They did not huff. They did not puff. The Israelis simply tore the house down. The Palestinians did huff and puff, threw a rock and some words, but they were no match for the police carrying our M-16’s.
From the neighbor’s rooftop I watched the destruction below. An Arab man cried next to me. Across the valley was the opposite: construction, of Israeli settlements. They say there should be a road where we stand, and where the house once stood, and where 17 more should fall. Though there is already a road on each side.
In yet another house I had coffee, a hospitality in every Palestinian home. I am wired after so many visits, the walls buzzing, shaking in fear. I am always welcome, the children offer me candy. The TV was on when I entered, Bush was talking, but there was no sound. They clicked it off.
Palestinian living rooms have a fondness for silk and plastic flowers. Unnatural colors, brilliant, florescent, like ones you find at grave sites left by a devout but busy family.
Their order has come. They tremble the paper at me, it is written only in Hebrew. They have less than a month to leave the house. The flowers will survive, they survive anything, that is the nature of plastic. They house will not. Maybe they can be laid on top after the walls become jagged tombstones of their former selves.
A child, one of three in this house smiles at me, I smile back. Her nose is stained a strawberry-red color, I figure she had been eating some. I looked at her dad. “She fell,” he said. Some wounds you need only to wipe the blood away, one more wash and she will be clean again. It will only remain hurting somewhere in her memory. She will discover that other wounds take longer to heal. And sadly, that some wounds never heal.
The destruction crew, in an odd display of care, stretches red caution banner tape around the fresh rubble next door. It flutters angrily in the wind after the last soldier has left.
This week’s HV cast is “Pedestrian Fanatic” (mp3) by Abner Serd: The paving of America as seen from the shoulders and sidewalks of our country’s roads. Musings-in-motion recorded during a 5000 trek from Arizona to Georgia to Maine. “It is becoming illegal to travel this country by foot.” Music by Jeff Arntsen of Racket Ship. (9:55):
“It would be an immense source of pride for me if NPR could find in its heart new beats and new sounds — not radically different ones, just different enough that they would belong to the people who are now 17 but who are going to be listening 40 and 50 years from now.” –Robert Krulwich
“[NPR is] the retirement community of the air. What was once an insurgent radio movement now sounds like Chet Huntley reading the evening news.” –Alex Beam, Boston Globe
“NPR is run by newspaper people. Sometimes I think they don’t even like radio.” –Bob Edwards
Caught a bit on NPR the other morning on “Embrace the Suck - A Pocket Guide to Milspeak.” My favorite term was “fobbit,” which basically replaces REMF as the term of choice in a place where there is no rear but plenty of fortified bases.
Journalism.org just released a massive report on The State of the News Media 2007. We @ HV are most taken with revelations in the Radio chapter, such as:
most popular format- Country Music.
pubradio listeners- NPR 26M, APM 17M, PRI “difficult to track.”
Clear Channel gets most of the cash; CBS gets some; the rest split scraps.
radio news folk work for peanuts, and lately just for the shells.
podcast listeners are pretty evenly spread out b/w 12-54yo, except for those 18-24 who podcast LESS (but a bit more than 55-64).
most educated audience- Sports Talk listeners (gotta be to track all those March Madness stats)
When you finish with the factoids, do waste some more time with their “Design Your Own Chart” feature.
Skye Rohde’s sound and images from her day at the annual cultural show in Goroka, in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. This is the social event of the year, a swirl of colors and costumes, traditional songs and dances. (Broadcast: Mar 12 2007 on NPR Day to Day):
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Caught a bit on NPR the other morning on “
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