Category Archives: Experiences

Free Thinking

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I love the free thinking of 4 year-olds.

As I was getting on my bike, the boy next door asked, “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the post office”, I replied.

“Are you going to get a lollipop?”, he exclaimed, excited for me.  This was so far out in left field I laughed.  I never associated the post office and lollipops before.

“You get lollipops when you go to the post office?”

“Yeah”, he replied, with a questioning tone of “doesn’t everybody?”

I told him he must be pretty special to get lollipops at the post office because I’ve never gotten one.

“Well, if you want a lollipop you could go trick or treating”, he says, as if I could do that at any time.

 

Radio Dilemma

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Back in 2008…

I decided this town would be a good fit for a small town radio station, much like the one portrayed on the TV series Northern Exposure.  Later my friend Daoine O’ became a DJ at the station near her small town.  I got to see the studio and even trekked up a mountain side to the transmitter.  I was inspired.

So I set out writing my congress critters, pleading with them to pass the bill that had been lingering for years in their committees.  The bill was to reverse a law that stopped new LPFM stations from being authorized (long story, short).  It took years for the bill to finally get passed in 2011 and signed by President Obama.  Now the FCC is busy trying to make sense of the bill and adjust their rules accordingly.

Yar!  Ahoy me hearties!

Unbeknownst to me,  probably in 2010, a couple of people from town simply put together a studio, put up a pirate transmitter someplace and voila, they’re on the air and streaming.  They’ve had in-studio guests and broadcast live from various venues in town.  It has a local vibe to it.   I admire them and the simplistic route they took to start a station without all of the bureaucracy and regulations of the government.  They are not interfering with any other radio signals.  They are polite pirates.

Is it a community radio station?  Not quite.  Members of the community interested in doing a radio show, can’t.  Also, it’s only live on the weekends.  As far as I can tell, weekdays are just pre-programmed with a playlist of music.  I’ve tried contacting them, but haven’t received any replies.

Podcasting

At the beginning of the year, my friend Jacob asked for my help in setting up a podcasting studio in his home.   We picked out equipment, set it up, tested it, and now I’m the recording engineer for the bi-weekly podcast Radio Golden.  This was my introduction to podcasting in general and through him I was introduced to other podcasts to listen to.  One of my favorites so far is Radiolab.

Last summer I started streaming my own weekly radio program called Road Trip.  It’s not a podcast yet, you have to listen to it live on Friday evenings. To stream this program requires no bureaucracy or government approval.

Is anybody out there?

I wrote a letter to the local newspaper calling for people interested in starting a radio station to contact me.  The response was lukewarm.  I received about four replies, most of them wanting to have their own radio show.  But no one seems very enthusiastic about trying to work through the bureaucracy of actually making the station a reality.

There is a lot that has to be done:

  • A non-profit corporation has to be formed.  Only a non-profit can apply for a LPFM community radio license.  This involves writing up articles of incorporation, writing bylaws,  and submitting various forms to the state, along with fees.
  • I need to find people who are willing to serve on the board of directors of the non-profit, and they have to reside within 10 miles of the transmitter (a proposed rule the FCC is considering).
  • An application has to be submitted to the IRS to be tax exempt, along with a fee.
  • A preliminary site has to be selected for the transmitter, as well as a frequency.  This will require permission from a landowner to to place the transmitter on the property.
  • An application has to be submitted to the FCC, plus another fee.  The window for accepting applications is usually very short, only a week long, and will occur this summer.  Who knows when/if there will be another window anytime soon.

If the FCC application is approved, there is even a longer list of stuff that needs to be done, more applications, fund raising to pay for equipment, etc.  If only four people responded to my call for volunteers, what’s fundraising going to be like?

Lying awake at night

I’m not the kind of person who likes bureaucracy.  (I can’t even spell it.)   I see the simplicity of using the internet as a means of audio transmission and I wonder if it’s the future.  I ask myself, why do I want to jump through a bunch of hoops and pay a bunch of fees just to satisfy some romantic notion I have of radio?  While I have some friends who are supportive of my radio station idea, I don’t know enough locals who are enthused enough to really bond over the idea, to keep the momentum going while getting through the bureaucracy.   It needs to be a team effort and there is no team.

The alternative

If I scrap the traditional radio idea, I will also scrap the community radio idea.   If I go with the internet transmission method, then I’m going to join up with my music geeking friends and create a station that is not tied to location.  For all the fees I would have paid with submitting various government applications, I can buy each of them mics and mixers.  That would be just as fun as my old romantic notion of radio.

 

Small Town Morning

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It snowed more than 32 inches over the past 24 hours.   I step out into the sunless early morning to a muted white landscape.  It’s so quiet, even my own sounds don’t propagate far.  My snowboots don’t make a sound in the fresh powder.  The scent of woodsmoke fills the air.

My walk to the post office to pick up yesterday’s mail will take me across the two-lane state highway and the center of town.  I see that the road is already getting congested with skiers and snowboarders heading up from the cities.  None of the sidewalks are clear so I have to walk on the edge of the roadway.

Leaving the highway, I turn down First Street.  I peer into the co-op to see if it’s open yet.  The lights are off and the sign in front says “closed”, but I can see steam accumulating on the inside of the windows.  I know someone is in the back kitchen baking scones and muffins.

I continue to the other edge of town where the post office is. The air here has a different scent of woodsmoke.  It smells like fine tobacco being smoked in a pipe.   One thing I love about this town is the variety of wood that is burned in stoves and fireplaces.  Each block has a different scent.

I pickup my junk mail and deposit my Netflix DVD into the mail slot.  I contemplate taking a different route back home, but decide I want to pass the co-op again to see if it is open.  The idea of a fresh baked muffin sounds so appetizing.

I walk up First Street and peer into the co-op windows.  Yes!  The lights are on and the sign says “open”.  I ask the clerk if there are any muffins yet.  Just then a women carrying a tray of fresh baked chocolate covered raspberry scones emerges from the back, answering my question.  She puts the scones into the display case and tells me about all of the other baked goods in there.  It was a tough choice, but I settled on the banana cranberry, peach muffin, a large one.

Outside, I break off the crispy top part and begin nibbling on it as I walk up the road.  The bottom part of the muffin is steaming.

The highway has even more cars on it now.  Although the traffic is only crawling along, nobody wants to stop to let me cross.  Finally I just go for it, forcing the issue.

Looking up at the Divide as I walk west, I see the sun is shining.  It won’t be long before it’s sunny here.

Back at home, I make some Earl Grey tea and finish my muffin.  I look out the window, between the houses, and see the traffic is stopped dead on the highway.  I’m content not to be in that mess.