The School Lunch Crisis

Image: KCPQ-TV

You may have heard about the outrageous incident in Kent, WA recently when a student who was 26 cents short on his school lunch card was not only denied his lunch, but the lunch was tossed in the trash and the student was humiliated in front of his peers.

http://q13fox.com/2014/06/11/kent-father-angry-after-son-is-denied-lunch-and-humiliated-at-local-middle-school/#axzz34vFqNfvM

It's not just in Kent, but around the nation and for far too long, we've been hearing similar reports of children being denied school lunches and bullied by the very people serving them due to an inability to pay.

It is a national embarrassment. And enough's enough. This is the United States of America. These are our kids, not inmates at a North Korean prison camp.

There was a time my mom couldn't afford my school lunch money. The lunch ladies served me anyway and gave me a form to take home to my mom about the reduced or free school lunch program. She'd send me back with it next day with her information. I still got lunch. Problem solved thereafter.

Why can't it still be this way?

Sometimes parents lost jobs, sometimes there would be financial hardships. The principals and teachers knew this and they would eagerly talk to parents and see if their kids qualified for reduced or free school breakfast/lunch programs until they got back on their feet. Sometimes a bully took your lunch money. It made no difference. You still got a decent lunch.

And we funded these programs well during the '50s, '60s and '70s. Granted, it wasn't the greatest taste explosion for some of us.

I couldn't wait for pizza day!

But for others, we'll never forgot them because they got us by and we looked forward to them, no matter what they seemed like to us.

People then never viewed it as a problem. Or as "socialism". Or any myriad of disgusting and completely WRONG analogies that never even appeared in the public discourse until the 1980s when the Reagan administration made devastating cutbacks in public education and drastically reducing funding for school lunch programs. A precedent that has only gotten worse.

Since that time, public education funding has dropped even further, leaving school districts to make up the balance in unpaid meals or to serve special alternate lunches for indigent children (a concept I find revolting because it marks poor children in the lunchroom, making them targets for bullies. Poor children in the school lunch program deserve exactly the same lunch offerings in the same portions as everyone else.)

School lunch programs were once viewed as an investment in children. An investment that has paid off incalculably since the 1940s. And we never thought twice about it. And it's time to let our representatives in Congress know we view it that way again. Because it is an investment in our children's education. And one of the worthiest.

But instead of talking about it, some of us are DOING something about it.

Come to Louie G's Pizza in Fife, WA Friday July 11th at 7:30pm for a spectacular all ages benefit show featuring cutting edge Northwest music from Boneshaker, Alien Nation, Q-Dot, Mister Von and Gossamer. Proceeds to go to a special fund to help needy local school children afford school lunches. A great night of music and fun for all at the Northwest's BEST place for live music, food and fun for the whole family. Voted among the Best in Western Washington by KING-5's Evening Magazine.

And please donate what you can to help.

https://www.facebook.com/events/490991297700830/

The Red Scare

 

Milk (2008)

"Milk", starring Sean Penn and Josh Brolin is about San Fransisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, an openly gay businessman who had gotten sick of not only watching other gay people being harassed and bullied by a stiff city establishment but other minorities such as African Americans, the poor, elderly and people with disabilities being used as scapegoats and the first to suffer in any major city decision of that time. He not only stood up for the underdog, but he championed them. He put PEOPLE first - something a lot of politicians only pay lip service to. Milk actually did something about.

Milk transcends being a mere gay bio-film. While Milk's sexuality is never too far off, the real gist of the movie is how he gave the system a major wake up call and how he paid the ultimate price for standing up for what he believed in. From his beginnings as a flamboyant camera store owner in the Castro district of San Fransisco to the political battles he fought against the city and self-righteous anti-gay crusaders such as Anita Bryant to finally being elected city supervisor of San Fransisco and the turmoil that followed, especially from his biggest opponent, Dan White who assassinated Milk and San Fransisco Mayor George Moscone.

The story of Harvey Milk is a fascinating one for me, having read The Mayor Of Castro Street by Randy Shilts several years ago.

HIGHLY recommended reading!

I always loved his appeal to the social outcasts and how he worked to level the playing field for all people. We sure as hell could use a guy like him today.

One could only wonder what could have been had he not been assassinated. He most likely would have ended up mayor of San Fransisco and would probably have made it to Washington DC by now. I'd take Harvey Milk anyday over Diane Feinstein.

Harvey Milk never got the recognition he truly deserves for not only breaking down a LOT of doors and glass ceilings for gays and lesbians, but for inspiring all of us that the underdog can lose many battles, but still win the war in The Good Fight. The people know a true hero when they see one.

Days of Future Passed

April 8, 1994

It was another ordinary Tuesday morning, not unlike this one in Seattle....

I had just woken up to my phone ringing. "Hello?"

"Looks like Kurt Cobain just found Nirvana" my sister giggled into the phone, paraphrasing a wisecrack Kevin Nealon made a few weeks earlier on the Weekend Update segment of a Saturday Night Live episode a few weeks earlier after his suicide by overdose attempt in Rome. ("...and finally, Kurt Cobain almost reached nirvana".....)

"What?"

"Haven't you heard? They said they found a body at his house and he's been trying to kill himself. Turn on the TV."

I turned it on and KING-5 had an image through a TV camera crew on a chopper flying over the Cobain property in the Leschi neighbourhood of Seattle. And my heart sank, as those of millions around the world. Even though his body had been in that loft above the carriage house on his property undiscovered for three days, it was 20 years ago today we heard the awful news.

For the next few days, it seemed like everyone was in a daze. It was in a way like deja vu. It reminded me a lot of how it looked after John Lennon was assassinated. Many were just speechless. And while some were quick to disregard Nirvana as just another dubiously talented garage rock band that somehow got lucky, they were often older people in their insular, status quo world of classic rock oldies who were oblivious to the fact that the whole world of rock had changed in just the past three years. Or who spearheaded that change. Something they should have been acknowledging with all due respect, rather than dismissing so abruptly.

Two days later, I attended the memorial for Kurt Cobain at Seattle Center. It was a very surreal event. Some fans crying inconsolably, others laughing and in a party mood. I was given a candle at the gate (one of those emergency candles, although I had a crystal tea light candle holder that resembled a mountain. I guess not only to metaphorically represent his struggle if not to overcome his personal demons. Then to be accepted, warts and all. But it was also the only candle and candle holder I had at the time.)

The event was MC'd by all three major Seattle rock radio stations KISW, KXRX and KNDD. All competing commercial rock radio stations under different owners, but uniting everyone in one moment. I had not seen an event like this since.

But one thing I will never forget, nor forgive, was Courtney Love's address that was broadcast unedited to those on the radio and on all three stations and the Seattle audience of his grieving fans at the memorial.

  
Yoko One never addressed John Lennon's fans this way after his assassination. Yes, Courtney had just lost her husband in the worst possible way imaginable and I can sympathize with her pain and most of all, her anger at the fact that he did it. But by no means did it excuse her from addressing his fans this way. A few might have shrugged it off, but most didn't. I'll never forget the guy just in front of me with a video camera. He was crying so hard when he heard "...some of this is for you and the rest is none of your fucking business" on the tape, he could barely keep his camera steady as he dried his eyes on his shirt.

I only hope she's learned by now, if there are some details you do not want to disclose, don't mention them in passing.

But the death of Kurt Cobain became the death of grunge rock. From that point on, grunge began losing out to electronic, the Nu-Rock rap-metal hybrid the brought us Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park and while the echoes of grunge still ring in any Muse ringtone out of some dude's cell phone today, you can never take away what Kurt Cobain brought to rock n' roll.

And that is how we should leave it.

We miss you Kurt....

The Day After

You know? One of the TV movies I REALLY wanted to watch was "The Day After".

For those too young to remember, in 1983, The United States and the then Soviet Union, now Russia today, were at more or less the peak of the Cold War in the 1980s. And both were nuclear powers. And both were unflinching.

And they were the biggest. Ever. "The Arms Race" as it was known guaranteed something known as M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction.)  

It seemed like at the slightest provocation, no matter how minute, could set either side off. Sending unholy nuclear holocaust in either direction.

But the public reality was both sides HATED what their respective governments were doing. That's the odd thing about governments. They claim to speak for their respective people in international affairs, but they haven't the foggiest idea of what the respective people under them actually WANT.

Most of us back in high school wondered why don't we just simply get together over a beer and talk about it (The reality was we really wanted them to get together over a BONG and talk about it. In those days, the very subject of marijuana here in the very Land Of The Free was unspeakable in public high schools.) The mellowing effects of weed we felt would have been far more beneficial in that regard. After the language barrier, the rest would come easy.

ABC-TV aired this program on November 20, 1983 with much hype and it was THE movie to watch on that particular night. EVERYONE was talking about it. Be There...or Be There. That kind of thing.)

I never saw it.

My mom was content with what I thought was her "fuddy old people" shows and we argued for HOURS over it. I hated her for that. And EVERYONE was talking about it the next day after it aired and here I was, the lone idiot who never watched it. Costed me unbelievable high school social points for the next few weeks!

FINALLY, last year, 30 YEARS LATER. I finally got to watch that whole movie....On YouTube!


I am now complete.

Frankenstations

They're technical anomalies, transcending medium, legality and current technical standards to become something they were never meant to be.

 

 

They're called "Frankenstations". Or "Franken-FMs". Because while most FM radios can tune down to 87.5 FM, the FM radio dial in North America legally begins at 88.1 MHz and ends at 107.9 MHz.

However, 87.7 MHz (or 87.75 MHz to be exact), is/was the analog audio carrier frequency for VHF TV channel 6. Since the end of World War II until the DTV switchover in 2009, people who live in areas with a local TV station on Channel 6 could hear that TV station's audio signal on 87.7 on their FM radios, a fact not lost on the Channel 6 TV broadcasters (KHQ-TV in Spokane, WA promoted this for years.) And it was offered as a way to hear the audio portion of the Channel 6 TV station when you were in your car or away from a TV.

Bear in mind this wasn't a deliberate service the station offered. Just an anomaly of how the radio/TV spectrum was carved up. And unique only to analog VHF TV Channel 6 because the Channel 6 audio carrier frequency was coincidently in a tunable portion of the FM radio dial at 87.75 MHz.

However, in the early 2000s, several low power analog VHF TV stations began popping up on Channel 6. They weren't purposed as traditional TV stations, but as FM radio stations. This is why they are called "Frankenstations" An FM radio station using an audio frequency for TV.

The first Frankenstation was KZND-LP in Anchorage, Alaska. "87.7 The End" went on the air in 1999 and immediately outraged competing broadcasters who thought KZND was cheating and complained to the FCC. As it turned out, the station was using an overlooked loophole that allowed the audio portion of a TV channel to not be synchronized with a video image.

However, being an FM station on the TV band isn't as easy as one would think. First, you're technically a TV station. This means you must at least run some image on the video carrier. Which KZND was not transmitting, so the FCC forced them to start doing so. It wasn't enough the station had the ability to transmit a video image, but it had to actually do it to be within the law, as it was technically a TV station first. A simple graphic card to be broadcast over their video carrier was all the station needed to become legitimate.

Today, KZND now broadcasts on a real FM frequency (94.7.) 87.7 in Anchorage is now a jazz station called KNIK

WLFM-LP in Cleveland, Ohio actually used a Western Digital screensaver as their video carrier image!

Second, you have to be a lot more quieter than standard FM stations because you still must broadcast according to television technical standards. This meant a lot of the problems of a quiet uncompressed FM radio signal, such as "picket fencing", that "fwip-fwip-fwip" sound you hear on FM radio as you drive farther out of the station's primary service area is far more apparent well within the primary service area on an 87.7 Frankenstation. You can't broadcast in stereo either. While Zenith invented both FM Stereo and MTS Stereo TV transmission, the two systems are incompatible. All Frankenstations are mono.

And Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron), which measures radio ratings regards the Frankenstations as actual TV stations and doesn't count them amongst actual FM radio stations.   

However all low power analog TV stations, which had been exempt from the 2009 American digital TV switchover must change over to digital themselves by September 1, 2015.

Which will mean the end of the Frankenstations because the digital signals can no longer be received over standard FM radios.

However since the analog to digital TV switchover there's been talk of expanding the FM radio band down to 76 MHz (similar to how the AM radio band was expanded from 540-1600 kHz to 540-1700 kHz in the late 1980s.) Which would incorporate the Japanese allocated FM radio band (which runs from 76-90 MHz) into the American FM radio band and allow American FM stations to broadcast on those frequencies. But that's only going to happen when the current FM spectrum gets so crunched, there is no alternative.

And we're already pretty much there in some parts of the country.

....And meanwhile in Sochi....

Sochi is running out of pillows http://www.vocativ.com/02-2014/sochi-running-pillows/

The honey is so fresh, it's still got bees in it!

People like me will never get a break in Sochi.

Yuk!

Every hotel room has these. I think the top left gizmo is a closed circuit radio. In Stalin days, the Soviet Union made them mandatory in every apartment and hotel room and ran a wired feed of the main government radio channel. Over the air radio wasn't made legal in the Soviet Union again until after World War II. North Korea still uses a similar system and as I've heard it from my Russian friends, you could turn them down to a low volume, but you could NEVER completely turn them off.

This is not beer. Or tea. Or apple juice. Or that either. It is water.

Add caption

This picture of Putin is the closest you'll ever get to a TV in some hotel rooms.

Watch for open manholes.

This is not bottled water.

The Canadian team housing: Feels like home?

Doors that lock from the outside.

Helpful....

Harmonic Convergence.....Redneck Style

Courtesy of W. Lane Startin @ Superfluous Bloviations (Photo taken today at Fred Meyer, Twin Falls, ID)