Editor's Note: I struggled with writing this post; I am usually loathe to rely on personal connections to amplify unrelated points. So, the notes below are offered in the spirit of “something that reminded me of something else,” rather than any attempt to claim any form of analogy between the two sets of thoughts.
Last week, I visited Seattle, Wash., the city that welcomed my Dad’s family when he arrived in the United States at the age of 12 as a wartime refugee. The city is bigger now than it was then, by roughly 150,000 people. What was my Dad’s childhood neighborhood is actually pretty close to downtown, while the new suburbs reach farther outward from the city core.
On previous trips to Seattle, I visited my Dad’s old neighborhood; last week, I spent some time downtown, and as I walked around wondered what businesses occupied the downtown buildings that preceded his arrival and now house new businesses (for example, the old Kress building, which now houses a grocery store in its basement, and the former Coliseum Theater, which is a now Banana Republic). Even old iron lamppost bases caught my attention as I thought about the city as it was, and how its atmosphere must have shaped my Dad’s experiences as a new young American.
Of course, I was in Seattle for work, specifically, to meet with members of the Oregon Telecommunications Association and the Washington Independent Telecommunications Association. During a breakfast conversation about the latest Washington, D.C., buzz, an older telecom exec shook his head and said, “You need to bring them out West.” I explained that NTCA’s Foundation for Rural Service undertakes such efforts, bringing Hill staff to rural areas so that they can see and experience the regions in which NTCA members provide service. My breakfast companion suggested that the trips be made by bus so that congressional staff can experience the full expanse of the countryside (“windshield time”).
Whether by land or air, however, this gentleman’s suggestion was important. The phrase “boots on the ground” is trotted out when rural service providers visit policymakers in Washington, D.C.; it denotes those providers’ connected and personal experience with the business of providing communications services in rural areas. While it is not a perfect substitute for bringing policymakers to rural areas, it helps staff see the issues through the eyes of providers who can offer firsthand testimony.
And, with the increasing use of broadband for agriculture, education and health care, it will become increasingly important for those providers’ voices to be heard as well, so that the full scope of rural broadband can be seen through our farmers’ eyes, our teachers’ eyes and our doctors’ eyes.
I cannot claim to appreciate fully what Seattle meant in the 1940s to my Dad, but having visited, I can at least claim a visual context. Recruiting others with a stake in rural broadband can provide an ever broader canvas on which to consider a fuller scope of rural issues.