Falling back:

I once had a brief understanding of cosmologist Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, but the revelation had a half-life of about 30 seconds. Based on my minute residual understanding, this weekend's time adjustment will be the equivalent of taking an instantaneous leap backwards of approximately 658,800,000 miles. If you used the approved Superman method of turning back time, it would involve flying counterclockwise around the equator 26,352 times (with seven additional cicumnavigations for each second you dawdled.) To guage the environmental impact of such a hasty junket, look at the seam on my $6 Chinese globe. No doubt the science of time has advanced while I have been poring over lighter reading. But however you get it done, enjoy the extra hour of sleep.

Secure Site:

These are insecure times. Considering my past experience performing pointless tasks for the managerially-impaired, or long stretches eked out as a subsistence entrepreneur, you might think that it would be equally hard on my nerves to work for an outfit like NCPR. After all, part of its budget is subject to the vagueries of culture war politics and it gets by mostly on semi-annual bouts of intense begging.

But not so--instead, I witness the practical miracle of the gift economy at work year after year. So long as we maintain our focus on serving and supporting the communities of this region, those communities will return to us what we need to survive. At first, it takes a little faith to live on the generosity of strangers--but in time, keeping faith turns faith to fact. Thanks to each of you for all for your support.

Now you hold the gun on me:

In preparation for next week's Fall Fundraiser, we've been running around poking microphones in people's faces and asking them what they like about their communities. In the spirit of food-tasting, I'll go first: I'm from Potsdam, and what I like most about it is that I've been from Potsdam for 48 years. It's a pretty nice town, but then so are many places--what's important is that it is my place. I know it as well as a blind man knows his apartment. It has the comforting familiarity of a favorite sweater. In a world jaded by relentless novelty, a new face or a new place in Potsdam is a rare treat. Like a bit of gravel in your slipper, it gets immediate and undivided attention. As all communities are knit together by shared experience--the longer and broader the sharing, the more profound the connection. In the coin of Potsdam, I'm a rich man.

Tell us what you like about where you're from, and if you care to--what you like about North Country Public Radio.

Unfair Weather:

It's just too nice--day after day of dulcet glory. And me with my nose pressed against the window like a kid outside a candy shop. The hammock still hangs out back, but only yellow windfall apples and red and gold maple leaves get to lie in it. I am (franticly) otherwise engaged--with pre-snowfall promise-keeping, with fall fundraiser prep, with the newest and nowest online whatever, and all the other busy-ness that serves to divert one from living in the moment. I met the wife of a recently retired coworker the other day at the Co-op. "Bet he's loving this turn of weather," I ventured. "No, he's too worried about getting through the winter," she said, "he's been worrying about it since May." Glad it's not just me.