Some problems with mass markets

I remember when I was a kid, we weren’t the first family on our block to have a tv. I watched Howdy Doody and similar programs at a neighbors and had to be sure to get home in time for supper. Here we are almost three quarters if a century later and, thanks to “progress,” things haven’t improved much. In fact, in many ways they’re worse. Having no service in many ways  improves on having shoddy service.

Using our less than broadband internet service, I can’t locate a local serviceman to check and/or replace  our Over The Air [OTA} antenna and coax cable. I’m not sure if HDTV would be a better option. Where we live, cable is as much of an option as broadband.

Between our antenna and the broadcast towers, several oak trees west of the house are now taller and broader than they were when we bought the place. Because of oak wilt, ideally we shouldn’t prune until November. I’m not inclined to take some sort of technical course to learn how to select and install an antenna since I’m not likely to need to do it more than once. I’d rather hire someone qualified, if there were anyone.

our internet service

Photo by J. Harrington

We know what a lousy job government has done at insuring availability of rural broadband internet. I know for a fact that our county has been “studying” broadband for about five or more years. To the best of my knowledge, there is no good, reliable, source identifying OTA broadcast availability, nor is there a mandate that cable providers service an entire township by date certain.

Add to the above the fact that our township supervisors have decided to merge most, but not all, of the township with an adjoining city, leaving several sections of the township to be potentially annexed by other cities that, as far as I can tell, will do little, if anything, to benefit current township residents, and combine that with  the failure of our state government to enact critical legislation despite a $9 billion surplus, and the outcomes of the January 6 hearings in D.C., and I’m developing severe doubts about the viability of democracy in a global, neoliberal, mass market economy. Once upon a time we had the TVA and the Rural Electrification Act. These days it seems to be mostly “I’ve got mine. Vote with your feet.”

Rural Reflections

a poem by Adrienne Rich 

This is the grass your feet are planted on.
You paint it orange or you sing it green,
But you have never found
A way to make the grass mean what you mean.

A cloud can be whatever you intend:
Ostrich or leaning tower or staring eye.
But you have never found
A cloud sufficient to express the sky.

Get out there with your splendid expertise;
Raymond who cuts the meadow does not less.
Inhuman nature says:
Inhuman patience is the true success.

Human impatience trips you as you run;
Stand still and you must lie.
It is the grass that cuts the mower down;
It is the cloud that swallows up the sky.

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