I needed fresh tomatoes yesterday. And milk and eggs and corn and melons and another pint of Vermont’s best ice cream (shout out to Strafford Creamery). It’s a winding 20-minute drive from our hilltop summertime perch in Vershire to Crossroad Farm, my source for all things local, and I automatically turned on the radio for company. Vermont Public’s “Eye on the Sky” was tracking the cool front we’ve all been waiting for. ATC host Mary Louise Kelly was chatting with crime novelist Karin Slaughter about growing up in Georgia during the Atlanta child murders. It struck me as the quintessential, bedrock public radio experience – the seamless blend of hyper-local and global perspectives that helps us feel at home wherever we are.
“At home” is the key phrase there because America is a restless nation, a country of people on the move. Most of us will have multiple jobs and live in multiple places during our lifetimes. We’re so good at re-inventing ourselves, we’ve enshrined our energy and willingness to embrace new opportunities in our national mythology. But we also cherish our roots, and we make deep commitments to the places we call home. We cheer for our home teams, drink local craft brews and join CSAs. We send our kids to neighborhood schools and we shop and volunteer and vote locally. No wonder we love public radio – It’s a unique amalgamation of our twin urges for freedom and belonging. It gives us what we need to be good stewards of our local communities and simultaneously, citizens of the world.
I’ve always thought of the public radio system as an extraordinary, unparalleled experiment in what we used to call, back in the ‘80’s, thinking globally and acting locally. It sounds so simple when you hear it – those smooth hand-offs from a host sitting in a studio around the block to another sitting halfway across the country – but it’s a dizzying shift in time, locale, and perspective. A magic trick, technologically and editorially speaking. In some ways, it shouldn’t work. But for more than 50 years, it has – and will, with our support, continue to give voice both to the multiplicity and the unity of America.
This September, Steve and I will pack our car and our dog Alfie for the long drive home to Wisconsin. We’ll go through Saratoga and upstate New York and along the shores of Lake Erie, through Ohio and Indiana, past Lake Michigan and Chicago, until we cross the border into Wisconsin. Along the way, we’ll listen to public radio – to WBFO in Buffalo, WKSU and WCLV in Cleveland, WBEZ in Chicago – until the sound of WPR welcomes us home. Thanks to public radio, it’ll feel as though we never left.
Happy listening, wherever you are.
– Anne