Random Musings, Cont'd.

This post...

2010-12-13T00:04:00.000-07:00

...shall serve to permanently close the blog known as "Random Musings, Cont'd.".

The Research phase of this project is now irrevocably concluded.

The author wishes to express his heartfelt thanks toward the innumerable real persons whose invaluable participation in this project to date is exclusively responsible for any good which may ever happen to arise on account of the project's existence.

Any and all faults and shortcomings exhibited by this project to date are solely attributable to the author, who gladly accepts the full weight of responsibility -- moral, ethical, and legal -- in particular, for the participation of certain persons with neither their prior knowledge nor their informed consent. Without exposing these persons to any further public scrutiny, the author yet wishes to express his sincere regret for any unforeseen ill effects which may have resulted on account of their unwitting inclusion in this project, and apologizes with none but the deepest gratitude for all of those upon whose backs the ethics of any new communications technology era, but especially the nascent electronic bitstream world of our own day, are hammered out.

This project's author may still be reached via electronic mail to jmwzqdest505 at gmail dot com (minus "zqd").

Yay! Documents.

2010-12-05T06:27:00.003-07:00

This beats Draft Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Impact Statements, hands down, any day. (Sure is nice to be out of the news-gathering organization, so that now I'm actually subject to the first amendment, and quite free to have and voice my own opinions.) :^) :^)

A little website you may have heard about -- wikilieaks.ch -- seems to be releasing a whole slew of classified diplomatic cables from US Embassies abroad -- over a quarter of a million of 'em -- in what they're somewhat predictably calling "cablegate". Not all at once, but in stages. You might have heard oh say on NPR or something about how wikileaks seems to be coming under fire. First they lose their DNS servers' support, then PayPal stopped processing donations to their site, and on December 1st US-CERT issued a warning about supposed Wikileaks-related phishing scams, blah de blah. Since I'm sure I'd only strike some very well-informed reader as a wee bit paranoid were I to so much as suggest that wikileaks may be coming under pressure as a direct result of their releasing sensitive information contained in these documents, I won't even go there. Hell! For all I know, the document I've been reading (which I link to below) is just a clever forgery, and I'm just really kinda stoopid to take it so seriously.

Now I ain't all expert at readin' embassy cables, but here's one little link I hope folks living down here on the border might find interesting.

The Battle Joined: Narco Violence Trends in 2008, from the US Embassy in Mexico City to the US Secretary of State, summarizes -- well, the title pretty much says it. The cable expresses concern over the potential for US Government agents serving in Mexico to face violence at the hands of battling drug cartels. While I'm sure a lot of what's mentioned here is quite common knowledge, I still found several things of particular interest, especially where the logic seems (to my judgment) just a little bit shaky.

Here are some random selections from one who believes that words do have meaning, and matter.

Beyond its broadened scope, the nature of cartel violence changed in 2008: organized violence was characterized by significantly increased brutality, a callous disregard for the potential for collateral damage and more frequent targeting of soldiers and police.

The cable's own definition, above, of "cartel violence" and "organized violence" as "being characterized by. . . a callous disregard for the potential for collateral damage" is crucial, if we wish to understand the language in which this report is couched.

The surge in violence along the border stems largely from the intensified struggle among cartels over a few lucrative land crossings to the U.S. In particular, the January 2008 arrest of cartel leader Alfredo Beltran Leyva sparked a serious rift among the Gulf, Juarez and Sinaloa (Pacific) cartels, which is being played out viciously in Ciudad Juarez.

Transshipment points, anyone? Is this really a surprise to anyone? Hmm -- how about targeting reporters?

Cartels have also expanded their use of violence to intimidate. Beheadings and the prominent placement of dismembered bodies in public places, relatively rare two years ago are now common throughout the country. The late night grenade/shooting attack on our consulate in Monterrey was obviously designed to send a message, although no individual or group has ever claimed responsibility. More explicit was the January assault on the Monterrey offices of Televisa, accompanied by a message telling the broadcaster to do a better job reporting on corrupt public officials. Attacks such as these remain sporadic so far, and we have insufficient indications whether they mark a new trend or not.

Gee, I dunno. I guess we could ask the photographers at El Diaro -- that is, if reporters' lives even matter. :^| :^|

Despite these sporadic attacks, Mexico's drug war continues to primarily impact security forces and those linked directly or indirectly to the drug trade. The civilian population in some urban areas along the border remains bunkered down with some of those who have the money either sending their children to school in the U.S. or relocating entirely to minimize risk. In much of the rest of the country, though, the civilian population not involved in the drug trade remains essentially insulated from the violence, though not from its effects.

Intriguing! The ability to remain essentially insulated from violence, without remaining essentially insulated from its effects, must either demonstrate an extraordinary resiliency, completely unique in all of human history to Mexico's current civilian population, or else an exquisitely obfuscatory turn of phrase, the possible reasons for the employment of which must be due to causes which I can not readily discern. At any rate, the imputed ability of Mexico's civilian population to remain uninsulated from the effects of violence, while remaining insulated from the violence itself, seems to me to break the chain of causality, which (unless I misunderstand) dictates that effects flow from causes, and never arise independent of causes. (But then, what does little old non-degreed me know about highfalutin' intellectual shtuff like Prasangika-Madhyamaka logic?)

As for sending kids to school across the border, ask my mother about that. As for relocating, well dear reader, lemme just suggest that next time you see someone with Chihuahua plates drivin' all weird on the freeway, instead of chewin' 'em out, just think of 'em as refugees driving in unfamiliar traffic, give 'em a little space, and see if your own driving doesn't improve measurably. ;^) ;^)

To continue:

Increased confrontations between security forces and criminals is one explanation for the increasing killing of security forces personnel. GOM authorities argue that killings are no longer just score-settling among bad cops, but increasingly the consequence of the government's aggressive fight against the cartels. Some analysts we have spoken to agree. However, they also note that with few exceptions the majority of deaths are not the result of direct confrontations. They argue that the crackdown on police corruption has put compromised police officials in the position of either being prosecuted or breaking their established agreements/arrangements with the cartels. Hence, some of those who presumably choose the latter course are being punished brutally. (See MEXICO 2371, 3498)

So, hm. Let me see if I'm reading this right. According to unnamed analyst sources, "compromised police officials" face the choice of prosecution under Mexican law on the one hand, or brutal punishment (up to and including murder) by cartels on the other.

Sure sounds to me like the cartels are more powerful than the Government of Mexico. :^) :^)

As for Drug Trafficking Organizations' (DTO's) threats to US Government (USG) assets in Mexico:

While the cartels have not yet directly targeted USG law enforcement or other personnel, they have shown little reticence about going after some of our most reliable partners in Mexican law enforcement agencies. Ten close DEA law enforcement liaison officers have been killed since 2007, seven of whom were members of Special Vetted Units. Similarly, within the past two years 51 close FBI contacts have been murdered. More than sixty of Mexico's best law enforcement officers in whom we have placed our trust and with whom we have collaborated on sensitive investigations, shared intelligence and in many cases trained and vetted have been murdered by the cartels. We do know from sources that cartel members have at least contemplated the possibility of doing harm to both our personnel and institutions, but we frankly don't know enough about how DTO members think and operate to know what factors might trigger a decision to mount such an attack, but the potential threat is very real.

Wow. Sounds almost exactly like what I've heard from some of our boys who've served in Afghanistan and Iraq about translators working for US Forces there. How long 'til US assets in Mexico have to change their names and places of residence on a regular basis? I wonder.

We assess that the threat to U.S. personnel could increase if the violence continues to escalate and more high-level government officials and political leaders are targeted. Also, a reaction may be triggered if traffickers perceive their losses are due to U.S. support to the GOM's counter-narcotics efforts. We will continue to monitor potential threats to U.S. personnel from organized criminal gangs and be alert to information that suggests drug traffickers increasingly see the U.S. hand as responsible for their losses.

Let's see. The counter-narcotics efforts of the weak (not to say corrupt) Mexican government (GOM) are directly supported by US foreign policy's longstanding preference for attempting to control the supply side of this underground economy's equation, while doing little (if anything) domestically to address demand other than criminalizing end-users. Wow! I guess our Diplomatic corps are just really gosh-dern lucky that the guys headin' up this multibillion dollar international enterprise aren't smart enough to figure that one out! "No, really -- it's OK", the report seems to say, "they may be drug cartel kingpins, but it's really OK, 'cause at heart, they're just stupid Mexicans".

If you believe that, I've got some Miracle Salve to sell ya.

The implication that traffickers do not in fact perceive their losses as stemming from US government support of the Mexican government would seem to assume that Mexican drug traffickers are extraordinarily stupid, despite their previously acknowledged ability to exact retribution against compromised Mexican officials whom the government of Mexico is apparently either powerless or unwilling to protect.

The next quote is stated in support of acknowledging, though not without reservations, "considerable truth to the assertion" that the Calderon administration's counter-narcotics "successes" are partly responsible for the surge in violence seen in 2008.

According to collaborative sensitive reporting, the January 2008 arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva split the Pacific Cartel, and accentuated antagonism between that DTO and the Gulf organization which caused the spike in violence in Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Baja California (see also MEXICO 1766). In addition to these rifts, frustrated traffickers have turned to kidnappings and extortion to compensate for the loss in drug-trafficking revenue, expanding their reach and impacting a greater number of bystanders who have no involvement in DTO activities. These kinds of impacts bring home to ordinary Mexicans the nature of the struggle here.

In other words, a good portion of the 6,262 murders the Mexican Attorney General's office connected with organized crime in 2008 must be counted as little more than collateral damage in the Mexican government's own counter-narcotics "successes", won with support from the US. (I wonder how many of those murdered managed to remain "essentially insulated from the violence, though not from its effects" while getting killed. Amazing what we stupid Mexicans can do. Too bad for me I'm really just one-quarter Mexican; speaking just for myself, I'm pretty sure that getting killed might actually kinda hurt!)

Returning to the first quote's definition of "cartel violence" as "being characterized by. . . a callous disregard for the potential for collateral damage", I would posit that it's fair to ask whether the US government considers the Mexican government itself to be a cartel, or else acting as cartels' security forces.

Followup questions? If the answer is "no", then "what constructive role does the US see the the Mexican government playing in Mexican society, given that it engages in cartel-like behaviour?" If "yes", then "why should the US government support the Mexican government's counter-narcotics efforts, thereby essentially taking sides in what amounts to an internal struggle between warring cartels for control of lucrative narcotics transshipment points?"

Three hours 'til New Moon...

2010-11-05T23:13:00.002-06:00

...and everything around me's permeated with a sense of peace.

Twenty-one people came to the Spanish-language meditation, teaching, and discussion at the Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Cultural Center tonight. It was a flawless -- and I *do* mean *flawless* meet!

I made tea and pink lemonade and someone else stepped up to pass around bowls of peanuts to everyone with visciously hot little "Takis" snack taquitos garnishing the top. And yet, at the end of the night, I had only the cup from which I had drunk tea to wash. Someone else brought two kinds of chocolates and passed them around. Another brought miniature muffins. Everything was freely shared (including the work -- or was it play?); and the conversation was *sparkling*, punctuated at its end by a collective peal of laughter that swept through the room like a Dublin pub's craic. Nobody left hungry, thirsty, or, as far as I could tell, in *any* way dissatisfied.

Ever the consummate kindergarten teacher, David entertained one of the two wonderful little boys who were there with his drawing on a whiteboard. I showed the same boy, later, how to make a paper crane when he began to get restless -- as always, I got to watch him start to "get it" about geometry (e.g., folding not just "in a straight line", but "in a straight line between two points"). Thus was I reacquainted to what an amazing thing it is to *watch* new concepts blossom into fresh realizations in the innocent mind of a child.

Incense burned throughout, and people lingered in happy discussions all throughout the center afterward. Someone else vacuumed the shrine room while I emptied trash; and, as always, David set up cushions and desks as they'll be needed next. Someone (I'm not even sure who) stuck around a bit after everyone one else left just to make sure that both David and I made it out safe and sound, the center securely locked up. The place was left as close to spotless as I have *ever* seen it, and all the work was shared in a profoundly joyful cooperative spirit which I like to think is the very embodiment of the concept of "Sangha" in its phœnomenal manifestation.

What Dickens might call "impoverishment", and what several generations now of translators of ancient Sanskrit, Pali, and Tibetan texts into Western languages have awkwardly borrowed the Christian term "renunciation" (and by default extension, its underlying concept) to describe, I much prefer, in the spirit of Don Schraeder, to simply call "living simply that others may quite simply live". It more than has its share of charms -- and now that I'm *finally* drawing close to accomplishing it, I am strongly disinclined at every turn to do *anything* which might unduly complicate my life. Strongly disinclined, indeed!

I knew that's what I wanted when I moved to Albuquerque, but my plans for living simply in that complicated continental crossroads of a town went very far off course between a combination of my own acquisitive spirit and nearly magnetic attraction to exquisitely, even exotically complex displays of every kind of controversy ever known to man. Throw in about as much "fame" as a person of my constitution can take without shredding every fibre of integrity: the stage is quite well set for a brilliant purge. I speak not on the scale of fireworks nor meteor showers, but on the scale of white dwarves going supernova, if not galaxies nor galaxy clusters.

I can now say -- with absolute honesty -- I have given almost everything I own away. Not always gracefully or graciously, I'm sure; but caught up in torrential whirlwinds of illusion, fragile ego -- mind? -- grasps at utterly ludicrous straws trying to preserve not itself but even its mere self-perception. Never again -- *never* again do I intend to follow after chains of grasping that lead (in time, with constant reinforcement) to moving unplayable pianos several times between a string of outrageously oversized, overpriced rentals, while human life itself is held less dear than empty husks of vintage radio cabinets. The car and this laptop my mother gave me are both useful tools to accomplishing whatever it is that I set my mind now to accomplish, but they are not me, they are not any part of me, nor am I them, nor any part of them.

Needs? A third pair of socks would be nice, but I'm in no great rush to go shopping for them. Lots of things "would be nice" (for which you may well read "would *seem* nice"), but -- no! Everything I "own" fits very well into the car, which takes me anywhere the road may go (and a few places it does not).

Even at our most dysfunctional individual levels, both David and I exhibit a dynamic complementarity which serves each of our separate needs rather well. We don't finish eachother's sentences -- that's no more of a trick than looking like your dog. We share dreams, and even (I would openly say) visions. That's not a hackneyed turn of phrase or bad attempt at poetry. It is our literal, experienced, and very deeply *shared* reality.

I would write more, but honestly, I have far, far too much, far too better to do with my nowhere near sufficiently ample time. Life is short and its repetitive-enough-to-be-downright-boring tendency to "be difficult" is no more than sea salt in the beans.

This much I know. The beans that I just ate may not just be the best I've ever made, but even the very best that I have ever had. Even engrained habits -- even "ancient traditions" die, or are at least transformed beyond their blind adherents' wildest imaginings.

There is no turning back.

So be it.

I don't have the luxury...

2010-10-18T02:56:00.001-06:00

...of anonymity. Of course, I never really did, but I am being very much more careful now what all I put online -- hell, even on my own damn hard drive. So far, I'm *pretty* comfortable with what little I've seen coming mirrored back my way. Yeah, I've done things (mostly in the traditional privacy of bed) that I wouldn't want up in lights on Times Square, but I'm not terribly worried, either: at least for the most part I'm not a raging asshole, dangerous sociopath, or anything else of that nature.

Opinionated, yes -- but strongly held opinions and beliefs, weakly expressed, are snakes lying in grass. Usually, I'd rather just piss off some self-important piss-ant moron (you're interim director of *what*, again? Since when have *I* cared if you are the fucking Governor?) than pretend to be "undecided". Or pretend that right is wrong? Fuck you, have a nice day, ain't gonna stick around to crash and burn with ya.

Life is more honest that way. And very sorry as I am to have to say it, the simple fact is I've known outlaws with far greater personal integrity -- from their direct communication alone -- than important and supposedly "respectable" public personages in positions of very real power.

The old saying goes "knowledge is power" precisely because knowledge passes from person to person through words. Words have power, precisely because words have meaning. In this context, "meaning" might be defined as mutually agreed-upon referentiality.

Those who twist words' meanings -- those who lie -- abuse power. And abuses of power must ultimately be exposed -- not by some personified ideal of "justice" but quite simply from cause and effect. I can say "4 = 5" 'til the cows come home, but the first time I try to make change for a dollar, I'll be screwed.

By the same token, those who comminucate clearly, directly, and correctly must ultimately be heard. It's not that they will have "their day in court" or "the last laugh". Vindication doesn't right past wrongs, and has nothing to do with either justice or revenge. Vindication quite simply prevents future error: "4 = 4" needs no elucidation. It very simply *is*.

So much for eloquence and rhetoric. So much for style. So much, indeed, for questions of opinion and even of personal experience.

I do wish I knew what ever happened to Ken F. Montoya. I really was completely terrible for him, and definitely owe him an apology for the unkind, even cruel things I thought and said both to and about him. I hope he is alive, and well, and very, very happy.

The day is *very* fast approaching when everything that anyone has ever said or done online is effectively permanent record and common knowledge.

In the mean time, I must admit -- it can be lots of fun to just sit back and read and write and watch people guess what's "really" going on when you deliberately leave lines for them to read between. A good way to quietly make distinctions in one's mind between who is wheat and who is chaff. Unfortunately there's a *lot* more chaff out there than wheat. I guess that's what you would expect in any complex, living organism like the planet Earth that's overrun with a virus like post-industrial humankind. Not that I don't know who my real friends are, you understand -- it's just amusing to infuriate the ones who are puffed up, and good to get as much as possible on public record showing why what they're saying is bunk.

By all means, be my guest, and feel free to comment.

Off radar.

2010-10-15T01:15:00.000-06:00

It's a month to the day I went truly "off radar", tonight. Not as easy as it sounds in today's electronic age. But not hard, either. Especially not after you've become accustomed to living without internet access for months at a time, and cellphone access is only just a little bit more dependable. Basically, I told *no one* where I was going. *No one*. Hell, I hardly hatched the plan myself before I hit the road. And when I did, I took the battery and SIM card out of the cellphone a friend had loaned me.

For four and a half beautiful hours, I *knew* nobody knew where I was or what I was doing. I wasn't being recorded or monitored, tracked or even just plain "needed". Probably no one *cared* where I was off to, what I was doing -- but that isn't the point. After living in an increasingly tightly controlled environment for months on end -- I won't *quite* say I was "held" (though I sure did make getting out next to impossible at times!) because, in truth, I never was -- it felt insanely good to be out on the road yet one more time, albeit driving on a doughnut spare and lacking the customary passenger-side front window.

I'm sure I'll wonder quite a lot in coming months and years what ever happened to the eleven or so guys whose names I've written down one place no one can ever get to 'em. Those would be the eleven with whom I think it's fair to say I formed fairly intense emotional bonds, and I don't believe for a minute that there is a villain among 'em. Oh, to be sure, there's one guy who I *think* is a dangerous sociopath. But one in eleven's not bad for a group of guys stereotyped as the dregs of society, if not the root cause of society's ills. And, to the best of my knowledge, that one guy was pretty well out of commission when I saw him last.

And now I'm living a sort of "underground railroad" existence out of a friend's house. I've got no cellphone, so that's not a problem. I do have email, and access it pretty regularly. Truth be told, it's kind of like living in a cave -- tucked away from the world, "on retreat" I believe the monks call it. Difference is I'm free to pop my head out whenever and wherever I please. Money's an issue, but only for those things you can't get without money (gas, tobacco, and usually, food). One *very* long-dreaded betrayal came, alas, to fruition; but like all before, provided nothing more than a harder and more concrete realization of my own real resourcefulness. (Suffice to say, I must *not* spend *any* more time around people who lie than is absolutely *required*. Terrible things happen whenever I do.) All of that being said, I've got a nice little circle of acquaintances and friends even now who do know where I am and what I am doing. Simply maintaining that network is (dare I say) something of an accomplishment.

And actually, it's not a bad existence! Still no hot water, but I'm developing ways to get around inconveniences of that nature. The food we have may not be terribly exciting, but there's more than enough to eat. The house in general might be a mess, but I've got my own little corners of sanity cleared and set up so I can use them as a base of operations, daily. And, aside from the money, I can *truly* say for the first time in my entire life that I'm *mobile*. Shit hits the handbasket? I'm out. Maybe another state. Hell, maybe a whole other damn country. I can slip away like *nobody's* business.

Not that I'm in any rush to leave. Indeed, very far from it. (Not that I'm in any rush to "accomplish" something, either -- though I probably could with the nearly monastic conditions.) For all its privations the life I live now is very much indeed what I would have wanted when I was, oh, say, seventeen. I'm living with someone I care about deeply in a beautiful house in the best neighbourhood in town. Food's easy enough to come by and there are no wild animals or enemies about. The neighbourhood is fairly active but it's mostly quiet when it needs to be. There's stuff to do, places to go, people to see, but next to no pressure to do, to go, to see. Perhaps most importantly I am free to sit, to study, to get up and move about, to do whatever I feel that I need to do whenever I feel that I need to do it. I'm actually very much at peace here, and feel no need (for the time being) to move along to my next grand adventure. Winter is coming, and as sure as I knew at the first migraring raven's caw over Albuquerque that I'd soon fly South myself, even though Spring's 'round the bend, I also know that now's the time to gather in what all I've got and do the sort of work that's always best when done indoors.

No regrets.

None whatsoever.

One last night in Albuquerque.

2010-10-03T21:56:00.000-06:00

At least for the immediately foreseeable future.

Drove up thanks to David totally at the spur of the moment to retrieve some books from Matt's house before he leaves and sells the house. Housesat this summer for him -- unforgettable summer, another story for another time. He wasn't there when we arrived at around 5:41 PM so we met Remo and Jason at Barnes and Noble -- now we're watching "Squidbillies" and going slightly bonkers. Jayme (who I haven't heard from since shortly after my father died) is online and I'm waiting to hear back from Matt, whose mother's in town. David's called his friends in Deming and New York and I finally found Charles' number and left him a voicemail from David's phone.

Weasel says it is a "highly connected night".

I'm inclined to agree.

Only ten days between posts...

2010-10-03T21:49:00.000-06:00

...and I can't help but feel I am *finally* starting to build up a fresh head of steam.

Went to a party last night at an El Paso landmark -- the Fairview Apartments. Designed by (you guessed it!) architect Charles Henry Trost. After attending the opening, Friday evening, of the El Paso History Museum's new exhibit, "El Paso: The Other Side of the Mexican Revolution", it was uncanny (if you will) to practically relive one of the moments featured prominently *in* the exhibit: specifically, the viewing from rooftops of the first Mexican revolution from the relative safety of the Hotel Paso del Norte.

Of course I wasn't charged admission last night, and it was unreal -- but in a *good* way -- to reconnect with some of the artists and writers and musicians I knew way back in the mid- to late-'nineties, when we'd spontaneously congregate in front of what was (at that time) a Plaza Theatre boarded up against vagrants of both the human and avian variety in order to drum off the echoing cavernous walls of a once grand city long forgotten and mostly gone dark, resigned to despair. But, as always, because I am who I am and there's nothing anyone can do about that, I connected less with the wonderful people around me (and it was a *lovely* party, I assure you) than with the place itself.

The Fairview Apartments is one of those rare, still-extant apartment buildings from the day when Apartment Building names (like words in general) still tended to have some semblance of actual meaning. To this day the Fairview commands a sweeping, grand, panoramic view from the neighbourhood called Sunset Heights down into the Rio Grande valley itself -- unlike Albuquerque's Sandia Heights, not at the distance of some miles -- at the scale of mere meters. The entire neighbourhood is less "landed" on top of surveyors' imaginary grids than something which sprung up organically from the sheer sandstone cliffs of the giant Rift Valley, precisely where the watershed finally narrows down to a gap between mountain chains which gives this "Northern Pass" of a city its name.

Nothing could have been more natural at the time this place sprung up than that it should consist of an exquisite balance of imposing mansions always stopping just the right side of "ostentatious", mixed in with plainer but no less proud common single-family housing, and apartments which would credit any great city on earth. One can only imagine what that view was like when the Building was platted, laid out, constructed, and first lived in. The vast, careening swath of the unpredictable and flood-prone Rio Bravo with its constantly shifting sandbars, its over-abundant Tamarisks, invasive Russian Olives, and better loved non-native cottonwoods trailing a ribbon of abundant green between two cities born as one, joined at the heart, cut apart imperfectly during raging adolescence by the scalpel of language and forceps in the form of law.

Those crude incisions never fully healed, and not unlike that street in Vicksburg -- antebellum mansions just upslope on the East side, shanties on the West draining down to the Mississippi -- but on an infinitely grander scale, they threaten to fester long enough on both sides in different ways to leave no more than irreducible traces for future archaeologists of a society cut down in time by its own unstable bifurcation between not enough "haves" and teeming masses of "have nots".

I am living (for the time being) with David -- one of my friends from those old drumming days and he is wonderful to me. One might, a little more unkindly, but not inaccurately, say that I am living "off" of him, as I've yet to regain solid footing in this, my hometown, with the smuggler culture, with the train horns echoing both coming and going. He is an artist and substitute teacher, and subsists on a substitute teacher's wages -- and sometimes, that means things like "there is no hot water". This is indeed a source of annoyance to me, and my hygiene has certainly taken a hit for the worse these last several days. But for perspective, I need only walk out to the front sidewalk and look less than a half mile down the street to see entire neighbourhoods without *running* water.

So yyyeah. I found myself last night, perched on the balcony overlooking Juarez. No exceptionally dramatic shows of force on display at the S-Mart, no stray bullets going through City Hall while the council's in session -- just the usual lights -- which are signals? which just set back behind scant windblown foliage? Impossible to say. And of course amidst the wonderful party the one thought I couldn't get out of my mind: how many are going to die there tonight?

The El Paso Times put the death toll for murders in Ciudad Juarez alone, for 2010 to date alone, at over 2250.

Sometimes it makes me want to cross the Santa Fe bridge on foot in the middle of the night with nothing but a pen and notebook. But not knowing the language, and -- and -- and -- and -- I always come up with a reason not to do it that sounds better than "it's scary as fuck".

Wow! And we're back again...

2010-09-23T00:39:00.000-06:00

...after losing not *only* a laptop, but my 1923 Royal typewriter. You know -- the one without the backspace key, with the "Princeton University" stickers on the case.

Well sir, there's technical difficulties and then there are TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. I appear to have just had a decent sized fit o' the latter, so I hope you'll all be kind enough to forgive my longer-than-anticipated silence (how about a round of applause for that header tone crew? YAY HEADER TONE CREW -- couldn't do it without ya ten guys drivin' the generators down in back one each for every tone on the keypad).

A year to the evening I'm happy to say that I'm back. Sorry to say things didn't work out quite as rosy as I thought they might at the time of my last post -- now nearly six months later, two additional roommates and one house (er, condo) down with not a clue how many more to go, I'm back, yes, online, yet again, and no, I'm not sorry to say there really isn't much of anything that anyone *can* do about it except (hopefully) be nice to me. For my part, I promise only to try. Try and be nice, that is. Nice 'n' trying. ;^) ;^)

And in five -- four -- three -- two -- one...

2010-04-08T00:17:00.000-06:00

. . . and weelcome back to Random Musings, Cont'd. -- I'm xeltifon -- glad to be with you today. And what a long, strange ride it's been. You cam imagine, I'm sure -- what's it been, now, three whole months? almost four? since I last posted and promised I'd start posting again soon? Well -- you know how it is in this business. You post almost each day for what, four or five years, and then eventually trail off, taking your efforts into other arenas, but always just kind of maintaining a minimal presence in that one special place with your name on it. Then you decide "I'm comin' back" and very publicly announce and -- whoops! the first multi-month silence in your online journal's history. *That's* sure embarassing. But you know -- I learned one little trick in radio that's served me well -- it goes right along, hand-in-hand, with not apologising, ever -- it's not overanalysing things. So yeah, we had some momentary technical difficulties, and now we're back loud and clear, clear and strong!

Typing this from my new roommate's computer. He's fuckin' awesome, dude. Long story I'll spare you the all the boring details of but let's let it suffice to say he cooked fried chicken tonight for the dog and me. Yes, that's right -- he fried chicken, himself. You know -- with oil, and flour, and chicken, and stuff? And his dog -- maybe the single smartest canine I have *ever* known.

Best of all from a purely selfish perspective (have I ever had any other?) I'm BACK ON MY STREET, BABY. Yyyyyep! Hell of a detour those couple of years but FINALLY I'm right back to *living* on Steinbeck's Mother Road. How? Why? Oh honey -- you've gotta meet me for coffee if you want all *that*. Lost much? A bit. Mostly all stuff I didn't need, or really want, or stuff that didn't fucking *matter* in the first place. Don't have cellphone access right now and all I have to say about that is thank you Lady Gaga. Unreal the anxieties we occasionally choose to feel when the very machines we allow to do nothing more for us than ratchet up our anxiety levels are no longer with us.

What next? Might read. Yep! An actual book. Not a glowing blue screen, and not an overpriced chunk o' pulp to be chucked in the mail as cheaply as possible. Regardless what else happens, I am going to go to sleep here very soon. Soon. And, for the third night in a row, I am going to sleep beautifully and well in a sacred place that I *know* to be the right and proper center of my universe right now.

My wish for you, my dear, esteemed reader, is that you may know the same immeasurable peace and pleasure, even if just once in your whole life. For me, the doppler shifting groundwaves beneath intermittent 18-wheelers' tyres coming down Westbound out of Tijeras pass are quite enough to send me off to perfect sleep.

Stand by...

2009-12-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

This blog is now back on the air.

To my long-standing readers: I apologise for the extended silence, filled with but little more than dummy posts for several months.

To newcomers: there is some excellent work here already, but much of it lies buried in extended rants and raves about much of little if any consequence.

Suffice to say that I am once again renewed in my conviction of the power of the written word, and the responsibility incumbent upon those living in a nation the constitution of which guarantees not just the privilege but the right of free speech.

Free speech in our society is not an idle luxury. It is the ultimate foundation upon which our society maintains not just its vibrancy but in the end its very existence. Nor is free speech a social nicety, conferred for purposes of detailing at length the daily trivialities which ravenously consume the better part of almost every living person's daily lives. It is an innate human right, and insofar as it must not be limited by those who wield power, it is also the duty of the otherwise powerless to excercise.

I hope the posts herein, from this moment forward, will be of higher quality, of more interest and import, and greater relevance than much which has been written here before.

It has been good to practice writing in the light of free and open public scrutiny.

Now it is time I acknowledge that yes, my words do have real impacts: many completely unpredictable. Words can be powerful and useful tools in the betterment of people's lives (the author's own, included), but they can also be turned into dangerous weapons just about a thousand different ways.

So yeah! Hi all. I'm back. Not sure where this is going in the end, but if you want to find out, jump in and hang on. It ought at least to be a pretty interesting ride!

:^) :^)

Happy November.

2009-11-12T02:03:00.002-07:00

So far so good. Struggling to make ends meet and stretch the hours in the day. Got lots of people in lots of places who care about me and do anything and everything they can to see that I stay safe and sane.

Someone who I won't name plugged me in, at the last minute, to record a three-day conference. That was great! Long hours, yeah, but *loved* the subject matter -- now all that remains is editing +/-35 hours of raw audio.

Still substitute hosting at the station, both weekday drivetime shifts. Got some time doing that coming up; very much looking forward to it, even though it *is* going to mean little sleep for several days running.

Falling behind on doing eBay listings for myself, but it's one of my few urgent priorities with neither prior obligations nor hard deadlines. Am current on all bills but the credit cards now, and will deal with them tomorrow, without fail.

Visited a freind today whose neighbourhood got shut down this morning when someone found a body in a church parking lot's dumpster. No ID on the body, speculation is that the guy overdosed. Violent city, Albuquerque.

Now a real post.

2009-10-04T14:28:00.003-06:00

That guitar I got a good deal on some time back is now selling on eBay. Made it a ten-day auction to run over two weekends. So far it's been viewed over 300 times, "watched" 52, and has five bids, with the reserve just barely met, and I've had more than a dozen questions from prospective bidders. Only 19 hours to go! Woohoo! Here's the link, for anyone who wants to see a rollercoaster ride come to an end. :) :)

Hm. Let's see if this works...

2009-09-29T14:25:00.000-06:00

Muhaha! Let's see if this works. It's actually October 4th. But hopefully blogger will accept this if I change the date, so I don't skip a month in archives.

Right on deadline.

2009-08-31T19:16:00.002-06:00

If I don't post *something* for August, I'll have skipped a month. I refuse to do that, seeing as I'm paying for a domain name and stuff.

Suffice to say August MMIX was one hell of a stressful and obnoxious month. High points include driving up to Los Alamos. Low points include -- well -- let's just say myriad financial difficulties. And some personal crap.

But suffice to say for the time being -- I'm not dead yet!

Be well,

xeltifon

Independence Day, MMIX.

2009-07-06T18:29:00.002-06:00

Independence Day is always interesting for me. In 1995 I finally decided I'd had quite enough of the fucked-upness in Seattle and abruptly left, bound back for Texas in the middle of the night upon a Greyhound bus. That trip in time led to still further cross-country Greyhound bus trips. I can honestly say I have been from coast to coast on Greyhound busses at various times before they did away with all their small-town "local" stops and started running more and more on freeways between cinderblock stations in the "homeless" zones of big cities. You might even say that I saw some trends coming, before they blossomed into full maturity.

Uncomfortable travelling, yes -- but what a place to gather up an invaluably rich collection of others' stories, the likes of which you *know* are true from the intensity in the voices and the fire in the eyes the fire in the bellies of all your other road-weary, sleep-deprived strangers telling you *their* lives knowing full well they will *never* meet you again, once they get back on their feet and don't want to be embarrassed by the tales of their youth, or their madness, or both.

What better way to hear about salmon fishing in Alaska from teenaged men who had been poisoned for life by their boat's fiberglass? What better way to see the stars in Death Valley, to swat poisoned mosquitos in Louisianna's summer heat, to feel still-present racial tensions in Alabama, to see the remnants of the glowing civic pride of now-forgotten farming towns through the midwest, to recognize poverty-stricken attempts to gloss over our nation's legacy of segregation, only to finally arrive in some still gleaming but still deeply ashamed and angry city through its most overcrowded tunnels just to see the gaping holes where once two gleaming towers stood? That all I've done, over the years, and it started on Independence Day.

This year, not near so ambitious, I casually rode out with Remo in his clunker of a minivan to Edgewood -- a semi-rural, super-far-flung exurb, or so it might be if it weren't forever isolated from Albuquerque by the deceptively not-quite-towering Sandia and Manzano mountains lining the North and South sides of Tijeras Canyon, through which you take your life into your own hands driving if you *ever* want to pass into that world. From Albuquerque to Edgewood, it's just something like 38 miles, but the people are quite undeniably *different* there.

To most of the rest of the country, Albuquerque residents are weird. To most resident Burquenos, East Mountain folks are *mighty* weird. Maybe that's why I like them.

They do things like routinely "not evacuate" when forest fires come burning right up to their homes. This sort of inexplicable behaviour tends to inconveniently drive down the numbers for big national do-gooder organizations like the Red Cross, who wind up with perhaps a handful of only the most truly desperate people in their shelters, pissing off the people who run such organizations, since they wind up wasting money, but somehow, nobody dies, which (if only the non-evacuating weirdos would kindly oblige) might in turn drive some more people to the shelters, and doubtless help increase reven--ahhem--donations.

They live in all manner of housing from down-and-out trailers to historic ranch houses to miniature mansions to ranch-house-styled McMansions. Unlike in the city, where each of these kinds of housing has a whole neighbourhood (complete with neighbourhood association) associated with it, in Edgewood they're all scattered amongst eachother and just spread enough apart -- generally accessible only over long, barely-graded dirt roads that each neighbour has, to some extent, a sense of privacy from their neighbours' unwelcome weirdness -- even in a "small town" (although a sprawling one) far from where the *true* mountain men live -- just far enough that during "normal" times, a sense of "this is mine" seems *always* to prevail.

They love the peace, they love the quiet, love the solitude. But I am guessing that most landowners in these parts do own guns, and will not hesitate to use 'em if someone comes prowling 'round, completely uninvited, doing things on private land that they should not be doing. And that's not to say that gun violence reigns. No -- for that, you have to get down to Belen. (A whole other story.)

Not so much in Edgewood as further out into the less densely populated places (where tiny, sparsely-scattered general stores are *still* the gathering places for locals), but people here do seem a *bit* insctinctively distrustful of outsiders and random passers-through in general. At least, until they get to know you.

Which usually entails looking you in the eye and having an honest conversation about *something* substantial. About what? Doesn't fucking matter. You can talk for a couple of minutes with the clerk in the Wal-Mart in Edgewood about which counter you have to go to in order to buy cigarettes. But if it goes beyond "oh, counter 19, fine, whatever", and turns however briefly into a discussion about how her husband died ten years after quitting smoking from emphysima and your own father's now on Oxygen for COPD, then yes. The clerk now not only *knows* you but suddenly gets downright courteous. *Not* familiar, but *courteous*. This is a vast difference between the two which easily gets lost on *anyone* who lives too long in the City. (Especially, perhaps, if they come from the vast city known as California.) Try striking up a conversation of any kind with anyone in almost any Albuquerque Wal-Mart and you're likely to get security called out on your ass.

If you haven't yet figured it out, Remo and I showed up at the Wal-Mart in Edgewood to met NightRider. He apparently had something planned involving fireworks at his house. After more than an hour waiting in the parking lot, eating a *very* disappointing salad, drinking questionable lemonade from plastic bottles, and generally amusing ourselves to no end watching one of the more stunning wrap-around pink and orange and blue and white and grey sunsets either one of us had seen (for which appreciation, the security guard himself got out of his truck, not to tell us to move on, but to admire it for a while with us), NightRider does show up. He parks about a mile away
in the enormous parking lot, we walk over to him, ask him if he knows what's going on, he says he's waiting on a couple of the other people whom I'd only met briefly, one of them presently shows up, in fact, he'd been there over 20 minutes but didn't know that we were there, and thus, the conversation starts.

Soulcat is, in my initial estimation, an amazing human being. He probably wouldn't like being called that, and would honestly prefer to be called a crazy fur. OK then. In keeping with my long-standing policy of not calling individuals what they prefer not to be called, I will agree. He is a crazy fur.

This crazy fur served six years in the Army, including multiple tours of duty in Iraq. He was *there* at the FOB in Baghdad when the AHA got hit from a lucky round of mortar fire, resulting in a fire involving multiple explosions which lasted for more than nine hours.

He now works as a mechanic at a large-chain car-repair place. It seems to be the only job that he can get in this economy. He says he was let go for health-related reasons, despite being a good soldier. And man, not that I know jack shit about the army, much less combat, but I do believe to the depths of my heart that this furson knows *exactly* what he's saying, and means *every* single world he tells this near perfect stranger.

It's not my place to tell his story. He's still alive, and so, it's his to tell.

Suffice to say, we did go out to Nightrider's place to shoot fireworks off in the stormy desert night sky beneath a brilliant full moon which disappeared and reappeared to our eyes constantly throughout the night.

At one point someone lit one of those big ones with a long damn fuse. Somewhere near the beginning of that video, I'm sure my voice can be heard saying "long fuse!" to which some other person unknown to me in the dark says "that's never a good sign", or words to that effect. The fuse seems to burn on just a bit too long, until we start to wonder whether it's a dud. In fact, the powder meant to send it off hurtling it hundreds of feet into the sky before the charge to make it bloom beautifully and safely above our heads has simply, for reasons unkown to me, failed to go off. All of a sudden -- BOOM!!!! Brilliant white tongues of fire come racing toward us all from on the ground, as in slow motion. I wouldn't be surprised on seeing that video on YouTube (as I'm sure it will be posted, in time) to hear my own voice saying "HOLY FUCK" as I shield my eyes and run from the explosion, along with the probably fifteen or other so people then standing close around the faulty charge that went off on the ground.

It feels like half an hour -- we've all got bumps and bruises in weird places -- maybe burns -- it's hard to tell. In fact, probably not ten seconds had elapsed before we all emerged, more or less sheepishly going back from our protective cover behind cars assembled to see whether damage has been done. It is *quite* done. A mass spasm of laughter erupts from the crowd. We've all survived this much at least, if never anything more serious.

Soulcat goes on to tell me how to make an MRE bomb. I kinda dig explosives, you see, and improvised ones can be *very* clever. I never knew such things even existed.

In time, the party assembled runs out of fireworks and has to be led out back to the paved road by NightRider.

A party of six of us winds up camping out 'til near sunrise, under the stars, on a paved cul-de-sac near Albuquerque's West Mesa, sharing MRE hospitality supplied by those in the party who *have* put their lives on the line.

Over the course of the ensuing hours, we all share stories with eachother, but to those of you who *served* I thank you not only for your service, but for your hospitality, your humour, your love of life, your joy in still existing, and in sharing your existence and the stories of those you've both existed with and loved in ways that we can never know with us.

From where I stand, right now, it's *not* political whatever stupid wars we fight wherever we fight them. I still know I would *never* fight in *any* war. But to have the honour of hearing just a few of your stories, related to my own ears first-hand, is priceless. My greatest hope going forward is that you find a way to tell them to others beyond me.

And if we only ever came to meet because we're furries (whatever the fuck *that* means!), then so be it. I'm proud to have just that much in common with you, my freinds.

Be well,

xeltifon

Pride MMIX (C.E.)

2009-06-21T20:16:00.002-06:00

Just barely in time to *not* miss a month.

Since I missed the march this year on account of having to go to the emergency room (a miniature saga quite publicly detailed elsewhere) I'll make the post about this year's Pride a reminiscence, of sort, of the last five of my life.

A little over five years ago, in May, I literally feared for my life at the hands of a speed-freak stalker of a boyfreind. Since my mother was leaving the country for several weeks, and no one even *knew* that I was queer, I figured I had to find some way to at least tell *one* person close to me the name of the person whom I fully expected to at least try and kill me. A little "guessing game" ensued. She knew I was sort of in love with someone at the time, and eventually she guessed the guy's name, over the phone -- a name that no woman I know of has *ever* had. And -- ta da! -- *that's* how I *finally* came out to my mother, at age 29.

Actually -- a couple of months before that, in February, I came out, in a manner of speaking -- on the radio. True, I only used my first name on the "call-in show", but I described being "dragged kicking and screaming out of the closet" on the redefinition of marriage act sponsored in the state capitol by Representative Gloria Vaughn. I asked for contact information and attended the legislative session for the first time in my life -- as a citizen lobbyist -- read "warm body". But you know what they say -- half the job is showing up! And if nothing else can be said for me, I *always* show up.

In June -- still fearing for my life, mind you -- I decided that I *had to* march in Pride. That was 2004. I wore a brown shirt, only to find myself *terrified* when I got to the march that someone might think I was "a brown shirt". Just the opposite happened. The support of the crowd was positively overwhelming, and I fast-marched the whole length of the thing the people who've taken it over have since come to call a "parade", standing between Ruben Israel (of "God Hates Fags" fame) and the people in the street, at both the beginning and end of the march, 'cause baby, that's what it's *about*.

I missed 2005 -- for reasons detailed below -- and then attended in 2006, 2007, and 2008 -- also detailed below. It's become a month-long event for me, the energy of which sweeps me up. This year, like in 2005, I had to ultimately miss it, for reasons beyond my control, but I still connected to it *deeply* in ways I never would have thought possible just the year before. And unlike in 2005, I can honestly say "there will always be next year" -- at least, if we're lucky.

In short, I think what happened is that five years ago I didn't matter. I was running around trying to make people happy, and doing pretty damn well at it, except for the fact that at some level I was lying about who I was, or at least not acknowledging it. It wasn't *usually* a matter of outright lying. More often it was a question of selecting invisibility, of choosing silence, the equivalent of telling a reporter "no comment". In short -- disastrous. No matter how many people I fooled for how much of the time, I never *did* jack shit that *mattered*, because at the core of my being I was hiding who I *was* and could *not* get away from. In short -- I could move fucking mountains and it wouldn't matter, because at some level I lacked *integrity*.

Then I feared for my life and started telling the truth. I think it's fair to say I owe my speed-freak stalker boyfreind of the time a special debt of gratitude. If he hadn't put that fear into me, maybe I wouldn't be where I am today. And I can honestly say this, today, for the first time since I knew him -- I hope he's alive and well, if still, hopefully, *very* far away from me, indeed.

One thing led to another. My deepest, darkest, most closely-held secret was "out there" for people to accept, take exception to, or ignore, as they saw fit, and suddenly I *had* integrity. It really was that simple. Eventually I got into reporting. And then I got into hosting drive-time news. Apparently people *trust* me. If I am *incapable* of lying about something as potentially repugnant as who I find myself sexually attracted to, why *would* I lie about news?

I don't pretend to be perfect. I make more than my fair share of mistakes. I've also done plenty of stupid shit, and gotten into plenty of trouble for it, but you know what? I've *never* lied about it -- never lied about much of anything, in fact, since I finally let my mother guess my lover's name, over the phone. Read back, if you don't believe me. My life these last few years is pretty much an open book, and *this* is *it*.

I've dithered a few times, but in the end, "the truth will out", and it's just a matter of time or research before people figure out where I really stand on anything that seriously matters. In the meantime I suppose I *should* apologise for writing lengthly posts almost every day for years running, but you know what? Screw it. You don't like it, don't fucking read. And if you *really* are just reading to try and find my weak spots, save yourself the time and ask me to my face. Better yet, try and convince me why I'm wrong -- I *do* listen. I also don't write *everything* online. Just damn *near* everything. I can't help it.

Reporters are like furries are like drag queens are like hairdressers are like waiters are like antique dealers are like court jesters are like village idiots are like shamans are like bookstore clerks. It's not just that we are all somehow "protected" or have "rights" on a societal level when it comes to telling truth. It's that we *must*. It's that we can not possibly do otherwise. We are ridiculous beyond belief. Therefore, we're truth tellers. You can believe us or not, that's really none of our concern.

The ironic outcome of all this five-year stretch now of telling the truth, like it or not, and regardless how it reflects on my character, is that I find myself "popular", or at least "in demand", on multiple often highly contradictory fronts. People in multiple worlds know that what I say *matters*, and seek me out because of that fact.

So -- I don't have enough time to do half the things that I want to.

Would I rather go back?

Not on your life.

Be well,

xeltifon.

On Albuquerque.

2009-05-02T19:15:00.002-06:00

Albuquerque is the kind of town that mercilessly beats you into absolute submission, and then turns around and smiles at you and tells you that you'll be OK.

To make a long story short: I now have a job -- and not just *any* job -- but *the* job I have always wanted to have. Just went out front to smoke, and saw the first rainbow of 2009. Rainbows in this town are bloody *meaningful*.

The pay's not great, but it's fair, and the employer's wanting someone who can grow and learn the business.

I'm no longer posting work-related details in this blog for reasons which should now be obvious to anyone who's followed me for long.

I will say this.

I *know* I'll love being an antiquarian bookseller.

Three and a half years later . . .

2009-04-08T16:59:00.004-06:00

. . . we finally think we know who murdered Carlos Esquibel.

Clifton Bloomfield admitted to murdering Carlos, as well as a second victim, as part of a plea bargain to avoid the death penalty in three other murder cases.

May have more to say later, but just wanted to pass this along to anyone reading who may have a memory going that far back.

EDITED 17 April, 2009 (C.E.) -- added "think we".

Happy March.

2009-03-16T20:32:00.001-06:00

Went down to Mississippi.

Back on the air for a week.

Nothing more to report at this time.

Hi!

2009-02-09T17:32:00.003-07:00

Death was in the air last week. In the span of eight days, one dog and two people close to three people close to me all died, so basically I played support person for a bunch of people in completely different ways.

Charles' father passed away on Saturday morning. I mention him (and only him) by name because he's the only one who my readers here (what few remain of 'em) might remember from old posts. Charles drove to Mississipi in a single night, and I await word back from him on gardening. Tomorrow if I still haven't heard, I'm heading over anyway to water in the pansies and violas. We *can't* let them die.

Happy February.

2009-02-01T20:21:00.002-07:00

Done with hosting for the next few weeks, meaning I can find myself a regular job, if I even know how to hold on to one of those anymore.

There's talk of a con *possibly* happening here in 2010 -- and groundwork is already being laid. I find myself in the middle of that, and hope hope hope hope hope hope hope it happens!

I go from the sublime to the absurd and back again. After eight years in the sublime, I *need* some time in the ridiculous. Immersed myself into a whole new weird world still connected to the world I was immersed in when I got into the sublime world eight years or so ago.

If you can make any sense of that, more power to you.

:) :)

One week...

2009-01-13T17:52:00.001-07:00

...'til the Inauguration.

Living in interesting times, indeed.

Covering board this week and next, so yet again I've got a decent seat as history unfolds.

Elsewhere.

2008-12-05T17:11:00.002-07:00

Still keeping up with this blog about once a month just to keep my "archives" sidebar from skipping a month, which would be incredibly bad form. In truth, I think it's fair to say I have moved on. Keeping this thing on life support, 'cause who knows -- some day I may want to come back here.

I do still prefer blogger's user interface; the simple fact of the matter, though, is that it's not that great a way to interact with real people, and I'm doing more of that these days than I am doing this. It was a great way to keep up with a handful of online freinds from years ago, but never was a way to connect with broader communities, much less actual human beings I might one day meet and form bonds with.

Random diatribes cast to the winds for future generations, maybe.

Quick update.

2008-11-20T16:55:00.002-07:00

Elections over. Moving in to house with mate. Priorities shifting radically.

Good lord.

2008-10-20T23:12:00.002-06:00

Yes, I've been through several incredibly powerful emotional wringers these last couple of months.

But I think I'm finally emerging better for it. Or, at least, I am shooting downhill.

Won't know for sure of course 'til the election's over and done with. The last few months have been one weekend after another of me telling myself "next weekend everything will go back to normal", except it never does, it just gets more intense, more complex, more involved, more weird, and then the work does too.

I think I am OK with that. I don't exactly *like* constant intensity, but I can navigate it well enough, mostly.

Gonna try and keep up with this blog here better than I have been of late, but what can I tell ya? I've kinda migrated someplace else where people I actually *know* actually *read* and *comment* and *post*, and then *I* kinda post comments to them, and just about everyone on my "mutual list" is no more than one step removed from someone I know IRL, including the "peripherals".

In short, there's a far stronger sense of community there than in here. Yeah -- the blogger interface is still the most elegant I know of, and I love it, but man -- writing for the ether sucks, if you can write for a handful of people who actually read and whom you actually go on to meet from time to time.

I guess I'm keeping this place up and running, then, for the time when I finally finish my All-inclusive Theory of Everything.

I'm Alive!

2008-10-13T18:04:00.002-06:00

Yes! I am!

Just wrapped production on the single most vast editing challenge I've *ever* taken on. It weighs in at over five and a half hours of finished sound in 30 separate files. It's taken a couple of months to pull it all together. More as soon as it's launched from its associated webpage.

Lordy what a weekend.

2008-09-01T16:49:00.002-06:00

Camping was GREAT. Haven't done it in twenty years. Went out with the gang to an ancient volcanic crater in the Malpais. Absolutely NO ONE IN SIGHT for MILES. Was right at the continental divide -- you'd go up the crater to this ridge and you could see I swear for MILES. Oh man, I *needed* that. Getting out of town for a weekend -- have meant to do it since I moved here, but never actually did, 'til this weekend. Kinda weird having freinds -- kinda nice -- but man, it's a major adjustment! That's fine, though -- adjustment is good.

:) :)

It ain't that bad, exactly.

2008-08-29T22:45:00.002-06:00

Not sayin' it's good, but nah, it ain't that bad, either.

I'm really not all suicidal and shit over who I might be gonna vote for.

Not sayin', either, that it'a all an easy decison, 'cause it 'aint.

Life's complicated. Bigtime. There are no easy answers. Much as I might wish that there were.

Life's interesting.

Raccoon day.

2008-08-29T20:33:00.004-06:00

Life is *fairly* complex.

One day you're soeta covering the first debate between the candidates for a certain swing state's congressional seat.

On the same day you're covering the first "sorta" debate between the candidates for the Senate seat.

The next day you're in a raccoon suit out in Edgewoood.

Two days later you're interviewing Ralph Nader.

Three days later you're trying to get out of town to go camping with whatever freinds you have left.

Please. Someone. Shoot me now.

End of August.

2008-08-29T20:21:00.000-06:00

What a month it's been!

You likely wouldn't begin to believe me, even if I I told you.

I've covered major presidential campaigns, only to "play raccoon" where presidential campaigns *weren't* directly at stake.

I've subsequently gone from "playing raccoon" (ooh! shiny!) to playing *against* presidential campaigns yet again.

Nothing simple about it.

If someone shot me in the face right now, I guess I'd likely count it as some sort of luxury.

Shiny = good.

Muzzle flash = shiny.

That is, indeed, an invitation.

Thus begins August.

2008-08-01T07:05:00.003-06:00

July was one of the busiest, most complex, and most interesting months I've ever lived.

What with me trying to be careful not to post *everything* publicly I guess I kinda have a lot of time to fill.

Cliff says "stop writing, start living". There's something to that.

I haven't stopped writing of course.

But of course I've gotta save something for the novel. ;)

Obligatory July post.

2008-07-30T22:20:00.004-06:00

This is my obligatory July MMVIII (C.E.) post.

I do not want a month to pass by without so much as an obligatory blog post here.

Had this been an actual post, you would have found some content of some sort or other.

This concludes the monthly test of the Emergency Blogpost System.

*bdjeeep! bdjeeep! bdjeeep!*

*boooiiiiiiiing*

*blip*

Interesting article.

2008-06-26T11:51:00.002-06:00

About the state's largest university, from the Albuquerque Journal.

UNM Finds no Cronyism.

Interesting to me for a number of different reasons I won't go into.

Perhaps the State Ethics Commission should be asked about this.

Pride MMVIII (C.E.)

2008-06-16T20:45:00.003-06:00

Pride was a hoot!

Glad to take at least partial credit for one group I won't name getting out to the march for the very first time.

Went to a party with 'em afterward and man, did I have fun.

Life's good!

Complicated, but good.

Back to the cagey cat.

2008-06-11T22:22:00.003-06:00

I've *never* pretended my life wasn't absurdly complex.

Goes with the territory.

A former freind from my North Hollywood days (with whom I wish I were still on speaking terms -- one of two, from that particular lifetime) once told me in a chat room that I'd built for free for the studio he worked for (which had helped build a major cable TV network) that I was a "cagey cat". I could say *much* more on that, but heck. I'm savin' *some* things for the novel. Truth is *very* much stranger than fiction! And in the words of Walter Moers' Captain Bluebear, a cat "must have his secrets, after all; they make him seem attractive and mysterious".

This little online journal's gone through multiple transformations over the years. It started basically as an idle excercise in writing where I might get some occasional feedback, as opposed to the letters typed out on the back of pizza shop flyers on a 1923 Royal "Junior" typewriter that I snail-mailed to one of my chat room freinds of some years before in another damn state at the time. (BTW -- he remains one of my precious handful of readers.)

In the time *since* that time -- and specifically, in this latest stretch of time -- I seem to have gone from being a total nobody to being someone large numbers of people kind of have to trust. And I will *not* betray that trust. They depend on me just like I depended on the people who trained me.

And they have *not* come to trust me because of what I have written in here, over the years. There is *plenty* of deeply, personally embarassing material in here, I assure you. I have no doubt I'd wince, myself, re-reading most of it. But it was true enough to me when I wrote it to write it. The difference between now and then is basically that then, I didn't matter all that much. And now, somehow, I do, in ways I can *only* imagine. The irony is that as what I write matters more, I have to keeep myself out of the story. I'm not the story. I'm just the person relaying it.

The stakes are infinitely higher now.

You want my background? Well, there's plenty of it here. Not nearly all, but enough, if you want to have at it. Have at it! Have fun. Rip it apart. Confront me with it, if you want.

What I write here from this point out is *not* just for a handful of chat room freinds. It's for posterity. And yes, there's lots and lots I've already written in here that might call my character and judgment into question. Ask me anything you'd like. I've got no secrets.

Bring it on.

And please forgive me if I cease, for the time being, at least, to use this online journal as a venue to discuss the day-to-day things I encounter. I do this by my own volition, and assure you -- and it's a *very* hard choice for me to make.

But some things quite simply matter infinitely more than my own day-to-day frustrations and triumphs.

I will continue posting.

Not near as often as in past.

And the focus of what I write about will change. It's changed before. And it will change again. Big deal.

Welcome to the internet.

I love the people I work with.

2008-06-09T21:20:00.002-06:00

Not to be vague, but it's a complex little game playing out on multiple fronts all at once, here.

And posting about people I work with seems to have rather further complicated the game by a bit. Not my intention, but I *do* see that now. A single "off the record" conversation proved it to me.

I *will* say this.

I love the people I work with on a day-in and day-out basis.

(I've never been one to enjoy *simple* games.)

"Coal River".

2008-06-08T19:20:00.003-06:00

Book review post.

Haven't finished it yet. And while it's kinda advocatey it's really well structured -- a complex but compelling narrative about mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia.

Thank gawd I seem to be developing something vaguely resembling a personal life these days, though I'm sure there's plenty of potential for controversy there, as with everything I've ever done. I honestly don't think I could survive right now without it. Let's face it -- doing what I do for a living -- coming home after that to read even well-written and very compelling tomes about SMCRA lawsuits ain't exactly the sort of thing that tends to make a person happy or sane.

There are, quite simply, more important things in life.

I'm learning that now -- like I learn everything -- the hard way.

I'm also learning what to save for the novel. :)

Texas menu highlights.

2008-06-02T20:48:00.004-06:00

Visited home this weekend.

Highlights from the menu follow.

Upon arriving at 11:30 PM my mother served me freshly chilled poached salmon with pickled beets and homemade tartar sauce with herbs grown in her yard in the space in her backyard which she has converted into a private entertaining space, as the mimosas were in full bloom. Perfect light menu for a late-night arrival, complete with tryptophane to put me right to sleep.

The following day, for breakfast, she fed me a homemade lemon poppyseed cake with strawberry preserves made by her very talented -- and very dedicated canner of a freind who's currently recovering from a mastectomy.

For lunch, we visited a *very* fine Italian restaurant -- new -- which features its own fresh-made mozarrella each and every day. The young woman who served us, winds up, had sung as a child in the "rainbow choir" I was part of, which my mother directed -- she's never waited tables before, but you see, since she's now taking care of her ailing father, she needs a good-paying job with flexible hours, despite having a degree.

I was glad to make her acquaintance once again, as I never thought I might *ever* be glad to ever see anyone again from my youth in the now utterly bigoted Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. The creme brulee at this place was absolutely, without question, worthy of *any* restaurant with a Michelin star. Thus, and sometimes only thus, are longstanding wounds healed.

The following day we had a nice lunch at what I'd now easily call El Paso's "second best" Italian restaurant. How far, indeed, El Paso has come since the days of "Cappetto's" and "Via Napoli", which all tasted the same! I count this place as "second best" only because they seemed so utterly fixated on the details of presentation that all other considerations tended to go, more or less, by the wayside. Of course, they might yet considerably improve, and certainly, their attention to detail is admirable. Their asparagus tips were utterly second to none. And the veal -- yes, veal -- I would call it "en roulade" -- but being an Italian restaurant, I think it wasn't that, exactly -- was to *die* for. Yes, the baby calf died for art. But the attention to detail rather flagged, if only a bit, in some other particulars. Still, I wholeheartedly appplaud their aspirations and wish them none but the best.

Then finally we ate at Sam's -- the new Chinese restaurant. They clearly have excellent staff in the kitchen -- their food is second to none -- but they clearly suffer from scrimping on the front end of the house. It's clear the waitstaff are overworked, even as they desperately *want* to please you. At the same time, though, the owner of the place makes the rounds, himself, repeatedly, so I *don't* seriously think he means ill -- I think he merely means to cut costs wherever he thinks that he can. I, personally, think he might do quite well to double his waitstaff. It would hardly cut into his bottom line, and could only improve their tips, as well as customer loyalty.

But that's one of the quandries facing small restauranteurs in marginal markets.

The definition of "eerie" . . .

2008-05-29T20:42:00.004-06:00

. . . is radio station not on air.

I know, I know. I'm trying *desperately* to excercise some judgment these days. Trying (not always entirely successfully) to behave like an adult with a *real* job who (like it or not) kind of *is* a public figure, by default. Negotiating the delineations between my "personal" and my "work" life. It's never really much mattered before. Now it does. I know that.

But I *do* think I *can* safely say that for reasons I don't know, the station's main transmitter got knocked off the air for about an hour or so today.

What's eerie about it is that you keep moving forward just like nothing's happened, knowing you might go back on air as normal with little or no notice. Plus, normally, you walk out into the foyer and there's the signal playing through the loudspeakers, and yet, today, there's silence thick enough to cut. I can only imagine, after spending over a year practically living in a radio station, that it's something like what outer space sounds like.

So those of us who are working on stories and stuff just keep working on stories, not knowing whether anyone will hear them, in the end. It's like a giant excercise in the vacuum world of "what if?". We've all got stuff we're working on, and it *all* matters.

Good thing we do keep working on it.

The transmitter goes back on air shortly before my broadcast, and it's positively chock-full-o-news. Some of it very late breaking.

Life is good.

Rechy's memoir.

2008-05-26T22:46:00.003-06:00

I've read *perhaps* a slight majority of John Rechy's novels over the years. Usually in reprint; and far more often than bought, safely borrowed from some library or other while going on trying to survive my own crazy damn life, let alone make sense of it all.

Yes, Gore Vidal said something rather nice about him. Good for him. I love Vidal. But I can't pretend to have read him like I have read Rechy.

Rechy's fiction *connected* with me in a way that I could never *quite* pinpoint, besides having come from the same place he came from, and besides having lived a life bearing some passing resemblance to a similarity with the guys he described in his always seemingly episodic and fragmentary novels, which may (or may not) have been just so semi-autobiographical.

"City of Night" I hardly need mention -- after all, it was *the* seminal gay-written novel about gay life -- although it definitely dates from an era predating my own, with sexual roles rigidly predetermined.

"Rushes" made me view the world of the gay bars critically, *long* before I got hired as doorman at Foxes by the very bartender who wound up leaving his job of over a decade after selling me 13 martinis in a single night.

"This Day's Death" I know was one of his own least favourite works, but just the details of El Paso ("I know that very cottonwood") made my life in El Paso worth living at the time.

"The Sexual Outlaw" impressed me with the clear movement within the narrator's perspective from "accepting victim" to "outraged advocate", and even "agitator".

"Numbers" -- well, I leave that to your imagination.

Rechy's memoir is, I believe, perhaps his most important work to date.

For his semi-fictionalized characters you almost never know what they are really feeling or thinking. If you read *very* carefully you get a *sense* of it, but *never* more than *just* a sense. Furiously as he may have written at whatever time, his leading protagonists remain somewhat ghostly figures, and it's left to you to figure out how much, and what, may be real, and what may be fiction. A risky but courageous stance on his part, which appears to have simultaneously protected his sources and opened him to decades of utterly vitriolic criticism on false charges of having "made it all up".

His memoir (and how many *men* write "memoirs", as opposed to "autobiographies"?) provides all the subtext, all the backstory, all the footnotes that you *never* got reading his novels. Or at least, just enough, that you *can* check him out.

He speaks in no uncertain tones of absolutely real places -- and far more importantly -- absolutely real people.

In fact, two persons that I knew in person as a child, and whom both of my parents knew far better than me, are named, specifically, in his memoir.

Gawd help me the day I call my mother and my aunt to say "I just saw so-and-so's name in a book by John Rechy". But there you have it.

A third person whom a freind of mine (I don't have many) lived with for a brief spell many years later is also named.

I've checked his facts, by now, with multiple sources.

John Rechy's absolutely, positively not lying.

His story, as he tell it here, appears to be completely true.

Long live John Rechy.

The book is entitled -- uncharacteristically awkwardly, but also appropriately -- "About My Life and the Kept Woman".

I highly recommend it.

As to the lesson that I take away from the book, it has to do with Marisa Guzman's long-forgotten statement, which I've only shared with one person through private email.

If you want to know what it is, then you'll just have to read the book.

I *very* highly recommend it.

(You might not "get it" if you're not a fag -- be warned.)

A Jihad for Love.

2008-05-21T02:18:00.001-06:00

Haven't seen the movie but Amy Gooodman ran a fascinating interview about it today on Democracy Now. All about gay and lesbian muslims.

For once I didn't mind her breaking late (which she did, by roughly four minutes).

The film's website is here.

Eileen Welsome's story.

2008-05-09T11:52:00.004-06:00

On money and politics in City Government:

Chumminess with Mayor keeps Architect's Fortunes Rising: Chavez Ignores Staffer's Recommendations that Schiff be Fired

And now for a supplemental story, also by Eileen Welsome:

A $164,000 Deal?

[Considering the advice of a trusted freind, I am allowing myself the luxury of a single edit. -- 5.15.8]

Third format breaker . . .

2008-05-08T20:57:00.003-06:00

. . . in as many days. By the time the network goes back to the standard clock, that'll be a format breaker in itself.

Ba-dump-bum.

Yeah it was a really amazing story but sheeeiit all I care about is the clock, sometimes.

Jim got back today.

And Thursdays seem to be the most stressful days generally.

Jim throws me a *really* good story. It's literally, like, "thud", as the twenty-page, as-yet-unpublished article by a Pulitzer Prize-winner lands on my desk. The joke is that I love reading EISes, because somehow, it's true. This isn't quite an EIS, but it's about as courageous and complicated a story as I could ever hope to be asked to have anything to do with. It takes me hours to read, what with all the standard distractions.

On top of which there's another story involving mortages and stuff (I *hate* the economy. I *hate* it!) which I need to get a voice or two on. I do, and then, of course, I have to get the Congresswoman's voice on it as well, and just exactly like I know they will, they get back to me with a prepared statement which is completely irrelevant *precisely* one minute before deadline.

I'm going to start telling them not that my deadline's "five o'clock" but that it's *actually* "4:53". I know what'll happen if I do -- I'll get their responses at 4:52. instead of 4:59. I'm serious! As it is, I have to re-read the headline for the second hour (which is hour one) *amended* to point out the fact that yes, eventually, they *did* get back to us, before deadline, or they can say we misrepresented them. Unfortunately I think there are people in positions of power out there who don't take us totally seriously and *assume* we will misrepresent them. It ain't true. At least not on my watch.

I am therefore OFFICIALLY moving the "deadline" forward now for "All Things Considered". I am doing this by virtue of the authority fully vested in myself as the only total freakshow the powers that be will allow to run the board during afternoon drivetime for reasons I can not begin to fathom. The deadline for afternoon first hour (which is hour two) stories is now 4:53.

Trick is the long, involved, complicated "money in politics" type story that we hope to help to *break* is running *waaay* behind. I'm literally editing it at 4:55. Jim runs interference despite having his own things to edit before going to air. He arranges with the Freeform Host (Travis Parkin, who brought in an amazing group -- Asylum Street Spankers -- for a live broadcast from Studio A this afternoon). He calls the guy who's got the "breaking" story embargoed while he or someone he works with works on "rolling it out" on their website first. (It's called "protecting sources", I believe -- not in a "Deep Throat" kind of way but just as in "not stealing stories from other Journalists who've done the preliminary groundwork to your *helping* to break it".)

The stress is incredible.

I love it.

The only monkeywrench is that for whatever reason DN is running on CMP on LS-1 instead of on CD for reasons I don't know anything about when I take over CR. It *definitely* throws me. I have to line shit up and air it almost off the bat from CMP almost as soon as I start my broadcast. And the carts are in place but not cued up the way *I* cue them up. So DN ends and there are seconds of silence. Finally I go ON AIR to announce the frequencies and PAD, BABY PAD while I get the carts cued up, but only in time to throw off the whole log for the rest of my broadcast, more or less, but way worse in the first quarter of it.

Since I'm crunching on a big important story that winds up not airing anyway Jim helps me out by writing out some billboards for me. Only -- apparently -- we process text differently in our heads. I get a big old wall of text. I read it. The whole thing. Aparently he skims it as he goes and just hits the main points. I read whatever's put in front of me. Different approaches. Different tricks. Finally I run out of time and just cut to network for headlines.

The big story airs tomorrow morning.

Jeezus. If only people could know what we go through sometimes.

Not that I'd trade it for the world.

I wouldn't.

Two format breakers.

2008-05-07T22:16:00.000-06:00

In as many days.

It would drive me insane, if I hadn't had a *really* good time last night.

Yesterday -- the network ran a format breaker which I apparently failed to notice thanks to the North Carolina and Indiana Primaries. It completely screwed up my backtiming, since I was running on a rundown from earlier in the day. Yeesh, I sounded like a fool near the end. But I fit it all in! Somehow.

Then today they ran like a fifteen minute story about transgendered three-year-olds. I'm serious. It was an *amazing* story. I was glued to the board just listening to it. Decades worth of backstory on the ethics of psyciatric diagnoses and treatments for homosexuals and stuff. But I was literally up against 6:48:27 before I realised -- they're just *not* going to break for my final weather.

Just when you think you've learned all the curveballs the network can throw at you -- surprise!

Man, I love radio.

A good day . . .

2008-05-05T21:14:00.003-06:00

. . . is any day I'm on the air.

(To the tune of that song from "Open Season". You know the one.)

Seriously, though.

Slept through most of the weekend just catching up on sleep lost running myself ragged chasing that stoopid, stoopid forest fire, driven by the stoopid, stoopid wind. Still not completely recovered but hell -- I've got to sound good and calm when I'm actually talking to people ON AIR. The listeners don't want to hear "I've had a hell of long day", they want to hear "here's what the fire did". Thank gawd the fire didn't do anything more dramatic than it did when it jumped the containment line last week and burned down 50 houses. Bastard.

It's a balancing act -- there are *so* few people working in the newsroom, and we've got *so* much to cover, just between the three of us! It's not even remotely funny. We all repeatedly go through this thing -- like a cycle. Mondays it's more about "just do what you can, and don't run yourself into the ground, 'cause that won't serve the listener well, in the long run". We all understand that, and try to live up to it. But somehow or other, by Friday we're all either involved in two-hour-long in-studio interviews that we have to edit down to seven minutes within the next hour or we're driving all over the state to get voices on tape no one else has. Then we go home and collapse for a weekend, then come back. Like teletubbies. "Again! Again!"

I swear -- I've got a masochistic streak in me. ;)

But today was definitely a good day.

Trigo update.

2008-05-03T14:37:00.004-06:00

Fifty additional homes are confirmed lost in the Sherwood Forest area by the Trigo Fire.

That, in addition to nine homes, nine outbuildings, and two mobile homes lost prior to the fire's downgrade from a Type II incident to a Type III incident.

That, according to the U-S Forest Service.

The fire, which has now burned an estimated 13,670 acres in the Manzano Mountains has since been upgraded to a Type I incident.

Colon endorses Obama.

2008-05-03T14:25:00.000-06:00

NM State Democratic Party Chairman Brian Colon is endorsing Illinois Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

That, according to a press release from the state Democratic Party sent out at 11 this morning.

The endorsement is confirmed by the Obama campaign.

Verification . . .

2008-05-03T01:38:00.003-06:00

. . . that I do, in fact, have at least one anonymous reader remaining follows:

Trigo fire, part the second.

2008-05-02T19:57:00.002-06:00

Long day. How better to recount it than chronologically.

Up at six. Leave at Seven for the Trigo Fire. An event's scheduled at the Tijeras Ranger Station. I get there early, just keep driving toward the fire. Stop at a little general store for coffee. Trade gossip on the fire with everyone else there. Continue driving down 337 'til I hit the "T" with 55. Last time I turned right to go down to Torreon, Manzano, and eventually Mountainair. This time that road was closed -- authorities weren't letting *anybody* in to the evacuation zone. Turned left instead, toward Estancia. Maybe sixteen miles later discover that's a charming little town as well. Humanity (if it survives) will bemoan the day the mobile home was invented.

I've come to Estancia to find the shelter that the Red Cross has set up. It isn't easy -- I'm guessing anyone who *should* be there knows their way around the small towns on the back roads of New Mexico. I seem to have several different addresses for it. Not helpful. Wander into the County building twice 'cause that seems the best candidate among the wooden churches and houses in the little town out on the plains. It's not. I'd called Elaine from the road asking her to let me know if anything came out through the e-mail that I should know. She calls me back while I'm at the county building. She tells me the contents of the latest Forest Service press release. Listening to her talk about acreage and ground crews and aeroplanes and windspeed it just dawns on me -- *that's* not the story. The *story* is what the people in the little general stores are saying. It takes me hearing fire statistics being read over my cellphone while *feeling* the wind in my face and smelling the fire miles away in the air to *see* that. She gives me two numbers for the Red Cross and I call.

The guy who answers is nice but obviously doesn't know the town. "It's on the main street", he tells me. "You mean Fifth?" I ask. He answers "oh, does it even have a name?" It does. He doesn't know it. And it's actually *not* on the "main street". I find the post office, go in, and an older lady with *amazing* hair straight out of the 1870s tells me "go out this way, and you'll see it right down there". (I *love* small town post offices -- with reason.)

It's in the community center -- which was built in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration. It's utterly charming -- pueblo revival -- very simple, very functional, but very, very beautiful as well. Lots of attention to detail in these old WPA buildings. Appropriate to place, and built to human scale. It's got exposed wooden ceilings in a style modelled on vigas and latillas, and the ceiling of the gymnasium has these amazing rafters. The floor of the gymnasium has eight cots on it, a few tables, lots of plastic bottles of water, piles of clothes, snacks, and coffee. There's only one evacuee in the building and he's clearly not interested in talking to anyone.

The gentleman who talks to me strikes me as good and sincere but he can't, or won't help me. I get one-word answers to even the most simple and preliminary questions. "When did you open?" / "Monday." / "So about how many people would you say have come through?" / "Seventy-four." / "So how is everybody holding up?" Then he asks me "are you familiar with the Red Cross? With its mission, and its structure?" Jeezus. The story of the Red Cross ain't the story that I'm after. We exchange a few pleasantries but finally he tells me I need to talk to his supervisor, who's in ALBUQUERQUE but who's on his way and if I want to stick around for a couple of hours maybe *he* can answer some of my questions. You would think I'd asked him a trick question like "did you kill her before or *after* you took the money?" Call me crazy but I ain't stickin' around for two hours to talk to people who don't want to talk to me only to talk to someone I could have talked to in fuckin' Albuquerque. I've got to go ON AIR.

Drive back. Witness my first bomber actually drop slurry on the fire. Pictures don't do it justice. They take this HUGE old plane and fly it 'round and 'round in circles 'til it's practically scraping the tops of the trees and FWOOSH drop this big old amount of slurry -- red stuff -- fire retardant. Damn, that takes guts. And compared to the size of the fire it looks like about a teaspoonful of cough syrup.

Need to stop and think, see a sign leading to Oak Flat picnic area in the Cibola National Forest. Screw it -- my story's just falling apart, and I've been driving for hours. This is *nuts*. *I* am nuts. Get to the picnic area and figure "what the hell's the big deal, it's just a big old bunch of trees". I stop the car to get out and read the Forest Service's warning signs.

Silence.

No -- wait -- that isn't silence -- that's wind blowing through the pines. Sounds like the ocean. I decide what the heck, drive up to one of the picnic sites and get out and explore.

I do so. The forest is so overgrown I have to walk and walk before I find a place where I can penetrate it. I do. A few yards in I find myself looking at the forest floor. I've been looking for all the wrong things. I haven't *understood* something about what's *happening*. The forest floor in this tiny clearing is *covered* with dead pine needles. Pine cones. Oak leaves. Some other leaf I don't recognize. A few baby trees are poking up, but none more than a couple of inches. The older trees themselves are dry. Snags litter the ground. It's beautiful. Suddenly I am in another world, entirely.

Then suddenly the wind picks up again. I don't know how else to explain it other than to say I have a "Bambi moment". I can *smell* the smoke, *very* faintly. I imagine I can *hear* the fire. Suddenly I find I'm *terrified*. The fire is *miles* away. But *that's* the *same* wind that is *driving* the fire. And those dry things -- that's "fuel". I *literally* rush back out to my car and drive away at breakneck speeds.

Half a mile away it *hits* me -- *that's* the story. Get *that sound*. The sound of the roaring wind. I might be able to use it. I calm down enough to realise I'm not in any immediate danger and go back out to the spot and go in, even a little further, to a grove of pines around lichen-covered rocks. It's magical. And it overlooks a wide valley with nothing but trees for as far as the eye can see. I get my sound. I go back out.

I decide finally to go back to one or both of the general stores. At the first I get a frito pie. But it's not set up right to talk to anybody. It's small and crowded. So I just shut up and listen.

Finally make it back to the first. Actually, I overshoot it, meaning I have to drive back for maybe ten miles on this *crazy* curvy road. It's easy to miss things on 337 -- you keep your eyes on the road. Or you die. That simple. I'd bought something there before, and think I made a decent impression. Business owners seem to have a way of liking people who spend money in their stores. It's a kind of diplomacy I can understand. And the owner said she loved my station. That sure didn't hurt, either.

When I go back, we talk some more about the fire, the shelter, this and that. I ask her if she'd be willing to let me record her.

I *love* mountain people. They're freindly -- give you the shirt off their backs kind of people -- but shy. Even, maybe, a bit private. The mere *mention* of "record" or "microphone" or "broadcast" seems to make them self-conscious. She declines. So does the lady with her. They'll tell me anything and everything. But not on mic. "But wait", she says. She knows *one* person who will talk to me. I need to talk to Fred.

What she does then qualifes her, in my mind, as a dedicated reporter. She pulls out two *huge* rolodexes *stuffed* with cards and systematically goes through one while the other lady with her goes through the other. No Fred, there. Then it's on to the *other* filing system -- the "guest checks" -- of which there are literally *hundreds* in piles -- I have *no* idea how this system works for her, but obviously it does.

Except they can't find Fred's phone number.

So they call someone else.

That someone else has Fred's number, and gives it to her.

She calls Fred. I figure "give her some privacy" so I peruse the goods. You really can get everything you need here.

She says "Fred's on his way".

Wow.

Fred shows up. Tells me amazing stories about a family member who chose to stay with his house inside the evacuation area. The house got threatened three times, from three different directions. It's now burned out on all sides, except one -- the leeward. (Currently.)

It's a good interview. Lasts 14 minutes. Fred's very kind, and very sharing of everything that he knows.

The ladies inside the store are getting busy with the lunch rush but ask me when the story's gonna air. This is a common question, and the standard answer is "I can't say, for sure." This time, I confidently tell her in no uncertain terms "between five and seven tonight, not sure when, exactly".

Back to the station.

One rumour I heard from *several* people over the course of the day is that one of the reasons people aren't leaving their homes is because they want to fend off looters. One of 'em (who I won't name) even mentions the Torrance County Sheriff as a source, saying he'd arrested four people in the evacuation zone for looting. But the people on the ground -- evacuees and non-evacuees alike, aside from not knowing what's been burnt, are positively *buzzing* with stories of looters emanating from phone calls from behind the lines of the evacuation zone. What's going on in there is *anybody's* guess.

Now to do the things best done from a desk with a telephone.

I call the Torrance County Sheriff. The woman who answers the phone is genuinely *shocked* to hear what I'm asking about, hasn't heard anything about it. Gives me a number for Central Dispatch.

Central Dispatch says they haven't heard anything about that sort of thing but call such-and-such *different* number and ask to talk to the Public Information Officer (PIO).

I call at least three dozen times in rapid succession. Busy. Every time.

Finally call up the Bernalillo County Sheriff's office 'cause I've *also* heard that they were helping out. The person there who picks up the phone tells me she doesn't even know whether they're helping out in Torrance County but I should definitely talk to *that* Sheriff's PIO.

I do. *She* says they *are* helping, but haven't heard anything about arrests for looting and tells me I need to talk with the PIO from the State Forestry Division, and helpfully finds his number for me.

I call him. He doesn't know anything about looting, either, but says I should call the Forest Service's central Public Information Office instead since it's "their fire" (it's burning mostly on National, not State forest land).

I call the Federal Agency and dial the wrong number only to find out the poor woman on the other end of the phone has gotten *several* calls that same day asking her about a forest fire. She doesn't know anything about the forest fire, except that people keep calling up to ask about it. She runs a sign company. But she's very good-humoured about it.

I apologise to her -- it's clear that *I* was one digit off. Not the press release. Me. Apparently a bunch of other people were, as well.

I try the number again. I get right through on the first try. The Forest Service PIO hasn't heard anything about looting but says she'll make some calls on her end and get back to me.

Maybe half an hour later, she does. She tells *me* about the runaround *she* got and then gives me a number for -- Torrance County Sheriff's Central Dispatch -- the second number in this numbers game. Right? Wrong! She reads the first three digits. I read the last four back to her. Nope. I'm honestly not hopeful at this point, having already gotten one phone number wrong myself, but thank her, hang up, and try the number *she* gave me *anyway*. Central Dispatch in the Torrance County Sheriff's Department really *does* have *two* different phone numbers.

I get straight through.

The officer who answers tells me he'd heard from someone else just a few minutes before that someone was asking about looting (someone I'd asked about it, I'd bet) and tells me that the Sheriff *is* the PIO in Torrance County, and that while he's on the fire right now, if I'll give him my phone number he'll have him call me right away.

KICK ASS.

A few minutes later the phone rings and I *know* before I pick up who it is.

The Torrance County Sheriff (forgive me for not using everybody's name in writing this) tells me in no uncertain or wavering terms that he has received *no* reports of looting and has made *no* arrests in connection with reports of looting. He does explain he did make one unrelated arrest along the evacuation zone's northern boundary, and all but begs me to get the word out that the rumours of looting are just that -- rumours. He takes his time, answering questions, too. I forget to ask a few. But, heh, we're all hearing the wind and smelling the smoke.

Apparently rumours can spread like wildfire, too.

So -- *that* is a reporter's job as well. Or at least part of it. To check out every even slightly suspect fact. I could have "broken" a story about looters in the evacuation zone because I "liked" the people I was talking to, and the word would have spread back into the evacuation zone that the radio news was now reporting that the looters were in fact real. And people -- whether they were listening to me directly or not -- might have decided to stay with their homes in the face of the flames to protect against looters, since now they weren't just hearing it from their neighbours but on the news.

Those people inside the evacuation zone don't have the *luxury* of double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking everything they hear. I may be worn ragged, but damn it dude. That woman at the general store got me in touch with Fred. The least I can do is replicate her effort in my own way.

The leading headline for both hours is that the looting is a rumour.

There are also two amazing sound clips from Fred, for the benefit of everyone else who's not threatened by the fire, about his relative's story on the one hand, and about how "mountain people" (his term) live -- accepting that fire just "goes with the territory".

I read it live. Both hours. I *know* I sound a little tired. I am. But I feel good about what I have done. Who knows what it might accomplish.

The inappropriately comic moment this evening occurs when ten minutes to broadcast the AP wire sends out about six important stories I *don't* have anything worked up on.

I get interruped briefly while rewriting one, about a lobbyist representing the company that's building the uranium enrichment facility outside of Eunice having paid for the Attorney General's hotel in Holland.

Ever noticed how "l" and "o" on the one hand, and "k" and "i" on the other are *right* next to eachother on the keyboard?

Well, no, neither did I, at least until tonight, when I was on the air, reading a story about money in politics involving foreign countries and actually SAID ON AIR that such-and-such lobbyist representing such-and-such uranium company paid for 140 "dikkars" worth of *something* for the Attorney General.

Uhm. What!?

My brain goes off -- rapid-fire -- as I'm already reading the next sentence, which is all about uranium processing and commercial nuclear reactors. Even as I continue reading, I think -- "What's the foreign currency in Holland? Oh wait -- it's Guilders, isn't it? Or maybe now it's Euros? Dikkars? What the hell country is *that*? OH SHIT! THAT'S NOT A CURRENCY! THAT'S A TYPO!!!!!"

I chuckle a bit as I finish the story -- but quickly realize uranium's no laughing matter -- so I just move on.

NO APOLOGIES, BABY.

Pics!

2008-05-01T21:16:00.002-06:00

From the AP awards banquet last week: here. Proof, as though any were needed -- we're not TV material! I'll give you three guesses who the total freak in that lineup is. ;^)

But seriously -- it's wonderful to *have* these pictures being *taken*! And it's wonderful how Adrian Martin is maintaining -- no -- *improving* the News Department's profile on the station website. Constantly. She's so quiet and unassuming, working in her little corner, and we never really *know* what she's working *on* until we go and actually look at the website. Then outta nowhere we're all kinda like -- oh -- wow -- that's really amazing! *Huge* morale booster.

There are more pics at the "AP Awards List" link underneath the blurb. The popup window that's too small to accomodate the pictures kinda sucks, but that's not Adrian's doing. (At least it's resizeable.)

"Meet the KUNM News Staff" is interesting, too, with pics of us in studio. Alas, you can only get to that by clicking on the link in the tiny popup window that appears, and I can't seem to find a link to it directly. Again, this circa '97 homebrew website ain't Adrian's work, it's what she has to work *with*. But heck. It's public radio, ya know!

And just for the record -- left to right, it's Jim Williams, Elaine Baumgartel, Adrian Martin, Sam Irons, Devon Armijo, and me.

My only regret from that otherwise wonderful evening is that nobody saw my utterly exquisite silk "bullfighter" suspenders from England. :^)

I hate this fuckin' fire.

2008-05-01T20:18:00.003-06:00

Not to be emotional about it. But it's *exhausting*. I got three hours of sleep last night and spent much of today on the phone, then rewriting, and rewriting some more as the story kept changing -- for the worse. It was 95% contained yesterday, but then the winds kicked up and blew embers a clear half mile across the fire line on the fire's north side. Yesterday morning it was 48-hundred acres. Now it's *11-thousand*. Evacuations are in place from Tajique to south of Torreon. It's moving east by northeast, generally. But the winds are still both strong and shifty.

How did I get myself into this? I got licked in the face by a wolf. That's how. Go figure.

Special thanks to Rufus Cohen for reading the copy I wrote up during his Afternoon Free Form! He absolutely *didn't* "have to" do that. I hate to ever barge in on someone else's show and tell them what to do -- and really, have no right to do so. But mentioning evacuations and shelters is kinda very much in the public interest -- and he *understood* that. Not everyone does.

Of course, the EAS *never* went off. Not even *once*. And the whole fire, and the whole evacuation area, is within the broadcast range of our main transmitter.

My first wolf story.

2008-04-30T21:09:00.002-06:00

After Elaine left found a press release about Wild Earth Guardians and another group whose name escapes me at the moment suing the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service and the U-S Forest Service under the Endangered Species Act regarding what they allege is a dereliction of duty under the act in implementing Standard Operating Procedure 13, a rule whereby any endangered Mexican Grey Wolf believed to be involved in three cattle depradations in a year on Forest Service land (which is leased to ranchers for grazing) must be removed from the wild and *may* be killed, despite the fact that the wolves were reintroduced to the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area spanning two national forests in New Mexico and Arizona and have yet to meet initial goals in terms of population with the objective of eventual downlisting and delisting as an endangered species.

Nothing complicated, mind you.

I knew the AP would have a wire copy piece about it soon enough but figured I had better work it up into a cut-and-copy, at least talking to the plaintiffs and defendants in the lawsuit. Printed out and read the entire lawsuit. Talked with one of the plaintiffs. Called up a spokesperson for one of the defendants, and she hadn't seen the lawsuit, so I emailed her a copy. She calls back and tells me what Fish and Wildlife's objectives are.

A little dialogue ensues. It's valuable. It's not the greatest wolf story ever, but it's a dialogue, and not a shouting match. There's something about wolves -- like abortion. Everyone has good intentions but there's some deeper passion that gets tapped whenever you *mention* the subject to *anyone* involved in it. All I can do is try to understand at least a few of the different pieces of the story from as many different perspectives as possible and put it "out there" for the listener. All this goes into the story, but of course, the story just keeps getting longer.

*Then* the day starts to get complicated.

Another group sues Fish and Wildlife the same day over panthers and the impact of the border fence on *their* habitat. On that one, I print out and read the wire copy, because even though I'd written up a short piece on it to follow the wolf piece, the wire copy is *better* because I've spent most of the day on the wolves. I don't even have time to edit the copy. But now I have a nice little bottom-of-the-hour package of headlines all relating to endangered species in the state. Nice and neat.

Then literally between taking the helm in CONTROL and doing my first newscast, out of nowhere, the wire, which has been thin all day starts feeding me important breaking stories that I wind up bumping my carefully prepared package for -- again, and again, and again. I read 'em all pretty much cold. Barely time to run through 'em once to see where I might trip up -- but I *have to*. If I start talking about 16,278 people drawing 142,846 dollars in February of 2008 in benefits as opposed to 16,164 people drawing 137,554 dollars in benefits in May of 2006 without reading through first I will *sink* my broadcast, and by now, I *know* it. So I *have to* read through it, first. I do. Find the trip-up points, then round off, and take my time as I read, reading ahead, making sure I *understand* what I'm actually *reading* before trying to convey the *meaning* of it to the listener. No one wants to have numbers *thrown* in their faces. If they want the exact numbers, they can call, or they can read the newspaper -- newspapers do things like that better -- with stuff like numbers stories, I can *only* give listeners a *taste* or a sense of the shape of a story. I'm a filter between the numbers and the listener who needs to understand what the numbers *signify*, and *why* it *matters*.

Between my first newscast and my first weather there are still *more* stories flooding in over the wires. Including this one -- the Trigo fire, which I visited last week, and which *was* 95% contained, got blown past containment lines to the North and is, yet again, burning in steep and rugged terrain, driven by high winds.

So, I push off the story I spent all day working on to tell people about the forest fire. At least I manage to sound fairly calm doing it.

Then shortly before the *next* broadcast there's a story about political ads geared toward fucking *November* airing in the state.

Push off the wolves again.

Finally get my little wolf story read at the bottom of hour two, which is, of course, hour one.

Ohhhh *man* you have got to be ready to adapt in this business. You've got to plan everything out and still turn on a dime. You've got to be ready for *anything*. And then you have to be the listener's *freind*. You know, the calm, unruffled one, who knows a lot, *and* all the latest, but who's not *seriously* shaken up by *anything*. "Oh -- the state is on fire, again. This morning it wasn't, now it is. But the winds should die down on Friday. It's 78 degrees. Have yourself a great evening."

It's fucking NUTS!

I LOVE IT!!!!

Finally I go off air.

Then lured by free pizza I head down to the conference room where the monthly general meeting's underway. Maybe a dozen volunteers and two staff people are talking about minutiæ at great length, and with tremendous passion. (Radio people seem, as a rule, to do that. OH MY GAWD I love radio people.) At first I poke my head in, kinda figuring "I better at least pretend to be interested if I'm going to be taking their food".

Somehow I start to soften up, just listening. Oh, wow, *that* may not matter *at all* to *me*, but yeah -- I can see how it *is* important. At the same time, things that are *tremendously* important to me matter not a whit to this or that person. I don't talk. I just listen. As Gore Vidal would say -- "Be like the eye of God. Don't judge. Don't miss a thing." It takes getting past some bluster, and just not being afraid to be in its presence, but heck -- the bluster winds up being *very* entertaining! And it's *not* about *nothing*. It dawns on me, slowly, as I listen -- that person's not "the enemy", and we're not on "opposite sides" of some great divide here. We're all just chipping away at this big old huge thing from so many different angles all at once we can't see what the other is doing.

Eventually I'm *hooked*. The politics of public radio are *intense*. Heartfelt. We're *all* fighting for something *vitally* important here. Sometimes the only thing we can do is show up and just listen to eachother. But it *matters*. Yes, even for the "music people". I'm not a "music person", but that doesn't mean their struggles don't affect my own. It's tempting to get into a mindset where the only thing that matters is "what I'm working on right now". But I can't let that happen. It might prove fatal.

And the stakes are *far* too high.

Birthday broadcast.

2008-04-29T20:50:00.003-06:00

Sort of a "bread and butter" day in the newsroom, mostly working up the Bingaman teleconference audio and writing out a couple of headlines.

Elaine's helping me *focus* my stories. We talked for almost an hour today about an event I intend to attend Friday. I can't just waltz into it unprepared -- it's a weird thing -- but this is a mistake we all make sooner or later, and the sooner we break ourselves of the habits involved, the better.

Some organization -- say, a national lab, or a group of activists, or a Ranger Station, or whatever -- will announce they're having what amounts to a media "open house". Obviously, they want to use the event to shape our coverage of their organizations. That's not saying they're evil or anything. It's simply the reality. Everyone wants our attention, and everyone wants to shape our coverage. And these events can be quite helpful in getting at least one side's worth of understanding on a given issue. Sooner or later every reporter goes out and covers this sort of event and winds up getting swept away or overwhelmed with sheer sensory overload to the point they don't know what the story actually *is*.

Thankfully, usually cooler heads prevail in the newsroom and with the back-and-forth we kind of figure out that no, that's really *not* a story in itself. (Anyone for post hole convolutes? I'm *still* hopelessly enamoured of those things.) That sort of detail *may* indeed be a crucial *part* of a story; but just the sheer existence of such things is really *not* a news story.

This is why we depend on eachother. We each have our strengths and our passions and bouncing the ideas off someone else is *priceless*. Heck, it saves our credibility.

NPR did a story tonight that made me laugh right before going on air. Thanks loads, guys.

And then they did *another* where I felt I had to call 'em up and issue a correction. It was a good story, but someone apparently got confused between "El Paso, Texas" and "New Mexico". Yeah, El Paso's really *not* part of New Mexico. Heck, at least it was an interviewee -- not a network reporter. Interesting piece though, regardless.

Factual correction.

2008-04-28T22:30:00.002-06:00

On 27 April, 2008, we incorrectly reported that the station's newsroom had won sixteen A-P awards.

In fact, the total number of awards received equals seventeen, including "Station of the Year".

We regret any inconvenience.

:) :)

Another monday.

2008-04-28T20:49:00.002-06:00

Good solid start to the week.

Placed a few calls but didn't get calls back by airtime -- oh well.

So it was mostly just headlines tonight -- not ideal, but kind of nice, too, to be able to sort of relax a bit from time to time. Did have a fascinating conversation with a guy who just got back with Governor Richardson from Venezuela. Richardson was trying to get Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez re-engaged on hostage negotiations with the FARC in Colombia. I've said some rather unkind things of Richardson in the past, but there's no denying he's a skilled negotiator and diplomat, either. If you're not following things closely over a period of years you just see the headline in isolation and it's like "he's grandstanding". Well, almost certainly, there is that aspect to it -- I don't think *anyone* would be surprised if he's offered either a VP slot or Secretary of State slot on a Democratic ticket (*if* they ever do decide on a candidate) but at the same time, he's also working with and taking advantage of relationships that go back years.

I'm very lucky to be where I am -- I get to peer behind the curtain, just a bit, sometimes, behind the headlines, and see how utterly fascinating politics and diplomacy really are.

The Raices collective brought in a quartet called "Los Otros" and set 'em up in Studio A for right after I was set to go on air. It's always neat when there are musicians in Studio A. Almost invariably something magical about it. Roman's *incredible* to watch, live engineering on the Wheatstone -- there are *so* many more variables engineering music than talk. And the music is neat, too.

Validation.

2008-04-27T01:33:00.002-06:00

Not that it's not all about the listener. Breaking records during pledge drive kind of honestly means more to me than winning an award.

But validation's nice. Quite nice.

I guess I'm now officially an award-winning journalist. Nothing big, just a "show" for some random stories about Los Alamos. But heck -- I was volunteering when I did 'em, and honestly never thought I'd live long enough to submit 'em for, much less *get* an award.

Granted, all I got was a certificate -- but given what the first place trophies remind me of -- it's probably just as well that I *didn't* win a trophy! It would only be a matter of time 'til I used the damn thing as it was clearly meant to be used, thereby rendering it permanently unfit for public display.

I won't describe 'em 'cause I don't want anyone to think I'm being petty, or bitter.

But seriously -- can we *please* go back to the New Mexico-shaped wooden plaques, already, *please*? Those things look super-neat all lined up on the wall.

The trophies seem to get weirder, and harder to display, each year.

This year's trophies would have done Dan Savage proud in 1995.

Long story short -- collectively, the newsroom won 16 AP awards this year.

The cleaners.

2008-04-25T20:14:00.003-06:00

Got my tuxedo and one of my suits back from the cleaners today. Have put off getting them cleaned for *ages* 'cause I hardly ever wear 'em, and didn't want to spend the money. But heck. If I *really* want to look my best, I REALLY want to look my best!

Intense week at the station, but *entirely* positive. The Trigo fire trip was incredible. But also an initiation (by fire -- literally) into forest management policy. I go 'cause I'm interested in the wolves way up north and wind up getting interested in a whole *different* thing. And dealing with the Forest Service -- it's nowhere *near* as cut and dry as it appears on the surface.

There's a HUGE book in the newsroom called "Wildfire". It has an essay that sadly I only got around to reading *after* reporting from the scene. About how wildfires (and disasters in general) get covered. Very interesting -- there's one way of looking at "news coverage" as a concept whereby "news coverage" constitutes competing parties trying to get *their* message out, while reporters working under tight deadlines struggle to just get teh facts right in a timely manner and wind up inadvertently casting the story in terms defined by the party that's most successful in conveying its particular message to the reporter at hand. Hard to swallow, but true.

*That* would explain why we're peppered constantly with press releases and media advisories from all sides of every single issue under the sun. People devote their *lives* to different sides of deeply controversial issues, while reporters (we're not people, remember) devote *their* lives to conveying facts. People are *trying* to make us miss the forest for the trees.

Uhm. Yeah! Guilty on that count. I'm a hundred miles away from the control room and just really only getting *one* side of the story, which is *huge*, because only one side is willingly feeding me information. What I wound up airing was OK -- advanced the story a bit, but damn, dude! I didn't get the story I was after, 'cause I eventually found myself on an interested party's home turf and simply *had* to get back to the station fast enough that I couldn't stick around for the lady I'd talked to before to return from her lunch break.

On the other hand, at least I didn't waste any time producing the fluff piece I *could* have about what I actually gathered. Heh. News judgment, anyone? I hate to admit it, but it does kinda suck to gather hours of good, usable sound only to wind up leaving it all on the cutting room floor. But sometimes -- you know -- that's just what you have to do!

I could *easily* have done a very interesting piece about how firefighters are good people and how fighting fires is like fighting a war. And they *are* good people, and the way they fight fires is, indeed, a big part of the story. But it's only *one* part. It wouldn't have done any great service to the listener, just delivering one "angle" in depth on a story that also involves decades of policy decisions spanning both Republican and Democratic administrations and having profound consequences for forest ecology. So -- I aired my "cut-and-copy" and moved on. Everything I learned at base camp? Filed away. For future use. I'm sure the oppportunity will come up, soon enough, again, to revisit the underlying issues.

Being a newsroom, other things just kept happening. I was *really* happy with two of my broadcasts this week. So of course, I pull 'em off the skimmer. And no sooner am I listening to myself than I'm thinking "that worked, but that didn't". Heh. Maybe I'm halfway competent at what I do precisely *because* I take myself *waaaay* too seriously. But seriously, there's got to be some sort of balance.

I'm finding it. Slowly. Balance. It's possible. I may be riding across several crossing tightropes on a unicycle while juggling bowling pins, but I'm *not* falling into the gaping abyss! I have to recognize the fact that at some level I *do* know *exactly* what I'm doing. I like the feeling when it all goes *right*. No. Actually, I LOVE it! And I *can* make sure it does, in fact, go right. *That's* power.

On the level involving other people -- the newsroom's working *way* more smoothly than I've known it to in the past. It's like -- here's this institution (the newsroom) within a larger institution (the station) within a huge old lumbering bureaucratic institution (the university), within a still larger and more complex and far more deeply dysfunctional institution (the state) with a bunch of deeply layered institutional type challenges on almost every level, and everyone's working separately, underground, to chip away at getting to where things actually need to be.

It's like miners coming at eachother through different tunnels. First there's a chink in the wall through which you *think* you can see some light but don't dare allow yourself to think it. Then the chink in the wall grows to a hole just big enough where you can see the other miner's face. Then before you know it you're all in the same tunnel and working together. That's what this week was like.

We're not having meetings any more where we gather and obligatorily say "I'm working on this, what are *you* working on, like it really matters?". We're meeting together and discussing things in depth and bouncing ideas and critiques off eachother without stepping on eachothers toes and handing off stories right and left. Corporate types call it "breaking down silos". Loath as I am to borrow their terminology, we're *definitely* doing that.

I *really* want to do a wolf story! A month ago, that would have been unthinkable. *Two* months ago, "Wolves" would have been "Elaine's story", "Oil and Gas Drilling" would have been "Jim's story", and anything about "the Labs" would have been "my story", while whoever got stuck hosting whatever aired would have just sounded half baked not knowing the difference between "produced water", "endangered species", or "graphene molecules" reading the lede.

And then there's the whole issue of how reporting's *traditionally* done -- in newspapers and stuff, people have "beats". It works, to a degree. I know people in the labs and people who put pressure on the labs and seem to be trusted pretty well by all concerned. Elaine knowns wolf reintroduction advocates and critics and the people who oversee the program, and seems to be pretty well trusted by all. Those connections are invaluable, and you don't generally want to jeapordize those relationships by having some random person who doesn't understand even the basics of a given issue call up person "x" only to have 'em wonder "who the hell are you, and where's the person I spoke to last time?". But let's face it -- most functioning newsrooms with well-defined "beat" reporters *do* have more than three people on full time staff, two of whom are *also* drivetime news hosts.

If we want to do more than gather sound we never use, *eventually* we *have to* communicate effectively, internally. We're *definitely* moving in that direction. Faster and faster, too. Turf wars are just a waste of time and resources, and do injustice to the listener. We all know that. We are *all* erasing our own precious lines in the sand.

Jim hands me a couple of hours of sound about a hunger story that he can't get around to editing and I work it up, literally in my spare time. I'm far enough away from the story that I can just step back and realise -- I *don't* have to listen to the 20 minute speech about the "gap analysis", important as it is. I *can* cut to the meat of the story that makes *sense* to the listener who just knows, from lived experience, that food is costing more. Food prices are up, fuel prices are up, the two are feeding eachother, more people are going hungry, that's putting stress on nonprofits, but these organizations are working together to fill up the gap. Bingo. It winds up being a pretty decent story, if I do say so myself.

I hand him my notes from the busdriver's union story that I got stuck on a couple of weeks ago when the lawyer for one interested party told me he'd never heard of someone else on the other side of the issue and *he* finishes *that*.

I haven't said a lot about Elaine, because, basically, I'm kind of a sexist pig, and I know it. But she's a *huge* part of this transformation -- she *has to* go out of her way to be assertive, and make it known, repeatedly, that she's there to help as much as anyone else. She *shouldn't* have to keep saying "ask me anything if you think I can help", I should just *ask* her for help when I *know* I need it! But that's the reality -- not to excuse it -- it's the old thing about "asking for directions". Men (as far as I can tell) just will *not* do it! We'd rather be lost! Damn it! We're not lost! We're explorers! We *can't* ask for help! Surely not from a *female*!

But this wolf thing -- my god. That blew me out of the water, completely. Elaine was on top of the wolf stories *months* ago! I'd be lying if I said I didn't think of it as just some sort of "pet project" of hers at the time. But the culture within the newsroom is changing. Slowly, yes, but it's changing. And for the better. Having met a wolf, and *the* "wolf lady" in person, that barrier breaks down a bit. Oh -- yeah -- those wolf stories -- they *really* matter! Why didn't I *see* that? Because I was busy playing "Mr. Plutonium" and assuming she was playing "Ms. Wolf". That attitude is *my* problem. I have *got* to get beyond it. And I will. But it took getting licked in the face by a timber wolf to get there. Goodbye, Mr. Plutonium. Go figure.

Anyhow.

Charles left a voicemail message for me last night which I wish I could save for the ages. He lives in his world, and I live in mine. We're both fags so we both trade barbs more than anything else. (Heck, it's how we survive.) Over the years I've known him, he *has* come to thank me for helping him out. But the closest he ever came to paying me an outright *compliment*? "Nice shirt. I like houndstooth weave." To which my reaction was probably something like "Yes, of course you like houndstooth. It reminds you of Germany in the '30s."

Last night he leaves a message saying he was in the car with Claudette and heard me for the first time during broadcast. I don't recall all the salient details, but he *did* he found me "enthralling", noted how I hit all the intonation and pacing, said I'd clearly "found my niche" and furthermore said something to the effect that while he'd never listened before, "I will, now".

Heh.

I don't learn *anything* the *easy* way.

The Associated Press awards banquet is tomorrow. And I plan to dress nice, since I'll be in front of people, for a change, doing something other than pestering them.

Life is good.

Fabulously fabulous.

2008-04-23T20:05:00.004-06:00

Flawless -- no -- *seamless* broadcast tonight!

All day people coming and going in and out of the newsroom. All day, working on *our own* damn stories. All day, communicating *clearly* between shifts. And finally, to top it off, a bunch of the state's best reporters are now working for the brand spankin' new New Mexico Independent online-only newspaper, and Trip Jennings (who's no longer with the Journal) and Dave Alire Garcia are in the newsroom for an interview with Jim. He does that and pulls off handing me a 12-and-a-half minute *feature* length three-way interview *well* before I'm set to go on air. I work up a timely (maybe urgent) cut-and-copy to lede at the top of the hour newscast out of 42 minutes raw sound. We're doing waaay better than "doing better". We've got MOMENTUM. We've got DRIVE. It's *very* powerful.

The broadcast goes without a hitch. Taking time with headlines, but reading currents to get all transmitter locations' current temps in. Hitting posts. Every time. Matching pacing, tone, and intonation to network.

At 5:44:30, introduce and run Jim's piece. Listen. It is *amazing*. Have *the* perfect music all lined up -- an arrangement of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse". (Get it?) Even assert myself -- Jim calls up with a request for music bed at the end. Yeah, I tell my own boss, basically, "we don't take requests during news", and he lets me. ;) (Actually, he *encourages* me. I *love* public radio.) Better still, I cue "Powerhouse" up to the "timeclock" opening of "theme B", leaving *precisely* 1:41 in the song. Hear Jim's outcue, fade up flawlessly. Let first few bars play. Fade down to 30 or 40 ish. Do my weather with fresh currents that I got while playing Jim's piece -- no stale current temperatures here! Finish it *dead on* at 58:20 and fade up the network for national funders with "Powerhouse" still broadcasting underneath. The funder credits end. So does the song. I play my carts, and stack 'em, and hit the 6:00. WOW.

Insane but beautiful.

2008-04-22T20:05:00.004-06:00

Discovered today one of the more magical parts of New Mexico. Little towns that are 400 years old. Ruins of churches that look more like Morocco than New Spain torn down in 1680 with stones used to build surrounding houses people still live in. Tiny little towns where people's families go back centuries. Church graveyards with hand-made markers, names scratched into rough-hewn stone. Each town has a church, or more than one, but one town has a store, the other down the road has a post office, while neither one has both. Where the lady who runs the post office is the mother of the person I'd been trying to get on the phone. And then that charming, quirky little railroad-era town at the end of the road where the Forest Service has set up their base camp, 'cause that part of the world is on fire.

It was important for me to go. All I got out of it was 30 seconds, but that was enough. I won't bore you with why. But now I *know* where -- and what -- places like Escoboso, Chilili, Tajique, Torreon, Manzano, and Mountainair *are*. Each one, one of a kind. Our signal and my voice reach these places, each night. We *can't* ignore them. And they're too special to simply let burn down.

Trigo fire.

2008-04-21T19:53:00.002-06:00

Somehow after meeting the wolf lady the Trigo fire seemed to *matter*. We've been covering it but mostly just reading headlines. Today was on the phone all day and the story kept changing. Finally got through to one of the fire managers at 4:20 and she told me something new that let us break a story in the fire's development. Domenici talked to the Forest Service chief and the Governor's going down to Torreon *early* tomorrow morning, which I only find out about after going on air. He announces after I get off the air that FEMA's freeing up funds for the fire which has so far cost 2 million dollars, burned close to 3800 acres, destroyed 9 houses, 9 outbuildings, and 2 mobile homes. First newscase was great, second was a mess. The information just kept changing and I was trying to cover both the latest with the fire and all the other stories happening. I need to keep it simple. In time. Tommorrow I drive to Torreon, bright and early.

The Wolf Lady.

2008-04-20T17:45:00.003-06:00

I have met the Wolf Lady.

In person.

I did not *plan* to do so. It simply *happened*.

I'd heard about her. How doesn't matter. But suffice to say, she's legendary.

Went to the grocery story and there's a little crowd around a table out front. I figure it's an animal adoption thing or something.

Nope.

Right in front of the store is a 6'3", 128-pound Timber Wolf wearing a pony harness. His name is "Hokshila". You can see a picture of him here. It takes a guy as big as he is to keep the wolf from running off whenever Stephanie Kaylan -- the wolf lady -- is away. She's the alpha. Next in line (in the group there today) is the female Wolf/Cinnamon Husky mix, Seneca. She's lovely, but *only* as big as a big dog.

It's one thing to *read* about "packs" and "dominance" and "wolf society". It's another thing entirely to experience it. She has to greet Hokshila *every* time she returns from even getting something from the car, ten steps away. He wants to follow her, *everywhere*. She *relates* to her animals in language that *they* understand.

Hokshila *loves* kids. He's totally socialized. But still wild. He's on a heavy, short leash the *whole* time. He's freindly but the setting is chaotic for him. It's noisy, there's constant traffic, and he's like a ball of pure energy responding to to all the stimuli, all the time, but absolutely *determined* to stay close to Stephanie in the unfamiliar setting. Try and keep *that* on a leash!

People's reactions are almost universally positive. All *kinds* of people walk up. Almost all want to know if they can pet the wolf. Yes, you can, but you *have to* ask, first. There were so many magic moments between kids and this animal I found myself just stuck, enthralled, watching. For two hours. Incredible.

The Wanagi Wolf Fund -- Stephanie Kaylan's organization, rescues wolves that were bred and sold -- illegally -- for thousands of dollars as pets before being abused, neglected, or abandoned. She lives in the mountains with six canines, currently -- both wolves and wolf-dogs.

She's looking, right now, for a horse trailer. Bigger's better, but it doesn't have to be anything fancy or shiny. Just needs good axles and wheels. What with six wolves, they won't all fit in her SUV, and if the wildfires hit her ranch, she will die with the wolves.

I never did get groceries.

Visualizing the listener.

2008-04-19T03:24:00.002-06:00

Got the general gist of it before.

But *now* it's *real*. Hard to explain. But somehow, now, it's more natural to me.

I think my broadcast has improved this week.

I'm visualizing listeners familiar to me.

Not abstracts of human beings.

Stressful.

2008-04-17T23:38:00.002-06:00

Yes, what I do for a living *is* a little bit stressful.

Today was a relatively "normal" day.

But I'm slowly getting to where I'm OK acknowledging to myself that it's inherently stressful.

The credit for that goes to Elaine. You know. The whole women being "honest" thing, while men repress their feelings (other than anger) constantly. Fuckin' gender constructs. Hate 'em.

Nothing terribly out-of-the ordinary happened. Just people showing up for interviews and interminable updates on forest fires on top of the usual wire copy and whatnot. Waiting for callbacks. The usual.

Still wasn't really "on top of" my broadcast when it happened. My damn tongue kept falling out of my mouth to trip me up.

Fuck it. No apologies. The guys from the labs wonder how I do what I do. I barely know myself. I kinda make it up as I go along. I guess.

The network -- not me!, the network! -- did a dirty "rejoin" today. Faded up at 5:35:30 expecting a split second of silence only to find the *netowrk* running ahead of their own clock they feed to affiliate stations, what with someone announcing something.

I *beg* your pardon. Where's my music bed? And *why* is the newscaster introducing something as I do a *clean* join on my end?

Can it be, can it *possibly* be that the people at NPR are human, too?

Newsroom: THE MUSICAL!

2008-04-17T02:12:00.002-06:00

To the tune of Broadway's "I can live without you" from "My Fair Lady" (which never made its way into the film version):

When Domenici sneezes, it is news!
When the governor snoozes, it is news!
When the delegation races,
with NNSA in its paces,
it is news!
it is news!
it is news!

Back to "normal".

2008-04-14T20:22:00.002-06:00

"Normal" being a relative term, of course.

No dozens of people wandering the halls -- no free food -- and just me in CR most of the time, alone with the listener. And a "normal" clock for weekday ATC.

Heaven!

Did get screwed up a bit, but Devon was there, and helped save me. Evan sent a story from down south -- a biggish one that he *broke* -- so we *had* to run it, even though it came in late and contained language that might offend people. It seems to depend which email account he uses to send stories whether I can run 'em or not. Maybe it's on my end too -- not sure -- was using my own login instead of "Production". We'll iron it out tomorrow. But his mp3 came through and downloaded itself as an HTML file.

Yikes.

With four minutes to spare. While ON AIR.

Got it to play -- *as* an HTML file -- in Windows Media Player. Getting last-minute stories is a challenge -- I can only accept 'em from certain workstations and then I *have to* play 'em on air from the Control Room computer. Was all set to play an HTML file ON AIR for probably the first time ever, without really knowing how it would work, when Devon did some magical thing or another and saved it as an mp3. I opened it and saved it as a wav file where it needed to be. Refreshed my list and made it in to the mic with a whole 20 seconds to spare.

Ran a 6-minute story from Jim first -- partly because I'd gotten it first, and gotten it ready first, and partly to buy me some time! Watched the clock run down and realized I'd have at least a couple of minutes to cover. So I did something -- not ideal, but better than dead air or pure "padding" with music -- faded up a music track, calmly read about two minutes of wire copy (inbetween features) and then finally played Evan's story.

That gave me 27 seconds at the end of his story to pad with music before cutting to network for funder credits.

And did it all without sounding "hectic" or "panicked".

Life is good.

Weekend in full swing.

2008-04-13T11:35:00.000-06:00

So to speak.

Attended a gallery opening which I enjoyed last night.

Today: lazily lounging at home. Will doubtless get some decluttering done before the day is through.

Pledge drive reminds me how much a Wolperting whelp I am. All the day-to-day nonsense that goes with *any* job can get you down.

But then you wind up breaking records, and nothing else matters. All that ultimately matters is the listener, after all. Mabe I'm doing something right.

My weekend...

2008-04-11T23:25:00.025-06:00

...will begin after I finish reading this [with my comments in squarebrackets].

Nothing *quite* makes my day like receiving a technical report about monitoring wells landing in my inbox less than 20 minutes before I'm set to go ON AIR, reading headlines.

Here's the letter:

April 1, 2008 [April Fools' Day]
Mr. James Bearzi, Chief
New Mexico Environment Department
Hazardous Waste Bureau
2905 Rodeo Park Drive East, Building 1
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505-6303

Dear Mr. Bearzi,

A New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Hazardous Waste Bureau letter to the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) dated February 26, 2008 [titled] "Status of Remedy Selection at MDA H" brings attention to the fact that the FLUTe sampling membrane does not provide for collection of reliable and representative samples of soil gas for measurement of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The NMED letter makes the statement pasted below:
NMED contacted the manufacturer who acknowledged that there were problems with VOC adsorption in FLUTe systems greater than 50 feet in length. NMED is concerned that the material used for the construction of the membrane may have absorbed some of [sic] VOCs or influenced contaminant detection in other ways.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Facility Investigation at the Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) Mixed Waste Landfill (MWL) measured many VOCs to be present in the soil gas below the MWL. DOE/SNL identifies the VOC tetrachloroethene (PCE) as a primary contaminant of concern for the contamination of the groundwater below the MWL. In the Long-Term Monitoring and Maintenance Plan (LTMMP) for the SNL MWL, DOE/SNL propose to monitor the VOCs with FLUTe membranes installed to a depth of 400 feet below ground surface in three boreholes at locations surrounding the MWL. However, the admission by the manufacturer that "there were problems with VOC adsorption in FLUTe systems greater than 50 feet in length" is proof that the FLUTe membranes will prevent collection of reliable and representative soil gas samples for the proposed unsaturated zone monitoring wells at the SNL MWL.

Therefore, based on this new information, Citizen Action requests NMED to order revision for the LTMMP by SNL. The LTMMP must then be informally presented to the public by DOE/SNL with a public comment period and public hearing. The LTMMP public comment period was closed on January 31, 2008 and the new information regarding concerns for the FLUTe membrane was not available until February 26, 2008. The new information needs to be taken into account by the LTMMP because the FLUTe wells do not provide effective vadose zone monitoring. Revision of the LTMMP must also comply with the requirements set forth in the SNL MWL Corrective Measures Study that require compliance with RCRA Subpart G and Subpart F for closure of the MWL.

On November 5, 2007, the NMED released the Fact Sheet/Statement of Basis for the Selection of the LANL MDA ["Mixed Disposal Area"] H Remedy (MDA H Remedy Fact Sheet). The remedy selected by the NMED [for MDA H, I assume] includes
1). complete encapsulation of the nine disposal shafts at MDA H,
2). an engineered evapotranspiration (ET) cover on the land surface above MDA H,
3). active vapor extraction of the soil gas plume at MDA H, and
4). long-term monitoring of soil gas below MDA H to a depth of 254 ft below ground surface (bgs).
The NMED selected this remedy because of a concern that trichloroethene (TCE) contamination in the soil gas below MDA H could result in TCE contamination in the groundwater below MDA H at a level greater than the EPA Drinking Water Standard of 5 ug/L.

The TCE contamination was measured at a concentration of 2,600 ug/cubic meter in soil gas samples that were collected from three boreholes at MDA H with the LANL Packer sampling system on a quarterly schedule from February 2005 to March 2006. From March 2006 to the present time, the soil gas samples were collected with FLUTe membranes that were installed in the same three boreholes at MDA H where gas samples were previously collected with the Packer sampling system.

The VOC contamination measured with the FLUTe membranes during four quarterly sampling events in 2007 are presented in Table 5.0-2 in LANL report LA-UR-07-7803 (November 2007). Table 5.0-2 presents TCE concentrations measured in a total of 48 gas samples collected from sampling ports in the three FLUTe membranes installed in the three boreholes. The measured TCE concentrations range from ND (i.e., "not detected") to a maximum concentration of 9.7 ug/cubic meter. For the 48 soil gas samples, the measured TCE concentrations were greater than 9.0 ug/cubic meter in only four of the samples and greater than 8.0 ug/cubic meter in only ten of the samples.

All of the TCE concentrations measured in the soil gas samples collected with the three FLUTe membranes were three orders of magnitude lower than the TCE concentration of 2,600 ug/cubic meter that was cited in the NMED MDA H Remedy Fact Sheet as the level of TCE contamination uniformly present below MDA H. The TCE concentration cited in the Fact Sheet was for measurements in the three boreholes with the LANL Packer sampling system.

Because of the very low concentrations measured with the FLUTe membranes for TCE and the other VOCs, NMED has ordered the following actions by DOE/LANL in a letter dated February 26, 2008:
"NMED therefore directed the Permittees in a December 21, 2007 letter to evaluate the effects of the FLUTe system on VOC sample measurements. The Permittees must collect data from existing boreholes at MDA H with and without the membranes for at least two quarters for comparison purposes." (p. 2)
There is no merit in the direction of NMED for the intercomparison of data from a small number of new soil gas samples collected from the existing boreholes at MDA H with the FLUTe membranes and with the LANL Packer sampling system. The large amount of historical data collected from the existing boreholes with both the LANL Packer System and with the FLUTe membranes is superior to the new data to be collected "for at least two quarters for comparison purposes." Collecting the new data will require repeated installation and removal of the two sampling systems in the three boreholes. The periods of time the boreholes are open will allow cross-flow and cross-contamination of the in situ soil gas and dilution of the contamination in the soil gas by atmospheric air that will flow into and out of the open boreholes in response to the daily change of barometric pressure. [Emphasis, myself.]

Furthermore, the manufacturer has acknowledged that the FLUTe membranes are inappropriate for sampling soil gas for VOCs at depths greater than 50 feet. [emphasis, myself.] This admission by the manufacturer is a reason to not use the FLUTe membranes for monitoring soil gas at MDA H or at the SNL MWL. At MDA H, the release of VOCs is from disposal shafts constructed to a depth of 60 ft below ground surface (bgs) and the three boreholes for sampling VOCs are drilled to depths of 256 ft bgs, 249 ft bgs, and 97 ft bgs, respectively. An excerpt from the NMED MDA H Fact Sheet is pasted below that describes the results from soil gas monitoring below MDA H for the time period before taking measurements with the FLUTe membranes:
"The Permittees have been conducting quarterly monitoring and submitting Periodic Monitoring Reports to NMED since (LANL 2005c, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). Analytical results confirm the presence of VOCs and tritium in all vapor samples. The results do not indicate an increasing or decreasing trend over time and do not show increasing or decreasing trends with depth. However, the monitoring locations do not include the Cerro Toledo Interval or the underlying Otowi Member of the Bandelier Tuff." (p. 5)
The fact that the results do not indicate an increasing or decreasing trend over time for the quarterly samples collected over a period of one year and the sudden decrease in TCE concentrations from 2,600 ug/cubic meter to less than 10 ug/cubic meter when sampling began with the FLUTe membranes is evidence that the FLUTe membranes do have properties for adsorption of TCE from the soil gas. [emphasis, myself.]

In addition, the fact that the results do not show increasing or decreasing trends with depth is proof that DOE/LANL have not used an appropriate sampling methodology for soil gas samples collected with either the LANL Packer sampling system or with the FLUTe membranes. [emphasis, myself.] NMED also has a concern that the three boreholes are not drilled deep enough to monitor soil gas contamination in the Cerro Toledo Interval or the underlying Otowi Member of the Bandelier Tuff.

There are many deficiencies with all of the soil gas data collected at MDA H. The data do not support any decision on the remedy for MDA H. There is an immediate need to drill the three existing boreholes and two new boreholes to an appropriate depth for monitoring soil gas in the Cerro Toledo Interval and the underlying Otowi Member of the Bandelier Tuff. The two new boreholes should be drilled at appropriate locations within 25 feet of the nine disposal shafts. The required depth for the five boreholes is approximately 400 ft bgs.

It is essential to permanently install a multiple-port sampling system in all of the boreholes and for this system to be constructed with materials that will produce reliable and representative gas samples for measurement of in situ concentrations of VOCs and tritium. [On background: "post-1945 water will have an occurence of tritium due to open-air testing of nuclear weapons as opposed to pre-1945 waters" .] Soil gas samples should be collected from the multiple-port sampling systems installed in the five boreholes for a minimum period of eight quarters.

It is very likely that the results collected from properly monitoring the five boreholes will show even higher concentration of TCE than 2,600 ug/cubic meter for ports at depths from 60 ft to 200 ft. Ports in the lower 200 ft of the boreholes are expected to show a decreasing trend for VOCs and tritium. Reliable soil gas data is important for long-term monitoring for early detection of the release of contamination from MDA H.

However, the soil gas data does not replace the need for the installation of a minimum of two groundwater monitoring wells into the regional aquifer at locations within 50 feet of MDA H and one background water quality well at an appropriate location west of MDA H. The network of groundwater monitoring wells are a requirement of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). The RCRA requirements are described below. The results from the properly instrumented soil gas boreholes and from the monitoring wells located close to MDA H may show that the VOC and tritium contamination released from MDA H is not a source for contamination of groundwater. The results may show that complete encapsulation of the nine disposal shafts is not a required remedy. Active vapor extraction of the VOCs also may not be needed as a remedy.

We would like to address issues of appropriate standards for protection of the public health, safety and the environment by comparing the differences between NMED’s enforcement of corrective measures at LANL and SNL. Our conclusion is that LANL MDA H, a legacy era nuclear weapons dump with much less contamination than the SNL MWL, is receiving substantially more enforcement and remediation requirements. [emphasis, myself.]

The SNL MWL is a 2.6 acre dump where greater than 700,000 cubic feet of hazardous and radioactive wastes are buried in seven [unlined] trenches and more than 40 pits. The LANL MDA H is a 0.6 acre site where 14,000 cubic feet of hazardous and radioactive wastes are buried in nine shafts. The volume of wastes at MDA H is only 2% of the volume at the MWL. The top of the regional zone of saturation is approximately 1000 ft below ground surface (bgs) at MDA H compared to approximately 470 ft bgs at the MWL.

The SNL MWL trenches and pits are unlined and there are no leak detection systems to monitor releases. In addition, NMED has not enforced the requirement of RCRA 40 CFR §264.98 (a)(2) for active monitoring of the release of contamination to the unsaturated zone below the buried wastes. Furthermore, the DOE/SNL long-term monitoring and maintenance plan (LTMMP) for the SNL MWL does not include active monitoring for soil gas contamination below the buried wastes in the MWL. Instead, DOE/SNL propose to monitor the VOCs with FLUTe membranes installed to a depth of 400 feet below ground surface in three boreholes at locations outside the perimeter of the dirt cover that will be installed over the MWL.

The three FLUTe wells will not place the MWL in compliance with §264.98 (a)(2) because the proposed wells are located outside the dump (LTMMP, p. B-9, Fig B-3.1-1) and also the FLUTe membranes will not produce reliable and representative soil gas samples because of the adsorption properties. Compliance with §264.98 (a)(2) requires monitoring wells must by law be placed within the dump to detect “[t]he mobility, stability and persistence of waste constituents or their reaction products in the unsaturated zone beneath the waste management area.”

The Vadose Zone Soil-Vapor monitoring proposed under the LTMMP (p.3-12 to 3-17) can not provide “the early warning system for protecting the groundwater” that is required by law as the LTMMP claims. Given the lack of liners at the MWL, early detection of contamination in the unsaturated zone beneath the MWL pits and trenches is a necessity at the MWL. The early detection of contamination requires a large network of multiple port vadose zone monitoring wells that are installed within and immediately at the boundary of the MWL. The number of wells is not known but is a minimum of ten. The number and location of the monitoring wells must be determined by careful sampling of the soil gas below the MWL with a large number of temporary probe holes. On February 14, 2008, NMED approved a DOE/SNL sampling plan to use probe holes for collecting and analyzing soil gas samples below the MWL. The sampling plan does not take measurements at enough locations or to the necessary depth. The deficiencies in the plan are described below.

The soil gas data collected for the RFI Phase 2 are proof that the three FLUTe wells proposed in the LTMMP are too distant from the MWL for the early detection of releases below the buried wastes. Two figures in the RFI Phase 2 report show that the PCE concentrations measured at the proposed distance away from the MWL for the FLUTe wells are 10 times lower than the PCE concentrations measured within the MWL unclassified area. (RFI Phase 2 p. 4-76 PCE in Soil Gas at 10 ft and p. 4-83 PCE in Soil Gas at 30 ft).

The LANL MDA H and the SNL MWL are both RCRA "regulated units" where groundwater monitoring must be in compliance with RCRA 40 CFR §§264.90 through 264.101 (RCRA Subpart F). In a recent LANL report - Technical Area 54 Well Evaluation and Network Recommendations, Revision 1 (LA-UR-07-6436, October 2007), NMED and DOE/LANL acknowledge that the groundwater monitoring at MDAs G, H, and L must be in compliance with RCRA Subpart F, but NMED has not enforced this requirement for the SNL MWL. [emphasis, myself.] The requirements in the LANL report for groundwater monitoring at MDAs G, H, and L are pasted below:
"The following requirements from 40 CFR 264.90-.99, Subpart F apply to permitted units or regulated units that received waste after July 26, 1982. The regulations apply throughout the active life of the units and the closure and post-closure period if the units are not “clean-closed” under RCRA. The groundwater-monitoring network and facility process must be able to detect, evaluate, and respond to releases of hazardous waste or hazardous waste constituents into the uppermost aquifer. Detection monitoring is required to establish that a release has occurred. It is assumed that because of the significant depth to groundwater beneath TA-54, vadose-zone monitoring will be a key component of the overall monitoring program in support of both CMEs and the RCRA Part B permit.

An integrated groundwater-monitoring system must consist of a sufficient number of near-field wells and downgradient monitoring wells installed at appropriate locations and depths to obtain representative groundwater samples from the uppermost aquifer. These samples must represent both the quality of background water not affected by the regulated unit and the quality of groundwater passing beneath the regulated unit to allow for detection of contamination in the uppermost aquifer.” (p. 6)
The above requirements for RCRA regulated waste disposal sites at LANL TA-54 are especially pertinent to the LTMMP for the SNL MWL, the SNL Draft RCRA Permit, and the SNL Solid Waste Management Units (SWMUs) slated for No Further Action.

The SNL MWL is also a RCRA regulated unit because of the period of time that it received wastes. It is notable that the New Mexico Court of Appeals did not take jurisdiction over this issue and the issue is raised both for the record for the LTMMP and the SNL Draft RCRA Permit. As will be discussed below, the MWL does not have adequate soil gas monitoring or groundwater monitoring as is required by NMED at LANL for MDAs G, H, and L within TA 54 [emphasis, myself].

The SNL MWL Corrective Measures Study p.19) states that“Hazardous waste landfill closure requirements are codified under 20.4.1.500 New Mexico Administrative Code (MAC), 40 CFR Part 264, “Standards for Owners and Operators of Hazardous Waste Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities,” Subpart G (Facility Closure Standards) and Subpart N (Landfills). The NMED, the lead regulatory agency, has adopted the federal regulations as written and incorporated them into the New Mexico Hazardous Waste Management Regulations 20.4.1 NMAC. These standards are performance-based regulations that specify performance criteria without specifying design, construction materials, or operating parameters. The EPA has provided numerous guidance documents to aid in interpreting the level of performance required to design, construct, and operate a compliant closure system. The closure performance standard is defined in 20.4.1.500 NMAC, 40 CFR 264.111 as follows:
“The owner or operator must close the facility in a manner that:
(a) Minimizes the need for further maintenance; and
(b) Controls, minimizes or eliminates, to the extent necessary to protect
human health and the environment, post-closure escape of hazardous
waste, hazardous constituents, leachate, contaminated runoff, or hazardous
waste decomposition products to the ground or surface waters or to the
atmosphere; and
(c) Complies with the closure requirements of this subpart . . .”

The SNL MWL is not in compliance with Subpart G (40 CFR 264.117 (a)(1)(i) ) because monitoring and reporting that must comply with Subpart F are not provided for in the LTMMP as is required for the closure of a landfill. Additionally, the necessity of providing clean closure or obtaining a post-closure permit for the MWL or documents in lieu thereof have not been addressed as required by 40 CFR 270 et seq.

The NMED Response to Public Comments SNL MWL SV SAP (2/15/2008, p. 13) states that “There does not appear to be a significant increase in soil gas concentrations between the depths of 10 and 30 feet.” The Phase 2 RCRA Facility Investigation (RFI) on the contrary shows a great increase in the Total Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in Soil Gas at 30 ft compared to the values measured at 10 ft and in some instances by a factor of four times greater. (Figs. 4.5-28, 4.5-29). The RFI report shows PCE in Soil Gas at 10 ft to be nearly doubled at the 30 ft depth. (Figs. 4.5-21, 4.5-27).

The PCE concentrations in soil gas below the MWL are identified as a source for contamination of groundwater in the MWL Fate and Transport Model (F&TM) (Ho, et al, 2006). However, the modeling of the PCE was from the maximum value of PCE in the soil gas measurements at the MWL measured to a maximum depth of only 30 ft bgs. The value used in the model is increasing from the level measured at 10 ft (5,200 ppb) to 30 ft (5,900 ppb). The data used by the F&TM was ten years old, too sparse and shows a trend to higher values from where the data was collected and there may be higher values at greater depth than 30 ft and at other locations beneath the dump. There is no indication that the highest value at the MWL is presented for the F&TM.

Because of the deficiencies in the F&TM, we have used Henry's Law to calculate the groundwater contamination below the SNL MWL from the PCE contamination of 5,900 ppb that was used in the F&TM model. For the MWL, Henry's law calculates that the PCE concentration of 5,900 ppb in soil gas will contaminate the groundwater with PCE at a concentration of 52 ug/L, a level 10 times greater than the EPA Drinking Water Standard of 5 ug/L. Our calculation with Henry's Law was the same process used by NMED to select complete encapsulation as the required remedy for MDA H to protect groundwater from the release of TCE as soil gas from the disposal shafts.

LANL was required by NMED to conduct quarterly sampling for the past two years to measure the soil gas concentrations for a complete suite of VOCs at multiple depths to a total depth of 250 ft bgs and with a borehole for monitoring to a depth of 250 ft bgs at a distance of approximately 25 ft from the disposal shafts. By contrast at the SNL MWL, however, on February 14, 2008, NMED approved of a sampling plan that will collect new soil gas samples for VOCs at only six probe hole locations within the MWL. Three locations will collect samples at depths of 10 ft and 30 ft, and three locations will collect samples at 10 ft, 30 ft, and 50 ft. The sampling required by NMED at the MWL is a token effort.

The depth of the aquifer below LANL MDA H is approximately 1000 ft bgs. The depth of the aquifer for the SNL MWL is one half that at approximately 470 ft bgs and the MWL contains more than fifty (50) times the volume of waste that is buried at MDA H. Given the concentrations of TCE at MDA H, NMED stated concern that “More specifically, the Permittees have not sampled soil gas at depths greater than 250 feet below the ground surface.” On the other hand, at the MWL, NMED is only requiring one-time sampling for soil gas at a depth of 50 feet at only three locations. Deeper sampling should be required at many more locations.

Soil gas samples should be collected at a minimum of twenty locations within the SNL MWL and to depths of 200 ft bgs on a sampling interval of 10 ft, 30 ft, 50 ft, 100 ft, 150 ft, and 200 ft. The soil gas samples should be analyzed for a complete suite of VOCs and also for tritium. NMED requires LANL to analyze the soil gas samples collected from the three boreholes at MDA H for tritium on a quarterly schedule. At the MWL, no monitoring for tritium is being required although large quantities of tritium were disposed of in the MWL. LANL, on the other hand, is required to collect soil gas samples from the boreholes at MDA H and sample for tritium along with VOCs. Tritium concentrations are required to be measured in the soil gas. NMED is not requiring tritium gas sampling at the MWL. [emphasis, myself.]

The remedy required by NMED for the SNL MWL is only a soil cover draped over the surface of the dump with a design identical to the ET cover proposed for LANL MDA H. NMED praises the soil cover for the MWL for protection of groundwater but is non accepting of the nearly identical cover proposed for MDA H because it doesn’t protect groundwater. The NMED criticism is pasted below:

“In order to ensure the continued performance of an ET cover, the Permittees proposed to conduct regular maintenance and monitoring throughout the 100-year institutional control period once the vegetative cover has been established. However, this alternative, similar to other containment alternatives listed by the Permittees, does not address the plume of VOCs and tritium that are currently present in the soil pore gas in the vicinity of MDA H. This ET cover also does not prevent future releases of these compounds to the subsurface from the shafts at MDA H.”
There is a contradiction in the practice of NMED to protect human health and the environment between the selection of only a soil cover for the MWL dump and the acknowledgement of NMED for MDA H that the soil cover is not protective for the plumes of VOCs and tritium for releases at this time or for future releases.

Hakonson states that “Controlling aqueous transport of volatile contaminants [with a soil cover] [squarebrackets original, in this case] does not necessarily control vapor phase transport. In fact, maintaining low soil moisture content of cover and backfill soils to reduce aqueous phase transport may be associated with increases in vapor phase transport of volatile contaminants (Jury, 1987).”

Similarly to LANL MDA H, the soil cover at the SNL MWL does not address the VOCs and tritium that are currently present beneath the dump in far greater amounts than at MDA H. The soil cover will also not prevent the future releases of those contaminants to the subsurface beneath the MWL. The shafts at MDA H, are similar to the unlined pits and trenches at the MWL. However, NMED is requiring much more protection for MDA H with far less contaminants in volume and type than for the MWL. No encapsulation of MWL pits and trenches and no soil-vapor extraction system are required at the MWL. [emphasis, myself.] NMED must provide equal protection for similarly situated dumps and communities. At MDA H (p.12),
“NMED therefore has determined that it is appropriate to implement Alternative 3b (complete encapsulation of the shafts), along with a soil-vapor extraction system, at MDA H to prevent biointrusion and eliminate the VOC contaminant source detected in soil pore gas so that the drinking water resource can be conservatively protected.
“Alternative 3b will isolate the shafts from the environmental media to offer the greatest protection against potential intrusion of plants and animals, and accidental human access. This complete encapsulation alternative will prevent water from entering the shafts, and thus minimize the potential for contaminant migration into the surrounding tuff through aqueous phase transport.”
Also at MDA H, NMED is requiring that (p.13)
“To conservatively protect the regional groundwater from contamination by VOCs in soil pore gas, the Permittees will be required to operate the SVE [Soil-Vapor Extraction] until VOCs in soil pore gas are reduced to levels at which any of the detected VOCs, in contact with groundwater, theoretically could result in concentrations above half of the lower of the respective MCLs or Water Quality Control Commission (WQCC) standards. For example, TCE in soil pore gas must be reduced to a concentration below 1100 μg/m3 in vapor phase to meet the established criteria. Installation of a SVE system will require the installation of vapor monitoring extraction wells in the vicinity of MDA H and extending the depth of existing boreholes to the Otowi member of the Bandelier Tuff.” (Emphasis supplied) [author comment, not mine. emphasis shown boldface here is underlined in original].

At the SNL MWL, NMED is leaving poorly understood soil gas contamination with VOCs and tritium unmonitored beneath a soil cover that increases the potential for the volatile contaminants to contaminate the groundwater. The level of PCE contamination measured in the soil gas below the MWL required that an active soil vapor extraction (SVE) should have been installed 15 years ago. The SVE system was never installed and is not in the LTMMP as it should be.

At MDA H,
“NMED questions the long-term reliability of the engineered ET [evapotranspiration] cover in preventing the intrusion of deep-rooting plants and burrowing animals. According to the conceptual design of the engineered ET cover for MDA H, the total depth of the cover is approximately 4.5 feet over the existing surface layer. Based on the Permittees’ findings at MDA H (LANL 2005), the site specific deep-rooting plants can extend roots to depths as deep as 23 feet (7 meters), and local burrowing animals can excavate to depths deep to 10 feet (3 meters).” (Emphasis supplied) [author comment].

The depth of the soil cover proposed for the SNL MWL is 4.25 ft (MWL Design Report, 1999, p.3). At the MWL, Hakonson reports that many species of ants burrow beyond depths of 5 ft and three species can burrow to depths beyond 5 meters (16.4 feet). (p.37). Hakonson states, “The mixture of grasses that SNL/NM intends to use in reseeding the MWL is lumped within the herbaceous plant category. These data show that deep root habits are quite common in woody and herbaceous species across most of the terrestrial biomes, far deeper than the traditional view has held up to now. The implications for the MWL are that no matter what vegetation is planted on the landfill, if moisture penetrates beneath the ET cover, roots can be expected to follow.” (P. 31-32).

The monitoring at the SNL MWL never produced reliable data for the detection of any contamination (including the VOCs PCE and TCE) at the water table or in the deeper permeable groundwater zones below the MWL. [emphasis, author.] There are other RCRA regulated units at SNL where VOC groundwater contamination with VOCs and other RCRA hazardous wastes is a concern but the required groundwater monitoring was never installed. One example is SWMU 101, Building 9926 Explosive Contaminated Sumps and Drains where PCE contamination was measured in soil gas samples. The nearest groundwater monitoring well is approximately 0.5 mile away. RCRA Subpart F requires a network of monitoring wells as close as possible to SWMU [i.e., "Solid Waste Management Unit"] 101 and certainly within a distance not greater than 50 feet away.

A second example is SWMU 154 where High Explosive (HE) and VOC liquid wastes were disposed of in two 23-ft deep seepage pits known as "the west HE drain system. The seepage pits received liquid wastes for 40 years from 1965 to possibly 2005, the year the seepage pits were backfilled with clean, native soil. The only monitoring well for SWMU 154 is located 300 feet away from the seepage pits. SWMU 154 is not in compliance with the groundwater monitoring requirements of RCRA Subpart F.

A third example is SWMU 196 where poorly characterized radioactive and hazardous liquid wastes were discharged to a large cistern, a vertical concrete cylinder 25-ft in diameter installed from 3-ft above ground to a depth of 22 ft bgs. RCRA liquid wastes including total petroleum hydrocarbons, VOCs, SVOCs and metals (and also radionuclides) were discharged into the cistern for 12 years from 1978 to 1989. There are no groundwater monitoring wells to investigate groundwater contamination below the cistern. RCRA Subpart F requires a network of monitoring wells at SWMU 196.

The three SWMUS are among a population of many SWMUS that are being proposed for No Further Action status by DOE and NMED without establishment of RCRA requirements for groundwater monitoring.

There currently is no monitoring at the MWL of the “Groundwater” as defined by the Consent Order. (p.15). The Consent Order (“CO”, April 29, 2004 [worst birthday *evar*]) defines groundwater as follows:
“Groundwater means interstitial water which occurs in saturated earth material and which is capable of entering a well in sufficient amounts to be utilized as a water supply.”
The fact that groundwater is not monitored at the MWL is evidenced from the monitoring reports that cite poor production of the MWL wells and samples being collected days later from the water that trickles into the wells after they are pumped dry.

At the Sandia MWL, wells MWL-MW4, MW5 and MW6 need replacement under the CO because they have all failed for their intended purpose. The pertinent part of the CO is pasted below:
"In the event of a well or piezometer failure, or if a well or piezometer is any way no longer usable for its intended purpose, it must be replaced with an equivalent well or piezometer. In constructing a well or piezometer, Respondents shall ensure that the well or piezometer will not serve as a conduit for Contaminants to migrate between different zones of saturation." (P. 63, CO Sec. VIII.A.).
Monitoring Well MW4. The purpose of well MW4 was to investigate contamination at the water table beneath Trench D. However, the top screen in well MW4 was installed too deep below the water table, and the well has never met its important purpose to investigate contamination at the water table. The bottom screen in well MW4 is installed across the contact of the AF sediments with the ARG strata. The position of NMED is that well screens shall not be installed across formations with contrasting hydraulic properties or markedly different hydraulic head but this is the setting for the bottom screen in well MW4. In addition, the available information indicates that well MW4 is allowing cross-contamination between the top and bottom screen. There is an immediate need to plug and abandon well MW4, and install a new monitoring well to characterize groundwater contamination at the water table beneath Trench D.

Monitoring Well MW5 is located west of the MWL, but the well screen is installed across the contact of the AF sediments with the ARG strata which, as explained above, is in violation of NMED requirements for monitoring wells. In addition, a mistake in well construction contaminated the screened interval with the bentonite clay grout that was used for back-filling and sealing the annular space between the well casing and the borehole wall. The grout accidentally filled the lower part of the screen. There is an immediate need to plug and abandon well MW5. The failure to do so is a violation of the CO.

Monitoring Well MW6. MW6 is in the productive groundwater zone but is more than 500 ft distant to the northwest corner from the dump. No monitoring well is located at the point of compliance to monitor the “groundwater” as defined by the Consent Order. RCRA Subpart F also requires monitoring the productive groundwater zone as close as possible to the western and southern boundaries of the buried wastes in the MWL.

The SNL 2007 Annual Groundwater Monitoring Report (released by DOE/SNL February 21, 2008) again incorrectly takes credit over the years for sampling with one background monitoring well and five downgradient monitoring wells that have never existed at the MWL. The Report still presents flow direction as being to the northwest, contrary to NMED recent declaration that flow at the water table is to the southwest. [emphasis, myself.]

Fate and Transport Model for the MWL

National Academy of Sciences (2000): “Long-Term Institutional Management of
U.S. Department of Energy Legacy Waste Sites” points out that “Stewardship” (covering waste with dirt and instituting institutional controls) of waste sites will be difficult if not impossible to achieve.

The National Academy of Sciences 2007 report - Plans and Practices for Groundwater Protection at the Los Alamos National Laboratory states (p.68):
“Numerical models combine information on geology, geochemistry, infiltration, regional groundwater fluxes and waste discharges in a manner that quantifies understanding of the physical/chemical processes and interactions involved in the transport of contaminants. Information gained during the process of model development provides valuable insight on the validity of the conceptualization implemented in the numerical model. Though many “solutions” are possible, comparison of predicted results to actual measurements [emphasis supplied] [author comment] provides an estimate of the level of understanding of the flow and transport processes moving contaminants away from their initial disposal locations.”
SNL has never put in monitoring wells at the identified hot spots for PCE and TCE at the MWL to verify the accuracy of its fate and transport model. [emphasis, myself.]

Drilling MWL wells with “mist” is not appropriate.

In a June 19, 2007 letter from Mr. Bearzi to SNL it states (page 5, Section 5.2.1): “The permittees shall log the depth of the first encounter with regional groundwater and the depth of any perched groundwater will be logged during drilling.”

In a July 2 2007 letter from James Bearzi to SNL for replacement of MWL-MW 1 and MW3, it states, “The mud rotary drilling method shall not be used to install the wells.” Our position is that the ARCH drilling method using an undefined amount of water as a mist is the same as the mud rotary method because using water to drill through clay-rich sediments will create "drilling muds" that will invade the zones that are important to monitor with the clay-rich muds produced by the fluid-assisted ARCH drilling method.

In the August 10, 2007 Workplan for MWL-MW7 and MW8 sent to James Bearzi by SNL it states: “Minimal water (but no other foams/liquids) in the form of “mist” may be introduced into the borehole to aid in the removal of cuttings.”

Section 3.5.3 of the LTMMP should include the drilling methodology to be used for installing monitoring wells. It should state specifically that no drilling methods with water or water-based fluids (i.e., bentonite clay or organic fluids or -foams) shall be allowed for any of the boreholes for the groundwater monitoring wells. Those fluid-assisted drilling methods should not be used at any location because the boreholes are to be used to investigate the existence of perched zones. The only drilling methods that meet the NMED requirement to investigate perched zones and the first encounter with regional groundwater are the air- rotary reverse circulation under reamer casing advance or sonic. The sonic drilling method was used to install well MWL-MW4 at the MWL. The air rotary casing hammer (ARCH) drilling method should not be used in any of the boreholes because the history is that circulation of water is necessary to recover the cuttings and the circulation of water produces drilling muds that invade the zones that are important to monitor.

Prior data from ARCH drilling with “misting” at monitoring well MWL-MW5 shows that the misting resulted in slugs of mud that invaded the screened interval. The perched zones of saturation and the water table cannot be accurately identified nor can reliable sampling be obtained if water, even as a mist, is used for drilling. [emphasis, myself.] An additional important reason to use no water during drilling is that the in situ groundwater in the perched zones and from the water table of the regional zone of saturation should be sampled from the borehole for the full analytical suite including VOCs, Semi-VOCs, tritium and RCRA trace metal suite. Tritium should also be analyzed at the low detection limits of the University of Miami as is done for LANL. In the past year, the dry air-rotary reverse circulation underreamer casing advance drilling method was used for monitoring wells R-35a, R-35b and R-36 at LANL.

Recommendations

FLUTe wells shall not be used for monitoring soil gas at the SNL MWL. FLUTe membranes are inappropriate for their known properties to absorb the contaminants of concern.

Permanent installation of multiple port wells is required for monitoring the unsaturated zone beneath the MWL. The location and installation of the unsaturated zone wells at the MWL must be at locations within and immediately along the boundary of the MWL.

The monitoring wells MW4, MW5, and MW6 need to be replaced.

The nickel and chromium contamination measured at well MW1 requires a new monitoring well with a PVC screen at a location south of MW1 as close as possible to the northern side of the MWL[.]

The southwest direction of groundwater flow at the water table below the MWL requires installation of a monitoring well along the southern side of the classified area and along the southern side of the unclassified area.

All new groundwater monitoring wells installed outside the MWL dump shall be installed as close as possible to the boundary of the buried wastes.

Well MW4 must be plugged and abandoned and replaced with a new angle well installed at an appropriate location inside the MWL to monitor contamination at the water table below Trench D.

Two monitoring wells shall be installed at locations within the MWL where high levels of PCE and tritium are known to be present. The wells shall monitor contamination at the water table. The two wells are essential for confirmation of the MWL Fate and Transport Mode.

DOE/SNL should be informed by NMED that the claims of the 2007 Annual Groundwater Monitoring Report are not accurate and that an appropriate monitoring network must be installed at the MWL and the SWMUs.

Only the dry air-rotary reverse circulation under reamer casing advance or sonic drilling methods should be used for drilling boreholes through the unsaturated zone and into the regional aquifer at the MWL. The ARCH drilling method with water as a mist to recover cuttings is not appropriate at the MWL.

In addition to considering these concerns for present action, please submit this letter for the Long Term Monitoring and Maintenance Plan, the SNL Draft RCRA Permit, 26 SWMUs for NFA Status and 5 SWMUs for NFA Status.

Sincerely,

David B. McCoy, Executive Director
Citizen Action New Mexico
POB 4276
Albuquerque, NM 87196-4276
505 262-1862
HYPERLINK "mailto:dave@radfreenm.org" dave@radfreenm.org

Robert Gilkeson, Registered Geologist
PO Box 670
Los Alamos, NM 87544
HYPERLINK "mailto:rhgilkeson@aol.com" rhgilkeson@aol.com

Review of Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico Evapotranspiration Cap Closure Plans for the Mixed Waste Landfill, T.E. Hakonson 2/15/02, p. 28.

Whew. Neat stuff. And now I start my weekend. (It's 2 PM Saturday. Better late than never.)

:) :)

Brain wiring.

2008-04-11T21:54:00.004-06:00

Final push today. Didn't meet teh "goal" for number of calls, but not by far! After two consecutive record-breaking days, what the heck. We may still have broken some comparable record. No telling 'til the pledges are all ultimately tallied.

Weird feeling. Pledge week is always insanely intense. Then suddenly, it's over. You hit "Stardate" and have to face the fact you're not coming back tomorrow to push people even more into a frenzy to support public radio. Indeed. Tomorrow I plan to spend all day at home! I'm even daring to deliberately miss a perfectly newsworthy event early tomorrow morning just because I know I'll *need* the rest, and *also* know I have earned it.

Went out to Zinc wine bar with a couple of amazing women from work after it was over. At Jim's urging. I'm such a social doofus it's not even close to funny. Said I'd go, then nearly chickened out when I found out he wouldn't be going. ("OH MY GAWD. They're not men. Whatever WILL we talk about?") He just calmly said "you should go". Without irony, either. I accepted it on the level of "OK, you're my supervisor, and every time you say I should do something I don't really want to, I do, and wind up being glad I did". What can I say? I'm male. That's how my brain is *wired*. I *trust* him.

Listened mostly but contributed a little too to an *amazing* conversation about everything that happened over the previous week. Totally honest and straightforward. Men and women think differently. Yes. But we *must* work together. This, I admit, is *very* hard for me! (Anyone remember "I'll never work for another straight person" phase?) A woman tells me "maybe if you..." and my mind just flashes back to Starbucks' worst madness, where *everything* was deeply personal.

And heaven help the world if anyone does anything I perceive as even *slightly* unethical -- I flip into "THIS MEANS WAR" mode. I could make a *lot* of drama if I wanted to, over stupid shit that *happens*. Except for one thing -- I've got a job now that's worth *not* making drama over.

Ultimately, I have to accept the fact I trust Elaine *almost* as much as I trust Jim. And yeah, the simple fact that she's female makes me feel threatened on a very basic, almost animal level. But she *has* earned my trust. Time and again. She shouldn't *have to* keep *proving* herself to me. That's *my* problem. Not hers. I've got to allow myself trust her. At least a little bit more, every time. It's sexism, baby -- and I've got as much of it in me as anyone.

What we need isn't war, it's constructive alternatives. I don't know how to explain how we think differently, but we do. It's like men think forward seven steps, strategically, and go with all the ways the situation *might* branch out, while women think forward three steps, and then think *back* from those forward positions to simply ask themselves "what if?" by two steps, and then think *those* possibilities forward a step or two before deciding what to do.

It's like men think "if, then" with several different possibilities at the outset, but then set themselves into a chain of thinking based on whatever happens that is *set* from those initial premises, which may or may not reflect reality. While maybe women think "if, then" with several different possibilities at the outset, but then maintain the flexibility to ask "but, what if, then?"

I'm probably showing my ignorance here so I'll shut up.

Makes me wonder though whether the computer modelling at the labs is predominantly male or female driven.

Focus.

2008-04-10T22:18:00.002-06:00

Pledge drive is a time to refocus.

The most amazing things happen during it.

Interviewed an international human rights leader today.

You'll hear more on that when it airs.

It's not a story I can possibly produce for tomorrow.

This is why I exist.

Turnaround.

2008-04-09T19:57:00.003-06:00

Slow start to pledge week.

Turned it around tonight.

Last night was especially disappointing.

Tonight: beat the goal for number of callers. (Goal: 65, Actual: 82.)

More than doubling last night's numbers. (Goal: 62, Actual: 40.)

Phones rang around the room, into the overflow room, and then around the overflow.

And it's just Wednesday.

Pledge drive food.

2008-04-08T23:25:00.003-06:00

I admit -- I'm getting fat. This happens twice a year.

The development office plans and plans and this time they've got things *way* better systematized to work for *everyone* concerned than *ever* in my memory. We "down the hall" in the newsroom/control room end of things only really start to realize what all they've been doing for months a couple of weeks before the pledge drive hits. But then suddenly, there's all this food available to anyone who wants it and not enough people to take home giant bowls of spaghetti to clear out the fridge to take the latest leftovers, even though we've got an "overflow" room of phone volunteers for "around the room" ringing.

Which leaves it up to us down in the newsroom to make the phones ring 'round the room. Not to mention, this being my first pledge drive on staff, I feel more compelled than *ever* the make the phones ring 'round the room. I will spare you the diverse rationalizations and analyses why we've not yet *quite* managed this feat.

All I know is that human beings, being animals, just tend to *go* for the food. But this time around they've come up with a system -- not *perfect*, maybe, but *effective* -- for prioritizing *who* gets the food when it comes in. This is a *very* good thing! I *do* remember "captaining" the phone room and not getting *anything* to eat, a time or two, just making sure everyone one else got fed first. Not fun!

That problem is now *gone*. Now that I'm spending almost none of my time in the phone room, I find the phone room better organized and run than *ever*.

But now we've got all this food left over after the volunteers have been fed. And they've got a sort of "cascade" system to make sure it goes to the volunteers first. As, indeed, it should be! And Chris seems *even* seem to have mastered the multiply chaotic systems of knowing what got put into the fridge when, and not having twelve half-full containers of "mystery sauce" left over two weeks later.

But it's working almost *too* well -- at this point. There's always food left over, despite inflation resuting, at least in theory, in more unit persons entitled to food than food to go around. Whether this pattern holds through the end of the week only time will tell! But heck. They've likely done a better job solving a short-term problem than the Federal reserve did when they leveraged the buyout of Bear Stearns.

(Yes, I *am* a news junkie.)

And much as I love casually wandering down the hall for a snack, I know damn well from having been on the other end of things that the people who give up their free time just *deserve* to take precedence over those who are paid to be there. Period.

Heck, I figure I safely can go without eating at all for the rest of the week just based on how many "green-lighted" sandwiches and salads and noodle concoctions I've consumed these last two days.

I love pledge drives. I half-secretly hope there's no food left to go around these next couple of days. Reporters *should* be hungry.

Now we need to get those phones *ringing*.

Tomorrow is "hump day" pledge-drive wise. We can kinda dick around the first few days on the convenient (but not entirely true) theory that "everyone will pledge at the last possible minute".

No more.

Time to get down to business.

It's time to make those phones ring off the hook.

Momentum.

2008-04-07T20:46:00.002-06:00

Tricky thing the first days of a pledge drive. You can't start out slow and build momentum, because by the time you've "got it" the listenership has probably rolled over. Much like running any ON AIR shift. You've got to "hit it" coming out the gate. But on a grander, more complex level. I barely pitched at all today, just ran the board. Will get into pitching but first hour's unfamiliar with the clock. The second isn't. Heck. Tomorrow will be better.

Trinity.

2008-04-05T19:49:00.002-06:00

I made it.

Amazing day.

Read the two Donne poems into my mic with my back against the obelisk at Ground Zero. Incredibly powerful. Donne's poetry, alone, but in that setting -- positively mindblowing.

Thousands of tourists. Interesting, people's reactions. Most have never been on a military installation before. I'd been there once before so spent more time watching people than looking at the "things" there were to be looked at.

Coming and going between the obelisk and the parking lot, there are the crowds, and then there are the fence-walkers -- the folks who walk the barbed wire fence in hopes of happening across a stray chip of the dreaded, coveted trinitite. I admit. I am a fence walker. There are also the photographers. And the photographees.

Most get extremely quiet, stay that way. Others do obnoxious tourist chit chat waiting for the bus to the ranch house. Many stand transfixed reading every single word of every single sign and plaque. *Digging* to glean some *meaning* out of this absurd situation. They travel all the way out into the middle of the desert on a journey to be faced with nothing more than an obelisk, an empty room, an empty water tank, a ruined windmill, a collapsed barn. It's *very* stark. And there is nothing to do but wonder at the sheer destructive power of honest men with good intent. It leaves everyone at a loss for words. Including those who irritably chatter about nothing.

The section of unremoved trinitite has been covered with sand and sealed off from public view. I would love to know why. I wonder.

My station broadcasts there.

Then to Bingham, 17 miles east of the Stallion Range Center Gate on NM 380 to the little rock shop that sells trinitite. I've already got a good sized chunk from Karl Wyler. I don't need another. But I admit, I'm curious.

They're charging $30 a gram for dime-sized chunks of the stuff.

Back to San Antonio for the lunch rush at the Owl Bar. Sit at the bar. Usually miss lunch rush. Much nicer when it isn't busy. Everyone there works crazy hard but there's no system to the chaos. There's just chaos. Today, service is slow. But they actually know me now. I don't mind. They're always wonderful when they're not fighting lines out the door and around the block.

Sit next to a man with his son who came out to see Trinity. It's amazing. This is going to get passed down, another generation. Have a nice conversation with him, too, which I surprise myself by striking up.

Back to the station, directly. Run board for Saturday ATC. It goes OK. The complexities are greater than on normal days. An unfamiliar clock, with local "drops" and special carts, and the whole art of "pitching" add several new ingredients into the mix out of nowhere. Do make one frankly funny mistake I'll *never* make again.

Hint: you fade up the mic *AFTER* yelling "STANDBY". Not before. I'll want to get an aircheck on that one just for the comedy value.

Paul Ingles pitched with me. I learned a *lot* working with him today. Like "structuring" breaks. My first two I just kinda ran the board and mostly let him do the actual talking. He's been doing this for 15 years. By the third I was getting into it myself.

Considering a pilgrimage.

2008-04-04T20:29:00.002-06:00

Trinity's open to the public tomorrow.

Last time I tried to go, my rear tyre blew out before I hit Socorro and had to drive like fifteen miles on the rim on rumblestrip to somplace I could get the tyre replaced, before having to drive to a Radio Shack someplace else to buy a box of plastic handcuffs in order to tie the bumper back onto my car so it wouldn't parachute out at freeway speeds. Needless to say, I didn't make it out to Trinity, that day. That was 2004 -- my really, *really*, REALLY bad year. I *could* have changed the tyre, you see, except I couldn't find the jack, because it was kinda buried underneath the garbage in my back seat. (I *did* eventually find the jack -- about 18 months later).

The only time I made it out *successfully* to Trinity, a year or so before, I actually went through the South entrance, joining a *huge* caravan that left from Alamogordo, before joining the military escort at the entrance to White Sands Missile Range, which is normally "off limits" to the public, save for these twice-a-year, escorted Trinity Test Site visits. Now *that* was amazing -- got to see something like 47 miles of New Mexico that not a lot of people get to see.

If I were a purist or a zealot I would want to do it that same exact way again. But there's NO WAY IN HELL I'm driving 300-some-odd miles in the middle of the night to join a caravan that leaves at 7 sharp only to drive back *all* the way to Albuquerque when I have to be ON AIR at 5 o'clock for NEWS. (Being on air has an uncanny way of helping a person learn what their limits -- not to mention the hard, objective limits of *reality* -- actually *are*.)

Since now I have a working car, I am quite seriously considering a visit! It seems a good time for me to look back on what all got me into all o' this radio stuff in the first place. Really, just a little piece of ugly bubbled green glass called "Trinitite" given to me by an *old* school broadcaster by the name Karl Wyler.

Why am I here?

And then tomorrow afternoon I'm running board for Saturday All Things Considered. Why? Because it's PLEDGE DRIVE, BABY! Being on staff, now, it's fair for people to *expect* me to be there, including at some times I usually am not. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

But, seriously -- Why am I here?

And what better mindset to go into for my first pledge drive as staff than the *very* special mindset I can likely *only* get into in the first place by visiting the one place in the world where the atomic age *began*, getting me *into* broadcasting years later when I was 12 or so years old, before I could *begin* to imagine how *everything* would loop around all super-neat-and-nifty two whole decades later?

Those two decades have, honestly, been kinda rough! No point mincing my words. Not that I regret *anything*. But for the first time in my life, I *know* I am *exactly* where I need to be. Each day. That kind of thing is absolutely *priceless*. I think it would be fitting for me to go pay tribute to my own origins, in my own way.

About which I will *never* write a word. Nor speak a word on air. Nor likely ever tell a single human soul. I'm not sure it's something I *can* put into words.

All I know right now is I've got my 1940 "Oxford Book of English Verse" I got at the Black Hole in Los Alamos, which once belonged to Marian Konopinski. (A quick Google search turns up the name as a Polish priest who died at Dacchau in 1943, listed on Wikipedia as one of the 108 Blessed Polish Martyrs. I have not yet researched it further.)

I've also got my Borzoi edition of John Donne's "Complete English Poems". It, naturally, contains both "Hymne to God, my God, in my sicknesse" and "Holy Sonnet XIV", both of which Robert Oppenheimer cites in a 1962 letter to Leslie R. Groves explaining why he chose the name "Trinity" as the code name for the test.

I've also got my security badge -- #108 -- from S-Site, the HX (High Explosives) facility at Los Alamos -- my only purchased souvenir from the Manhattan Project. (I did not *buy* the Trinitite from Karl Wyler.)

I've also got my Bendix Civil Defense CD V-742 dosimeter, number A 0017375. I've got another I'd take with me if I were seriously concerned about getting irradiated, but I'm not taking it with me. It was made later, and has a bad "hairline drift" problem I can't immediately fix with my Victoreen dosimeter charger, since the D-cell battery I'd stored with it (but *not* IN it!) is dead.

I've got my two IBM mainframe punchcards from 1952, with the holes punched in 'em to read "THINK" on one and "WORK" on the other, with which I intend to mark the poems in John Donne's Complete Poems.

And I fully intend to read both poems at Ground Zero.

Since I'm a reporter, I'll also be carrying my recording kit, and hope to record myself reading the two poems that named the site.

I can only hope the Military Police don't take it as a "demonstration", which I do not intend for it to be. Indeed -- ideally, no one will even see me do it.

Demonstrations are strictly prohibited on the missile range.

I simply hope to come to some better understanding why I'm here.

KRRT is ON AIR.

2008-04-03T23:05:00.002-06:00

Knocking off a couple of old translators I won't bore you with the details of. If you want the gory details, google my station's call sign and click the first link in results. (I can't imagine who wrote all that stuff.)

Announcing new trasmitters is now perfectly *routine* to me. Come on! Gimme some more!

Today's live translator ID announcement went out over the airwaves on a music bed of "The In Crowd". A sort of "in joke" almost *no one* listening will "get", but heck! I figure if it worked 40 years ago, and we're still on the air today, it can't hurt to deliberately tempt fate in a *good* way.

Covered a political event this morning -- Jim emailed me late-ish last night asking if I might be able to cover it.

McCain's already airing TV ads in this state for the general election.

It is APRIL.

The general election happens in NOVEMBER.

I remember living in California and falling in love with the sheer complexity of that state's politics. But in some ways, New Mexico is absolutely on an equal footing with California, where political complexity's concerned. (Now if only we had referenda and such.)

This is, without a doubt, *the* single most important, and single most complex election -- besides being the single LONGEST -- that New Mexico has *ever* faced.

EVER.

Granted, we are a young state! What, the third or fourth youngest? Something like that. We only got admitted to the Union in 1912. I'm sure plenty of other states have *deeper* running histories, what with the Civil War and all. But -- WOW.

And we're universally perceived as, because we *are*, a "swing" state! Such has our history made us -- for decades our Senate delegation has been "split" between the parties, while our House delegation has routinely favoured Republicans, two-to-one. Now it looks like the balance in the House *might* happen to swing two-to-one favouring Democrats, in hotly contested elections in both parties in each of our three Congressional Districts. (I doubt NM would swing solid for either party.)

But when the Republican Senior Senator retires (my first day ON AIR for a weekday drivetime newscast, just in case you forgot), the *whole* congressional delegation in the House throws their various hats in the ring for the Senate seat, and then over two dozen hopefuls in turn declare their intentions for the various House seats opening up.

(Every one of whose voices I have gotten on the air, if admittedly, only in roughly 6-second clips.)

We're *going* to lose seniority and key committee positions in *both* houses as a result. There's no question of that. There's also no question that key seniority positions in both houses have helped maintain the military and industrial and science-based economic *backbone* of the economy in this otherwise agricultural state.

How this will all play out in the long run at this point is, pretty much, anyone's guess!

I'll quote the advice of a freind of a freind to a freind (without attribution -- since heck, this is a blog) on a wholly unrelated matter -- "enjoy the ride".

This is the ride of my life!

The same fellow says, in a private email to me, that I have "a lot of drama".

Well, yes. I admit: I kind of do! With no apologies, that's how I make my living, which I'm damn lucky to be allowed to do.

So today the Lieutenant Governor and a bunch of other elected Democrats come out to "show unity" behind "whoever wins the party nomination" while the State Republican Party Chairs from arond the country hold their national convention at Santa Ana Pueblo's resort.

Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton says our current Governor more or less lied before endorsing Obama, and James Carville's at Richardson's throat, and the Governor's going on the defensive on national TV day after day in what amounts to a highly-publicised pissing contest probably amounting to little (if anything) of serious or lasting consequence on commercial news outlets.

So the state-level Dems just want to show some "unity" at the same time the Reps are doing the same at the national level.

Let me reiterate.

It's fucking APRIL.

The general election doesn't happen 'til NOVEMBER.

But already, both major parties are, effectively, campaigning for the general election.

But wait! The fun doesn't stop there. Not by a long shot!

Ralph Nader's supporters submit sufficient numbers of petition signatures to the New Mexico Secretary of State for Nader to qualify for the November ballot as a candidate for a new "Independent Party". Yes, it does, indeed, appear to be a contradiction in terms. But this just complicates the situation one small step further. This is one of a very few states where major elections are routinely decided by the slimmest possible fractions of percentage points.

Look. Please. Do yourself *just* one personal favour. Don't go slashing tyres late at night just because you happpen to dislike a four-year-old bumper sticker on a car at a restaurant that you happen to be eating at. I mean, I can't *stop* you from doing that sort of stupid, criminal activity, if you're really so inclined, but there's no telling whether or not the person whose tyres you slash winds up ON AIR covering the next election, which will make the election during which you slashed some random person's tyres in a parking lot seem utterly irrelevant, in the long view.

Oh -- by the way -- thank you to whoever slashed my tyres the night before Nader visited town, while I was busy making tortillas on the graveyard shift at Frontier Restaurant (shortly before I first volunteered at the station). You didn't stop me from meeting him, and in fact, you made it easier for me to meet him in person once I told his handlers my story from the previous night.

I'm just now just *far* too busy reading headlines to about a hundred thousand listeners (give or take a few thousand) each night to spare the time and effort that making tortillas at Frontier deserves.

I tell you what. If you come forward and apologise, and promise not to slash any more tyres during the 2008 election, I *won't* press either criminal or civil charges against you.

Nothing to do at this point but sit back and enjoy the ride.

Thank GAWD for once in my life that I'm a reporter and therefore *have to* NOT take "sides" in *any* of this.

And I stand by what I said in 2004, and in 2000 before that.

I won't know who I vote for until I have actually cast my ballot.

To lighten up a bit, now.

In "daily broadcast craziness" -- WaveCart (a *totally* suck-ass Windows program if *ever* there *was* one) apparently got stuck in "loop" mode by some unknown prior board op without my knowing it. So I do my first "top of the hour" newscast playing the NPR funder credit, intro the piece from our capitol reporter, then start to read the next headline, only to find the funder credit start playing again underneath me only to fade out. FAST. *That* sounded dumb! But I figured maybe I'd put the credit into cue without meaning to. With no apologies, I just keep moving on.

Then at the bottom of the hour I have a two-part "cut and copy" headline.

I read the intro. Play the first clip. Move on with reading the segway into my next clip, only to find it jumping up, *again*, to the top item in the cue list, which is, once again, the funder credit I'd just played.

The good news is I'm learning how to "read ahead" well enough that by now I can just hear "support for NPR" and fade down and stop the improperly looped funding credit from playing while stopping it and lining up my next "clip" before I fade up yet again. Jim comes in and fixes it for me and the problem doesn't resurface for the rest of my broadcast.

No one calls to complain.

I announce during my "weather" breaks the new transmitters in "non-legal-ID" form. The FCC's *very* specific what I *must* say and in what order during "legal IDs" at the top of the hour. But I *can* take a few seconds during "weather" breaks to say "if you're listening to us here, this is our frequency, but if you're listening to us there, you *might* get a better signal tuning up or down to this or that frequency". Location first, then frequency. No call signs. Totally *not* FCC regulation.

Ears perk up when the voice mentions the *place* you're at *before* the frequency likeliest to give you a good signal. And language tends to be strictly linear, at that particular level. You know -- the sort of thing a listener might actually hope to understand, which a whole slew of legally required call signs and locations might not help them with, at all.

A listener on the road, for instance, between Socorro and San Antonio's Owl Bar can hear "Socorro: 88.7" and know *exactly* what to do when they hear us gradually fade out while listening to 89.9, whereas the same listener might hear us say the legally required "KBOM Socorro" as legally required at the top of the hour and *only* register "Socorro" without *any* clue where to actually turn their dial if they want to keep listening.

Tristan calls to say he likes the announcement I make, which means a lot to me. I spare the listeners all the various transmitter/translator call signs. We *are* KUNM. Going down the garden path of "We are KUNM/KBOM/KRAR/KRRT with translators at K216CU/K216CT/K220EM/K220AW both up and down the dial" is simply *not* worth announcing any time we can *possibly* avoid it without breaking the law.

But -- listeners *should* be familiarized with the fact that they can likely tune the radio dials in their cars a little bit this way, or that, during commute, and get us without interruption, regardless of whatever hill they happen to be going 'round at the time.

The branding's *definitely* a challenge. We *are* KUNM. We have to announce all our transmitters at the top of the hour, per FCC regulations, which exist for good reason. But -- we *should* make clear to listeners in various different areas where they can pick us up the best. They don't care, in general, about call signs. They just want to hear our programming, based on wherever they happen to be at that moment in time.

I'm considering rewriting the translator IDs and submitting the rewrite for approval based on my understanding of what's legally required.

And I *still* want to get the station engineer to come in and plug in his bug to a guest mic XLR to fist the 5 o'clock translator ID in Morse code, live, at least once! Maybe when the last transmitter in the network he is currently building goes live, ON AIR. I'm pretty sure that's legal. ;)

Life is good.

Every day's different.

2008-04-02T22:09:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I was in fine form, and apologised for it anyway, but in such a way I would never *dream* of apologising for having apologised.

Today it was like the board op in my head faded down the "brain" channel in my head at around 4:30 PM to "30" to run in background, only to find he couldn't fade it up again. But I didn't apologise.

Weird thing is that the network sounded roughly the same.

I was just kinda "out of it" all through my broadcast. But so was the network. Not the best time to have a grandiose realization, but there's never any telling what comes to you when it will when you're working in radio.

I sorta realized I was just one tiny synapse in a vast, worldwide network with nerve endings gathering stories from all these different continents, and feeding them to Washington, which feeds them to us, who in turn feed them to our listeners. I swear, the whole national/internatonal network sounded "out of it" like I did, today. Sorta rambly and aimless, missing posts, or else cutting things *way* too wide only to have to pad with music. Yes, I "stepped on" the network, but the network also "stepped on" other elements within itself. We *all* sounded kind of "out of it" today, for reasons I can not begin to fathom. Possibly not the best time to come to the realization that I'm just one tiny part of something *way* the hell bigger than myself, but also, possibly, the most effective.

Tomorrow: KRRT ("Radio Relay Taos") goes on air.

Personal life?

Hell. I've got new transmitters to announce, doing my own little but *very* public part in bringing them to life for the first time ever to more listeners than who may hear the *next* "legal ID" once I've handed it off to whatever music host happens to be taking over from me that night. And, yeah, even though the frequency may not be part of the "legally required" minimum ID, they sure as hell happen to matter to people driving home from work at Los Alamos ("on the hill") to Espanola ("in the valley"), or what have you. Should they tune "up", or "down", to continue hearing that story during their commute that has them *hooked*?

I'll be damned if I "jinx" the first legal ID for *any* transmitter by broadcasting a prerecorded announcement as "legal ID". And the first legal ID I give for *any* station has simply *got* to be read, *live*, ON AIR. I've got some ideas I need to work on as to how translator IDs "should" run, and *may* submit 'em to the powers that be, once I've got a better handle on the actual legal requirements. (After all, my own long-expired FCC license is only novice class.)

I come from the Karl Wyler school of radio broadasting, you understand.

He was weirdly superstitious, too.

When Wyler built the building for what eventually became the three-station broadcast powerhouse KTSM from El Paso on the NBC network, he *insisted* that the building's foundations have "no voids". (Looking back fifteen or so years later, I can comfortably assume he equated "voids" in the building's physical foundations with seconds of "dead air" -- not one of which I *ever* heard while listening to *any* of his stations while he lived.) When I visited him, he proudly showed me a drill core sample of the building's concrete foundations. It had no voids.

Just how that translates into my reading "first translator IDs" LIVE, ON AIR I can't exactly quite explain. At least, not rationally. But there is *definitely* some connection, there.

Wyler be with me.

In good news -- maybe not in terms of "deafness" -- I'm getting *way* too seriously attuned to background noise! I swear I can hear it on practically *every* NPR story, including the newscasts. "There's the sound of headphones being ripped off before someone hits buttons on board." Or -- "Who's that coughing? -- sounds like a career diplomat", I'll routinely ask myself during a broadcast. Or else "I suppose that's what the air conditioning sounds like in Rome right now", or "is your studio in Kenya *really* so poorly soundproofed that we can hear that stupid car alarm ten blocks away, giving away your otherwise careful edits?"

Personal life?

Maybe after the pledge drive.

One more full-powered transmitter.

2008-04-01T20:40:00.002-06:00

(I would title this post "Best newscast EVAR", but that would simply cross *too* many lines.)

KRAR went ON AIR this afternoon around 3:30. I therefore didn't have the particular distinction this afternoon of giving its first-ever legal ID, but I *did* do its first legal translator ID before starting my newscast. (For the handful of listeners driving home down off the hill -- Los Alamos -- you know -- just to let 'em know they don't have to lose us around that particular bend in the road.)

I had a full "translator ID" recorded from the night before, since I had some advance notice on when it would be going online and didn't know how much time I'd have between the end of DN and the start of ATC. It goes something like this:

This is YOUR public radio news source at 89.9 KUNM Albuquerque, Santa Fe, 88.7 KBOM Socorro, and 91.9 KRAR Espanola, with translators at 91.9 in: Taos K220AV, Las Vegas K220AW, Nageezi K220EM; and at 91.1 in Arroyo Seco K216AL, Eagle Nest-Cimarron K216CT, and Cuba K216CU.

*You* try saying all that, live, in under 29 seconds! It's verbal calisthenics. This is about the closest I can ever hope to get to the verbal virtuosity demanded of commercial radio announcers. But it strikes me as a good learning experience, even if I really *don't* want to "talk fast" during the "billboard" following it immediately (the theme music for ATC gives me a full ten seconds to breathe, THANK GAWD), let alone the "newscast" following the "billboard" three minutes later.

But -- I am *also* a bit superstitious! (Just like Karl Wyler was, not wanting *any* voids in the concrete beneath his stations, when he built 'em, lest they translate to a single moment of "dead air at the top of the hour". And *all* of his stations outlived him.)

I *don't* want the first legal station ID *I* give out over a new transmitter during drivetime to be anything *but* live *if* I can possibly avoid it! I mean -- come on -- I can squeeze, I can stretch, but it's only *history* being made, here, and why would I *ever* relegate that historic moment to a prerecorded message, if I can possibly avoid it? Particularly if I'm the only person to record the message, just as a total emergency backup?

Luckily, I had 57 whole seconds to spare at the end of DN. This gave me ample time to read some current temps, send out "a *very* special good afternoon to all our listeners in Espanola", mention in passing that "we're now broadcasting at 6000 watts from high atop Black Mesa at 91.9", and then casually read off all the transmitter and translator IDs, live, before saying "it's five o'clock" and launching into my standard five-o-clock NPR billboard.

I could *definitely* get to like this. :)

It was a *damn* good broadcast.

I did apologise, once, during a weather break in my second hour, because I got "Socorro" confused on my sheet of paper with "Los Alamos", and there was something like a 23 degree difference, between the two. But I smiled as I did it, and refuse to apologise for apologising, at least this time around.

Had a couple of decent "cut and copies" for the newscasts and ran 'em.

Finally dared to send out another special greeting to our listeners in Espanola, even daring them, on air, to call us up and tell us how we're coming through.

Got one caller. She said "loud and clear, and I'm so grateful to have you back on the air out here in Abiquiu" or something similar. Kick ass. (They're expecting something on the order of 150% average spring runoff at the reservoir, there.)

The story today was the newscasts -- they were *great*! Beat *everyone* else to a story regarding a U.S. District Court decision regarding a FOIA lawsuit against the NNSA regarding test well monitoring at Sandia just because by this point I can get the press release and write it up into a comprehensible headline faster than, oh, I dunno -- anyone else in the state, basically! I mean, this is only just one little story I've been following since last September; so when the judge cites a previous judge's ruling, already, I'm far enough ahead of the curve to be able to check my sources.

Then, to provide balance, I *also* beat everyone else in the state to a story I treated as *followup* coming out of Sandia about water scarcity for around 75% of the world's population by the second half of the 21st Century. That little two-minute newscast held together *so* well -- I'm *definitely* getting it off the skimmer. I want that for my own personal "feather in cap" file.

Both stories dealt with Sandia. Both stories dealt with drinking water. One led *beautifully* into the next, based on how I wrote both of them out. The first story was about a court victory by people critical of the labs. The second was about a major projection regarding worldwide water, published by lab scientists in a major journal.

Who -- balanced -- me?

Come on!

Missed the post.

2008-03-31T23:55:00.002-06:00

Twice!

The first time by an unmistakeable six seconds.

The second by a merely "sloppy" two or three.

My ledes were just too long. If I'd killed a clause or two between my first and second broadcast I *could* have pulled it off the second time -- but I just "read fast" instead, and *still* missed it. I'm sure some radio nut out there is laughing his ass off right now. (Thanks for the vintage mic link, btw.)

The newscast stories did work well together. But I literally *couldn't* hit the post. The timing was simply *too* tight. It might work well enough for a so-called "personality" like Limbaugh. For me, it just draws unwanted attention to myself. I know better now what my time limits actually *are*.

But we've *all* got a long way to go before we really sound good at this sort of coverage. At least we're all consciously working together to move in that particular direction. No one called to complain. I've still got to get it through my mind that it's better to run short than to run over.

But -- I *swear* -- I *did* hear the sound of the lightbulbs in the studio where we record coming through my headphones for every single local piece we did today.

My ears are getting *way* too sensitive.

Ulysses S. Grant.

2008-03-28T19:59:00.004-06:00

Started out the day by interviewing President Ulysses S. Grant.

Some explanation is clearly in order.

The 1872 Mining Law -- signed into law by President Grant -- prioritizes hardrock mining as the *preferred* use of public lands, and allows miners to extract whatever minerals -- Gold, Silver, Uranium, Molybdenum, for instance -- without paying *any* royalties to the federal or state governments.

It made sense, possibly, in the days of Reconstruction when the nation had survived a brutal civil war and the call of the frontier served as a unifying national rallying cry, drawing independent prospectors.

It arguably makes little sense, today, and there are those who say its current effect is, in fact, profoundly destructive, particularly in watersheds. In New Mexico alone, there are 21,660 active mining claims, many in the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

A historian and his wife in Pennsylvania have taken to dressing up and asuming the roles of President and Mrs. Grant. When they are in persona, that is who they *are*. And today they visited Albuquerque to sign a proclamation calling for reform of the law.

A Bill which would reform the law has passed the House, and is now under consideration in the Senate. Both of New Mexico's Senator's sit on the Energy Committee -- one of them chairs it, and the other is the ranking member.

This was a *brilliant* event. The organizers took this very dry, wonkish, complex piece of proposed legislation, and made it not only understandable and compelling but actual *fun*. And gave a history lesson in the process. It was held at Alvarado Center -- the downtown bus station -- and a sizeable crowd gathered. I could *see* not just interest but delight and fascination in the eyes of everyone who walked by -- not one of them a professional policy wonk.

I think I was the only person covering it, not counting the TV cameraman. And the event was *perfect* for TV. For radio? A *bit* more challenging! But heck, I get to talk with all the people advocating for reform in considerable depth; and even if I didn't use the sound, but only wrote a headline, I *have* the sound I gathered for a story which I plan to put together for next week.

I wrote a headline and led both hours' newscasts with "President Ulysses S. Grant visited Albuquerque Today . . .", and then explained, as best I could.

Oh -- and I took the opportunity to bring along my original Thomas Nast cartoon from Harper's Weeky -- "The Crowning Insult to Him Who Occupies the Presidential Chair". Alas, the best picture I can find of it online is this low-resultion, tiny image, from the Smithsonian:To explain.

Thomas Nast *invented* the Democratic Donkey and the Republican Elephant. He was a brilliant artist, and a brilliant editorialist. I've got several of his original engravings, alas, rather more badly damaged over the more than a century it's taken them to come into my hands than the image above. But the image above conveys *very* few details, which the original's chock full of.

The head being lowered onto President Grant's is labelled "the scapegoat". The Republican fox has a book labelled "party catechism" in his pocket. The animals in the picture include a bear, a pig, some ducks, some mice, a rat, and of course, the democratic Donkey ready to pull away the chair out from underneath Grant. In the distance, which you can't see in the image, there's an ape, a giraffe, a monocled unicorn looking up at the newly-built Capitol dome, and of course, the barking bulldogs labelled "Press".

It's *very* far from being Nast's most complexly layered political cartoon. But I *can't* pass up the chance to bring it out while I'm covering a story involving someone depicted in the cartoon.

It's a hit.

President Grant, being presidential, declares he'll sign it on the back (it's mounted on foam board). I tell him, Mr. President, you read my mind -- Mr. Nast seems to have been a great admirer of yours. He says indeed, and tells me how he never hewed to the party platform. For the first time *ever* I get to *discuss* this particular image and its meaning with someone who clearly understands it *way* better than I do.

He signs it, on the back, "Best Wishes, U.S. Grant, President of the United States". Even the handwriting matches. Uncanny.

Then back to the station, after this welcome and all-too-badly needed step outside it.

Things keep happening.

The whole control room is disassembled fifteen minutes before my broadcast. I try to be a good sport about these things. It's not disastrous, it's simply annoying, and I'm *guessing* these things happen when they do because they know I try to be a sport about it.

I would be lying if I said it didn't fluster me a bit -- and I'd be lying further if I said it didn't affect my broadcast. But I just kept moving on. So what if I switched words that one time, or else got the state "Virginia" stuck in my head when I *meant* to say "Pennsylvania". I'm not gonna get all giggly about it, or apologise. I'll just correct myself, if I need to, and move on.

I am *over* apologising.

Or, as Charles would say, "I'm oves it".

Yet another fine day.

2008-03-27T20:42:00.003-06:00

Give it enough time and this "radio hosts have to think positive" thing just seeps into your soul.

Started out meeting Michael, Public Affairs guy from Sandia, underneath the designated tree at the designated parking lot at the edge of the barbed-wire fence-ringed Air Force Base. The fence didn't stop a young burrowing jackrabbit from going onto the base to avoid the big scary radio reporter.

I'm slowly getting used to this. And *really* liking it. It doesn't have to be a big old "go to this building, go to that gate, go to that gate, go back to this other building, no, go back to the first building, now go to that gate" thing. I see the government van pull up and just know to pile in.

John Fleck from the Journal is there. He's the only other reporter covering the event. Apparently the TV cameras only show up, as a rule, if "really kewl" footage is *guaranteed*. Fleck's an *amazing* reporter. I learn something from every serious reporter I encounter. In today's case, it's "shut up and listen to the people who know more than I do." But it doesn't stop there. He's literally thinking certain stories forward by a *decade* at this point. (Now *that's* something to aim for.)

Senator Bingaman speaks. He's not at all like I'd imagined him. I've only ever even *seen* him once before. I've done the teleconference thing with him a few times and think of him as "talking in circles" in a "hard to edit" sort of way. Which he sometimes does, if he can get away with it. The setting's different today. He delivers a remarkable -- and major -- energy policy speech.

Then he takes questions from the audience.

My god -- those were some of the most amazing and incisive questions I have *ever* heard asked of a sitting Senator.

Every stereotypical characterization of "lab workers" just falls away. (Even if that one guy *does* happen to look like "Smithers". You know who you are.) ;)

The workers and the activists are coming at the same problem from different sides with different approaches, but I don't doubt for an instant that there's *way* more in common between 'em than either side will openly admit for reasons having more to do with how they have to relate to their internal communities than anything else. Lucky me -- it's just my job to facilitate dialogue.

Activists aren't "treehuggers" and lab-workers aren't "weaponeers". (I must admit that I increasingly dislike that second term, whenever I hear it. The irony -- hypocrisy, even -- of it being routinely spoken by certain persons with countless "nonviolent communications trainings" under their belts shows me that *something* is missing from those trainings -- apparently some people will extend nonviolence only to those people they tend, generally, to agree with.) But in general, people on both sides, with the best of intentions, can simply be *mean*, which is simply *not* helpful.

And -- oh -- there's that dynamic *in* the labs as well. It dates back, if I understand things right, to the wartime "compartmentalization" of the Manhattan Project. But at this point the labs all compete with eachother for funds on a year-by-year basis that makes ongoing research *extremely* difficult.

The labs are opening up. Slowly. One little step at a time. But what we're witnessing now is historic. Utterly unprecedented. It can not but be for the good.

I am, indeed, an *extremely* lucky reporter.

I was plagued by computer problems today. Jonathan came in and worked on my computer, getting something like 119 consecutive "error" messages at once. I just let him work and tried to do the "running between computers" thing that never bothered me when I wasn't getting paid to do it.

One slightly glitchy thing happened -- Tristan was working on the board right before I went on air. It wasn't major surgery. He said "tell me to get out anytime." As I still had a couple of minutes to spare, I figured, nah, I'll let him push whatever buttons he needs to. But now I know to ask him next time to make sure the board is "normalized" before he leaves. ;)

The inputs/outputs on LS-1 were set to other than default, with Channel 2 coming in through the board through "B".

It gave me a couple of seconds of "dead air". But when I saw the meter switcher registering levels from CMP as I ran the translator ID, I knew it was just a "buttons" level problem. Nothing to do but read the translator ID live. Fine with me, today, because I've got a full ninety seconds to spare, since DN actually started on time today.

Trick is I get through that and then get GIGGLY on air reading the billboards. Aw, hell. Just get through it and line up your next break. It's not the end of the world. And people will be tuning in for headlines.

I love my life.

Aired a piece Jim did which aired earlier this morning, after working up the sound from the Sandia speech into the most complicated "cut and copy" I have *ever* done. Voiced it for Elaine so she won't have to line up and play six clips in rapid succession tomorrow morning.

I hadn't even *heard* Jim's piece before I aired it.

But it was a downright nifty, comprehensive, total broadcast *package*. I talk about Bingaman's Energy Policy Speech. Then Jim talks with Sierra Club folks about energy stuff.

You might be forgiven, as a listener, for thinking we're all on the same wavelength, in the newsroom.

I think, increasingly, we really are.

Keeping busy. . .

2008-03-26T20:57:00.002-06:00

. . . leads to weird dreams.

Which I'll get to, in time.

Elaine got sick at the end of last week. I've got *way* better "coverage" for my shifts than she does, since she has to be up by roughly four AM, while I get to onveniently sleep in. I *need* to get trained for her shift, if only because I live five blocks from the station. But any time either of us gets sick, it affects us all.

We ultimately *need* more people in the newsroom to maintain the quality of broadcasts listeners come to expect. Period.

My own ON AIR shifts go OK. Not perfect, but OK.

Then an email goes out marked "URGENT" to volunteers on Sunday night.

By the time I get it, I've had my first two consecutive days off in about two months and am jonesing for the ON AIR host mic. I get flip and casually agree to cover for "Overnight Free Form" if no one else offers. Part of me foolishly believes I still have to prove myself to everyone, even at this point.

I unfoolishly offer to play Wagner for most of it, figuring that will save me some late-night hours scrambling for music every three or four minutes.

And I get the word back: that's OK, *if* I just mix in all the different genres that I should, somehow, in the first part of my overnight shift. Which I do.

Last week left me completely and totally beat, what with finding out I won't get paid for three weeks (because I was too busy actually *working* to turn in my timesheet, while dealing with bureaucratic hooh-hah, more than half an hour late to make sure we don't get our broadcast license challenged with *legal* hooh-hah) and other assorted "stuff" that tends to happen when you work for the most powerful radio station in the state whose license happens to be held by the Board of Regents for the giant bureaucracy of a state university whose initials happen to be incorporated into your very call sign.

Annoying? Yes. But I am guessing, educatedly, that it beats working at the labs.

But at some point during being too exhausted to cover every important story I *know* matters, it *comes* to me.

The *only* thing that *really* matters is THE LISTENER.

Yes, I have been through fifteen dozen different kinds of wringers in about five days. But I *know* from *years* of personal experience that NONE OF IT can *possibly* compare with what MY LISTENER has probably gone through in one day, whenever he happens to tune in to hear two minutes, nineteen seconds (roughly) of sanity from me reading headlines and telling him current temps.

I'm damn lucky to be alive, let alone broadcasting.

The listener isn't tuning in to hear me sound tired, or flustered, reading headlines that barely affect him. He just wants me to deliver headlines that affect him directly, calmly, no matter what.

I admit. I'm *in love* with "the listener". After even the hardest day facing whatever distractions I face on a daily basis -- I can step out for a minute and *know* that "the listener" has, on average, been through FAR worse than I have on that day, and just needs me to sound sane, telling all the crazy things that routinely *happen*.

My overnight freeform shift rolls around. I start it out by letting the piece Ali started play at the end of "Global Music" because *someone's* going to just then be getting into it. If it pushes me over a minute or so on the "legal ID" I *must* let it do so, if I want to hold on to his audience. (Sure beats the "Tombstone Rock" crew I took over for that one time.) But I'm still close enough to meet FCC guidelines, as I understand them. There's a time to "cut in", but there's also a time to just let things "play out". It's not, at that hour of the night, like I'm so much a slave to the clock that I *have to* cut off Amy Goodman -- about whom I have some words, but for whom I will save them, for when I meet her in person, next time.

"Afternoon drivetime" and "after-midnight" are just different *enough*. I've done it *all*, at this point.

I go ON AIR. Give the legal ID. Introduce "a very special freind, from long ago, who's been with me from way before I ever started working in radio" and so forth. "It's my very special privilege, indeed, and honour, to introduce you to the one and only -- United States Naval Observatory Master Clock". Or something like that.

Radio geek joke. Just the sort of thing I can casually pull off in the middle of the night. But even then, I can't let it play out for more than a minute or so while I line up the next thing to play. After all, it's "precise", but *only* on the order of eight seconds (between myself and the listener) and 700 additional milliseconds (between the satellite, and myself) without spending *way* too long explaining it to people who don't care and who will eventually tune out.

If I let the USNO Master Clock play more than roughly a minute, I'll have to answer to people who find themselves setting their clocks and watches, only to find themselves such-and-such "off".

I actually broadcast the USNO Clock on "confidence audio" channel 2 on SAT-2, passing up the opportunities for all sorts of clever "shtick" to segue into a dance-club mix I happen to have found that seems to sound like a bomber crew honing in, second by second, on their target. How convenient an opportunity to practice my crossfading skills.

Then to a track from Radiohead's latest 12-inch "single" which matches, since it seems to be about nuclear war. "Too much, too bright, too powerful". Or something like that. Read it as a "political statement" if you want. Where I stand, it just made good sense in terms of cross-fading broadcast channels in the middle of the night when we have fewer listeners than pretty much anytime else.

Then to a nine-minute field interview I'd personally recorded *months* before but never aired from my tour of Sandia National Labs' Thermal Test Facility (TTF) -- complete with "warning" and "all clear" sirens bracketing explosions at Kirtland Air Force Base while the TTF's director talked about testing and simulation with another reporter from a specialty journal dealing with federal employees -- just because it was *way* too hard to incorporate into a news story the same day I recorded it. (Still wondering how much toluene I inhaled on that day.)

Then to this, and that other thing, and then that. I *want* to incorporate an Elmer Davis broadcast from WWII, but the sound from that website is just *way* substandard. So on the fly, I go in another direction, and play nearly half an hour of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, live, at Filmore East, in June 1971. Public radio cliche, perhaps, but it buys me some time. I am a NEWS man. Not a music man! God bless Zappa. he buys me time.

Then some Jazz that makes sense if you've listened to, I dunno, 40-plus years of our station's broadcasts.

Some bluegrass, winding up with "Sweet Sunny South's" song about "My Still" just as listeners stumble out of the bars.

But by now I've got it backtimed out so the closing refrain of Richard Wagner's "Das Rheingold" will meld *perfectly* with the opening sounds of the "Morning Edition" theme music from NPR.

I skip the John Cage -- which I probably shouldn't have -- and just casually play some Gamelan music. It buys me time.

I fade it down.

I do about seven minutes of a live reading from "The 13 and a half Lives of Captain Bluebear".

Thank gawd I gave myself a music bed.

I literally wound up gasping for air with some minutes to spare while finding out the pages didn't flip like I had meant them to. But -- I still sounded *damn* good.

I simply let the music carry me, and then take me out.

Then I "hit the post" starting "Das Rheingold", only to find I couldn't quite prounounce the name of "Sir Georg Solti", since by that time I was completely brain-fried.

Only to find Richard Wagner WAY THE FUCK MORE BOMBASTIC throughout "Rheingold" than I had remembered him.

But by now I'd kind of figured, what the hell, I'll set my levels and let it run, only to find out NO! I HAVE TO RIDE THE BOARD! I have committed myself to this.

Ali -- god bless him -- has a *gift* for backtiming. I'll spare you all the details how. But he looks at my second CD running down and checks the clock and tells me I'm going to be something like 2:37 over.

I trust him, but I don't trust numbers as a rule. I spend the next ten minutes crunching numbers only to realize he's right. I *will* in fact be roughly 2 minutes, 37 seconds over. I mean, within a few tenths of a second. Not that I trust my numbers. He does this calculation by closing his eyes and popping back three seconds later to tell you, without a doubt, "you're 2:37 off". I confirm his calculation by running numbers manually over a number of minutes and trying to figure out the math which frankly *baffles* me. Just enough to ruin everything I'm aiming for. Or -- just enough to plan for something for 2:37 inbetween this disk and that.

If I *don't* make up that time, somehow, my perfect "hit the post" between "Overnight Free Form" and "Morning Edition" -- backtimed roughly 2 hours, 22 minutes, and 11 seconds between three different CDs -- just *won't* work.

Ali's got a gift for numbers that is *uniquely* helpful in radio timing. It's like his mind is the slide rule we all want to design, but can't *quite* figure out. I may have done the calculations. But. If he says "you're 13 second over", or "you're 7 seconds short", you ARE. Period.

He tells me I have to kill this one track and "fill" for so long. In the middle of the night. Only Wagnerians *far* more dedicated than me will ever know I've killed this particular track to forward announce Morning Edition and read the weather.

He's a genius. For whatever reasons which I can't begin to know because I don't know how all the connections in the human brain begin to work. Ali *saved* my broadcast, and the timing of that broadcast in turn saved the day twelve hours later when I went ON AIR local hosting ATC from NPR -- after saving a broadcast of DN prior to ATC the previous day. He dislikes NPR rather more intensely even than I dislike it. But I don't *ever* want to work at a station that doesn't have a place for him. Yes, a conversation with him can go on for hours. But he's uniquely gifted, and priceless, in this environment.

I skip a single track in order to announce things -- and even read weather. I know my "post" at this point has shifted to such-and-such a time. I hit it. To the second. I've double-checked the calculation, but Ali has done the calculation in a few seconds, in his head, long before I've spent minutes checking it.

I couldn't *possibly* have done it without Ali. At the same time, I think he "gets" the whole "Wagner thing" way better than he might have if I hadn't been there to kill a few hours.

And I might have chickened out on the "Wagner thing", if he hadn't announced it.

Symbiosis, anyone?

Anyhow.

The transition happened -- pretty smoothly!

Elaine came in and took over my board.

And I went home to sleep.

But I had the weirdest dream:

Apparently some group of activists or other had secured the basement underneath Popejoy Hall at UNM -- I've never actually been *in* Popejoy Hall, let alone *underneath* it, so I have no idea how accurate my dream landscape may be -- but it was *definitely* Popejoy Hall, and they were there to hold a forum about the NNSA's "Complex Transformation" combined with the proposed closure and recovery at Los Alamos' radioactive waste dump at "Area G".

For some reason, I find myself, not there *reporting* the event, but dressed up as a Panda Bear (of all things). I find myself running around through underground corridors in a fursuit only to appear at this or that moment during whatever presenters' presentations. I distinctly remember running up through narrow staircases in the wings only to emerge someplace else to the amazement of my handlers who seemed to assume I would just appear "stage left" only to appear "stage right" or the like. No one can tell where I'll turn up.

Then -- in what I'll call a "dream within a dream" -- I envision my mother's house in Texas besieged by, of all things, a whole fleet of space shuttles. They fly over her house in formation and send down repeated volleys of arrows, such as might more reasonably be expected to come from medieval Japanese archers.

Then I wake up in her home. In the bedroom of my childhood.

I close all the blinds throughout the house. Carefully. Without panic. It is late in the day. A reasonable time to close the blinds.

After all the blinds are closed, I join my mother in the kitchen.

She's listening to public radio on the receiver that gets heard throughout the house.

But she hands me what amounts to an earbud, attached to a tiny receiver.

I ask her: "Police Skimmer?"

She silently nods, without saying it, "yes".

I put it in my ear. It's an "Auto-Cue" moment of realization.

In the ear *with* the skimmer, I hear a coded message in the lyrics of a pop music song, released the same day, which runs something like this, *a la* Karen Carpenter:

I hear a Panda Chewing up Bamboo
One or Two Popejoys gonna Fall
Panda digging up the Bamboo
One or Two Popejoys gonna fall

In the other ear, I hear myself reading headlines. Inexplicably.

And that's my dream.

You must read this.

2008-03-21T20:20:00.004-06:00

Finally tracked down the source of my favourite quote, ever, which I originally happened across while looking at old microphones online:

It is not necessary to remind you that the fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other.

Perhaps that was true when Ed Murrow was addressing the RTNDA in 1958. Or maybe he was being diplomatic. But I think it's something we *should* be reminded of, every single day. Here's the whole speech. When I first saw the quote it reached out and grabbed me. It's *way* too relevant to me not to think he planted it as a time bomb to go off in my head fifty years later. It's an *amazing* speech, and probably more relevant today than when he uttered it.

Turbulent week broadcasting. Nothing personal. Things just kept happenning. I guess if I can't take it, I've got no business being near -- let alone *in* a broadcast newsroom. I'll spare you the details. I'll just say it was a challenge. I do feel comfortable in saying this, though -- it did *not* affect my broadcast. None of it. Of course I can do better. And next week, I will.

Now I have my first weekend -- two days off! -- since January. I plan to enjoy them. I will not even *look* at a microphone until Monday, so help me gawd.

Vernal equinox.

2008-03-20T23:34:00.002-06:00

No telling if things will change since 11:48 yesterday when the Sun moved into Airies and Spring officially began.

But I'm keeping my hopes up.

In the last week I've run two solid hours of drivetime news broadcasts while major surgery got done between my breaks -- not just "on the board" in general -- but on the "host mic" module, resulting in my coming out of one channel *way* stronger than the other, until the engineer managed a workaround, which he did before the end of my shift.

Then tonight the host for the music show set to take over from me shows up late for reasons I never bother to ask him about -- leaving me to make a few frantic phone calls, do "legal ID" at the top of the hour, and then start a music show about whose genre I know *nothing* whatsoever.

Yep. A certain raging faggot (yours truly) started the reggae show tonight. Sure hope the most self-righteous, zealous rastafarians out there can live with that.

The host was kind enough on coming in to thank me for starting enough music to get him to where he could take over.

I don't care what some people (me? years ago?) say about rastafarians -- some of them just kick ass. :)

Even if they do show up a few minutes late on rare occasion.

New pics coming soon.

2008-03-20T01:05:00.003-06:00

On the supplement.

Finally downloaded some months' worth of pics from my cameraphone, going months back. Some quite good. Can't finalize posting those 'til I'm on a better connection than this.

Tonight: decent broadcast.

Yesternight, similarly decent broadcast in the midst of major broadcast console surjery between my breaks. Technical difficulties not something I could control and didn't bring listeners' attention to if they happened not to notice that I was coming out of one set of speakers three to five times louder than the from the other, while my bbackground music came through both equally. No one called to tell me, so I figured "mistakes listeners don't hear don't count as mistakes".

Still -- I'm managing to make enemies everywhere conceivable.

Wish it weren't so, but hell, I'm a reporter. Can't help it. In the words of the Univision reporter from Venezuela which I'll never forget: "You don't do this unless you LOVE it. It you don't LOVE it, it will KILL you."

Then again -- lab workers continue to happen to show up and prove to me we're doing *something* right by them.

At the same time -- anti-nuke activists let me know when I'm not getting their voices on air quite enough to please them.

I figure if I'm making enemies on both sides equally while making myself available to all concerned, I must be doing *something* right.

Only freind I have on earth: the listener.

Perhaps . . .

2008-03-18T00:20:00.003-06:00

. . . in time I'll "get a life".

Until then, though, I'll post my confessions in here.

My coverage of the Republican pre-primary convention was utterly substandard. I'm sorry to say I *literally* did not realize it 'til I heard it going out over the air, but I honestly didn't. Studio monitors and headphones just tell a world of difference in the quality of sound collected that one field headphone on 1/8th second delay in the field doesn't. There are worse feelings for a person, but not many. I sounded OK. But the sounds from the convention were just *bad* -- a fact I honestly didn't realize until it all went out over the air. Hard-limited or not -- I recorded you all under less than ideal circumstances. You deserve better. I know it.

Every Republican in the state of New Mexico has my personal apology for this. You deserve better sound, and you deserve better production from whatever person happens to shows up to cover *your* convention. Whatever failure may have happened is my own, and is due in no part to the station for which I work.

Perhaps if and when I get a life of my own my coverage will improve.

Hard to admit it, but I'm kind of up against a wall.

I lack perspective in the ways these things come naturally to "normal" people.

Therefore, I have to find my own "perspective" from alternative sources, the likes of which I doubt you can begin to imagine.

These don't come "naturally" to "normal" people.

But heck -- I still got every on-the-ballot candidate's voice "ON AIR" for both major parties, if admittedly, in short soundbites.

So please -- don't take my act of contrition *too* seriously. I know damn well there is plenty of room for improvement -- but I challenge you to find another single broadcast media outlet who's carried every single candidates' voice, in both parties, on air.

It's only the most complex election in the state's history, after all, and I'm only just a newbie at being on air.

If anyone else knows of anyone else ON AIR besides myself who's managed to air every single candidate of over two dozen in both major parties running for three congressional and two senatoorial seats, by all means, please let me know.

I've changed the blog's subtitle.

2008-03-12T21:48:00.003-06:00

Yet again.

Whereas it used to read "Life in the Borogoves", it now reads "Life, ON AIR, in the Borogoves".

For those who have forgotten, prior to reading "Life in the Borogoves", it read "Nightly Adventures of the Doorman at Foxes", or something like that.

Alas, I haven't really, truly *lived* in the Borogoves since the apartment complex I used to live in got bulldozed to put in high-priced, "affordable" housing at the behest of the developers who really seem to run this city's government.

But it's become increasingly clear to me over these last few months that the whole narrative arc of my blog, such as it is, has increasingly less to do with me and my neighbours and ever more to do with being "ON AIR".

Hence the change.

Air check day.

2008-03-12T20:09:00.002-06:00

Today was air check day in the newsroom.

That's when we pull a recent broadcast off the skimmer and sit down and review our "breaks" with the News Director (note the singular -- this is a good thing!) and the program director. We're trying to do these more regularly now -- they're an invaluable tool in just hearing how you sound on the air, without actually *being* on air, and getting the feedback from different sets of ears *without* the pressure of "I'm trying to line up my next break, here".

It *can* be a bit of a "sweatbox" -- you know, the unventilated, crowded closet underneath the stairs at the old Hyperion Avenue Disney studio in Hollywood, where animators would go over their pencil tests with Roy and Walt and their directors literally looming over their shoulders as they ran the rushes on a Movieola. But it doesn't have to be, and today, it wasn't.

I go in and carve out my "breaks" from the skimmer's sound of yesterday's brodcast. My first news break I literally take notes -- I tripped over the "K"s and the "P"s and still sound "halting" in my delivery. I'm *very* self-critical by nature, but at a certain point, just being so gets in my way.

Whoa -- back up. Look at the *big* picture. That's basically the advice I get. I need it. I'm obsessing over individual phonemes, and sticking my mind in the rut of thinking "sibilants and plosives trip me up", which winds up reinforcing itself in the way of a self-fulfilling prophesy, so that any time I see an "S" or a "P" or a "T" or an "F" in the script, let along a whole string of 'em, my mind gets pre-programmed to get jumbled. The air check is all about deprogramming my brain.

I just need to slow down and simplify. It's not about "reading the news" so much as it's about "telling a story" to one person, somewhere, out there. And of all the people listening, *whatever* I am telling them, some people will go "WHOA!", while others will go "WHAT?". So at the same time I am talking to *one* person, I am also talking to a *bunch* of people -- but it's *not* like standing at a podium and delivering a speech to the huddled masses.

And the whole "apologizing on air" thing. (Not that I did in my "air check", but I have been known to do it, in the past.) It isn't that it's "sloppy", which is how I *was* thinking about it, which invariably leads me down the garden path of apologizing for having apologized, ad infinitum. Wrong mental place to be, ON AIR. You wind up just gasping for air and waiting, with increasing desperation, for the post you have to hit to roll around.

It's *really* that apologizing simply *isn't* necessary *or* helpful. The instant you apologize on air -- even if you feel it's needed because you skipped or misread a crucial word -- you're introducing *personality* into the story. In some small but absolutely obvious way, when you apologise on air, the story ceases to be about the story and becomes *about* you, the host, and your sense of remorse and unworthiness at doing what really *is* a hard job most people would never even *dream* of doing. There are ways to smooth over mistakes which inevitably happen -- "rather" is a good one, maybe the best -- but if you start betraying your emotions on air, reading headlines, it quickly becomes less about the story and more about *you*. And the best way to prevent having to say "rather" is just to SLOW DOWN and TELL THE STORY.

My thinking is still, in some ways, that "air time is priceless", which, of course, it is! But that doesn't mean I have to read off current temperatures from *all* around the state like a Gatling gun. Amy does that in her end-credits -- and while I suppose it's sort of a verbal pirouette, when done day after day it's just too much getting thrown at you too fast, and you won't really *hear* anything. (Wait -- who produced? who engineered? I sure as hell do not remember.)

Got lots of other -- forgive me for saying it this way -- "pointers" on the details. I call them "pointers" because they're things I *can't* just turn around and suddenly incorporate into my broadcast, they're little, subtle shifts in the way I handle carts and stuff that will take time. One in particular -- about how to handle the current version of the translator ID -- will involve people in other departments before I'm really comfortable doing it the way I *know* it *should* be done.

I have been doing this long enough to establish some habits, and incorporating new suggestions and ideas takes changing some habits. That's a good thing! On both ends. On the one hand, running a broadcast is "routine" enough for me at this point I can *absolutely* do it every day. On the other hand, there are better ways to handle certain breaks -- indeed, better ways to *view* them, which involves "stepping back" from the crazitude of the Control Room from time to time for long enough to think about -- you guessed it! -- the LISTENER.

The breaks at 19 and 48:30 after, for instance, aren't technically "weather breaks". True, that's when I read the weather forecasts. But -- it doesn't mean I have to stick myself into a boring rut of fading down SAT-1, playing a 30-second cart, then fading SAT-1 back up to background while I come out of nowhere, breathing on mic, *desperately* trying *not* to sound *like* whatever cart I just played, to tell people the weather, and nothing *but* the weather. I can, instead, for instance, fade down SAT-1 and "take control" of the break with whatever happy thought happens to cross my mind at that precise moment. Oh, something like "This is KUNM, stick around for the Blues Show, coming up" *before* playing the cart. It takes a couple of seconds, and I didn't even *think* to do it until my last break at 6:48:30 tonight. But you know what? It sounded better! *Way* more fluid. And by the time the cart played, it was *my* break, already, because I had *established* that, *before* trying to "match" (or "de-match") my pacing and intonation to the craps shoot of whatever cart I'd just played. Instead, I matched my little "ad lib" to the network, and the whole broadcast improved.

I sounded better today than I sounded yesterday. The only reason is because today was air check day, and two different sets of ears besides my own were listening and telling me what crossed *their* minds. I hope we have another air check soon. There is *no* doubt in my mind that it helps us all improve.

New Mexico's a state.

2008-03-12T00:10:00.002-06:00

No, seriously, it actually *is* a state, at least since 1912, when last I can tell the national media were more obsessed with a certain transatlanic "White Star" luxury/steerage liner hitting a certain iceberg than the latest state to join the union. Granted, that may have well made better news sense back in 1912.

If you don't believe me, take ten seconds to confirm the fact with your local NPR affiliate station's newsroom. They can be reached at (505) (that's the area code, in parentheses, which I'm assuming reporters in Pasadena or New York just somehow seem to get confused by) 277-8013.

Unless of course that's not actually your local NPR affiliate's newsroom's number.

I can't pretend to begin to speak to the network's accountability to its listeners, in general. I can only speak to my own listeners' responses to the network we air on their local network affiliate, which I host.

And I hope network listeners respond uniquely to the network in each single market.

They can only make radio better by so doing.

I could document responses and whatnot 'til I went blue in the face.

But I have to sleep, now, before hearing tomorrow morning's headlines.

Which I'll hear -- in greater detail than even most of the most dedicated news junkies, I bet.

Then I'll wake up and write my own evening's headlines.

The "Complex Transformation" is indeed just a tiny bit controversial.

Big surprise.

Now I sleep.

If you hate me, call me! My number's listed somewhere, up above. :)

Another good day.

2008-03-11T20:13:00.002-06:00

Covered the morning hearing in Albuquerque on the NNSA's proposed "Complex Transformation". It's kind of a big deal 'cause it would do a lot of stuff that everyone has an opinion about, from possibly involving job cuts on the order of 20-30% across the nuclear weapons complex, nationwide, to consolidating all the sensitive nuclear material at something like five sites around the country, to designating Los Alamos as the nation's sole producer of plutonium pits. Just your standard anthill, here, in this part of the world.

No one seems to think it's entirely a good thing or entirely a bad thing, but there certainly are supporters and detractors, with *lots* of nuance to go around, and I had the distinct honour of speaking with several people on several different sides of the issue, today. At the same time, the NNSA's mission remains ultimately determined by Congress and the President -- a point acknowledged on mic not just by an activist but by the hearing examiner himself.

If you enjoy downloading PDFs from the web (and who doesn't?), you can download the entire Draft Complex Transformation Supplemental Programmatic Environmental Imapct Statement ("SPEIS") in 26 separate PDF files right here. (I'm a SPEIS gurrrl, honey.) And if you *still* just can't get enough of that PDF happiness, there are over 40 more site-specific fact sheets and appendices and whatnot for your edification and amusement.

Alternately, you can ask for a hard copy of the three-volume draft SPEIS from Ted Wyka at ComplexTransformation@nnsa.doe.gov (and no, he really doesn't bite, despite being barked at for a living). The trick is -- the public comment period ends April tenth. If you're planning to comment on the SPEIS, downloading the PDFs may well be your best option. (Unless, of course, you just want to do the lazy, ineffective thing and submit yet another form letter among thousands of others that basically say "whatever y'all is for, I's agin'it". Plenty of those floating 'round, which I'll leave it up to you to find, if so inclined. Subtle hint, if you care *anything* about your credibility: it hasn't been called "Complex 2030" for YEARS -- a fact I discovered the *hard* way between the sled track and Z Machine, which hasn't been the Particle Beam Fusion Accellerator for *years*.)

From there I head back to the station straight through a shortcut in the circuitously designed building so as to avoid walking for blocks back to my car. I wind up going straight through a HUGE National Bowling Association competition on the floor directly beneath the NNSA's hearings.

The only thing that could have added to the glorious surreality of walking through the MASSIVE bowling alley after talking with the deadly earnest activists and singlemindedly passionate scientists would have been if the bowlers (or at least *some* of them) had been wearing fursuits -- but alas, New Mexico seems to remain a *bit* behind the curve in just such things. Or, perhaps, I just happened by on the wrong day. Or perhaps fursuiters aren't really national bowling championship material. I honestly don't know! But it was *just* weird *enough* to put a smile on my face.

I smiled my way all the way back to the station, and remain smiling now.

Slight crisis in the newsroom -- the Associated Press stopped updating the wires on the website we routinely use to gather headlines. Jim helped me figure out a temporary workaround on that one (it involves a dot-matrix printer) and I *think* I managed to get a better workaround set up for the time being. That means our ability to gather headlines is severely limited. Oh well! Nothing to do but write our own headlines, meantime. I guess we have to act like a real newsroom now, huh? Forgive me if I *do* talk on the air a bit too much about the labs, but heck, there's *something* super-big and super-important coming out of the labs every day, and nothing else is on the wires even remotely affecting our listening area.

Too bad the network thinks the only worthwhile stories to come out of NM are "arts" stories. If devastating wildfires hits California, or New York gets tall buildings hit by aeroplanes, or if Louisiana get a nasty storm it's news for YEARS. As well it should be, because it all affects millions of people. But *if* the *only* story they run about any of that is about interpretive dance or experimental music, they would get crucified -- as well they should -- for trivializing catastrophe.

So -- how does the network handle the positively devastating bark beetle infestation that fuelled the catastrophic Cerro Grande Fire of May 2000 around (and on) Los Alamos which may have spread around some various and sundry national-lab-type nastiness into the drinking water all the way downstream to the Gulf Coast, not to mention over Oklahoma?

*That's* only newsworthy, apparently, 'cause someone from the Discovery Channel sees fit to do a so-called "story" about how someone managed to make "music" out of the sounds of the beetles, the infestation of which *may* have some tenuous connection or other to global warming, thereby conveniently securing grant funding from National Geographic.

But wait! It gets better! This "music" has gone on not only to be danced to in black box experimental theatres that no one attends, but has been *actually* played in Chiropractors' offices! Oh, how terribly clever and artistic are these provincial New Mexicans, who you *don't* need a passport to visit, and whose water is *actually* safe to drink! (It's not, really, but we don't tell fly-by celebrity reporters about that stuff unless they ask, which they apparently never think to do -- if they take a "what I don't know can't hurt me" attitude and combine it with "oh! I'm SO fearless for venturing SO VERY DEEP into this terribly dark wasteland, where no such creatures as jour-nal-ists even exist!", far be it from us to go out of our way to disabuse them of such notions. DRINK UP!)

Yes, I'm conflating several complaints into one post here. But you get the general idea.

Truth is *very* much stranger than fiction, and the truth in this part of the world far outstrips whatever convenient fictions lazy drive-by celebrity reporters (to give Limbaugh his due, even if he *is* sloppier hitting the posts than I am) might imagine the underlying "national" story to be from the part of the world.

You can *not* get the stories from this part of the world by just happening by.

You have to *live* here. Day in, and day out, for years.

I defy *any* New Yorker to tell me about the sex of Chickens in Dineh.

Oh, that's right. You don't know what "Dineh" is! Silly me.

So I'll give you a hint:

It's not lunch in Savannah.

Great broadcast.

2008-03-06T20:43:00.003-07:00

I know. Not like Murrow on London's rooftops. But relatively speaking. Let's just say "compared to the last several days".

It's been a rough week for lots of reasons I won't bore you with.

Jim got back to town yesterday while I was kind of at my low point, freaking out on everything, *trying* to *force* myself to stay positive, which *isn't* how it works, 'cause if you do that you just talk fast and sound sing-songy. Not to mention it's an emotional rollercoaster to do things that way, which is bloody unfair to myself and surely doesn't do the listeners any favours, either. (Apologies to any listener whom I may have caused -- allegedly, of course -- to drive off into a ditch.) These are things that can *only* be learned over doing this sort of thing, day-in, day-out for a while.

There's some immense and glacial calm which is communicable in the newsroom now. I caught it yesterday, but only after the single most disastrous interview I've ever conducted in my life.

You can do this "broadcast news" thing one of two ways, as I see it.

You can go *totally* bipolar -- get cynical, but still sound *way* too happy when you *should* sound "moderately upbeat", turning *intense* emotions off and on like water from a spigot. Do it a few days running and your whole body will literally ache. Your eyes will burn. Your throat will grate. You will hear yourself in the headphones, as you speak, and whatever state of mind you are deliberately affecting, you will think "my god, who *is* this cartoon madman reading news *at* me?". I therefore do not recommend this particular technique.

Or -- you can be calm, no matter what. You can *breathe*. DEEPLY. In this state, you don't have to flip personalities between announcing tragic news and telling people about lovely weather. You *can* be calm, respectful, and appropriate, no matter *what* actually happens, *if* you've got enough clean air inside your lungs and insufficient phlegm to choke you up. You can achieve this state in under ten seconds. The slightest and most undeliberate change in speed and intonation will signal to listeners whether it's "good" news or "bad", and they won't *need* any over-the-top histrionics.

The simple fact is I don't like being in the former state, and *much* prefer being in the latter. Whether this is what listeners want, only time will tell. Pledge drive's a month away -- if anyone loves or hates anything I'm doing, this is my chance to hear about it!

The best way I can illustrate it is how very different actors play Hamlet, and specifically his soliloquies on stage. Are you DECLAIMING TIMELESS BRILLIANT AND DRAMATIC ORATORY TO THE HUDDLED MASSES sitting in the back row, in the hopes that your words will just *overwhelm* everyone else? Or are you really just talking to one person, and exploring one issue, for a minute or two at a time? Radio *isn't* theatre -- but there *are* some *crucial* similarities.

Then the accomplishment for the day -- a two-part report I am *genuinely* proud of my hand in, and, even more, for the newsroom as a whole, because it signals a major shift in how we work *with* eachother.

A regional hospital is considering an operating agreement with a Roman Catholic-owned chain of hospitals, and a bunch of groups in the community are worried about what will happen to end-of-life and women's reproductive healthcare under the new arrangement.

About a month ago we *might* have managed to send one person to a press conference, get someone declaiming angrily into a mic in front of TV cameras, and then called up the other side only to get a prepared statement in response. It would have been "thorough" and "balanced" in the lowest-common-denominator way such a story might ever be and still get the basic facts out there. It might even have advanced the story a bit. But I would bet money it would have impressed listeners about as much as dropping a brick on the sidewalk, only to find it didn't bounce. Even if it *could* be delivered without sounding like one omniscient reporter trying to moderate a shouting match introduced by a host who wound up sounding vapid for not having any involvement in the story beyond rewriting the lead, it would have ultimately ended with some variation on "so-and-so says you're doing this. Are you?" followed by "no, we're not." Thud. A clunker.

Elaine's the process-oriented, "issues" person in the newsroom. Get her talking sometime -- and just listen. Within three minutes she'll go from facts and figures through characterizations into what the broader social implications are and have you utterly enthralled at her analysis of how this little disagreement between parties you've never dealt with in your life really *matters*. Everything ties into something bigger, and given half a chance, she *can* make you understand *why* it's important.

I, on the other hand, am the detail-oriented faggot geek from Texas. I want clear answers -- yes or no, mostly -- on what the details of the actual contract are, and want to hear why so-and-so will not release them to the public for review, so I can edit it all down in under half an hour and go ON AIR with the hard *facts* at hand. And to be fair to Steve, I'm also "the host", and making my broadcast sound good is among my very top priorities -- "broad issues" are all well and good, but damn it, I have *got* to go on air in twenty minutes, and good luck getting me to understand the underlying issues between now and then while I'm lining up carts, billboards, bollboard music, funding credits, headlines, and weather.

As of today we are working *together* -- as opposed to just "in the same room". A *huge* part of the credit for this goes to Jim.

A couple of weeks ago it was a story about testing veterans for depleted uranium exposure. She worked on her end for *hours* with genetic mutations in the children of veterans exposed to DU. She gathered story after story. I just wanted to know whether DU was or was not the byproduct of Uranium enrichment, and which isotope(s) we were talking about, and the possible role of various "daughter" elements in the decay chain, and why DU was being used for munitions at all (it pierces armour), and what the funding situation was for the program in question.

We worked "in the same room" on that one. We never *quite* found common ground. The story got out, but if you may forgive me for saying so, it wasn't so great, in terms of the total broadcast package. I kind of thought she was crazy, and while I wouldn't dare attribute thoughts to her, I think she could be forgiven for kind of thinking *I* was crazy.

Today's story was *totally* different.

Elaine spent two hours in interviews -- a good chunk of it with people critical of the hospital's arrangement, and their lack of transparency in contrat negotiations. She comes out of interviews with advocates of this and that who want to ask the hospital some questions, which the hospital won't answer to their satisfaction.

I shut up for five minutes and just listen to Elaine, knowing little more than that there is some controversy here. I get a decent sense of *what* it's most important that I ask, without getting emotionally involved in the story. Jim acts as moderator. I get to use the "straw man" in an ethically justifiable way -- I don't personally care, all that much, about reproductive health or contraception or end-of-life care issues and how the Council of Bishops mandates "Christus Health" treat these things.

But -- as an emotionally disengaged reporter, I *can* casually call up and ask the spokesman for the hospital, on behalf of the people who *do* care personally, what they're doing to address these various concerns. It's *not* personal. It doesn't *matter* if I "like" or "don't like" the person I'm interviewing. He agrees -- on tape -- to give some information to me that the activists have not yet managed to get. That agreement gets broadcast to perhaps a hundred thousand listeners.

And I intend to check the inbox tomorrow morning.

So anyway -- we took what could have been a glorious clunker of a produced story about vague abstractions from "right to life" to "right to die" and an uninteresting lead about dull facts concerning contract negotiations and fiscal and ethical implications and tied it all together -- beautifully. It ran about twelve minutes long, from end to end. And the overall effect -- I don't "believe" this, I KNOW it, because I *heard* it -- was one of facilitating a dialogue that might not otherwise have happened. Jim moderated between Elaine and me, and between us all, we facilitated a dialogue, in considerable depth, that might otherwise have been nothing more than "allegations" and "denials".

MY GOD. I LOVE PUBLIC RADIO.

I still do not consider myself a "team player". When I see that very term, I think of Starbucks, and how people are variously managed -- expertly, or not -- into achieving goals that really do *not* matter, in the end. But -- I can not deny tonight's two-parter had an impact that no discrete, "boxy" single-reporter piece on so complex an issue *ever* could have.

I tell you what. I would bet *money* that a *lot* of people heard both of our stories all the way through, tonight, over twelve minutes, as one single "piece", who would *not* have listened to a five or seven minute "he said"/"she said" piece by one reporter, introduced by a host who sounds like he just doesn't "get it".

I am where I belong.

Read this:

2008-03-04T21:01:00.003-07:00

KKOB Radio News Anchor Laura MacCallum Quits After Station Pulls Stories About Alleged Republican Vote-Buying Efforts

Ex-anchor Says Station Caved to Pressure From Heather Wilson’s Senate Campaign

Station Says Story Had No Legs

Not an easy headline, that; but it probably won't be long before I have to credit Dennis Domrzalski on air.

I make jokes about unwieldy headlines and difficult names.

Meanwhile, the above-named commercial broadcast journalist breaks a major story -- not on air, but in his blog.

The ironies, indeed, abound -- but I admit.

I am impressed.

Even keel.

2008-03-03T20:12:00.000-07:00

On a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

Saturday attended a day-long activist gathering on the NNSA's "Complex Transformation", which proposes consolidating sensitive nuclear material at a limited number of sites around the country but also provides for Los Alamos to become *the* sole manufacturer of Plutonium pits.

Saturday night my mother calls to tell me she's ready to put my aged and ailing father into foster care. I find myself in no condition to sift through six hours of tape, following that.

Sunday I go in for my broadcast, and mostly just watch the person that I'm training run the board. There are some rough spots, but he understands it. At the same time, he's not totally comfortable taking over, completely, on his own, just yet.

Sunday night my mother tells me tht my father's daughter's flying in from Mississippi and that family and freinds are coming in from all around to say "final goodbyes".

Monday -- today -- I go in figuring "this will be hard" but somehow get into it and sound OK.

Then I hear that I sound "a bit overdriven" on a weather break during my second hour. (Overcompensation, anyone? I'm reading current temperatures *all over* the damn place.)

I guess I do. The coffee has definitely gone to my head.

I wrap it up and hand it off and get home only to find my father has been transferred, now, to foster care. Not a teribly fun telephone conversation. My mother can barely breathe. But she's got someone there to help look after her, which is a *huge* blessing.

The best thing I've got going for me right now is the two hours every afternoon where I have *got* to keep an even keel.

Domenici retiring was *easy*. Covering ATC over Super Tuesday was *easy*. Let's just hope I can rise to this challenge.

On disinterest.

2008-02-28T23:09:00.003-07:00

Reporters and hosts should never be directly, emotionally involved in the stories they cover.

Period.

This is the lesson for today.

I learned it -- as I learn *all* the lessons in my life -- the hard way.

I wake up to Elaine announcing that the El Rey Theatre is on fire.

I go back to sleep and wake up totally refreshed, ready to go, some time later, convinced it was just one of those weird work-related, "what if?" kind of dreams.

I get to the station and quickly find out that it *wasn't* a dream.

Three of Albuquerque's leading music venues are now closed for an indefinite period. One of them lies in ashes. Literally.

What do I bloody well care? I haven't been to a concert since Austin.

But anyone who knows me well knows my own personal "long story" regarding historic movie theatres in city after city where I've lived. It's weird what can emotionally hijack you, on air. You can report, day after day, about things you *do* care about, and make yourself credible. But then something turns up to stir up ashes from some long-forgotten, previous existence you lived years ago, and you're fully engulfed to your eyeballs in flames about some place you barely know in person.

Being in a radio station, I'm surrounded by people who care *deeply* about the music scene in this town -- which was just starting to go somewhere when in a single hour, half the music venues get shut down (probably for months, if not forever) by just one little fire that raged out of control, however briefly.

People are asking me every few minutes, all through the day, if I have any new information, or they're giving me people to talk to, or I'm talking to those people, or arranging to talk to them, or they're giving me background information I did *not* know two minutes before -- or -- or -- or.

Prometheus be damned.

Then there's the inconvenient fact that several concerts for which various music show hosts have given tickets away to listeners for the next few days have been moved somewhere else, or are in the process of being moved somewhere else.

Then there's the additionally inconvenient fact that a bar in the back of the building that's burned down was very probably *the* first gay bar in town, back in the 'fifties: I believe it was called "the Newsroom", as though there weren't enough layers to this simple enough "fire" story to begin with.

But wait! It gets better.

The woman who runs the theater gave up a successful career in Hollywood to come back to Albuquerque to run the building which has been in her family for three generations.

And -- the family that's owned the building for three generations is directly related to Giacomo Puccini -- yep -- the "La Boheme" and "Madame Butterfly" and "Tosca" *inventor* of "verismo" in opera, the precursor to "cinema verite" *and* Broadway.

The whole station -- and everyone in it -- goes totally somber. It's a "death in the family" type atmosphere. Feels like a funeral.

I allow it to affect my broadcast.

That's *my* mistake. I'll be damned if I let it happen again. Sooner or later, *something* I report will be more deeply personal. I might do well to listen back, critically, to live radio coverage of 9.11.01. (Miss Piggy, anyone?)

Other stories are happening.

But -- my job as host *isn't* to get wrapped up in any one single story. And I *do* line up other headlines. And read them.

But when I go on air, I sound like a bloody funeral director, regardless what I'm reading.

Conflicting emotions abound. I'm definitely doing a public service for listeners by reading out this "headline" about the fire that I've written that the AP hasn't even touched.

But I can't let one headline totally dominate the whole news broadcast. Again -- I learn this the *hard* way.

My voice sounds downright funerary. Even when I'm telling listeners that tomorrow will be "sunny and beautiful", my voice says "something's *definitely* wrong here". Like I'm *assuming* that anyone who hears me do one weather report during their commute will think me insufficiently respectful if I sound the slightest bit happy about the good weather. It's an absurd assumption. People listen when they listen; I'll be damned if it makes any difference what I happened to be deeply immersed in, some hours before.

Richard bumps into me in the hall somewhere between 6:06:30 and a 6:19. I admit to him "I'm a nervous wreck". He says "you can't let it affect your work", in that experienced broadcaster sort of way that sounds just enough like Wyler's "personality" comment that I think about it without letting it *totally* sabotage my next break. No one's called to complain. Is it personal?

I can either get all hurt and let it ruin my next break, or I can take the criticism as "contstructively intended" and move on to make my next break better. I take the latter option, not out of any particular wisdom on my part, but just because I'm getting bloody sick and tired of hearing myself almost break up on air over a stupid fire story.

It's an emotional rollercoaster just getting back into the Control Room at that point. I *can* take it personally, if I choose to, and become the radio equivalent of certain Channel Nine reporters who are now -- who knows, who cares -- where? Wyler's dispassionate words come back to me: "too much personality". I remember being eleven years old and moved by some on-camera person's sincere tears and grimaces, only to forget whatever story they were reporting. Not a garden path I want to follow.

Eventually it dawns on me -- I've let this single story *dominate* my day -- and I'm letting *my* day dominate the broadcast. And now I'm pushing off what dominated *my* day on the listeners. Not fair!

The story *is* important.

But it's not *that* important. Not to *everyone* who's listening.

Nothing to do now but save my next break. No more "happy weather" reported in my best "the world is coming to an end" tone of voice. Not to be cynical -- but no one died, and no one will, and no one who didn't hear the headline cares about the news who's only tuning in, right now, just to hear the weather.

I get one call from a listener who doesn't give his name to tell me that Santa Fe isn't clear, but overcast. God bless him, he brings me back to where I need to be, as well. The information source I'm reading for weather has *definitely* got some problems. It's not earth-shattering stuff, but damn it, my credibility is on the line.

Then at the bottom of the 6 o'clock hour I practically have to repeat the fire headline for anyone who didn't hear it earlier. It's mostly hard-core radio freaks (like me) who listen to both hours, every single day.

The *fact* is that *normal* people *don't* listen to eight hours of news each day. They just maybe kind of happen to casually tune in when they're driving wherever, and whoever tunes in from a whole different part of the state for their ten-minute commute who happens to hear my weather likely doesn't *care* whether I sound sufficiently sombre on the basis of a headline they didn't hear and won't know anything about 'til they get their morning paper the following day.

I stumble once -- over some inexpert writing -- on my part. But it isn't the leading headline at that point. I'm just repeating it, at the end, for the "turnover" audience that didn't hear it at the top of the 5 o'clock hour. And I do it in my "news" voice, however imperfectly. Not my "funeral director" voice. "Funeral director" voice be damned.

For my final weather break I read the weather, forward announce the music show that's taking over, realize I have nothing additional to say, and fade back up to network, with ten seconds to spare.

Sometimes the less you say, the better.

I *love* this job because it's *never* the same from one day to the next.

But I'll be *damned* if I ever let myself become involved emotionally again like I did today. It damn near sank me.

Tomorrow is -- to coin a phrase -- another day.

Tristan rules.

2008-02-27T23:12:00.002-07:00

Not just because he has a name dating back to Medieval literature, either.

I wrote up a yellow sheet on this. I'm a bit of a clock freak, as anyone who knows me knows.

Winds up the US Naval Observatory Clock "confidence audio" we're getting over channel two in Sat-2 is *actually* delayed by roughly 700 milliseconds between the time it's broadcast and the time it reaches us. (Satellites -- great, except when they are not.)

So the various "atomic clocks" in the control room *are*, indeed, variously inaccurate, as they tend to set themselves once or twice per day, in the hours immediately following whenever I go off air, which means they're generally most inaccurate when I am ON AIR.

BUT! I know *precisely* how inaccurate the USNO clock coming over Sat-2 on channel two is, now, thanks to Tristan explaining it to me.

Therefore -- I can correct for the clocks that I watch during any given broadcast based on what I know is the margin of error for the clock I can listen to.

My current ON AIR "running error" is cutting the network rejoin *way* too close.

I'm *almost* ready to do the "network in one ear, cue in another" trick.

Key word: "almost".

Why weather is an art.

2008-02-22T12:11:00.002-07:00

Because we get national weather service reports that look something like this (this is an excerpt):

CURRENT MAPS...SHOWING BROAD NEARLY ZONAL FLOW ALOFT OVER NEW MEXICO...FLOW SHEARING THE BASE OFF HIGH AMPLITUDE NEGATIVELY TILTED TROUGH EXTENDING FROM GULF OF ALASKA SOUTHWARD TO THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. BROAD DIFFLUENT OUTLET JUST CROSSING OVER CENTRAL ARIZONA...AND THIS WILL WORK IN TOWARD WESTERN AND NORTHERN NEW MEXICO DURING THE DAY TODAY. FLAT PRESSURE FIELD AT THE SURFACE...WITH LIGHT WINDS AND A LITTLE PATCHY FOG NEAR THE TEXAS BORDER...AND A FEW LINGERING SNOW SHOWERS OVER THE NORTHERN MOUNTAINS.

MODELS...SOLID CONSENSUS WITH PLAUSIBLE SOLUTION...DEVELOPING COMPLEX MULTI SYSTEM EASTERN PACIFIC PATTERN AS SHORTWAVES DEVELOP IN SHEARING FLOW UNDERCUTTING ALASKA TO CALIFORNIA TROUGH.

SHORTWAVE DEVELOPING ON LEADING EDGE OF DIFFLUENT ZONE WILL ZIP ACROSS THE STATE THROUGH SATURDAY...AS NEXT UPSTREAM SYSTEM IN NORTH PACIFIC MAKES LANDFALL OVER SAN FRANCISCO BAY LATE SATURDAY AND THEN SIDESWIPES NORTHERN HALF OF NEW MEXICO THROUGH THE DAY ON SUNDAY. UPSTREAM RIDGE BUILDING FROM TROPICAL PACIFIC TO SOUTHEAST ALASKA ON MONDAY WILL CREEP SLOWLY TO WESTERN NEW MEXICO BY TUESDAY...BUT CONTINUED SPILLS OF SHORTWAVES ON DOWNSTREAM LIMB OF THE RIDGE WILL SLIDE SOUTHWARD OVER EASTERN HALF OF THE STATE. RIDGE FIRMLY IN PLACE BY TUESDAY NIGHT...BUT GETS MASHED DOWN BY LAST HALF OF THE WORK WEEK AS EAST CENTRAL PACIFIC SHORTWAVE MAKES LANDFALL IN PACIFIC NORTHWEST AND THEN AMPLIFIES AND CLOSES OFF OVER ARIZONA EARLY THURSDAY TO PUT BRAKES ON WARMING TREND FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE WORK WEEK.

Thanks for all that about California and Alaska and the Tropics and the Pacific Northwest. Thanks for all the drama of things zipping and affecting and impacting through a series of invasions and incursions by saggy back door fronts and upper low systems.

But -- what's the sky look like right now? Will it rain, or snow, and if so, where?

Dancing on the airwaves.

2008-02-21T21:18:00.002-07:00

I'll try to keep it brief. Two recollections of two of the most meaningful compliments I've ever been paid in my life.

Tuesday: I go to the Z Machine rededication at Sandia. You know -- the leading edge inertial confinement fusion machine on the planet. The world's most powerful emitter of X-rays, plus lots of other scientifically defensible superlative adjectives. The project at Sandia that even the most dedicated anti-nuke people I know say *everyone* there has a *right* to be proud of. (They don't let the press in to talk with people in the Light Initiated High Explosives unit, as a rule; and also, therefore, as a rule, I take whatever chance I get to go out there.)

As I get back to the station, I realise I'd forgetten to turn in my security badge. My escort out is obligated to come get it from me. I'd have driven it back to him if I weren't set to go on air in a few short minutes.

He's clearly more a scientist than a PR type.

He walks in after my first newscast and asks me in what I take for amazement "how do you run that thing?" while looking at the broadcast board. "Simple. Practice, mostly." Or something like that. This from a man who's capable of splitting atoms.

Was it flattery? Maybe. But I don't think it was. Call it a gut feeling. If we hadn't spent the next few minutes talking about radio in considerable depth, or if he hadn't admired the record libary like he did, I don't know -- maybe I'd feel different. But this guy strikes me as a man who *definitely* knows his radio. He watches me do a weather break, then we have to part ways. I could have, would have, gladly talked with him for *hours*.

Then Wednesday at 6:20:30 I get done reading my weather report. I'm getting better at these -- in some ways, they're one of the hardest things to do, for lots of reasons I won't bore you with -- but I'm getting better, and I *know* it. I get a call from a listener who doesn't give his name. It goes something like this:

"What's the temperature in Chama?"
"I don't honestly know. I'll tell you why -- the website I'm using lists a current temperature for Chama, but at this point, it's three hours old. I don't want to read off a current temperature that's just plain wrong."
"Do they even get your signal in Chama?"
"I honestly don't know." Then out of nowhere:
"You are DANCING on the airwaves."

I go completely, totally, dead silent. Like I go if I'm not sure if my mic is on. Maybe this guy's recording me. I'm waiting for the punchline, or for the other shoe to drop. I'm acting like it's probably a crank call, guessing someone really *doesn't* like the way I do my weather and is trying to make me feel silly, which I *know* will screw me up for *hours* if I buy into his setup. Finally, the voice on the other side of the phone pipes up again.

"I'm trying to COMPLIMENT you. You sound *great*."
"Oh, well, uhm, thank you! I think. You kind of left me at a loss for words right there."

He did. Of course, then, I'm still in the "how-to-get-information-for-Chama" state of mind and tell him if he knows a better way to get current information I would *love* to read current conditions for Chama but, but, but.

No. Apparently, whoever he was, he really meant it.

Thank you, whoever you are. It means a lot to me.

Screwup.

2008-02-18T21:15:00.002-07:00

Not a bad one -- but no screwup is good.

ATC tonight did something they haven't done before that I know of -- they had a piece at the back of segment D that was intro-ed during segment A. Normally segment D is where we run locally produced stories -- the network stories in that segment tend to be "soft feature" types of things.

But because they're having a Presidents' Day "quiz" during segment A, with answers in segment D, we can't just broadcast over the answers in segment D that they forward announce (thanks loads), or I'll be fielding angry calls asking *me* who the first president was to wear trousers. (I'm guessing President Yves Saint Laurent.)

What would normally be a process of "timing it out" to the post thus became a matter of "timing it out" beginning whenever such-and-such segment ended (not according to the time on the rundown) and then "timing it out" repeatedly for every local story that we played to the post which had moved since I previewed it two hours ahead of time on a station that ran that particular hour streaming.

It would have worked perfectly except for one small thing: the last piece to end before I had to join the network featured saxophone music.

And what did I choose for my "music bed"?

You guessed it -- saxophone music.

I should have seen that one coming a mile away.

So I'm sitting there with saxophone music going out over the airwaves and *different* saxophone music playing in cue and I get mentally jumbled -- it all sounds the same -- what's coming over the "PROGRAM" speakers above the board and what's coming from the "CUE" speakers beneath it. I *think* I hear the network going out over the airwaves, and fade down -- but no, it's the saxophone music I'm playing to pad 30 or so seconds. So to listeners -- they're hearing saxophone music, when suddenly, for no apparent reason, it goes away, and then comes back again, a second later, again for no apparent reason.

But -- I *do* join clean! The super-hard, some-would-say "impossible" thing to do, I manage. Bot only after fading out, and fading in the signal for no discernible reason.

Would you believe "technical difficulties"?

How about "gremlins"?

"Elves"?

Come on, people -- I'm running out of options.

Anyhow -- no one called to complain, so I guess it wasn't *too* bad -- though it did make me nervous, knowing it was coming for the first half hour.

If I'd just switched my music beds out, I would have been OK. I should have known to, given what I'd heard, before, when getting the outcue. Perhaps I was thinking it would make more sense to do something that would sound comprable in case I made some *other* mistake that I didn't. Radio is *perfect* for people who overthink everything.

Lessons learned for next time, I suppose.

Tomorrow -- Senator Domenici's coming to town to rededicate the Z Machine at Sandia. (Remember post hole convolutes?) There's a ribbon cutting open to the press and I'll be damned if I miss it. The timing is going to be *very* tight (not as tight as in the Z-pinch!) but I figure if I show up at the station early enough I can get some of the basic stuff out of the way, go to the event, and make it back *barely* in time to write out billboards and pull the more recent headlines. If I'm *very* lucky I can even write up a cut and copy on what happens at the event.

Correction -- I think.

2008-02-15T23:32:00.003-07:00

Maybe.

Hindsight being what it is:

In my post from 6 February, the words "less than one-hundredth of one percentage point" should probably have read "less than one-tenth of one percentage point".

That is, unless I am confused, which probably, I am.

Reporter + math = disaster. That's the only equation I *really* understand.

I'm blaming lack of sleep, at the time, because it's convenient.

But you get the idea. At the time it was basically me doing the calculations and just figuring out there were super-tight margins. *How* tight remains an open question for people who can actually do the math. I may be off by a factor of ten, but that the margins are extremely tight I don't think is seriously in question.

Then again, I'm not a statistician, and am probably misusing the term "margin".

Please -- anyone who knows better -- correct me.

Four facts.

2008-02-15T22:23:00.004-07:00

1. A brand new, full-powered radio transmitter with the call sign KBOM is now ON AIR, as of this afternoon, broadcasting at 88.7 MHz FM from Socorro.

2. KUNM has hired a Radio Production Technician on a "Full Time Equivalent" three-month term basis.

3. The first assignement handed to the new hire was to announce the new station's first legal ID.

4. I have a new job -- for the time being, at least -- and I *love* it like I've never loved *any* job in my life.

I'm the monkey.

2008-02-12T21:13:00.004-07:00

Got paid today and paid the rent.

Went in and got everything lined up for broadcast.

Then I overdosed -- near fatally -- on the US Naval Observatory clock.

I put it in cue to double-check it against the clocks I'd be using -- it was about the same margin as yesterday. I should have shut it off right then, but I didn't. I find the clock strangely compelling. So I line everything up all super-neat and super-nifty for my broadcast, and for a couple of minutes, the clock helps me get into the rhythm. But then I go and let it run in cue for waaaaaay too long -- maybe ten or twelve minutes. By the time I shut it off, it's turned me into a nervous wreck. Five seconds! Fifteen Seconds! Thirty Seconds! AAAAAGH! I'm tweaking on the second-by-second clicks and announcements and beeps. NEVER AGAIN.

I read *sixteen* headlines toay -- wire rewrites and press-release rewrites. Way too many!

During my first newscast, I'm starting to get into habits, and they turn on me! I've been doing a bunch of stories lately with federal and state government budget amounts, but right now I'm reading about competing house and senate versions of a bill the governor wants enacted, but *only* if it gives him the power to appoint so-and-so. I come across the words "eleven member panel" in my copy and only mentally register the "eleven m-" while I'm reading, so it comes out "eleven million dollar panel". I actually stop and apologise for that, on air, and then correct myself. I don't apologise unless I have to -- but it could have been "heard" as an editorial comment, which it wasn't. It was just a mistake. But it was a *bad* one. Unbelieveable what the mind can trip over.

I'm feeling more on an equal footing with the network, though, which is a good thing. Makes things more seamless on my end and serves listeners better. I hear *all* the little mistakes on the network and it *definitely* makes me feel better. Today with the "Potomac Primaries" they did a bunch of live phone interviews -- and I swear -- at one point you hear them take off their headphones and say "that's it?", "yeah, it's over" before KTCHUNK someone SLAMS a mic off from the board ('round about :18:33). Which wouldn't probably be that super-big a deal, except they don't have their own internal music bed cued up. One -- two -- three -- four -- shit man, the *network* is feeding dead air. Since the next thing in line on my end is a cart, followed by weather, I fade out the network and just hit my cart. Then that gives me a few extra seconds for weather, which I get to read in my super-sexy weather voice that positively *drips* with "I can save thing even when the network can't" attitude.

So -- from screwing up, to saving it, to screwing up again.

I made a mistake I didn't know it was *possible* to make at the bottom of the hour during hour one, which is our second hour. 6:29:25 rolls around and I'm all set to go with a cart for 29:30, and billboard music and script for 6:30. I fade down the network after the ME promo to say something like "You can hear Morning Edition right here on 89.9 between five and eight tomorrow morning" before playing the cart. Perfectly routine.

Then I hit the wrong button.

It *shouldn't* be possible. The buttons are on *totally* opposite ends of the board. I should know better. I *do* know better. But somehow, I still managed to hit the wrong button, and my mistake is going out RIGHT THEN to EVERYONE.

I'm *supposed* to be playing a 30-second cart to forward-annoucne the Sunday Public Affairs program.

What comes through my headphones?

"Bah! Bah! Bum! Bum! Bah! Bah! Bum! Bum!"

OH SHIT. I didn't play the cart. I hit the billboard music! AGH!!!! Think fast. Do I fade out and juggle things and probably screw up the clock badly enough that I'm reading far-flung local headlines for the next four minutes while obliterating national headlines?

Uhm. No. I stop and breathe, I casually pick up the script I *had* planned to pick up 20 seconds later, fade up the mic, fade down the music to "background" and as casually as possible "tease" what's coming up in the next half hour, just exactly like that's how I'd *planned* to do it.

Then on air I start to break up laughing. It's fine to sound happy -- but my god -- look what I'm "teasing" -- kidnappings in Afghanistan and veterans' suicides. I get giggly, despite my best efforts reading through the Afghanistan "teaser" and skip the veterans' suicide line to go on to the Hollywood Writers' Strike line.

Then I play the cart, which is *really* out of place running right *after* the billboard, but I have to, because I've got 30 seconds I simply *must* cover.

It sounds weird. But it sounds better than it would have if I'd done something truly, monumentally stupid, precipitously, to try and save it, and fail. There's no stopping the clock.

On the rundown for hour two (our first hour) this afternoon there was a bit about the last "Super Tuesday" state to deliver results. (I'll give you fifty guesses which state that is.)
It said they'd be talking with Jeff Jones, who is the political reporter for the Albuquerque Journal.

I saw that on the rundown and actually had to leave the building just to avoid writing a sarcastic "billboard" tease. I thought I *might* mention Jones by name, or the Journal, but decided against it for no better reason than that (with very few exceptions -- coughNinaTotenbergAhhem) the tease should *not* be about the reporter or media outlet but about the story.

Then I'm running the network and up comes this story that I want to hear. And who's on the other side of the phone -- or the mic? (Sounds like a tape sync to me.) Not Jones, but "member station KUNM News Director Jim Williams". WHOA!!!

I go ECSTATIC. He's onto a whole story -- vastly more important, but *way* harder to cover -- than the usual "we're taking forever to count votes, well, 'cause we're New Mexico, and we just kinda do things slow here" story that seems to dominate the mainstream coverage of what's happening. He's been talking with county clerks and the Secretary of State and Democratic Party big-wigs to figure it all out. Real investigative *digging*. Winds up there are discrepancies between the lists used by the party for the caucus sites and the lists the county clerks say they provided which resulted in registered democrats in at least three different counties being forced to vote on provisional ballots, which are now in the process of being "certified" -- let alone counted -- before the certification deadline this Friday.

Sometimes, being on board, you are just the monkey to someone else's organ-grinder. You (hopefully) push buttons when you need to and sound good delivering the weather forecast and try to cover things as best you can. Your acquaintances who don't listen to news may compliment your voice and mean it and you'll be glad to hear it. But sometimes the best thing you can do is just be there so others can do the things that *really* matter, which they couldn't do if they had to be nursing the board, watching levels.

At its best it's a collaborative effort, all the way.

The temptation is *huge* to think "Ah-Hah! I am the silver-throated warbler of the News! The radio's Ted Baxter! People tune in to hear ME! ME! ME!" Uhm -- no. People tune in to hear the NEWS.

Reality -- humility? -- creeps in. Tonight, I mostly just pushed buttons. And given the news day at hand, what more could I have possibly done?

I *love* this game. Broadcasting. It's different every single day.

Whoa. "I will create the nationalist party." This from Michael Savage. Eleven at night. He's just spent twenty minutes letting a guest preach against Sharia law, which he clearly does not understand. "With God's will and your listenership . . . " -- what the hell am I missing?

I've made a point of listening to other leading stations lately. We're not just on opposite ends of the dial, we're on completely different wavelengths. Literally. Are we even competing for the same listeners? What the hell? I'm just wanting to hear people talk and my own station's all music right now.

Ads are INSANE. I've never been a fan of underwriter spots. But ads are NUTS. Either it's the store's owner talking badly for WAY too long ("we're a restaurant, and you can find us behind this other, way better-known restaurant -- again -- we're behind this other way better-known restaurant -- look for it.") or it's a *way* too slick announcer "o!ver!em!pha!size!ing! ev!ery!sing!gle! syl!lab!ble! NOT JUST ONCE, BUT THREE TIMES! NOT TWICE, BUT THREE TIMES! THREE TIMES!!! THAT IS, THREE TIMES, AT LEAST! THREE TIMES, MINIMUM! CALL NOW!"

From nationalist parties to UFOs. Radio's an interesting medium. But I've had enough for one day. I should find a way to listen to what's on the air the same time I am on the air. Heh, heh.