I got this email from Emily Mann, who got it from somoene else. But nonetheless, as a rabid NPR addict, PBS lover, and Bill Moyers fan, I thought I'd post the email here so you all can read it as well.

I choose my words carefully when I tell you there's a war on, a war for the soul and integrity of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

At stake is our right to know the truth from sources who don't have to pay homage to the bottom line, and whom we've trusted for years. Just yesterday, we learned in the New York Times[1] that the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), along with its chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, told its staff that it should redirect money for NPR away from national newscasts and public affairs programming towards music programs. Tomlinson is also considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR programs for evidence of bias, an issue particularly sensitive for the Administration.

Without citing any evidence, Tomlinson has decided that "Big Bird" leans left, despite evidence from two CPB-funded polls[2] that suggest that an overwhelming number of Americans are happy with NPR and PBS programming.

Hands Off Public Broadcasting

Sign the Petition

We are committed to fighting back and we need your help. Please sign our petition to protect NPR and PBS from partisan meddling and preserve what many Common Cause members consider to be a highly valued source of news and public affairs coverage:

http://www.commoncause.org/protectpublicbroadcasting

The CPB board of directors is meeting June 2 in Washington and we want to demonstrate to Chairman Tomlinson and the rest of the CPB Board that we will not allow their attacks on NPR and PBS to go unchallenged. We have set a goal of 100,000 signatures to present at the board meeting. That is more signatures than we have ever collected on any issue, but with your help we know we can do it. So please sign our petition today to stop Tomlinson and rest of the CPB Board from playing politics with public broadcasting:

http://www.commoncause.org/protectpublicbroadcasting

It's ironic that the threat to the editorial independence of public broadcasting is coming from the very people entrusted to protect it from political influence. After all, shielding public broadcasting from political influence is what the CPB was designed to do when it was created almost 40 years ago.

But over the past several months, Tomlinson and his Republican colleagues on the CPB have betrayed their duty to protect public broadcasting by:
Hiring Partisans. Tomlinson is pushing the CPB board to replace outgoing CPB President Katherine Cox with Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.[3] Directly Seeking to Influence Programming Decisions. Tomlinson hired two "ombudsmen," reportedly representing conservative and liberal points of view to work for CPB, and helped them hunt down "bias" in public radio and television shows. The dueling-ombudsmen format is "unprecedented in mainstream journalism."[4] Working with the White House to sabotage efforts at reform. Tomlinson used his relationship with Karl Rove to sabotage a proposal that would have made the CPB board more professional and less partisan.[5] Targeting Journalists. Tomlinson hired a consultant to track the political ideology of guests on the PBS program NOW with Bill Moyers. The Moyers program was singled out without informing the public, members of the CPB Board, or Mr. Moyers.[6]

Moreover, Bill Moyers has been one of Tomlinson's major targets. This past Sunday he and I both spoke at the Media Reform Conference in St. Louis. Mr. Moyers told the crowd why this fight was so important to him and us. He said the following:

[O]ne reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism.[…]<

Those rules permit Washington officials to set the agenda … leaving the press to simply recount what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny. Instead of acting as filters for readers and viewers and sifting the truth from the propaganda, reporters and anchors attentively transcribe both sides of spin invariably failing to provide context, background, or any sense of which claims hold up and which are misleading.[7]

This is the journalism Tomlinson wants to destroy at public radio and public television. Mr. Tomlinson has said he is willing to speak to Common Cause, and we will meet with him.[8] But words are not enough. We need the pressure of your help, your voices, and your views. You represent the core audience of public broadcasting and we need you to send Tomlinson's CPB a very strong message: Hands off NPR and PBS.

http://www.commoncause.org/protectpublicbroadcasting

Thank you again for all you do for Common Cause.

Sincerely,

Chellie Pingree
President & CEO
Common Cause

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(1) http://www.commonblog.com/story/2005/5/16/113648/547
(2) http://www.cpb.org/about/reports/objectivity/03_obj_balance.pdf
(3) http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21914/
(4) http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/17/cpb_ombudsman_controversy/index_np.html
(5) Stephen Labaton, Lorn Manley and Elizabeth Jensen, Chairman Exerts Pressure on PBS, Alleging Biases, N. Y. Times, May 2, 2005, at A1
(6) http://www.commonblog.com/story/2005/5/2/18922/94745
(7) http://www.commonblog.com/story/2005/5/15/225042/181
(8) http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-et-pbs9may09,1,566877.story

I have been avoiding the news for so long because it just makes me mad and causes me to stress out but there is such a feeling of utter helplessness that washes over me. I feel like, no matter what I do, the big rich republican power-mongers will just sit back in their leather chair, take a puff on their expensive cigar, and laugh a deep belly laugh at my efforts. Gah. but at least this makes me feel like I'm doing something.

Hi mom!

Hi mom!
Originally uploaded by akfirefly76.

I can see y'all! Isn't this nifty keen?
Yay for google maps and the spiffy satelite view.

It's my first full day back in the office, since Hamlet openened last night, and there are no more rehearsals. Even though I haven't had a full day at my desk for over six weeks, I was able to fully catch up with everything and help with a large copy job. I've still got an hour and a half until the working day is done. So... I was checking the websites I normally visit. Blogs of friends and families, my forty different email accounts, news sites. But none of them were captivating my attention. So, I kept thinking to myself... Blast. Blast. Blast.

Blast is my new favorite curse word. It just feels right coming out of my mouth and for some reason reminds me of JB (my youngest brother for those few people who read my blog and aren't members of my family). Anyway... Blast. Blast. Blast. just kept repeating itself in my head. And, since there was a keyboard under my fingertips. I typed in a few random blast variations.. blast dot org. dot net. dot com. All led to actually sites but were pretty boring. Then... I typed in blast.co.uk (remembering that there are web servers other than the basic ones in the US) and I really liked that site because it led me to this little subsidiary site as an example of their work. I have no clue about the content, but I like that when I move my curser, I can make pretty patterns. Reminds me of the cool purple headless japanese dog animation page I loved a few years ago. (I tried to find it again, but google was no help when searching for headless purple japanese dogs.)

Yes, this is how I spend my time when my brain spazzes at work.

My year in princeton is slowly coming to an end. The last play of the season opens on Wednesday. I've got an interview at Playwrights Horizons for another directing internship. I bought my ticket back to alaska (just to visit) last week. I even finished folding all two-thousand nine-hundred twenty-nine paper cranes. What will my hands do to stay busy now?

I actually started making this post to complain about the insanity of cheaptickets.com. Granted, I found the cheapest ticket I could there. And its taking me from Here to Anchorage, Anchorage to St. Louis and then from St. Louis back to Here. Well, today, I got an email from cheaptickets telling me there had been a slight change in my itinerary. Small change, my butt. A whole leg of my trip was missing. They had me ending up in St. Louis, which wouldn't be a bad thing, I'm sure Kyle and Bek wouldn't mind having me stay for a little bit longer. But great googly moogly people. A whole leg of my flight vanished. Of course I called customer service (the woman could NOT pronounce Newark, Anchorage OR St. Louis, it was very odd, like she was pretending to speak with an american accent, but hadn't quite got all the kinks worked out yet.) who told me that the airline had canceled the flights that made up the last leg of my journey. While I was on hold, I researched it myself, and nope. Flights were still there, I just wasn't on them. All cleared up now though, because I am a persistant, patient, and intelligent woman who knows how to get what she wants. Mwuhahahahahaha.

Anyway, I must finish up with some other work here in the office before I head to the note session up in the theater. Whee! Oh... and have any of you ever had lines from Hamlet running through your brain constantly? I dream Hamlet. I mutter it under my breath as I walk down the street. And not really relevant quotes, but strange sections that are incomplete and so solid in my head I fear that if I wasn't crazy already, this might drive me there.

Last week, while waiting for Nilesh to drive back to New Jersey from North Carolina I got antsy and decided to go for a bike ride. I keep my bike in the back yard. Usually, I go there and leave when its dark, so I never really had a good look at the state of the back yard. Let me show it to you.

And really, both of these pictures are bad examples, because I only thought to take "before" pictures about two hours into my five and a half hour cleaning ordeal. So, although the pictures look bad... its not nearly as bad as it had been before I actually started attacking the yard.

But... Through intermittant rain sprinkles, two nalgene bottles of water, eight giant black plastic bags of debris... the yard finally looked like this. Gather and surmise...

Not only is it not a dirt/grass yard, but a slate patio, but it actually looks friendly and like a place you can hang out, eh? Maybe once I get out of tech and previews for Hamlet, I'll have a little bbq or some other type of social gathering at my house incorporating my new and lovely back yard patio space. whee!