THIRTY YEARS AGO, MORE OR LESS.

I'm referring to Labor Day, 1990, which means this post is on the "more" side of history.  I had been sailing on Geneva Lake and hanging out with other sailors, and then had to head home to get squared away for the resumption of classes, Northern Illinois University having this perverse by-law that starts instruction on the fourth Monday of August, thus you start up for a week or two, then stand down for a long weekend.  At the time I was still listening to the university's public radio station for the long-hair music, their propensity occasionally to play excerpts rather than full works and too many soporific guitar pieces notwithstanding.  That meant I got home to All Things Considered.

To set the context, dear reader, understand that the summer and fall of 1989 featured a continuing drama called As Communism Crumbles: Hungarian border opened.  Genuine elections in Poland. A few days after the anniversary of the founding of East Germany, the Berlin Wall came down.  (Find yourself a video of the anniversary celebration, dear reader, and check out the VIPs at the show:  Yasir Arafat, Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro, representatives from North Korea and Iraq, a regular rogue's gallery of lefty heroes.)  At Thanksgiving the Czechoslovakian communists threw in the towel.  The partition of the country into Czech and Slovak parts came a few years later.  There was coal in their stockings at Christmas for the ruling Ceaucescu clan of Romania.

Because All Things Considered presented itself as a news show, their correspondents had to cover those events.  You could hear the dejection in their voices.  It's so much more fun to run long, droning pieces with native music about communism in Central America, and those guys just got defunded.  Come Labor Day, though, there was a great opportunity to wallow in the past, signing off with Pete Seeger strumming the guitar and singing a less militaristic version of The Internationale.  "Letting Mr Seeger close the Labor Day broadcast epitomized denial. That's why radios come with tuners. Adios, All Things Considered."

I'm still not listening, and apparently public radio can still appease their internal Commie with riffs on "property is theft."  Somebody explain to me why public radio still is on the federal payroll.