Joe Estivill | The Electron Pencil

04/09/2015

Hot Air

Democracy

It’s WFHB board election time with three plucky souls throwing their hats in the ring. And, BTW, Board president Joe Estivill is snatching his hat back. Joe, proprietor of The Players Pub, is retiring after a tumultuous term as the big man of the nine-member conclave.

Among other fires he and his Board battled, the resignation of dynamic General Manager Chad Carrothers and the subsequent botched hiring of Kevin Culbertson rank among the hottest. Under Estivill’s captaincy, the Board eventually rectified the Culbertson mess and the station settled back into a somewhat peaceful existence.

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Joe’s Board also authorized the hiring of a politically-wired money-raiser: Dorothy Granger became the station’s Development Director in the summer of 2014. Granger also is District II representative on Bloomington’s City Council. With on-air fundraiser revenues falling short of projections since the departure of Carrothers, the station has been in need of cash. Granger’s hat-in-hand work has been a lifesaver.

Station members will vote on the Board members at WFHB’s annual meeting in June. Here’s the slate thus far:

Attorney Pam Davidson is running for reelection. She serves on the finance committee, volunteers at Middle Way House and Lotus, and is a member of the WFIU & WTIU Community Advisory Boards.
Louis Malone was appointed to fill out an unfinished term on the Board early last year. He’s running for a full term now. Louis is shelter care coordinator for the Youth Services Bureau of Monroe County. He’s a member of the personnel and nominating committees.
Tom Henderson is a first-time aspirant for the Board. He says he offers public radio, media technology, information technology experience.

The above three have been vetted by the Board’s nominating committee. As always, the Board has put out the call for petition candidates — that is, any who collects 10 signatures of station members can get on the June ballot. None have to this point.

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Harry As Dick

Y’gotta watch Harry Shearer do his dramatization of the Nixon Tapes. That’s all; just watch.

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Broken Taillights

So, a Charleston, South Carolina cop was charged with murder for shooting a guy in the back the other day. It’s not known just yet how many slugs Walter Scott caught from behind but Officer Michael Slager did fire eight shots at the 50-year-old as he ran away.

The killing might have been a blip on the radar screen of today’s police war on America’s dark-skinned citizens save for the fact that someone caught the incident on video. Hearing about a summary execution on the street is one thing; seeing it is entirely another.

Cop apologists can moan all they want about how we — the woefully uninformed citizenry — can never understand what pressures and fears officers endure on the streets. How would you react? they typically say in that challenging tone of voice. My answer in this case would be I wouldn’t shoot a goddamned guy in the back.

It’s true, we civilians don’t know all the nuances and details about the relationship between cops and people of color but we do know this: one police department after another has been busted for racial profiling, cops all over this holy land exchange racist emails, many big city police forces have KKK sects within their departments, story after story tell us about cops shooting unarmed black men but not shooting armed white men, and US citizens are 100 times more likely to be shot by the police than UK citizens, after allowances are made for the population difference.

Walter Scott was stopped for a broken taillight. Those in the know are fully aware that the broken taillight is the hassling cops best friend. As attorney Mark Geragos told one cop defender on CNN last night, “…[M]y father was a prosecutor for many years [and] used to say, ‘There’s more guys in state prison for broken tail lights than any other offense. Broken tail light means go hassle somebody of color.'”

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What the cops are doing is a natural outgrowth of human behavior. Cops are confronted with the ugliest side of humanity every day. They begin feeling helpless under the constant onslaught of immorality, illegality, and — pure and simple — viscerally disgusting behavior.

Like any other human, a cop wants to lash out. He wants to find someone to punish for the flood of vice he witnesses every moment of his working day. He wants to make someone pay. In the United States, we have a convenient population of poor, alienated, scarily different-colored people. Being poor, they’re more likely to be involved in crime — petty and otherwise — so the poorly prepared cop zeroes in.

Go look for a broken tail light and fuck that gorilla up.

And don’t underestimate the usage of the term gorilla or any other similar apish pejorative. Cops are not anthropologists. They’re not scientists of any sort. Too many only know that those black bastards are animals.

Until our American city governments start training cops properly and weeding out the reactionaries and racists, until even the “mildly” prejudiced cops are separated from the overall force, more black men will be killed. And make no mistake, it’s not just bad white cops who see black men as the enemy — far too many black cops see ghetto blacks as some kind of substandard citizen.

These shootings have to stop.

[h/t to Richard Lloyd.]

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04/11/2014

Hot Air

Make Me Laugh

Can’t wait to get my hands on the new issue of Bloom mag.

Ha.

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The Comedy Attic‘s Jared Thompson graces the cover. Inside, you’ll find out all about funny business in this town, natch, so grab one when you get a chance. You know, of course, that the Limestone Comedy Fest is fast approaching. This year the fest features as a headliner Patton Oswald.

Sure, he’s good, but can he rival last year’s appearance by Tig Notaro for getting Bloomington’s laugh-addicted pumped to the sky? Time will tell.

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Spring Can Stink, Too

So I’ve been bragging and crowing about how fab these recent spring days have been. Y’know, sunshine, warmth, daffodils, forsythia, breezes, short pants, and the ebbing of crushing winter depression.

All true. Life has taken a decidedly more positive turn of late.

In fact, I threw every window in the house open yesterday. The months-old atmosphere redolent of garlic, olive oil, my socks, me, dog, cat, and other foulings of air were swept out forthwith and, within minutes, the joint smelled like a delightful cabin in the woods.

It was so warm last night that most of the windows were still open when Steve the Dog, Sally the Dog, Kofi the Cat, and I all fell asleep on the two living room sofas. It was as peaceful a sleep as four creatures could experience together, all of us lulled by the rustling of budding trees and bushes in the soft wind and the occasional distant hoot of an owl.

But then an unseen skunk shot a blast of self-defense at some threatening critter and the first wave of reek blasted the four of us out of the arms of Morpheus. Steve and Sally began barking and howling like mad dogs, my eyes began watering, and Kofi went so far as to stir, stretch, and resume his snooze.

Sleep Wrecker

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I had to slam shut every single window in the house and somehow explain to the hounds that they weren’t going out no matter how much they begged and whined. My explanation consisting solely of the repeated words, “Shut the f_k up!”

So, I’m still pretty deliriously happy about spring, only I’m now reminded nothing’s perfect.

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WFHB Board News

The WFHB Board of Directors will have a new look after the station’s annual meeting June 7. That’s when the general membership will vote to fill three open spots.

Current Board members Carolyn VandeWiele and Matt Pierce (also state representative from the 61st District) are giving up their seats and Hondo Thompson quit the Board a while back, with his seat filled on an interim basis by Richard Fish. Fish is running for a full term this time.

Here are thumbnail descriptions of the four candidates for the three open spots, as selected by the current Board’s nominating committee.

Sarah Borden is new to the WFHB family but has been seeking the best way to volunteer her skills at the station for some time. She has a business background and offers skills in accounting, bookkeeping, tax filing, payroll, budget preparation and monitoring, financial planning, grant research, writing, submission, and management and specific HR duties which could be very useful to the station.

Richard Fish has served on the WFHB Board since March 2013 when he was appointed by the board to finish out the term of a member who resigned and is seeking re-election. Richard is a founding member of Bloomington Community Radio and long time host of Bloomington Beware and The Firehouse Theatre. Richard states that he feels that he can “help most in the area of planning and visioning. WFHB is — and will be — facing some serious challenges and changes in the foreseeable future.”

Benjamin Loudermilk comes to us through the on-air appeal for persons interested in applying for the WFHB Board of Directors. He writes “I have been a proud supporter and listener of WFHB since it was launched on the airwaves 20 plus years ago. When I learned of the upcoming open seats, I was excited at the prospective opportunity to seek candidacy to serve on WFHB’s Board of Directors.” Benjamin is a native Bloomingtonian, currently employed as a Paraeducator at BHSNorth, and an IU alumnus. He has been active in the local Arts community for over 30 years. He feels his strongest skills are in communication, research and networking.

William Morris has been associated with WFHB for nearly five years – as a DJ (“Brother William”) on several music shows, as a roving reporter and news reader with the Daily Local News, and as an interviewer/producer on Interchange. He states “Now, I’d like to participate in a broader, more-constructive and (hopefully) more productive way as a member of the Board of Directors…. As an attorney, I believe I can help the station think through and resolve legal matters that it will face in the next several years. As a former journalist and big-time music fan, I hope I can help the station look at programmatic, artistic and creative decisions. And, as a five-year member/volunteer of the station, I hope I can share my enthusiasm for WFHB with others in a way that fosters greater community, camaraderie and achievement.

Other candidates can still get in on the fun through a petition process. One of those is Maryll Jones, who started the Friends of WFHB Facebook group. The Friends arose in reaction to the Board’s selection of Kevin Culbertson as general manager last fall. Culbertson’s nod sparked a firestorm of controversy when it was revealed he’d been instrumental in operating a number of Christian radio stations out west and that he wasn’t a member of the Bloomington community. Jones is collecting signatures at this time.

Speaking of Jones, she applied to the nominating committee but was rejected. Word is the Board is keeping its distance from her because she’s the boss of Friends. Because of the negative reaction to Culbertson’s hiring in Friends and his subsequent decision not to accept the position, there’s been talk he could, if he so chose, institute some type of legal action against the station. If anything, the scuttlebutt goes, Culbertson could claim something on the order of workplace religious discrimination. When he informed Board President Joe Estivill he wouldn’t be taking the job in a letter dated November 20th, 2013, Culbertson wrote:

Never in my 30 plus years of working in broadcasting and media have I seen such hostility in a work environment. The slanderous statements and cyber bullying have passed the point, in my opinion, which any reasonable person would believe there would be an expectation of being able to accomplish the objectives of the station in due course.

WFHB honchos are hyper-sensitive to the possibility that Culbertson might file suit. Even a suit without much legal basis would have to be answered in court, meaning the station would incur potentially devastating expenses. It’s been decided that since Friends is an independent entity, the station shouldn’t have any connection with it as long as WFHB still has exposure to legal action. Ergo, Maryll Jones won’t be getting an official imprimatur from anybody connected with Firehouse Broadcasting any time soon.

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11/27/2013

3 Comments

Cleveland Dietz, Joe Estivill, Maryll Jones, WFHB

Hot Air-waves V

Cleveland Rocks

Here’s how the news reached my ears…, er, eyes.

Monday, the night of the mildly tumultuous WFHB Board of Directors meeting in City Council chambers, I was expecting that august body to do a quick, pro-forma vote to extend Cleveland Dietz as acting general manager through December 31st. After all, that’s what Cleveland himself had told me would happen.

But the Board had been spanked verbally by many in the volunteer membership for much of the evening and, toward the end of the night, announced it would gather in closed session to talk about Cleveland’s future.

Cleveland Dietz

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A future, by the way, I figured at that moment would last until the spring, at least with regard to our town’s community radio station. Cleveland himself had told me the Board expected to conduct another seemingly endless (my adjectives, not his) search for a permanent czar and the whole shebang could take until April. He caught himself when he said that and asked me not to mention the April thing in this communication colossus. I agreed to zip it.

It puzzled me that the Board should have to shut the public out of so minor a move — minor, that is, in light of the whole botched GM search that has been going on since…, hmm, let’s see now, oh, since Bill Clinton was president.

I pressed Board prez Joe Estivill for any information at all on Cleveland’s status. Joe shook his head. He wouldn’t commit to anything. I could only get him to commit to calling me when the Board finished up with its closed session.

Joe did call as Monday turned into Tuesday. The news he had for me was no news at all. The Board hadn’t voted on extending Cleveland as official seat-warmer and, in fact, had been discussing “some other issues” and would have something to say within 24 hours. I’d already started falling asleep when Joe’s call came in so, through the haze, I grunted humph. I like scoops and this, quite frankly, wasn’t much of one.

It seemed to me at the time that the Board had decided its best form of action in light of the Kevin Culbertson fiasco was to dither. Officially.

Joe asked me to sit on the “some other issues” news, to which a readily agreed. Surely there’d be no Pulitzer prize awaiting me for breaking the news that the Board was, y’know, thinking about something or another.

Flash forward to last night at precisely 11:40. Again, I was wrapped in the arms of Morpheus when the phone rang. By the time I picked it up, the caller’d hung up. It had been Joe. So eager was I to slip back into the dreamless that I decided, hell, I can call him back tomorrow morning. Surely whatever he had to reveal to me could wait.

I tossed and turned for an hour and a half until I sprang up from the pillow. Of course! I’ve got it! The Board decided Monday night to go back and offer the job to good old Chad Carrothers!

I jumped up and debated whether I should call Joe back immediately. Then I figured the poor old soul was probably drifting off into Z-ville himself. On a hunch, I cranked up this internet machine, just on the odd chance Joe’d sent me an email or Facebook message that Chad was back in the fold and all would be right with the world.

Once the Indian head test pattern had dissolved and Facebook flashed on my screen, I saw the real news.

Cleveland, that lucky dog, is in. For the long haul. Congratulations to the new permament general manager of radio station WFHB.

After six months of hand-wringing, waiting by the phone, and consulting oracles and tea leaves to find a new holder of the station’s riding crop, the Board has done something right. And the rest of us ought to pat the seven of them collectively on the back.

Tabbing Cleveland to steer the ship for the next few years is the safest and most healing move the Board could make.

Who has any problems with Cleveland Dietz? He’s as mild-mannered and uncontroversial a figure as can be found in the state of Indiana. Plus, he’s been trained in his job by none other than Chad Carrothers himself, whose coat he’d held in his role as assistant GM prior to CC’s unexpected move to the west last summer.

He’s proven himself capable and keeping him on permanently ensures that the station won’t go through any wrenching transition under a stranger. And even if the Board had elected to ask Chad to sit in his old chair, there’d be grumblings from those who found the old boss a little too rough around the edges.

The first person who complains about the Cleveland hire is nothing more than a person who complains obsessively, and maybe professionally.

Maryll Jones broke the news about Cleveland to the public and that’s as it should be. She spent a lot of time and energy — both physical and emotional — wrangling the roomful of cats that comprise the Friends of WFHB. I, for one, would like to see her sit on the Board of Directors just as soon as the rest of us can vote her in.

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11/22/2013

4 Comments

Alycin Bektesh, Dallas Texas, Dena Hawes, Jack Ruby, Jim Manion, Joe Estevill, Joe Estivill, John F. Kennedy, Kevin Culbertson, Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon B. Johnson, Orange Is The New Black, Richard J. Daley, Snowclone, St. Giles Catholic School, WFHB

Hot Camelot Air

Dallas

Fifty years ago today, the nuns at St. Giles school told us we were to go home when class started after lunch. I had no idea why.

I did know Sister Caelin seemed sad.

When I got home, I found my mother obsessively vacuuming the same spot on the living room carpet. Looking closer, I realized she was crying. It was the first time I ever saw her cry.

I wondered if I was in trouble.

The TV was on. Ma never had the TV on during the day. Simpler times, you know. TV watching was for night time, after work and dinner, school and homework, and all the day’s chores had been completed. Ma noticed me standing there, staring at her.

“Mike,” she said, dolorously, “President Kennedy is dead.”

Then I cried.

Dealey Plaza Today

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I knew who President Kennedy was. He was the boss of America, a man bigger even than Chicago’s Mayor Daley, a fact I was just starting to wrap my mind around.

I knew Mayor Daley could tell my Dad what to do. It was very difficult for me to grasp that someone could tell Mayor Daley what to do.

That night, I was sorely disappointed to learn that regular Friday night TV programming would be suspended in favor of wall to wall assassination coverage. I found it very unfair.

As the weekend went by, I came to understand the gravity of the killing of a president. I also came to understand how fragile all our hierarchies, relationships, and systems were. I saw Lee Harvey Oswald get whacked by Jack Ruby. I tried to get used to saying President Johnson.

The President?

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I began to get that everything in this weird world — save the world itself — was temporal.

In these more hyper-sensitive, more protective days, a lot of parents might advocate shielding seven-year-olds from jarring news like the murder of a president. Kids have plenty of time to grow up, they might say. Kids aren’t prepared for that kind of reality.

To which I’d reply, no one is prepared for that kind of reality. And, I’d add, the weekend of John F. Kennedy’s assassination was the first and most effective introduction to the real world this little kid could possibly receive.

I have a lot of issues with the things my parents did and didn’t do in raising me. But the fact that they never shied from telling me the unvarnished truth about world affairs or family secrets wasn’t one of them.

For that, I thank them.

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And On And On And On And….

The WFHB soap opera continues. As recently as Sunday, for instance, acting general manager Cleveland Dietz was pondering what he might do with the rest of his life.

Now, he knows where he’ll be spending his days at least through the end of the year. This week Board of Directors president Joe Estivill as well as regular Board member Richard Fish have approached Dietz, asking him to remain on the job through December 31st.

Estivill & Fish

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The Board will vote on the extension at Monday’s meeting.

Meanwhile, insiders are certain the board will start the entire GM search process over again, meaning the community radio station won’t have a permanent boss until April.

Which is ludicrous.

This latest development, following the withdrawal of controversial choice Kevin Culbertson earlier this week, would mean WFHB will have gone almost an entire year without a general manager.

A state the size of California can pick its governor in less time. And, in case the Board doesn’t know it, California is bigger with a far vaster budget, and hundreds — perhaps thousands — of departments, bureaus, and offices. Plus, the job pays a hell of a lot more than WFHB will pay its future leader.

This whole “national search” business is a pretense the station can no longer afford. WFHB is a community radio station; its leadership should come, naturally, from a local pool of people numbering a minimum of 200,000, if the latest census figures are to be believed. If the Board can’t find a GM in that crowd — which, by the way, includes the students and faculty of a major university — they’re not looking hard enough.

In fact, the three finalists for the job from which Culbertson was plucked include a former GM of this very station and a proven fundraiser for non-profit organizations. Even if the anti-Chad Carrothers sentiment is deep enough to preclude him from ever getting the job again (a situation that, too, is ludicrous), why can’t the Board fall back on Dena Hawes?

The argument against her that she has no media experience is a red herring. Hawes can raise dough. That should be of paramount concern. Jim Manion can continue to run the Music Department and Alycin Bektesh can keep News humming. They’re both good at what they do. WFHB needs a top dog now. People with money burning holes in their pockets just might begin to wonder if this rudderless ship is worth investing in.

The Board Monday ought to commit itself to finding a general manager within a month. That’s it; 31 days. It can be done. Big organizations, corporations, and even governmental agencies do it all the time.

The Board would do so if it was smart. My guess is when Tuesday midnight rolls around we’ll still be looking at an April target date.

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Word Trivia

Do you know what a snowclone is? Neither did I until just the other night, when I came across it somewhere, somehow.

It’s something you and I probably have used a dozen times recently. In fact, if you’re a fan of narrowcasting comedy-dramas, you likely have watched Orange Is the New Black. The title of that Netflix production is itself a snowclone.

OITNB

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Here’s the definition, according to Know Your Meme®:

Snowclones are a type of phrasal templates in which certain words may be replaced with another to produce new variations with altered meanings, similar to the “fill-in-the-blank” game of Mad Libs. Although freeform parody of quotes from popular films, music and TV shows is a fairly common theme in Internet humor, snowclones usually adhere to a particular format or arrangement order which may be reduced down to a grammatical formula with one or more custom variables. They can be understood as the verbal or text-based form of photoshopped exploitables.

In common English, that means you can take a familiar meme or trope and substitute words that make it into a whole new cliche. One of the earliest examples was If Eskimos have a million words for snow, then [some other folks] must have a million words for [something common to them].

BTW: the Eskimo trope is false; they don’t have a million or however many words for snow. Nevertheless, that cliched statement spread like wildfire a few years ago.

Anyway, Orange Is the New Black morphed out of the original fashion world pronouncement, grey is the new black, after many generations of variations.

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