Midnight Musings

by

Alice Chan

(497 words)

 

I lay awake long last night, deeply disturbed, pondering the implications of the PNB telephone meeting. What kept me awake is that these people puzzle me on such a profound level.

I was raised never to say that I hated someone. I can still hear my mother: "We don't hate people, but we can deplore their actions." I truly believe that the vast majority of people don't act out of a desire to do wrong. Hardly anyone wakes up in the morning and says "Oh boy, today I get to do great evil in the world!" I'll bet that Mary Berry and John Murdock get up in the morning and kiss their loved ones goodbye ever so gently before they leave for the day. Murdock is very likely a loving and nurturing father. Berry probably has a wonderful loving relationship with her family and friends. So why do these folks act towards us the way they do? What is driving them? That's the source of my profound puzzlement.

What we're missing is the "smoking gun" memo, something like a memo from Clinton (or Bush) saying that the Pacifica network has too much potential to sway opinion in America, so it must be co-opted or silenced. Where and when was it decided that Pacifica must be killed?

Their latest moves -- the new spin on the listeners' lawsuits, the PR spinning of the actions at the last board meeting, and the decision to form "shadow LAB's" - make me think of Stephen King's early novel THE STAND, a classic story of a post-apocalyptic struggle between absolute good and absolute evil. Life on earth has been decimated by the release of a "super-flu" bug from a secret germ warfare laboratory. The germ has a 99.9% mortality, and is called a "constantly-shifting antigen," because it kills by constantly shifting to a new mode of attack whenever the body develops resistance to it. Eventually the body just gets too tired, wears out, and dies. Those born after the apocalypse are able to survive not because they are immune to the bug, but because whenever the bug "shifts," they are able to shift with it.

That is what we must do here. We cannot allow them to tire us out and kill us. We must keep shifting with them. We need new strategies. We need to give each other strength and support each other. We must not let them have Pacifica.

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BOUNCING BIBLE

dennis bernstein 6/00

(83 words)

 

He carried a basketball wherever he went;

Sometimes he bounced it fiercely

and took aim at hoops

that only he could see.

Sometimes he twirled it

on one finger

like a bulbous ballerina.

But mostly he held the ball

between his palms,

against his chest,

the way a preacher holds a bible

to make god’s point.

Just like his mother’s little Christ,

it strengthened his grip on things,

extended his palms around a world

he was barely able to hold onto.

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