Many of you have already met BOB, the Big Orange Box, which occasionally fills up part of the screen at ncpr.org, before settling down in a few seconds over in the right-hand column. BOB is a one-trick pony–only has one thing to say–”Give Now.” BOB was born a few weeks before our Spring fundraiser, and since the drive ended I’ve begun to hear from a few visitors asking:

“What gives? I already gave. The fundraiser is over. You made your goal. Why are you punishing me?”

In response, we have put BOB on a diet–he has slimmed down a little, disappeared from page one, has been dressed up with better graphics, and doesn’t appear quite so frequently.

But BOB is not going to go away, even though we are done with the week-long radio drive. Why? It’s not because we are greedy, or are punishing our fundraiser donors for doing the right thing.  We are more grateful than you know. Because you radio listeners have been paying almost all the freight for building and maintaining ncpr.org.

Over the last twelve years, NCPR has built up a whole second audience that rarely or never listens to NCPR on the radio. They don’t ever hear the radio fundraiser, and few of them contribute. The “ask” for contributions on our website has been pretty quiet, too quiet.  We’ve concluded that our online-only audience needs some kind of regular high-profile reminder that NCPR is paid for with voluntary contributions by its users. We certainly aren’t shy about asking for donations on the radio.

Hence BOB. He’s big and a little annoying, but necessary. BOB can make a big difference to us and to our radio audience. While 40-50,000 people are regular radio listeners to NCPR, more than a million different individuals used our online services last year. It would take only a small percentage of them, giving a little bit each, to really change the sustainability math at NCPR. As changing media technologies cause more and more people to move online, the art of raising money online will determine whether this service survives.

So, if you are one of the folks who regularly do your bit for NCPR, thank you. Just ignore BOB when he turns up. He’ll get out of your way in 3.5 seconds. If you are one of those who can’t quite remember whether you are reading USA Today, Huffington Post or NCPR at the moment, BOB will set you straight. Click on him to win a free ride to our donation page.

Like many of you, I have been swept up in the coverage of the recent events in Boston, obsessively checking websites, my email and the tube for the latest updates. It’s been a grim week, creating an all-too-familiar combination of anxiety, anger and bewilderment that so marked the days immediately following the 9-11 attacks. The follow-on incidents of poison-by-mail brought back to mind the anthrax attacks that came on the heels of 9-11.

Then yesterday, we saw an echo closer to home of the besieged mindset, when the St. Lawrence County Community Services Building was evacuated following the discovery of an unattended backpack. (It turned out it was left behind briefly while its owner went to get some paperwork from his car.)

Morning Edition yesterday had a great feature examining the psychology of post-attack thinking: “Boston Blasts A Reminder Of ‘The Fragility Of Life” by Alix Spiegel. I had just heard the piece when the news came from the county building, and I wondered whether the same situation would have triggered such a response had it happened last week, before the Boston bombing.

Skull and crossbones mug. Photo: Michael Marusin, CC some rights reserved

Probably not, according to Spiegel’s thinking. He cites psychologist Jeff Greenberg, who did an interesting study in the aftermath of 9-11, using a technique called incomplete word stems. You give subjects the beginning of a word and ask them to complete it:

“You could fill it out with a death-related word or a nondeath-related word — so, for example, coff- could be either ‘coffee’ or ‘coffin,’ ” he says.

For a long time after Sept. 11, the probability that people would choose “coffin” instead of “coffee” was higher than normal.

Besides random jumpiness and morbid associations, the mindset may have important consequences in the national life, as well as the individual’s:

“When death is percolating close to consciousness, people become more ‘us vs. them’ — they become defensive of their belief system, positive toward those they identify with and more negative to those who espouse a different belief system,” he says.

This explains in part, he asserts, why the country became so polarized after the 2001 attacks. The immediate instinct to rally together was overwhelmed by the anxiety-strengthened differences among us.

As I sit and sip my cup of “coffin,” I think of Boston, New York and Washington, Oklahoma City and Newtown. If these experiences, in the end, only drive us further apart–what experience can bring us together?