When I first discovered broadcasting at my now defunct college radio station, once every year we would do a “radiothon” pledge drive in order to raise funds to keep operating.  This post comes to you with that same spirit, except this time it is personal.  My “station” in life needs your help, and my goal is to raise a modest six-thousand($6,000) by December, which would cover a donwardly-negotiated unjust “surtax” from twenty years ago, with this Fall Pledge Drive.  I am fifty-seven and single, but even a bachelor cannot make it on a paltry unemployment insurance check of eighty-five dollar per week – although I  really appreciate it because a few weeks ago, they told me my previous claim was “exhausted”, no check came for two weeks and I got down to total zero: no money, no gas in the car, no food except bread and boiled water on Labor Day weekend.  That cannot happen anymore, so with your help I can catalyst my own economic stimulus and climb out of the abyss. Yes, the nation’s money woes have exacerbated my plight, and I do not sleep well at night, with a bill du noir often waking me up with a start after usually only three hours of “good” sleep.  Vulnerable to eviction at the whim of the landlord who has been very kind to let be survive here this long, and a finance company holding the title of my thirteen year old car due to a debt-consolidation loan, these are nervous times and a recent visit to a free health clinic revealed the genesis of high blood pressure for the first time in my life even though I exercise regularly, and don’t “look” my age. 

My next door neighbor described me as “creative” a couple of days ago during an over-the-fence conversation about the issues of the day. I am a good man who just has not realized the goals I set for myself twenty-six years ago when I was at my personal mountain top as a personality on the number one New York City radio station; now I reside in a southern town of only 500,000 or so people with more limited possibilities than I grew up accustomed to.  My Mum who is going on eighty-eight said,”You would have had to have gotten more help with those [goals] than you did.”  Reading from a recently-discovered “bio” from 1984, my goals were: “radio management while maintaining a creative outlet ( air  shift); to Program a New York City FM station, and use his talents in the new Video/Cable field.”  NONE of that happened – where has the time gone? 

Yeah, all my close mentors and my main inspiration for my career choice died-off in the 1990s, but maybe some of it I guess was me or some secret criticism people with the power to help me spoke about only behind my back so I could not change it for the better.  Be that as it may, enough self-psychoanalysis.  As my friend who passed-away suddenly at age forty-five earlier this year would say, “It is what it is…”  I need your help or that of someone you know – I am now my own public charity.  Cash, honorarium, stipend or a grant to travel, write and earn my keep are all acceptable.  I have been pushing and applying for respectable work on-line and attempting to do so in-person, to then be shunned back to the internet; the telephone doesn’t ring anymore with people interested in paying me for my knowledge and services like in past decades.  One of my old college fraternity “brothers” said, “You’ve got to get out there, and be the CEO of your own company/can’t just sit on the internet” [paraphrasing].  Agreed, but difficult to do on eighty-five bucks a week from the Dept of Labor.

I do still have some humble pride and value my privacy, therefore I will not put  all of my personal information in this space. However, you can e-mail me or request more 411 in your comments and will gratefully communicate with you to achieve my goals.  This is straight-up world-wide panhandling – I never thought it would come to this, however we hear all over that we must use today’s tools to get what we need. I am an honest, talented man trying to get totally back on his feet in order to have  a chance at comfort for my remaining years, give myself a chance to share  and happily reciprocate.  Others have these things.  Why not me? 

 For those who donate twenty-five dollars or more, I can offer you one of my personally mixed, custom CDs or one of my radio show CDs (instead of a coffee mug, LOL)

And now my” tune wedgie” du jour; I always knew blues music was there because Frankie Crocker played it on WBLS in my radio “formative years”, but kind of ignored it. I met and interviewed Mr. Bland once as he sat on his touring bus outside of a nightclub called “Sweetwaters” on Amsterdam Avenue in New York City.

I “cry” because I don’t know what else to do but make this appeal at this time.  Thank you for your “support”. DJJimiB