From The Half-Red House

Open Letter to New Hampshire Public Television

themailbox@nhptv.org

Dear NHPTV,

We got your analog signal fine as of last night, but we can't get your digital signal on either channel 11 or channel 49. I assume this means we have lost NHPTV service for good. In fact, after WMUR converts, we won't be able to get any New Hampshire channel, and Boston channels mostly ignore New Hampshire. We can't afford to build a TV mast or subscribe to an expensive satellite service, and we are not served by cable. We also don't own most of the trees we'd have to cut down if we wanted to and could afford to. Do you plan to increase the power on your digital signals or otherwise help us rural residents? (I don't mean by telling us to remodel our houses and cut down our trees) Could you start streaming on the internet? We already pay for DSL service. Couldn't you keep the analog signal going on channel 11 the way you are maintaining it on channel 18, at least for a few more months?

I'm unhappy that a service we have relied on for decades has been taken away, but it appears there is nothing we can do about it. We aren't rich and won't be any loss to your fundraising efforts, but if your purpose was to serve the New Hampshire public, then you are failing a significant portion of that public, and I thought you ought to know.

-Jim Giddings

Greenville NH

Contrary to what you may have read, the John Greenleaf Whittier 200th birthday poetry vigil was NOT cancelled. It was low-key, but glorious. In addition, though I wasn’t there for the cake-cutting, I understand that a 450-pound birthday cake was shared later in the day! Read about it on my LiveJournal blog.

I just learned that the Whittier homestead is sponsoring a 24-hour poetry vigil this Sunday/Monday to celebrate Whittier’s 200th birthday. You can sign up to take a shift reading at http://www.johngreenleafwhittier.com/ . Of course you need to be able to get to Haverhill MA to take part.

Here is one of John Greenleaf Whittier’s well-known poems. See if you can locate the line that everybody knows but nobody knows who wrote it:

MAUD MULLER on a summer's day,Raked the meadow sweet with hay.

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealthOf simple beauty and rustic-health.

Singing, she wrought, and her merry gleeThe mock-bird echoed from his tree.

But when she glanced to the far-off town,White from its hill-slope looking down,

The sweet song died, and a vague unrestAnd a nameless longing filled her breast,--

A wish, that she hardly dared to own,For something better than she had known.

The Judge rode slowly down the lane,Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.

He drew his bridle in the shadeOf the apple-trees, to greet the maid,

And asked a draught from the spring that flowedThrough the meadow across the road.

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,And filled for him her small tin cup,

And blushed as she gave it, looking downOn her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.

"Thanks!" said the Judge; "a sweeter draughtFrom a fairer hand was never quaffed."

He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,Of the singing birds and the humming bees;

Then talked of the haying, and wondered whetherThe cloud in the west would bring foul weather.

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown,And her graceful ankles bare and brown;

And listened, while a pleased surpriseLooked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.

At last, like one who for delaySeeks a vain excuse, he rode away.

Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah me!That I the Judge's bride might be!

"He would dress me up in silks so fine,And praise and toast me at his wine.

"My father should wear a broadcloth coat;My brother should sail a painted boat.

"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,And the baby should have a new toy each day.

"And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,And all should bless me who left our door."

The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,And saw Maud Muller standing still.

A form more fair, a face more sweet,Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.

"And her modest answer and graceful airShow her wise and good as she is fair.

"Would she were mine, and I to-day,Like her, a harvester of hay;

"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,

"But low of cattle and song of birds,And health and quiet and loving words."

But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,And Maud was left in the field alone.

But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,When he hummed in court an old love-tune;

And the young girl mused beside the wellTill the rain on the unraked clover fell.

He wedded a wife of richest dower,Who lived for fashion, as he for power.

Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,He watched a picture come and go;

And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyesLooked out in their innocent surprise.

Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,He longed for the wayside well instead;

And closed his eyes on his garnished roomsTo dream of meadows and clover-blooms.

And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,"Ah, that I were free again!

"Free as when I rode that day,Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."

She wedded a man unlearned and poor,And many children played round her door.

But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,Left their traces on heart and brain.

And oft, when the summer sun shone hotOn the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,

And she heard the little spring brook fallOver the roadside, through the wall,

In the shade of the apple-tree againShe saw a rider draw his rein.

And, gazing down with timid grace,She felt his pleased eyes read her face.

Sometimes her narrow kitchen wallsStretched away into stately halls;

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,The tallow candle an astral burned,

And for him who sat by the chimney lug,Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,

A manly form at her side she saw,And joy was duty and love was law.

Then she took up her burden of life again,Saying only, "It might have been."

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope liesDeeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels mayRoll the stone from its grave away!

I was part of a group in the late 1990′s that was arrested for protesting the presence of sweatshop goods (especially clothing) in what was then New Hampshire’s second-largest shopping mall. In those days the goods were made by a largely female and often child labor force in a number of poor countries located throughout Southeast Asia and Central America. Nowaday, the same type of conditions still dominate the apparel industry, but the manufacturing is increasingly centralized in certain specific coastal areas of China.

To understand the impact on human lives of these facts, I strongly recommend seeing the 2005 documentary “China Blue” , which has recently been making the rounds of public TV stations and cable outlets, and is regularly been shown and discussed in activist forums and churches around the world. The film, which was made clandestinely and without government permission, follows the young femal workers at a Chinese blue-jean factory through several weeks, including a rush period when forced overtime sickens some of the workers. At the end of the movie, almost in an aside, a management representative is caught stating that the rush shipment of jeans had been for Wal-Mart. The women live in a dormitory in curtained bunks and can only leave factory grounds for shopping etc. a few times a week. Their pay is delayed for months on end until they stage an informal wildcat strike to force the managers’ hand. One young girl is unable to pay for a ticket home to visit her family at New Years; one gets the impression that they are all deep in debt and just break even when the paychecks arrive. All this is captured on camera. I don’t have the exact figures handy, but near the end of the movie a statistic is flashed on the screen that during the time it has taken you to watch this film, the 20? women in this section of the factory haved sewed 35? pairs of jeans. Their combined pay
for this work is under $2.00 . The rest of the price you pay if you buy these jeans at WalMart goes to retail and wholesale profits, advertising, shipping and assorted other overhead.

For more inforamtion on the struggle to end sweatshops and make the connections between cheap consumer goods, “free trade” and the suffering they cause, visit The National Labor Committee . In addition to the PBS website listed above, where you can learn more and react to the film, the filmmakers provide a 16 page study guide on their Bullfrog Films website

Although MySpace doesn’t offer it as an option, I’d like to recommend Tracey Curtis‘ song “Fair Play” whose chorus goes “12 hours 6 days with no time to play; I’m working my life away; Play Fair, Fair Play isn’t that what you all say? I don’t want applause just fair pay for 12 hour a day six days a week.”