Do Not Pledge to WCVE

One of the blessings of our lives is public radio, including PBS, NPR, and Marketplace. You can hear classical music any time of the day, but the news programs are what make public radio stand out. The Morning Edition and All Things Considered broadcast news in a dispassionate voice without all the hype of the standard media. They broadcast news of unusual interest, such as one man's unusual replies to telemarketers or why Google has been such a big success over the years. I listen to Morning Edition every morning when I go to work.

So you would think I would contribute to public radio? Not WCVE, 88.9 MHz. WCVE is the PBS and NPR affiliate in the Richmond, Virginia area. Like all these enterprises, WCVE has undertaken a pledge drive. However, they have done it in such a way as to prevent me from hearing what I want to hear on public radio. This week, when I tune in to WCVE in the morning, I get not Morning Edition but station people campaigning it up. I did not turn on public radio to hear talk about how much I should contribute to them, or especially the little ditties that Sue Wood has come up with about winning a thermos if you pledge. I turn it on to hear the news stories of NPR. The station has prevented me from hearing these stories clearly. I can still hear them, but I have to tune in to WHRV instead at 89.5, which broadcasts from the Tidewater region. I can hear it but it is staticky and occasionally a station at 89.7 interferes greatly. I think it is OK for WCVE to carry out a pledge drive, but one or two sentences between each segment is better than blotting out huge segments of news time.

Because of this I will not contribute or pledge to WCVE this year. I urge readers from the Richmond-Petersburg area not to contribute to WCVE until they stop campaigning it up on air time. So far the Tidewater stations WHRO and WHRV have not campaigned out any news that I wanted to hear. Therefore they will get my public radio contribution this year. I urge those people who want to contribute to public radio but who do not want to support WCVE's campaigning policy to contribute instead to WHRO and WHRV.

Osprey Nest at Kiptopeke

Last weekend I went to a convention of mathematicians in Salisbury, MD. I took the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to get from the Tidewater area to the tip of the Eastern Shore. Shortly after this, I went to Kiptopeke State Park. This is on the western side of the Eastern Shore, and consists of a trail, a picnic area, and a place where one can fish and go boating. I went to the harbor there, and found a wide wooden piling jutting from the water, close to me on the dock. I saw a strange bird there and took a picture of it, although my best shot, of one standing on the piling, was ruined by a passing boat; the birds all flew away. But then one bird went upon a nest built of sticks; evidently a female setting on her eggs or brood. I got out my tripod and binoculars and took a picture through the binoculars. This came out beautifully, and when I got home and could study the bird book at some length, I found that the bird was an osprey. I could tell because of the black band on its head and its white breast. Ospreys once were made endangered by real estate developments encroaching on its habitats and by the use of the pesticide DDT. The DDT went up the food chain and concentrated in the ospreys. They are coming back, thanks to that ban, and are fairly common on the Delmarva Peninsula, but still it was a thrill to see one.