I killed a cat last night.

It was hunkered down in the middle of the road, not in that pose that cats strike when they’re going to pounce, not lying stretched out like a cat in a sunny window.  It was hunkered down the way I assume a suicide bomber might wait alongside a dusty highway in Kandahar; resolute, steeled to what was next, at peace with the finality of a decision. (more…)

As they carted him off to the asylum from his mother’s house, Nietzsche was muttering. “Everything has a secret meaning!” “Everything has a secret meaning!” He was 53, just my age, and he was tied to a chair, I’ve been told, alternately shaking and nodding his head. Apocryphal or otherwise, it’s hard to remain unmoved by this image because it seems to sit squarely on the line where smarts meets craziness…ok, maybe a tad over the line. Whether or not Nietzsche knew the content of the secret is another question and I of course wonder if he could have shared it if he did. Fortunately, most of us are stupid enough just to shuffle through our mindless day-to-day experience like shambling zombies in search of brains. (more…)

London, 2 May 2011

Dear Friends,

You’ll be happy to hear that my trip abroad is going very well and I’m learning volumes about the development of community radio around the world. I’m hopeful that, on my return, I’ll be even more able to forge a course forward that will bring us to our longed for prosperity and into a shining new era of community involvement. If you’d like to write to me I’ll return to London for another few weeks and can be reached through the post in care of Saville House, Thrifty-On-Thames, London, England.

May heaven shower down blessings on you and hold me safe so that I may again and again express my gratitude for your love and affection.

Your most sincere friend,

Gary

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London, 5 May 2011

Dear Friends,

Today I’ve had such a disturbing experience I needed to write you quickly. Without a friend in all of England I had to share today’s happenings with you, who would believe me and who know that I could no more invent such a tale than could I make a melody from the chaotic sounds of frogs. You must guard this secret carefully for if it should find the light of day surely I will be rejected by my colleagues and disowned by my family. I put all this trust in you and I ask, in exchange, only for your trust in return.

Today I have met a monster, no, it’s worse than that. Today I have met a man whose guile and pretended charity makes him appear initially kind, but the story I have learned betrays him as the worst devil. If his tale is true, his insolence and cruelty cause me to wonder how such evil could live within so placid and normal a body. And I must warn you, dear friends, it’s worse than that.

Today, after a chance meeting on the morning coach, I inadvertently have come into possession of this monster’s portmanteau which I should never have opened but once I had, revealed the most profane and blasphemous treatise. Though it pains me even to share these few words of the horrible plan I now know, you must trust that you are in danger and that your knowledge of this villain may be your only salvation.

What strikes so much terror in my heart, dear friends, is that this monster’s tale concerns neither phantoms of fiction nor flights of fancy but none other than you, you my most beloved friends in whom I have placed such indelible trust and for whom I have spent so many years of my life combating the world’s indignities. You, who have given me reason to live and in whose every small gesture I find a reason to rejoice; you are the target of this madman’s ire and vitriol. There is nothing here that I would not condemn in public and which, were it in my power, I would not contravene at my own peril, were it only to prove my undying love for you all and for the hard work we do together, daily, in building our community. Here this barbarian has conjoined the blessings of literature with the infamy of terrorists and, alas, also has brought in vile contact with unbridled ignominy the gentle and noble pursuits of you, my sweet friends, and in a manner that seeks to discredit your holy souls and frustrate your valuable efforts through insult and defamation. This screed so broke my heart that I have erased the names of all whose virtue was impugned.

Trust me dear ones, I do this only for your safety and from concern that you learn what evil might befall you in my absence. What follows are the mad and diabolical ravings in which my new enemy confesses his cruelty and his evil plans against my most beloved. Brace yourself, my most beloved, for you are doubtless uninitiated in such a malodorous world as his.

I leave tonight on a steamer from Bournemouth and will be back with you soon and I ask that you keep yourself safe until then. I believe this villain will find your company before I and I’m fearful for the cruelty he will inflict. Beware this fiend who, already as I write this, is sailing towards Bellows Falls on the fastest mail packet, disguised as me. Make no mistake, I am still your most loyal friend. But he is your avowed enemy.

For now I repeat my oath that I love you deeply, and wish that you should never be injured by word or deed. I pray I shall reach you before any damage is done.

Your loving friend,

Gary

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The Journal of Victor Frankenstein

I don’t know when the nightmares started.

I was still dressed in my footy pajamas when I’d wake up screaming.  It seems like only yesterday.  I think my terror might have been genetic because my father had it, too, in significantly different sleepware.  While I met lumbering zombies on surreal landscapes, my father was chased by an angry dog, or so he said after he woke up screaming. It was a noisy house.  Whatever their message, nightmares are pressurized angst looking for an easy outlet.  It’s unfortunate that we have so much trouble making sense of all this fear and are forever at a loss to learn from the monsters we create; we don’t get smarter, we don’t get braver.

(more…)

What a peculiar array of merchandise at the Rite Aid this week!  Customers are confronted at the door by a giant chocolate rabbit named Mr. Bink, dressed in a 19th century vest and dangling watchfob.  Not just one or two, but an army of Mr. Binks, all stand at attention like NATO forces on the Libyan border.  I assume they’re ceremonial, since who would eat a two-foot-high chocolate rabbit. But they’ve all been called forth again to show support for a schizophrenic tradition, a matter of life and death.  It’s Easter!

Pagan and ecumenical celebrations are marshaled together right there in the specialty aisle, where billions of bilious marshmallow Peeps are shoulder to shoulder with the racks of pastel greeting cards, heralding the resurrection of a handsome and neatly-bearded Christ.  Rows of massive candy dinosaur eggs in loud yellow boxes encapsulate the promise of the future, I suppose, and the wonders of fertility suffuse the season with a cacophonous promise of rebirth.  This rebirth reclaims from the dead of winter our resurrected optimism and cordons off a demilitarized zone exactly at the spot where Heaven touches Earth.  Where life touches death.  Hallelujah, spring is sprung.

Well how about this: it’s just like that at Radioke.  And I’ll tell you why in a second. (more…)

When you think you have it figured out, watch your back.

Round Two of Radioke’s new season was a doozy.  To start, I think it was the first day one could refer to as “Spring” and keep a straight face.  At my house there are still snow banks up to my chest; even the early-blooming crocuses are trembling in their bedclothes and having nightmares of frost.  But on Saturday the sky was clear and a sliver of moon hung on a string over Bellows Falls.  Under the starry night it was warm enough in your shirt sleeves to stand and blow swirls of smoke into the balmy air.  And we did. (more…)

WEDNESDAY
Along the canal, the snowbanks have turned a patchy gray. Bits of dormant earth peek out here and there, more a premonition than a promise of spring. But anything can happen, unfortunately, and one has the eery feeling that winter is still lurking around the corner of the post office. On one of these dark nights it might catch us off guard, without a warm coat, and leave us ankle-deep in muddy slush.

Pessimistic? Not entirely, because Radioke’s back and its spring-like attributes remind us that there’s more to life than shoveling a path from your door.

THURSDAY
I really need to say a few words about Radioke but, first, this: Some things make you wonder; not as many things as used to make you wonder.   (more…)

A smart old economist once said, “History repeats itself: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Clearly, that gloomy old coot never went to Radioke. In our case it’s more like, “the first time as comedy, the second time as glory.”

(more…)

Grammy-winning music legend performs Thursday, February 10!

The son of a Louisiana farmer, Stanley ‘Buckwheat’ Dural was born in 1947 and while still a boy began performing as an organist with American originals like Joe Tex and Clarence Gatemouth Brown. In 1976 he joined Clifton Chenier’s band and found his love for zydeco and took up the accordion, eventually forming his own zydeco band in 1979 and has since shared stages with U2, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Ry Cooder and a Who’s Who list of other luminaries.

The New York Times says:

“Stanley Dural leads one of the best bands in America. A down-home, high-powered celebration, meaty and muscular with a fine-tuned sense of dynamics…propulsive rhythms and an incendiary performance.”

And The Wall Street Journal gushes:

“Buck and the band spit out the kind of crackling music that’s been missing since the heyday of Stax Records. On stage, the attack is relentless. Stanley Dural has hit his stride.”

(more…)

This morning I got myself in motion early to visit the mechanic. I’ve been driving the same thirsty Chevy for ten years and, trust me, it has its share of problems. But I’m not yet ready to consign all those miles to the junkyard. Sometimes we need to take stock of what we have and hold on tight. To paraphrase CeeLo Green: Sorry my car’s not a Ferrari, but that don’t mean it can’t get me there.

I was muttering this to myself while standing in the driveway, zipping my winter coat against another gray New Hampshire morning. There’s not much snow yet but, what there is, has managed to find its way onto everything. Telephone wires glisten, leafless lilacs bend under their early burden, the gravel barnroad is crisscrossed with tire tracks against the whiteness. I soaked all this in and I suppose I took it all for granted because it was just as it should be. And I was remembering that fact when, suddenly, I spied a red-breasted robin perched on the edge of the stone wellhead. A robin, in December, now what do you think of that? I was noting just how peculiar its presence was when the damn thing started singing. I swear, it was staring right at me so maybe this was a plea, or a celebration, or just a crazy moment when a lonely bird, left behind in winter, decided to do something about it. I’m no expert on birdsong but this was the drunkest sound I’ve ever heard a robin make but you had to applaud the effort. (more…)

So you probably don’t know this but I have a donkey and three sheep. They live in the barn, of course, and today was the first day of really cold weather. When I went down to feed them they were persnickety and it didn’t take long for me to learn that the self-filling frost-free water fount had frozen.

I called Mark Houghton, electrician and plumbing hero, but he was in Concord or somewhere, and he sent over Eric Smith to fix the breaker or replace the heater or something. Eric cuts a formidable figure with a beard and a blue sweatshirt . You can maybe picture this: Eric, me, the donkey, and the three sheep all huddled around the water fountain, like it was coffee time at the office, when the talking happens.

Well, one really can’t talk about a fuse for very long and my comments about the cold seemed quickly unappreciated. The donkey nuzzled my neck and tried to lip the brim of my red and black wool hat while the sheep, thirsty and perplexed, stared cautiously at Eric. It ain’t really farm living; it’s some pets, inconveniently situated in a cold place. Just a couple minutes passed before things got quiet enough to hear a few bits of hay blowing around in the feeder and the slow beating of the barn doors in an icy wind.

“So…” Eric says, filling the vacuum with his big friendly voice. He waits through a thoughtful pause and then he just says, “Radioke.” (more…)