An Opening and An Elegy

Neighbors,

I open this North Country Public Radio blog after months of station conversation about finding a place for neighbors across the region--and beyond--to talk to each other about public radio, about community issues, about the natural or political worlds we live in, about art or about family and friends doing interesting work. It's a shared blog. Members of the station staff will post from time to time, and some of you will want to respond or move the discussion in other directions. This post is the sapling.

On the air or on-line the people who work at NCPR are grappling with increased expectations: the more we do as a public media service, the more people expect of us. We are a small staff serving a huge geography with labor-intensive media, like regional news and a content-rich website. It's a daily juggling act--which wonderful (or simply routine but necessary) project should take our attention and talent? Do we invest in a detailed, community-by-community weather service or produce an in-depth series on running a dairy farm? Do we initiate a new weekly feature about food or find a way to train young people to use recording equipment? If our audio producer is devoting most of his time to a year-long regional music series, who will produce the local StoryCorps segments for "The 8 o'clock Hour?"

I'm not complaining. It's a kind of wealth to have so much good work to do. The first step of the work, though, is to make choices. Sometimes our choices may suit you, sometimes not. I'm always interested in hearing about what you like, don't like, or think we should do differently.

I'll use my posts to this space to try to give you a sense of what's happening on this side of the microphone or keyboard, of the conundrums we're trying to finesse--or just muscle--our way through.

I'll also use my posts to let you know I'm human, even if I work at a radio station. One of the things that separates media people from audiences is the sense that the voice you hear on the air belongs to an inaccessible person whose life outside of radio is either non-existent or shielded by a privacy curtain. It's gotta be that way. After all, no one wants to know what I ate for breakfast (even I don't care). But time after time what we hear from you--in notes, in response to surveys, in phone calls and emails--is this: beyond the favorite program or service, what you like best is the sound and sensibility of the people who work here. You want to know something about the people you trust to deliver accurate and complete news, introduce new music, or curate information about culture and the arts.

So, here's the elegy. This is the personal part. My beloved dog Ozzie died 10 days ago. A horrible anguishing death. Not old age. Caught in an 8-inch claw trap. I couldn't get her out of it in time. No animal should die this way, yet who knows how many raccoons, fisher, muskrats and other wild creatures are subjected to this brutal death each year. People do still set traps. A few of them rely on these traps for a livelihood; most do not. This is not like the death and destruction taking place in Iraq or Somalia, but it is a small ghastliness that touched me deeply and directly. I wish I was a wordsmith like Dale Hobson. I could write a beautiful elegy to a loving and sweet creature. Instead, I turn to an anonymous master who wrote this lyric:

...Old Blue died and he died so hard,
Shook the ground in my backyard.
Dug him a grave with a sliver spade,
Lowered him down with a golden chain.
Every link I did call his name.

Here Blue, you good dog you.
Here Blue, I'm coming there too.