Sunday, February 24, 2008

Greetings from West Philly!

Greetings from Philadelphia. I am here to visit with the Prometheus Radio Project, an organization that is involved in the establishment of community radio stations in the US and around the world.

For those of you in derby, you may not be familiar with some of the activities that I do outside of derby. Well, long before derby, I have been involved with supporting the establishment of Low Power FM (LPFM) broadcast stations here in the United States. I operate a LPFM information site, lpfm.ws. We (Prometheus folks and myself) are going to be traveling to Washington DC for various activities. This includes me visiting my counterparts at the FCC for the first time.
As someone who has lived in the west most of her life, it has been a bit of a challenge adjusting to winter weather. But it is nice to see snow.

I was going to leave on Saturday morning, but because of the storm that came through Philly, I decided to leave on a Friday night red-eye flight, which looked like a better chance of me getting on (those who are familiar with airline employee non-revenue travel can understand what I mean). Despite what Dan The Plumber says about me sleeping in his truck on rides back from Tucson bouts, I can not sleep on a plane. Therefore, I was up the entire time. My laptop has a shit battery so I could not use it for too long but fortunately, this was one America West operated flight where the in-flight entertainment (music) actually worked so I pretty much had that keep me entertained. I had a center seat, fortunately it was not the last row in the plane.
I arrive in Philly at about 5:30AM. I take a cab from the airport to the home of Pete Tridish (the founder of Prometheus). One thing I like about Philadelphia is the regulated nature of the cabs. It cost me a $26 flat fare from the airport to get to the city. Not bad.

The home where Pete lives in as a turn-of-the-century three story home along Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia. This specific home was previously used as a squat house for runaways teens who pretty much took over the once vacant house. A lot of the memories of those days are still in the house. So you will find portions of the house with exposed walls, exposed plumbing, slogans, bumper stickers and news clippings, etc on the wall. In many ways, it's very artsy. But despite that, the house is habitable. They call the house (K)notsquat.
Myself, due to internet connectivity issues, I am staying with one of the other Prometheus staffers that is within walking distance of the Prometheus headquarters and (K)notsquat. It's also a nice 3 story, 6-bedroom home, like most of the homes in this neighborhood. I really like this place.

I forgot to mention on Friday, I injured my right leg on the job. I was moving large boxes on a handtruck and forgot about a table and I hit it pretty hard. So I am right now nursing that injury and the cold weather is not helping that.

Since Friday morning, I had been up straight through Saturday afternoon. I was finally able to get a nap on Saturday afternoon and I was able to get a full night's sleep between Saturday night and this morning.

Today, I will be working with Prometheus to try to bring some alignment of the REC vision for LPFM with that of Prometheus and I am hoping to get Prometheus to take on some of the positions we have taken on LPFM that they have not really even taken on in the past.
When I get to DC, I am being told that one of the activists who will be there is a rollergirl from San Antonio. I am going to assume she's from Alamo City Rollergirls. This will be an interesting meeting. I did bring my camera. I just did not bring my plaid skirt .. lol.
I will be coming back Wednesday. With this injury and my exhaustion from travelling, I am definitely not going to be skating that night.

Until then, keep warm. I am trying to here. (*^u^*)

With derby loveMichi-chan=m

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