11 February 2003

Pledge Drive

"What was the strange thing the dog did in the night?"

"Why, nothing," said Watson, puzzled.

"Elementary," responded Holmes, coolly.

That is what the weather did Monday night. Nothing. Bob Ryan and Action 4 Doppler Radar blew the call. There was not an inch or two more fluffy white stuff on the ground, though the gray sky remained pregnant with something. It would have to act fast to screw up the morning commute, and it tried, big fluffy flakes finally starting to fall as I drove the back road to the Firm. But it was too warm to stick. If my son was counting on another snow day to avoid handing in his King Lear Major Data Paper, it didn't work. Instead we had a sort of postcard day outside, really pretty.

But my son and I are already off on a new adventure. For Advanced Placement Government we are investigating the appeal of the California v. Acevedo decision in 1991 in which the Supreme Court refined the Carroll doctrine of probable cause through the lens of the Ross and Chadwick decisions. Carroll goes back to Prohibition, and the discovery of whiskey concealed in an automobile seat cushion. My head already hurts this morning. The Chadwick angle deals with the expectation of privacy in suitcases, like the suspect who the cops know damn well is holding drugs is sitting in a squad car and the cops are going through the trunk and the cop says, "Oho, there is a clear expectation of privacy here. I better go wake up a judge before I peek inside." I am hoping my son enjoys this case, since he is eighteen and lives in Prohibition all the time.

Lawyers. The American Bar Association is in the mix of news this morning, too, they are standing up for the rights of the armed combatant Americans who were apprehended coming back to America to blow up apartment buildings. They think it is unconscionable that the little dears are sitting in cages at Guantanamo Bay. "Well," I thought to myself, "the trial lawyers have a point. I just wish they had let the terrorists go to the ABA convention."

George Tenet and Robert Mueller are up on the Hill today talking about the worldwide threat. That is a huge deal, the two men carrying thick binders of point papers and a busload of horse-holders. The flood of useless knowledge continues. Jennifer Anisette is 34 and Lloyd Bentson is 82. So while the sky has failed of its promise, and it looks like the schools and the government are open, the BBC is making up for it in ominous portents. Mingled with feature stories on the failure of the global pension system is the rising volume of the voices opposing action against Iraq. Oh, and the big Haj observation in the Islamic world, at the conclusion of which the Department of Homeland Security tells me someone may want to blow up my apartment building.

The war news has changed a bit.The cockpit of action has moved from the UN to the North Atlantic Council of NATO. France and Belgium have vetoed planning action to defend ally Turkey. Don Rumsfeld is described as "incandescent" in his dudgeon about the latest European perfidy. I'd like to see that sometime, a glowing SECDEF. But that wasn't the big news. The main story this morning is that the Pledge Drive is finally over.

This drive was hard. My finances being what they were in the long legal battle with my ex-wife's implacable attorney, I cheated. I will freely confess it. I listened to NPR for free. I took Vicki Barker and the BBC and Carl Castle and Bob Edwards and the Prairie Home Companion and just listened. Oh, sure, I felt bad. But I figured "From each according to their means, to each according to their need."

I needed some news and I was broke and hemorrhaging cash to college and court. I let a few drives go by. But with war coming and things looking up financially, I had flat run out of excuses. Saturday was the crisis. They beat me down, finally, one last pledge would have put them over the top for that hour's goal. The weekend still stretched ahead of me with all the promise and possibility. The laundry was done and folded. I could continue my little project to document the oldest monument of the United States of America, the first one chartered by the Congress in 1791. The new body had directed the placement of four cardinal stones to mark the diamond of the District of Columbia, and forty intermediary stones at one mile intervals. Forty of them in all, and most right where they were placed 212 years ago, though the landscape has changed a bit.

I could drive to the East Stone, and follow along either northwest or southeast, into that part of the capital most folks don't go unless they live there. I thought I might head down Eastern Avenue, past the mosque with the Fruit of Islam standing on the sidewalk in front of the mosque in their neat suits, crisp haircuts and natty bow-ties on Eastern Avenue. I could slip and slide through the remaining snow and find the Stones where they stand still in front yards and medians and near trash dumps. I am closing in on identifying the sites of all the stones. I have visited 27 so far, and have identified where the hard ones are. The ones deep behind wire.

I could have thought about a lot of things. But they kept whining about how expensive everything was to produce top-quality content and damn it, it finally pushed me over the brink. I put down my car keys and hit the web site for NPR. They asked me to enter my zip code and up popped my local station's home page. I felt I could expiate the guilt of my shameless exploitation of National Public Radio. I double-clicked on the icon to make my minimum contribution. I had to keep the news and content coming.

Things are looking up, finally, and I need to share my good fortune. Who knows how long it will continue? Governor Ridge says the terrorists could be coming this week and we are on the highest alert since 9-11. The Governor says they are going to go after soft targets, according to the Homeland Security Secretary. By my reading that means that a drunk sailor with a loaded rifle in front of the Post Office makes that a hard target and the terrorists will go elsewhere.

The worst part about the pledge drive was that after I contributed it kept going. For days. I somehow had the expectation that after I broke down and complied with their demands it might stop. But finally, this morning, the battle is over. They are counting the pledges down at WETA, and I hope that they make the payment on the BBC and Prairie Home Companion and the Writer's Almanac. Alex Chadwick, not the legal case but the afternoon news reader, joked that someone broke into an NPR station and stole $10,000 in pledges. They all laughed at the idea down at the station, the idea of somebody stealing promises.

But I promised. And at least for now, the Pledge Drive is at an end.

Now, bring on the terrorists.