I recently spent a month at home with my 4-month-old daughter, Eleanor Marie. During this time, I learned many things, some of them totally new to me. She’s my first child, and I’ve found out why every little girl is a daddy’s girl. And like every parent, I know my child is the most beautiful one ever. Beyond the normal new-child-in-the-world things, however, I’ve also learned things about my work, about Asheville and sustainable living.

In my nondad hours, I work for the state Division of Air Quality, helping people understand the sources and impacts of air pollution, greenhouse gases and health issues. And though I’ve worked in outdoor education for almost 30 years, Eleanor has helped me learn many things I already knew.

In Last Child in the Woods (Workman Publishing, 2005), author Richard Louv discusses “nature deficit disorder.” Simply put, children are spending less time outdoors and are getting fat, developing attention deficit disorder, depression and a fear of natural things. When exposed to the outdoors, these same children become healthier, more focused and less fearful.

I know this; I teach this. But Eleanor has helped me see the value of the outdoors in a new way.

We spent Christmas in Charlotte with my wife’s extended Southern family and a few of my people. Eleanor is a big deal: the first grandchild on either side of the family, and the first great-grandchild on my wife’s side. Everyone wanted to hold her for a few minutes, and my role was to change her diaper and hold her when she was fussy. Midafternoon, I stepped outdoors into suburban Charlotte, and a hosanna of angels came down from the heavens: A crying and agitated Eleanor took a breath as big as her first one and promptly calmed down.

Since then, I’ve walked outside with her as often as possible. When she’s outside she’s calmer and happier, a sponge that soaks up everything she hears and smells. On days when the weather prevents this, she’s more agitated. And after spending several hours outside she embraces sleep, rather than fighting it. Even stepping onto the porch calms her down. All this reinforces everything I know about being outdoors.

Our 20-minute morning walk takes us around the block. Eleanor gives everyone we meet a big smile and happy sounds; they all smile back. Somehow I’d forgotten how that simple pleasantry can make a day better and connect me to my neighborhood. I had to learn it from Eleanor.

Down our street is a playground; Eleanor loves seeing the children playing and meeting new people. After that we walk down one of Asheville’s newest sidewalks—created via eminent domain—and cross the street to another park with a pleasant wooded path. On the sidewalks, Eleanor watches everything with rapt attention. In the woods, her eyes are drawn to every sound. Only on the journey’s final leg—the place where the sidewalk ends—does the walking become hazardous.

Walking with Eleanor reminds me how much can be accomplished on foot. My practical upbringing urges me to do something useful while walking —get groceries, buy diapers, run errands. When we bought our home, we chose the neighborhood first, because within a 20-minute walk are three convenience stores, a half-dozen restaurants, two pharmacies, churches, a grocery store, a hospital, dentist and doctor, my favorite coffee shops—and no sidewalks for getting to them.

This forces me into a car—not an easy thing, as parents of young children know. I spend money on fuel, create air pollution, emit greenhouse gasses—and deal with the stress of a crying child. As much as Eleanor likes walking, she dislikes being imprisoned in the rigid plastic womb of the car seat. She’s not old enough to be carried on a bike, and even that is riskier than walking. With planning, I can take the bus downtown, and I’ll do this with Eleanor when she’s older. For now, however, we just walk around the block.

Eleanor has also helped me grasp what’s great about Strive Not To Drive Week. I serve on the event’s planning team, and we want to encourage people to find ways to travel without being utterly and totally alone in a car. This year, we’re asking people to pledge to take the bus, ride a bike, carpool or walk during the week of May 12-16 (see box). If you know someone who strives not to drive every day, nominate him or her for a Golden Spoke, Sneaker or Wheel award.

I can run some errands on my walks with Eleanor—collecting my dry cleaning, dropping her off at daycare or picking up this week’s Mountain Xpress. But I can’t get lunch or coffee, buy food or diapers, or pick up a prescription.

She would enjoy such missions, and they would make our lives a little easier come evening. Most days, however, my better judgment prevails; I haven’t wanted to chance the congested roads that lack sidewalks. That day may come, but meanwhile, she amazes me with her smiles, the joy she inspires in others, and her response to the wonders around her.

Like many other transplants to the Asheville area, I am very happy to have a public-radio station bringing classical music and NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered to my new home. Public broadcasting has been an important part of my life, both personally and professionally, for four decades, and every place I’ve ever lived, big or small, has had really good stations—except for WCQS in Asheville.

WCQS appears to be run by a small clique who have worked there for ages and who seem determined to keep outsiders --including independent producers—out.

In more than two years of listening to the station, I’ve never heard a broadcast created by a local independent producer, except for about six of my own Compact Discoveries programs scheduled as specials. Produced in Weaverville, my classical-music series is broadcast weekly by more than 50 other public-radio stations throughout the United States, plus Alicante, Spain; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. For two years in a row, it has been the most-licensed radio series distributed by the Public Radio Exchange. It would be nice if it were broadcast regularly by its hometown NPR classical-music station, wouldn’t it?  Instead, only low-power community radio station WPVM-FM broadcasts it weekly in Asheville (1 p.m. on Sundays).

But this is not just about Compact Discoveries. WCQS denies its listeners access to some of the best programs broadcast by public-radio stations in other communities: Performance Today, Day to Day, Talk of the Nation and The Diane Rehm Show, to name a few.

WCQS could be a much better station if it made a sincere effort to open itself up, to listen to its audience, and to act in the interest of the public it’s supposed to serve.

One way of doing this would be to create a daily, half-hour, Mountain Matters magazine program that would reflect the area’s life and people in the same way that All Things Considered reflects the world’s politics, art, science and culture. This could be an expensive proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. Jefferson Public Radio in Ashland, Ore., has done this for many years using one paid news director and a staff of community volunteers. It gives broadcast students at the local university practical, in-the-field experience—something WCQS could be doing here.

Another possibility is creating a truly independent community advisory board. Until last year, WCQS hadn’t had a functioning CAB for 13 years—in violation of federal law and Corporation for Public Broadcasting rules. Nevertheless, during this period WCQS has applied for and accepted CPB community-service grants, certifying that it was in compliance with all federal laws and CPB rules.

What is a community advisory board, and why is it so important that it’s required by federal law?

The answer gets to the heart of public broadcasting: It should serve the public and involve the public in its major programming decisions. CABs were established to provide a vehicle for public reaction to, criticisms of, and suggestions for programming and other matters of interest to the community.

CABs are advisory. They don’t run the stations; they’re not the board of trustees. They are there to provide consistent public feedback on how the station is doing. That’s why they must be independent of the station’s management and board. They report to the governing board, not to station management.

I pointed this out to the chairperson of the WCQS board of trustees in July 2006. After that, as a result of my persistence and assistance, WCQS very slowly re-established a CAB, which finally met last May 9. But what they created is not at all independent, by any meaningful definition, as required by CPB rules.

Station management drafted the new CAB’s bylaws—which had to be approved by the board of trustees as well as the CAB. The trustees must also approve CAB members. How can the advisory board be independent under these conditions? On the contrary, the trustees can make sure the CAB has no one on it whom they don’t want there. By preventing station critics from joining, they can create a mechanism for rubber-stamping station policies and programs. This is what they’ve done.

The management-produced bylaws call for a minimum of two meetings a year, as if to say, “If we must have a CAB, let’s be bothered with them as rarely as we can get away with under CPB guidelines.” The May 9 meeting was run by a board of trustees member and dominated by the station’s management. The CAB members were given the opportunity to introduce themselves to one another, and little more.

A committee of the trustees selected the first 15 people to serve on the advisory board. An independent CAB could have chosen its own members, starting by soliciting interested people via the station’s airwaves, Web site, publications and news releases. It turned out that four members of the former CAB were willing to serve on the new one; why not have them select the other new members, based on CPB requirements, if station management really wanted to involve the public in public radio. But WCQS seems more interested in listeners’ financial support than in their programming input.

WCQS management and board of trustees leadership need to understand that this is not their station: It belongs to all of us who live within the coverage area. It’s time to put the public back in public radio in Western North Carolina!

[Fred Flaxman’s extensive career in public radio and public television has included stints with stations in Washington, D.C.; Chicago, Oregon, Florida and Arizona. His Compact Discoveries programs may be heard on demand at http://www.prx.org. He may be reached at .]