My own private radio station
My morning commute is just seven miles, past a marshy pond where Canada geese float, over a set of railroad tracks, through the university, across the Mississippi, eagles occasionally soaring above the water, and then a quick cruise down past the Metrodome. I can do it in fourteen minutes on a day with no traffic; twenty minutes max most days, unless there's a blizzard.
My biggest gripe about the drive, now that the roads are ice-free and the days are long, is radio: There is nothing to listen to. I prefer words in the morning to music, and the local stations give me two choices: inane chatter about sports, punctuated by endless commercials for Country Hearth bread and replacement windows; or snooty and often depressing talk programs about the failing state of our economy, the failing state of our health care, the failures of our president.
Surely there must be something else, but I can't find it. I'd even be happy with just the basics--news headlines, weather forecast, traffic updates. But I can't stand the stupid chatter in between.
Enter Doug. He came downstairs one morning not long ago and handed me a CD. "For your commute," he said. I popped it in as I backed out of the driveway, and I was immediately captivated. He had combed through the morning crop of podcasts, and he had created my own private radio station.
The CD started with Morning Ireland's review of the newspapers, with Caroline Murphy. Caroline Murphy is whipsmart and wry; every morning she reads the Irish Times and the Independent and the other national papers and delivers a witty synopsis of whatever is making news. She picks great nuggets; my favorite was a description of Enda Kelly's recent election victory: One paper described it as "the triumph over the cappuccino crowd of the men who eat their biggest meal in the middle of the day."
Next up was a BBC look at the World Cup, an Elvis Costello song tossed in for pacing, and then a great little RTE documentary called "The Curious Ear." There was enough stuff on the CD to get me to work, and then home again, with a little left over.
Each morning now, he burns me a new disk. I've listened to documentaries about guys who commute by train every day from Limerick to Dublin (they bought a little toaster at Tesco's in order to make sandwiches en route); the harrowing story of two climbers lost in a storm in the mountains of Wicklow (they were saved by two guys from the north, who said, first thing, "Now you can never say anything bad about us Northies again"); a look at the rigorous leaving cert test among schoolchildren ("college was nothing after this"); and the viewpoint of a British journalist living in France, talking about the debacle of the French World Cup team.
They are all terrific. I am struck not only by the wide range of fascinating topics, but also how eloquent people are when interviewed--the rescued climbers told their story with drama and detail. Two women who run religious curios shops were quite thoughtful when they discussed why people buy such things as magnetic Virgin Marys for their dashboards, and what it means about faith.
Couldn't American radio be like this? Why isn't it? Ah well, no matter; mine is, now. I listen to WDUG in the car now, and it does what great radio should do--it makes my commute swift and short. Sometimes, when I'm in the middle of a fascinating "Curious Ear" segment, it makes me wish my commute were even longer.
