Chicanonautica: Español y Más en el Radio Garden

by Ernest Hogan

A pocho like me needs to practice his Spanish and stay hip to the exploding galaxy of La Cultura. I like to play music while slaving away at the computer. It makes my days brighter.

 It's one of my secrets as a Latinoid writer/artist--my ethnicity hooks me up with all kinds of stuff that keep people complimenting me about my originality. "Where do you get those ideas?" I was born into it, unlike those poor culturally deprived denizens of this planet's Anglo ghetto.

I've written before about Radio Campesina, TexanosBest.com, and KUVO's Sunday programming. I have their apps on my phone, and often listen to them while thrashing away at weeds in my wife's garden. Now I am happy to say that I've added another, and it's something different. It's not just a station, and it embraces the world.

I'm talking about Radio Garden. When you get on the website you see an interactive globe, and sprinkled about the continents are green dots. Click on one of the dots and you hear a radio station. Lots and lots of radio stations, all over the Earth.

Whenever I feel like it, radio stations from all over the globe--the entire Global Barrio!--are mine to listen to. The entire Latin Hemisphere, Spain, the Philippines, parts of Africa . . . Worlds of music to explore. And the talk!

Not to mention the access to other cultures and languages, and if something interesting happens in a part of the world that you don’t know much about, just tune in to their radio stations, and eavesdrop.

Imagine, the internet making the world better . . .

Ernest Hogan is also known as the Father of Chicano Science Fiction.