I’ve decided to give my 3rdActs.com blogging a rest for the rest of the summer. I want to go see more of this…

Talk to you in the fall.

UPDATE: Stuff to read while I’m gone (O.K., I reserve the right to pop up once in a whlie]:

NYTimes.com — nice piece about aging, quoting Robert Butler and others. The way we should all think, here.

I was kvetching here the other day about the fact that Yakima has no public radio station. That is, the FM station most likely to be used for local public radio programming is owned and operated by Washington State University as Northwest Public Radio, a statewide radio network based at the university in Pullman, which distributes national programming and some fitful regional news reports via satellite to all its stations simultaneously. I have a love-hate relationship with NWPR, and all over-the-air broadcasters, for that matter.

Because I’m interested in focusing more on my town in this blog, I was interested in this story on nytimes.com, about the localist foodie scene in Portland, that provincial wide place on the Columbia just southwest of here. Some of these folks have developed quite a bit of local fervor over nearby food production and consumption, resulting in at least one incident of fisticuffs.

Localism, if you define it in extreme terms, has always been around. All you have to do is move in from someplace else to discover the social power structure of a town. In my experience, this structure never really absorbs newcomers. Or maybe I’m just not willing to be absorbed. Generally, the newcomers just develop their own networks.

I think there is a new localism afoot. Some is being generated, perversely, by carpetbagging newcomers, like Ed Marquand and his Mighty Tieton development in the tiny town of Tieton, just west of here. It’s a bunch of arts-business people who’ve moved in from Seattle and are revitalizing a dead-town-walking fruit warehouse community. It’s a cross between economic development and gentrification that has already shaken things up out there. Yakima would be smart to emulate this activity — we already have a strong, if ego-Balkanized, arts community.

Another example. July 31, the Yakima Music Festival puts on a day of street concerts by local rock bands and others on North Front Street, one of our oldest blocks — just north of Yakima Avenue — which has an active merchant group of restauranteurs and others doing promotions. Kendall Weaver, a Yakiima radio guy, is apparently producing the entertainment for the event.

Yakima has a lively newspaper, the Herald-Republic. Newspapers in small towns have no trouble being hyper-local. What’s-going-on-here is their product, unlike broadcast stations, which are mostly clueless about how to cover their communities, and are either owned by top-down corporate networks or focused on their own variety of industrial provincialism — standardizing, importing employees, rather than bucking their norms and developing stations that look and sound like their towns. They’re only passionate about appearing to be local.

KIMA-TV, for example, has recently made a big promotional deal out of being the last TV station in town with a completely-locally-based news staff, though their on-air news content isn’t any more comprehensively local than it used to be, or demonstrably better than their competitors, and continues to be produced under nationally-consulted tabloid-style TV news norms. (I’ll take this on in detail in a future post.) Because of broadcasters and, now, Internet media, most of us have more-or-less lost the ability to make local thinking a conscious priority.

Yakima, like most communities, has a look and feel, a character. You have to live in it to get it. Get out of the house, away from the screens and speakers, and you’re in it.

Oh, you can hear Morning Edition and All Things Considered and Garrison Keillor in Yakima on 90.3 FM. But KNWY isn’t a local station. It’s just one transmitter owned by Northwest Public Radio, a network based at Washington State University, and every sound you hear on it arrives via satellite from Pullman, Washington.

Northwest Public Radio is a big operation, if you judge size by number of stations, but it’s really just two Pullman radio stations writ large. I’m happy they’re there, but I long for them to do a better job, or to decentralize.

By occupying the only FM non-commercial channel Yakima has, NWPR deprives this and at least another dozen Washington towns of locally-produced community radio. What would Yakima public radio be like? Hard to know, since radio hasn’t tried to develop unique local sounds for generations. And local people have been taught not to try to play in the broadcasting sandbox and to expect little from hometown radio.

Only newspapers have remained authentically local. Actually, newspapers have a better chance to break new local ground than radio, because they must convert to digital distribution, and they’re learning fast. Radio is totally networked and, frankly, the owners aren’t very smart. Radio people think “local” means the weather report. They think local life is a tune-out.

Maybe I’ll try to brainstorm some ideas to move Yakima radio into the digital century; to take advantage of the massive opportunity I believe exists. You can join me, by commenting here, or on Facebook.

Disclaimer: You can argue there are notable exceptions to my judgments of radio. I can’t be bothered.

Disclosure: I worked in and around the U.S. radio business most of my life. I love radio — what it was, what it could be, and, occasionally, what it has become.

Definitions: When I say “radio” I mean the patterns and streams of sound that have come out of the speaker for almost a hundred years. Not the wires and waves. Although the physics and mechanics of radio are a fascinating world all their own — the original exploitation of the electromagnetic pulse of the Universe, capital U. Sometimes when I say “radio” I mean the American radio broadcasting business — the industry. You’ll be able to tell which I mean from my context.

…but, one of the things that happens when you get older, if you’re lucky — you lose your stupid prejudices. My wife has always been more open to stuff like RV life than me. She’s never worried about not being hip or made fun of. I want to be like her when I grow up.

This birthday-of-my-country weekend, we’ve parked our new motorhome under the cedars of the Chehalis Thousand Trails campground in Western Washington. This spring has been extra cool and wet, and everybody in the state’s complaining. The Fourth is cloudy here, and the heat is supposed to arrive Tuesday, when everybody’s gone back to work.

After two weeks here, I’m more convinced than ever that George Orwell was right: if there’s hope for us, it’s with the proles — all the folks around us here, with their tents, trailers, motorhomes and vans, roasting marshmallows, laughing with their kids. They’re especially happy today, in spite of everything going on in our bumbling country, because it’s our country, and our birthday.

Join up with me on Facebook, here.

…sitting here in a comfortable lodge building on an RV campground somewhere in Western Washington, using their recently upgraded wi-fi. Yep, roughing it.

I thought I’d be writing — “working” — but the minute we arrived that urge simply left me, and I realized I needed to kick back. A week in, and the former urge is just returning. I have been thinking about writing a lot, which is writing, too, as any writer will tell you.

I just have to keep reminding myself to be more Zen about writing — you can’t force it. You can, but you may not like the result. Here’s one of the best things I’ve seen this week:

This will make a better writer of me.

UPDATE: 6/23 - 12:05PM PDT — Well, what else could Obama do? It’s not a win. But the Army isn’t part of the political-media complex, and free speech doesn’t apply to Generals or privates. Still, I stand behind my post, which is now old news.

I just read Michael Hastings story, “The Runaway General,” online, here. You should read it, too.

First I wondered how the Army, plus the reputed smartest guy in it, plus his hand-picked staff, plus some genius civilian consultant on, presumably, press exploitation, could have allowed a reporter for Rolling Stone, for God’s sake — a magazine with a forty-year reputation for muckraking and rude language — into the general’s most private working moments. There’s only one explanation — they’re stupidly self-destructive. Anyway you look at it, both adjective and adverb apply.

Then you read the piece. It’s either total fiction — and nobody has suggested it is — or it’s spectacular reporting supported by muscular writing.

Yes, Hastings has a point of view. He says Afghanistan is a total SNAFU. President Obama looks, well, stupid. How is it that the brightest and best people our government can assemble from either party can’t keep these big war-projects from turning into chaos? When will we stop sending ranks of mechanized troops after ragtag bands of guerrillas to get chewed up and blown up? Really, this has never worked. Remember those ranks of Redcoats marching upright in perfect lines down the road to Concord?

Well, that’s enough for now. I’m not required to offer a solution. But I do think each of us Americans needs to spend more time reflecting upon the quality of choices of leader-candidates we are being offered by our political system. And how we can demand a more intelligent, accurate system of developing and selecting them. I’m thinking about that. My choice for the immediate future is none of the above.

Saturday, I went to the Winnies, the annual awards party for the Warehouse Theatre Company, Yakima’s largest and oldest community playhouse.

This isn’t a photo of the party. I took this at a rehearsal for “Our Town,” the final production of the 2009-2010 Warehouse season. I was a cast member.

The Winnie’s name isn’t just a tribute to winners. It’s named for the Warehouse’s founder, whose name slips my mind — I was elsewhere when WTC was founded in the 1940s. WTC has been a vital organ of Yakima’s cultural life ever since. This season was more or less typical:

Last summer’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” won Brandon Lamb this year’s Best Director award — it was a precision, high-energy musical performance. “Joseph” also won the “Peoples Choice” award, which I think means it won the box office sweeps for this season. “October Festival” delivered the Best Actress this year, young Tori Gresham.

Then there was “Every Christmas Story Ever Told…and Then Some.” What can I say? Three goofy guys on stage, lotsa gags, lotsa props. Big hit.

Winter show: “Almost, Maine,” an uncharacteristically almost-new play — a series of vignettes set in a mythical town, about most varieties of love. Performed with zest by a fine young cast. Won Best Show.

Finally, this spring, WTC revived “Our Town,” the classic American play by Thornton Wilder. Vance Jennings played the Stage Manager, and took home Best Actor of the season.

The Winnies was the Warehouse gang letting its collective hair down. Unlike its productions, the evening was charmingly underproduced and spontaneous. Which is O.K., because it was a gathering of the clan, not for the WTC audience. Besides, it was scheduled against a big “Yakima’s Got Talent” show downtown Saturday night. One of our stalwart directors was a judge at that event, and Emily Stephenson, one of our stars, had to leave early to compete in it. She came in second.

After the awards, we had a party across the hall in the art gallery. Good munchies, good Yakima Valley wine, good friends.

Al and Tipper Gore announced they’re separating last week. Thank God, the tabloid scene hasn’t found much with which to blow this story into un affaire celebe.

But here comes good old AARP, the geezer’s guide to everything, with the coverage nobody asked for. You can count on AARP to behave like a traditional pop-magazine these days. It’s no longer enough to be the Third Rail of Politics.

And here they are, trotting out Boomer media shrink Pepper Schwartz to dash off a quick hundred-or-so words of predictable pop-psych analysis of the long-marriage-breaks-up phenomenon-syndrome. Never at a loss for a diagnosis, Dr. Schwartz concludes it’s because we’re living longer, and maybe we can’t stand the thought of hanging in there for maybe twenty or thirty more years of the same-old. And she never misses the opportunity to point out that this is another sign of the Boomers-Invented-Everything explanation. Here’s your pie, Pepper.

That’s my new Twitter name.

When I moved here three years ago I thought I was moving to a small town. Wrong. Yakima is a small city.

It’s the sirens. I hear a lot of sirens in Yakima. You don’t hear sirens in small towns.

We’ve got TV stations in Yakima. Four network stations, that behave like they think they’re in Seattle. Except, the anchors are either twenty-something or fifty-something. Small towns don’t have TV stations that lead with the top of the police blotter. Our “big city” TV stations make us look like a small town.

We’ve got traffic in Yakima. It isn’t Seattle traffic, but it’s traffic, baby. Small towns don’t have traffic.

Small towns have a Wal-Mart. We have two. Yakima is a city.

This article on Silicon Alley Insider’s Business Insider blog jumped to the top of my list today: “Content is No Longer King; Curation is King.”

This guy says because everybody can create content, the business to be in is gathering everybody else’s content and “curating” it. It’s such a nicer word than “aggregator,” or “leach,” don’t you think? Read it and see if you agree with his premise. I think he makes a strong case that checks with my observations. [By the way, if you want to know what I'm talking about when I talk about midlife crisis, read yesterday's post, here.]

The guy, Steve Rosenbaum, is a Web entrepreneur, and of course he’s in the curation business, which means doing a Website that gathers everybody else’s content, thus not having to go to the expense of creating original stuff. Just drill down, baby, and link, link. link.

To a content creator — that’s what I think I am — this means I’d better get used to writing for all the big curation Websites. They expect to be the new gatekeepers, the new prestigious publishers and networks. The catch is, they can’t keep us from reaching audiences. They just point, and sell ads around their pointers. Because nobody has the time or wants the trouble of Googling, and we’re all afraid we’ll miss something. I like curation sites. They’re obviously needed. My favorite right now is Arts & Letters Daily.

So, what does this mean? Shall I become the Curator of All Things 50-plus? Except for AARP.org, which I can’t stand, slim pickings, depressing stuff. I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. [Notice, I didn't even give AARP a link. You can find 'em.]

I’m gonna have to think about this.

UPDATE: 6/16 10:06PM PT — Here’s another great Web curator — a real person, too — ResearchBuzz.org. And here’s a fine New Yorker article about the future of music on the air and its curators, aka disc jockeys.

[What do you think? Email me -- dnewton@3rdActs.com -- or comment by clicking below. Or talk to me on Facebook or Twitter.]