Good Filters Make Good Neighbors:

If you live in the northeastern part of the NCPR listening area you may wonder why, lately, we have sounded like we are broadcasting over a wind-up Dick Tracy walkie-talkie. With the bottom end of the fm spectrum getting as crowded as dollar pitcher night with a hot band, it gets harder to accommodate new neighbors. A new religious network station sharing our Terry Mountain transmitter site appears to be interfering with the relay of our broadcast signal to the transmitter at 88.3 fm in Peru, and our new 102.1 fm translator in Jay. Radio Bob is at the site installing filters that may improve reception, and is in contact with our new neighbors to work on peaceful coexistence. We hope to see substantial improvement in the next day or so, and in a few weeks, installation of new digital studio transmitter links will make this type of interference a thing of the past. Thanks for your patience and concern.

Who Knew?

In the late 70s and early 80s, Potsdam, my hometown, hosted a great live music scene, with three performance venues clustered around just one downtown alley. A happy confluence of thirsty college students, a talent pool in the Crane School of Music, and a location close to the NYC/Montreal tour route filled the stages and dance floors of Django's, The Wild Oat and Alger's Pub with solid local talent, regular national acts, and enthusiastic listeners."

Alley cats" of the day recall then Crane student Renee Fleming as a sometime jazz singer at Alger's Pub--a big set of pipes in a small room with a nice feel for the standards. Hear Renee go back to her early love, including a rare recording from the gone-but-not-forgotten Alger's Pub.

Hydrotherapy:

As Rat says to Mole in The Wind in the Willows, "there is nothing--absolutely nothing--half as much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." I misspent last summer so unwisely that I had to take the Grand Isle Ferry just to be able to say I had been out on the water. So it was a kindness when Bob extracted me from the ncpr.org control bunker for an afternoon on the station's leisure research vessel Mona. Despite those who view the Brockville Narrows as a damp version of the Bonneville Salt Flats, there is still an abiding serenity to be had on the water, the masts and sails of the yacht club mirrored in the patterned slate steeples of Brockville, the long view up the reach toward the Thousand Islands, kids diving off the rocks of Stovin Island, and the endless patroling of gulls and ducks. If you get the chance, run don't walk, on down to the dock.

Powering Down:

Much as our engineer, Radio Bob, would like to have a single stratosphere-scraping broadcast tower that would bathe the entire bottom end of the fm dial in the North Country with a bone-marrow-curdling signal capable of reaching the lowest levels of the mines in Balmat, he has learned to live with disappointment. While his Clarkson classmates play with cyclotrons and x-ray lasers, he rides herd on a farflung network of transmitters and translators, the majority of which put out less power than a microwave oven.

Joining the NCPR communities this weekend are Carthage NY, with translator W272BL broadcasting at 102.3 fm, and Cape Vincent NY, with translator W230BG broadcasting at 93.9 fm. These new facilities, as well as ones scheduled to come on air later this summer in Clayton, Jay, Keene Valley and St. Huberts, were funded in part by US Department of Commerce funds that were not restored in the recent House vote that restored public broadcasting program funding. NCPR also depends on this funding source to replace our 40-year-old main broadcast tower and 25-year-old main transmitter, and to finance our transition to digital audio transmission. The US Senate will vote on whether or not to restore these funds in the coming week. Think of it as "Radio Bob's Law."