Special Needs Parenting

Rebecca Smith Masterson recently posted a blog.

To My Son's Autism Therapists

It's an open letter to her son's therapists. In the blog she offers insights into what it is like to be the parent of a special needs child. The experience can be isolating.

Among the insights...

I'll tell you that as a parent, it is tough to get your head around the fact that you have a child you can't help.


We're fragile. We're scared. We're struggling. We're hopeful. We're grateful. We're really, really tired.

Do you know how much we have to fight for our kids? The biggest surprise to me in this special needs parenting world was how much I have to advocate for my son to people who should be on his team. Schools, therapists, doctors, insurance -- you name it, it was probably a battle.

Your training should have included how much this therapy costs. I'm sure it didn't, but I'd like you to understand the sacrifices we are making to pay for all of this.

We too have special needs children. They are young adults now. They've made a lot of progress, but their needs have not gone away.

And this...there is no cure for Autism...there is no pill to take for treatment. Therapy is the only way right now, and it is expensive.

32 Million people tune into Public Radio Weekly (Nielsen)

A Nifty Report on Public Radio Listening     

Boomers still spend the most time with Public Radio. Gen X and Millennials are in the mix, but spend about half as much time with Public Radio as Boomers.

Boomers still spend the most time at home listening. Millennials spend the most time listening away from home...about 65%.

Washington, DC is the top market when measured as a percent of total radio listening. Vermont is second. Connecticut is in the top 10.

Nielsen calls the audience diverse with about 8% of the audience Hispanic and 10% African American.

Putting the Homeless in Jail?

Making the Homelessness a Crime

The City Council in Columbia, South Carolina decided to do something about the homeless congregating downtown. In the Summer of 2013 they voted to arrest the homeless if they refused to be put in a remote camp. 

Not all of these stories end badly. Within days of passing an ordinance in Columbia, SC that would have made homelessness a crime, people within their own community rose up to protest. Among the protesters...the police. The Homeless will no longer be swept up and taken to a camp against their will. The option of going to the camp is still there, but only as a temporary solution while other options are explored.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/04/columbia-criminalizing-homelessness_n_3866273.html

If the coalition of the police, city workers and advocates had not made their voices heard, Columbia would have gone back to the days of debtor prisons and prison camps. Speaking up can make a difference.

But the idea of throwing people in poverty in jail is gaining momentum. According to an article in Community Digital News...

According to the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, 100 of America’s largest 187 cities has passed anti-homeless laws. These laws criminalize everything from sleeping in cars to lying down in public; 30 percent of American cities ban sitting or lying in public. In 2011, 37 cities banned sleeping in cars; that’s now illegal in 81 cities.These laws carry penalties that the homeless can rarely pay; sleeping in your car in Palo Alto, California can result a fine of $1,000. The alternative is jail – up to six months.

Homelessness and Hunger

All this while homelessness is on the rise. The National Center for Family Homelessness reports that the number of homeless children is now 1.3 million.

Not only is it illegal to be homeless...in some cities it is illegal to help. NPR reports that "21 cities have passed measures aimed at restricting the people who feed the homeless since January 2013. In that same time, similar legislation was introduced in more than 10 cities. Combined, these measures represent a 47 percent increase in the number of cities that have passed or introduced legislation to restrict food sharing since the coalition last counted in 2010."

Autism and Air Pollution

Study Link Air Pollution to Autism

Reuters reports a Harvard study is linking exposure to air pollution in the third trimester of pregnancy to Autism. The researchers are saying the risk doubles. The study began in 1989 and involved 116,000 nurses.

Marc Weisskopf, a study author says,‘‘One of the unique aspects of the study we did is that it provides an even stronger piece of evidence for there being a causal effects. It’s really the pollution doing it.’’

There's a Caveat 

Further down in the article Charis Eng, chairwoman of the Genomic Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic says, "While the Harvard study isn’t definitive and the findings could be coincidental, it’s not likely given the large size and the precise result."

If there is a link...would this be impetus for change in how we view the importance of our environment?  Any change starts with us.

DuPont Awards for NPR and Public Media

Awards for Investigative Reports

It was a really important say for NPR and Public Media as they've recognized for their reporting.
The Dupont award is the equivalent of the Pulitzer for broadcast news. Among the reports winning DuPont Awards:

NPR: Guilty and Charged  Many guaranteed services like the right to an attorney are no longer free.

WGBH: Frontline – United States of Secrets How the government came to monitor the communications of millions all over the world.

MPR News: Betrayed by Silence The cover-up of abuse of children by Priests.

There were six awards given to Public Media.

A Republican Blocks Catastrophic Business Insurance

No Superbowl? 

(that's only the tip of the iceberg)

The Associated Press reports Senator Tom Coburn, a lame duck Republican from Oklahoma, blocked a bill that would have renewed a government program credited with reviving the market for insurance against terrorist strikes after the Sept. 11 attacks.

This might mean the Super Bowl could be cancelled, but the effects are larger than the shared media experience and the loss of ad revenues. Not to mention the billions lost because of the cancelled Super Bowl parties.

(You can read more here.)

The costs would shift entirely to the private sector. Especially hard hit will be  companies in construction, real estate, hospitality and major sports leagues, which face crippling insurance costs and spiraling rates as the program lapses.

Increased insurance costs will be passed on directly to the consumer rather than spreading the costs through a government subsidy. Since consumers may not be willing to pay the increased costs...The the shift in expenses will drive some of the affected companies out of businesses and result in job losses.  The program provides a government backstop for insurance companies in the event of catastrophic losses, and had widespread support from business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Coburn objects to the government back subsidy as a moneymaker for the insurance companies to the tune of $40 billion over the past 12 years.

Music: Discovery and Sharing

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band Nominated to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

It's been about 40 years, but I still remember the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Back then, I was into music on the edges. I was looking for and finding things that were outside the mainstream.

When I was discovering groups like Paul Butterfield and Blues Project and guitarist Michael Bloomfield, none of it was on the radio. I tried stuff. I would sort through records racks and buy based on the look of the cover. I looked for tracks that were over three minutes. Some of the search was based on the labels like Electra and Verve Folkways. Some of it was based on word of mouth and sharing.

So, while many of my contemporaries were listening to "This Diamond Ring" and "Red Rubber Ball," a few of us were listening to "Born in Chicago," "Two Trains Running," and "Wine." Having Paul Butterfield nominated affirms, in a way, the choices made over 40 years ago.

Underground radio broadened these horizons for a few years. In Milwaukee we had WTOS, WZMF and WRKR. I even worked part time at WRKR for a while where that spirit of sharing music lived. We kept the focus on the music. We took pains to get out of the way and let the music speak. These three stations were commercial. The format could not sustain itself with advertisers, but the music is still there if you look for it. WTOS was sold and became an EZ Listening station. WZMF had a weak signal into the Milwaukee Market. Eventually, it was sold and became the Commercial Classical Station in the market, WFMR. That has since been sold and is now an urban adult contemporary station, WJMR. WRKR moved its transmitter closer to Milwaukee and changed formats several times. It is now owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. with the call letters WKKV playing urban hot hits.

That spirit sharing still lives on AAA stations on Public Radio. Stations like The Current, WTMD and WXPN are discovering and sharing daily.

Click on the links below to see what I was sharing with my friends in the late sixties.

Christmas Music Bonanza

All Christmas All the Time

You've heard those stations that play Christmas Music non-stop, right? Does it seem like they start earlier every year? I avoid them. I would rather take my commercial Christmas music in small doses. It is true that the music can make me nostalgic. I guess it's all about a longing for home. Perhaps, a longing for safer and more secure days in my childhood.  But, I can't go there non-stop.

Apparently others can and do. It's a ratings bonanza for the radio stations that play all Christmas Music, and that translates into revenue.

Marketplace has a report...

That all-Christmas music station makes money. Lots of it

If you're like me and find the commercialism disconcerting, fear not.  Charles Schultz got it right.

The symbolism of the evergreen is the hope it represents that we will emerge from the bleak midwinter and be renewed like the earth with the coming of spring.

It's Not About the Mugs

Really!

I was listening to my local public radio station this morning as they kick off their fund drive. The announcer says, "I'm going to talk directly to the listeners now." He then went into a two minute pitch about coffee mugs.

Who, exactly, was he talking to before? 

Radio a personal medium. Listeners develop loyalties to radio stations based on the content and how well that content speaks to their personal values and fits in with their lifestyle. Radio stations that resonate with listeners become companions.

In the 60's Marshall McCluhan talked about radio,  “Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.”(Understanding Media:The Extensions of Man,Marshall McLuhan)  

Telling Stories

And, that is why storytelling is so important. McCluhan points out in Understanding Media, If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures. They become richer, [...]. All those gestural qualities [...] come back in the dark, and on the radio. Given only the sound of a play, we have to fill in all of the senses, not just the sight of the action. So much do-it-yourself, or completion and “closure” of action, develops a kind of independent isolation in the young that makes them remote and inaccessible.” (264) 

The same holds true for Public Radio. The platforms are changing. Radio is no longer considered the disruptive media, Social Media is. Perhaps radio has lost some of its edge because of the homogenization of the medium by large corporations like iheartmedia. Through Social Media there are many more venues for the content. But, the core values...the reasons for listening and loyalty...are the same.  

The station I was listening to is an NPR news stations. According to PRPD's Core Values Project, "In news, we met listeners who are deeply engaged in contemporary public life and culture; whose vigilant curiosity about the world brings them to public radio for depth and context. They see the world as part of an interconnected web of causal relationships and want us to help them connect the dots by focusing on the "why", not just the "what" of issues and events. They believe in the power to find solutions for the problems of their community, their nation and their world."

Understand Your Audience

I used to be employed in Public Radio. I still have my PRPD 20th Anniversary mug. Inside the mug, toward the the rim, it says, "Think Audience." That maxim came out of the Radio Research Consortium (RRC) in the late 70's.  Tom Church, the founder of the RRC championed working with Arbitron data as a way to measure response to our programming. John Sutton puts it well. "Church didn't say "Think Share Points" or "Think Cume." His words were "Think Audience" and their purpose was to get public radio programmers to focus on how listeners respond to a station's programming."

There is so much information about what makes radio, and public radio appealing. There is so much that public radio is doing right by telling stories that put issues and ideas into context. There's nothing in there about mugs. So, why is that the fall-back position for fundraising?