It's spring break in South Florida...

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean what the title conjures up!  I remember when I was in high school down here (Hollywood Hills High, class of '77, in case you were wondering...), in 11th grade, but looking a lot older than our 16 years, cruising the Ft. Lauderdale strip with my friends, looking for the hot college guys down here on spring break.  Ahh, the good old days, when the only thing you had to worry about was getting pregnant.  But I digress...

Now it's spring break, as in my 4th grader daughter is under-foot all week long!  

Today she went to the beach with the babysitter and her daughter but, after today's show, it was all about us.  

Thus the reason for the very late re-cap of today's Air America show.

What I had intended to be a few brief words on the loss of my former radio station, and the lone progressive radio voice in South Florida, became the whole first hour of the show.  Much of what I said was actually along the lines of my blog entries from Friday and Wednesday of last week.  That's part of the mourning process, I guess.  Venting and letting it all out.

But a big part of it was also challenging the listener to make the extra effort to find your favorite shows online and download them onto your iPod or other mp3 player and take them in the car, or listen via the computer as it's streaming live. 

I promise that, over the course of the next few days, I'll do the homework and post a comprehensive list of the progressive leaning shows, and the links from which you can listen.  

In the meantime, I plan on becoming more South Florida-centric over the coming weeks and months, to fill the void left when WINZ left the format.  Actually, to be completely accurate, that void has existed since I was let go from WINZ back in August...  Although they were a progressive station, there was truly no local presence on the station in the last seven months.  

To those who listen from places other than South Florida, I'll continue to sound off on other things that concern all of us.  And I hope you'll continue to let me know what topics and issues you'd like to hear about on Radio or Not.  We are in this together.

Click here to listen to the first hour of today's show (runtime minus news and commercials 37:44)

In the last two hours, we changed focus a bit.  I'm truly alarmed and frightened by the number of massacres that have taken place in this country in the past month.  

From the AP:

A string of shootings in the U.S. in the last month alone has claimed the lives of 53 people:

_MARCH 10, SAMSON, Ala. — A gunman kills 10 people and commits suicide in a rampage that spanned two dozen miles across the southern Alabama countryside. Police say Michael McLendon had struggled to keep a job and left behind lists of employers and co-workers he believed had wronged him.

_MARCH 22, OAKLAND, Calif. — A man pulled over in a routine traffic stop fatally shoots two officers and then kills two more in a gunfight in which the suspect was also killed. Relatives say Lovelle Mixon, 26, had been frustrated about not finding work and feared returning to jail.

_MARCH 29, SANTA CLARA, Calif. — A man shoots and kills his two children and three other relatives, then kills himself at a family housewarming party in an upscale neighborhood. Investigators don't yet know the motive of Devan Kalathat, a 42-year-old engineer at Yahoo.

_MARCH 29, CARTHAGE, N.C. — A man opens fire in a nursing home and kills seven elderly residents and a nurse who cared for them. Investigators say Robert Stewart, 45, apparently had targeted an estranged wife, a nurse's assistant who escaped by hiding in a bathroom.

_APRIL 3, BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — A gunman bursts into an immigrant center and kills 13 people before killing himself. Police say Jiverly Wong, a 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, was apparently upset about losing his job and about people picking on him for his limited English.

_APRIL 4, PITTSBURGH — A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opens fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three of them. Police say Richard Poplawski, 23, had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.

_APRIL 4, GRAHAM, Wash. — A man fatally shoots his five children in their mobile home and then takes his own life in his car miles away. Relatives identified the father as James Harrison. A motive was not yet known.

After playing Cheryl Wheeler's If It Were Up to Me, I spoke with Paul Helmke, executive director of the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence and to Bruce Tenenbaum, who wrote Gun "Nuts" for Huffington Post.  

Both guests made good points, in different ways.  I agree with Cheryl Wheeler... If it were up to me, I'd take away the guns.