DSL internet service). He nodded, said, "Got it," went out, 
fixed it, phoned to report and check. Now: perfect clean signal, 
flawless DSL connection. He explained that it was water in the wires 
under the street. So, done. Good. The system works.

     As for KZYX, I recall the page from Walt Kelly's /Pogo, Stepmother 
Goose/, where innocent toddler versions of the familiar Pogo characters 
are poling a pole-boat into a swamp forest where even though it's a 
static drawing it conveys mounting menace, and the caption reads:

The gentle journey jars to stop.
The drifting dream is done.
The long gone goblins loom ahead.
The deadly, that we thought were dead,
Stand waiting - every one.

     In other words: like you, Bruce, I worry for Ms. Dechter.

p.s. I read all of /2015, the Year in Review/ on my show last night, and 
the material about poor Dennis Boardman, killed by someone he'd been 
kind to. Your paper serves the county better than any other, and works 
very well on the radio as-is. Suggest it to the new manager of KZYX. 
(/Unngh./)

p.p.s. I recommend the 2006 film /The Fall/, by Tarsem Singh. It's set 
in 1916, in a Southern California hospital. It's about the storytelling 
and story-interpreting relationship between a heartbroken film stuntman 
and a little Hungarian girl with a broken arm. The stuntman was played 
by Lee Pace, who later played Ned in two years of /Pushing Daisies/ 
(with Anna Friel, Swoosie Kurtz, Kristin Chenoweth, etc.)

-------------
Marco McClean
memo at mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com