cleve callison’s blog

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep — something that’s happened more than once lately. This time was a little different, because what kept running through my mind was a line of poetry — just four words, actually.

Original text of remarks summarized at Miami University’s public forum, February 3, 2009

President Hodge and members of the panel, and guests here in Benton and listening via the world-wide web:

I’m Cleve Callison, and for the last almost-12 years I have had the honor of serving as General Manager of a great public radio station, WMUB.

I hope that those here this evening will allow me the privilege of speaking to you from the perspective of a day I hoped would never come, and until two weeks ago never thought would come.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep — something that’s happened more than once lately. This time was a little different, because what kept running through my mind was a line of poetry — just four words, actually, which I will get to in a couple of minutes. Other words kept running through my mind, questions I’ve heard a lot from colleagues and from listeners. One of these is “Can anything be done?” or, more poignantly, “Could anything have been done?”

Having tried to make WMUB financially viable in reasonably good economic times and knowing the difficulty of that task, I can only imagine the burden that Dr. Hodge and his advisers have felt in trying to trim $22 million dollars from Miami’s budget. WMUB is feeling the pain in a very public way, but there are other important and long-standing programs of the University that are feeling a lot of pain now too.

I’ve heard many suggestions in the last two weeks. All the ideas are motivated by a passionate love of public radio, and to all who have said or thought about the situation with concern and alarm, I say God bless you for that.

Several years ago, my boss Richard Little and I, knowing that the station’s subsidy from Miami was very high by national standards, began looking at WMUB’s budget to try to figure out a path that would put us at less risk. By cutting expenses, including staff, and increasing our fundraising, we succeeded in reducing Miami’s support both in percentages and in actual dollars. But not by enough to survive the onslaught of the financial and economic crisis that continues to rage in our country and state.

I know the plans Richard and I worked on for hours and hours and the battles we fought to try to bring them about. Some we won, some we lost; some you may know about some, you do not; several, I think, even I don’t know about. Short of Bill Gates opening a summer home in McGonigle and dropping a few million on us, completely getting off the Miami subsidy would be a task that would take time, time that now we just don’t have. Intellectually I know and believe that. Emotionally, I’ll always ask myself that what-if question. In the words of the great philosopher Don Meredith on Monday Night Football, “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.”

So the what-if comments will always be there. But there’s another comment I will take with me. I can’t count the number of times people have said to me “You have the best job in the world.” And it’s true. I’ve gotten to work with the full range of human ideas and intellects at play, with the arts and public service. I’ve even gotten to sing the SuperChicken theme song on the air, and been privileged to work with a wonderful, professional group of dedicated people. Many of the staff of WMUB are in the audience tonight, and I’d like to ask them to stand up now.

I’ve also gotten to come in contact with the thousands of listeners and supporters of WMUB who’ve been so loyal to it. We saw an outpouring of support at our recent Day Sponsor reception. I’ve always felt that a great public radio station is the best possible ambassador of a great university, and your response to WMUB both now and in the past has confirmed that for me.

As Cheri Lawson once said during a member drive, we’re truth tellers on public radio. Here’s a truth: this is a sad day and a sad time. And here’s another: if WMUB as we know it must disappear, our colleagues from Cincinnati Public Radio are good people to turn to. They know how to make good radio. Jenny and I have been members there for years. We listen to a lot of WGUC and to WVXU. It’s been fun to be both colleagues and competitors and friends with them, they the big kahunas and we the scrappy little guys with several walls full of awards to show for it. I know that competition has made us better; I like to think it’s helped them too.

As one of our donors said at the Day Sponsor reception on January 24th, she intends to get involved with Cincinnati Public Radio. I encourage you to do the same thing. Become a member; tell them when you appreciate something; give them heck when you don’t. You’ll help them — and public radio still needs your support.

Finally — I’ve been thinking about traditions a lot lately. I am a traditionalist — Southerner by birth, medievalist by training and Episcopalian by temperament. So believe me, I know the impulse to say, “Let’s don’t change anything.” Losing WMUB feels like a loss precisely because it is a loss.

At the same time, when you are a medievalist you know that in the long run things will always change — sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Fortune’s wheel keeps turning, bringing good and bad fortune to all.

One of the worst offenses committed by the late, unlamented governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich was to practically ruin the practice of quoting poetry aloud. But as promised, I’m going to risk it, and tell you the line that kept running through my head this morning. It’s by a poet who once stayed on campus about a block or so from here. The story as I’ve heard it — or as I’ve always liked to think — is that he referred to Miami as “the prettiest campus that ever was”. I’m sure he must have been here in the fall. I imagine him stepping out in the morning to look at this campus and wondering what kinds of change will befall it.

Here, in several senses, is a fall-like poem by Robert Frost:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have had the best job in the world.