The user desi isn't around any more.
This is a post I recently made on a different blog: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Bioreg/
It occurred to me tonight that perhaps the distance that any particular radio frequency covers is indicative of a region, specifically a geo- and hence bio- region. Tonight I traveled from the foothills of the White Mountain's Presidentials, east to my home on a large cove beach in southern Casco Bay. As I crossed out of the curvy dark hills and valleys and up onto the rolling coastal plain, the weather shifted (as it so often does) and I had to change my radio from setting 2- NHPR to setting 1- MPBN. These two stations have noticeable overlap, where as the Maine station never makes VT nor VT speak to the coast. The mountains running down the center of the state of New Hampshire are the divide. They cut off the frequencies that would otherwise travel east to west, west to east. The biomes, and culture of these regions seems to be divided likewise. The landscape of Vermont is slightly different than that of New Hampshire, and a bit more from that of Maine. The weather man from Maine speaks more directly to my father's weather patterns just east of the mountains in NH than does the Vermont weather man much closer - as the crow flies - to the west across the mountains. At his home the Maine NPR comes in clearly, that from Vermont is virtually impossible to get.
I know this is much discussion on a fairly banal phenomenon. But I wonder that such a recognition does not speak directly to some of the most rapid transformations and pressing concerns of our day. As our nation-state takes it upon itself to institute ubiquitous digitally transported television, I think it wise for us to consider what old ways of transferring knowledge we would like to hold on to. I think it ungrounding not to hear regularly and often about the news from my local region. The awareness of my immediate eco/cultural landscape will keep me focused on the needs and resources closest at hand. This sort of connection might make us not only more sympathetic to our own neighbors and landscape, but more sympathetic those people, creatures, and landscapes we so readily learn about with the many-other digital forces of our day.
"Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative." - Vandana Shiva
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July 2009 
leensylus
