High-Pitched Locals

Can a blog be local, if that locality is something smaller than, say, Brooklyn, which has more than a few online writers dedicated to its peculiarities? Does the internet, like all media, concern itself primarily with its own terms? Can you step out of its flow to discuss the office building across from the old Lowes to an audience that will respond to the point as more than just a bit of local color? Of course, there are media whose transmitters are focused on smaller realms.

They have their very local inflections. Take the local public radio station.

Nothing says Central Pennsylvania so much as the high-pitched female voices on the Classical music show. While Haydn and Debussy are commonly introduced by baritone men with snobby pronunciation, around here you hear voices on the verge of hysteria as they try to sound harmless, as if listeners were nervous dogs or frightened babies craving reassurance.

One pundit suggests that it is the inflection of Amish speech that gives Central PA its soprano tendencies. Or do these siren DJs reflect the nervous cultural politics of a Classical music station in the rural isolation of a partying college town, uninterested in the dead musicians from before 1966.

I have met kindergarten teachers with more gravitas than the local announcers. Yet these voices have a regional texture, that is distinctly different the clichéd dialects and twangs that defiantly mark north and south, city and country.

These ear-shattering, local radio personalities harmonize with the general tendency to make culture cute. Beethoven’s music is presented with cupcakes and clapping. “We’re celebrating Mozart week today and for the rest of the month.” Again the grating kindergarten pedagogy.

The question remains dear internet friends: can this blog address these tones, without becoming hopeless out of sync with its own medium, with becoming unpleasantly local?