bm192 ‘The Town That Was’: Centralia, PA

When you first hear that a fire has been burning beneath a town since the 60’s, it is hard to imagine. It would be even harder to live in that town, to see things destroyed or simply disappear. But that is just what has happened in Centralia, Pennsylvania and those fires are still burning. But not everyone is gone and beyond that.. people have become interested in Centralia, what happened and what lessons can be learned. My guest today is Georgie Roland, one of the directors of the new documentary about Centralia “The Town That Was”.

We Discuss:
– How Georgie first decided to focus on centralia
– His visits to Centralia
– The story of how the fires started
– What happenned to the community
– The remaining residents
– The possible scenarios for the future
– How people live
– Lessons for the future
– Eminent Domain
(and more, so listen to the program!)


Centralia on Wikipedia
I spoke about a message board, but I don’t have the link so nevermind.

A NJ Freak Winter

Tappy-Tap-Tap, the sounds of icey snow fill the air of ye old family home. I arrived here in the state of New Jersey several hours ago, around the same time as one of the year’s meanest ice storms I guess. Which somehow made the usually irritating and useless airport security checks and customs questions less annoying.

When I finally get the sleep I need and wake up focused and adjusted, I’ll write some about developments and corruption in the world of banana farming, vitamin supplements and lots of other fun stuff… part of sitting on a plane for 8 hours means reading many newspapers in more detail than maybe one usually does.

For now I’ll just mention a new blogging platform that makes blogging quite easy. No I mean.. even easier… which sounds redundant cause it is easier. Regardless, Tumblr is free and one of the easiest blogging tools I’ve seen since blogger. Not sure where the comments are, but everything else looks good and easy. Maybe it will be useful for those out there who wanted a blog but still felt like it wasn’t super simple enough yet.

bm191 Flashback – Roots of Public Relations and Manipulation

Packing my bags and leaving for the US and A in a few hours. Therefore, Im reusing and revisiting a show from 2005. A topic that I wish to see in every school and in every history book. Enjoy and I’ll speak to you from New Jersey.

You can search for the entire documentary on archive.org, search for the name Century of the Self.

Thats all, time to travel.

Planning and Packing

Podcast guests and topics are illusive this week, so far. At a dinner party this evening from across the room I hear “BM… this guy is from New Orleans!”

I jump up and have a seat next to him. A musician through and through who studied in New Orleans, as it turns out. After talking to him about my project and the issues I want to focus on, I was honored to hear him say “Well I’m glad you’re going. Its important that you go and do this.” He also spoke about how much it hurts him, reading and watching what is happening to his city from over here.

Anyway I leave you today and urge you to read This is Zimbabwe where another horror is still going on.. the ongoing horror that the whole world tries not to look at. (hell even me, somehow I don’t blog enough about the injustice there)

When Most of America are Veterans

I have this memory of my mother, when I was a kid, and its not the clearest of memories, but this is how it sits in my mind:

My mom was finishing her masters degree in social work, I must have been in the 5th grade. I remember because I would tell my 5th grade teacher sometimes, “My mom is getting her masters degree.” No idea why I needed to tell her that. Hopefully she had asked otherwise, what a little showoff I was.

Regardless in my memory she had a job or some kind of internship as part of her degree, at some counseling center in a city like Elizabeth, NJ. I can almost remember dad dropping her off at that place. I think alot of veterans went there.. vietnam vets. Mom would never, and has never been one to discuss people’s private details, I’m sure it wasn’t something she’d want to relive at home anyway. But I remember, and its still true, if you bring up life for Veterans trying to pick up the pieces back in the US, she has quite alot to say, and experience counseling them as her qualification to speak on this topic.

I thought about those days, which I’m sure my mom does as well as we watch hundreds of thousands of people being shipped off to a war zone… to a disaster.. and asked to do inhumane things such as kill or torture. I thought about it because I was cleaning the boat and listening to Radio Open Source’s program entitled “Coming Home: Iraq Veterans”. Now I wouldn’t say anything about it if it hadn’t reached into my heart and squeezed when I listened to these veterans speak.

Speak about the violence. What it was like to live that horror and follow orders to shoot people, and then come home and try to just be a friendly well adjusted neighbor again. At one point, one soldier is asked how people would act if they knew the types of things he had to do and what soldiers were required to do in Iraq.

The soldier replies…

“If they knew… they wouldn’t do it…. If people knew what war was about, war would stop. If my family knew, if people on the street knew, war would stop… if people knew, they would be alot more cautious about when war needs to happen.”

I listened to this show and I hit repeat to hear it again. I looked down at my dirty hands and the canal water.. I worried about what kind of future the US could possibly have with so many people damaged in such severe and not visibly detectable ways. I finally gave the engine a few pulls and listened to the engine reawaken after winter slumber, as Iraq veterans talked about their experiences in my ears.

Please listen to the show. Because besides the struggle to bring troops home and end this illegal and politically orchestrated war, the next biggest struggle that will effect the country for generations.. is how to help veterans deal with what they’ve been through, and handle the future as healthy civilians.

Todays Bigots

The by-line of the article reads as follows:

In an effort to close a chapter in America’s history of race hate, Washington is bringing elderly Klansmen to justice for killings carried out up to 60 years ago

Well now thats just a bit misleading and well… wishful thinking. The part about closing the chapter on race hate I mean, and the Klan.

Nope… that book isn’t even close to closed. Yet the Guardian isn’t alone when it talks about the civil rights struggle and racial violence in the US in the past test. You hear it all the time; I wonder how teachers are teaching the children in elementary schools?

See the KKK isn’t past tense. It is alive. Not only that, I learned recently that membership is at its highest levels since the 70’s! Yes… we’re talking about a membership boom in an era where some people would like us to believe racism and violent groups like the KKK are all done.

What causes a boom? Well we can deduce that one. The two very popular issues that drive today’s bigots to violence and organized oppression against specific groups: xenophobia and homophobia. By focusing on those two issues, as the Klan has apparently, they can count on all the immigrant haters and the gay marriage oppenents… ready to dawn the sheets and burn some crosses.. or whatever their modern day methods are. (buy a congressperson and rig a local ballot?)

Oh and one final note to all my blue state-northeast friends. If you’re like me you’ve often had the illusion that our states are much more open minded and forward thinking. Well, for the record, the active and growing KKK chapters are located in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. So much for what I thought was my forward thinking state-of-birth.