New territory

Welcome to those of the 348 brand new members of North Country Public Radio who are receiving this newsletter for the first time. Your generous contributions, joined with that of more than 2100 renewing members, have taken us well past our Fall Fundraiser goal to an unprecedented total: $307,912. Thanks to all our wonderful listeners, volunteers, organizations and businesses for an amazing show of support. You're all fabulous.

I think the thing that makes NCPR attractive to new members and listeners is that even though we are on the eve of our fortieth anniversary on the air, we keep doing new things: expanding our base with new transmitters this year in Chateaugay and Schroon Lake, expanding our offerings with new voices and programs, expanding public service through efforts like the UpNorth Music studio outreach project which is just wrapping up its first year, and the North Country Reads one community, one book project, now entering its third year.

Rather than ask listeners to help us maintain a comfortably familiar vehicle to cart us all off into retirement, we ask them to come along while we explore new arts and technologies, while we do our best to remake public service media according to the needs and possibilities of the new century. You aren’t going to believe what we get up to next year. Stay tuned.

Hundreds of villages

It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes hundreds of villages to raise and support a station like North Country Public Radio. All week, that support has been pouring in, from every "crick and holler" in the region, and from former strangers living everywhere from St. Johns, Newfoundland in Canada to La Canada in California. And it takes a volunteer effort on the scale of Hannibal's crossing of the Alps. 116 kind souls signed up to take shifts answering your calls. Hundreds of businesses contributed everything from composted manure to posh weekend getaways to encourage your support, along with copious food and drink to sustain the staff and volunteers. It's an incedible experience to be at the focal point of so much generosity, and a humbling one.

People sometimes poke fun at our "mendicant" business model. But I've got to tell you, it feels good--light years better than sending dunning notices to subscribers. Way better than having paid call services ringing you up at home during dinner. We're proud to do it the old-fashioned way--we ask, you give. And that's all it takes--except for lots of nerve, a powerful jawbone, gallons of sweat, and the amazing support of thousands. So we're feeling great, and we're doing great, well on the way to our goal of $290,000 and 450 new members by Saturday at 8 pm. If you haven't already, please take a moment now to support public radio in the North Country.

On to the next level

Thanks to everyone who suffered patiently last week and this while we struggled to recover from a major hacker attack on ncpr.org. We have almost everything back in shape, and now that the worst is past it is possible to see the episode in a more positive light--in a Darwinian sort of way. Having someone delete all our many thousands of audio files, like the prospect of being hung in the morning, concentrates the mind wonderfully. Consider the Permian extinction—the asteroid might have been very bad news for the dinosaurs, but it caused the little proto-rodents to kick their whole game up to the next level, on their way to becoming saber-tooth tigers, giant sloths, spider monkeys, and you and me.

I just don’t want you to think that I broke every page at the website--except the pledge page--in order to channel your attention toward our fall fundraiser, scheduled to leap out of your radios beginning 6 am on Monday. The pledge page and all member information are housed on high-security servers not connected to our public website and they were not affected. So--on to the next level, which in this case involves reaching a score of 290,000 points--if you’re playing a buck a point. But we are fearless and somewhat maniacal. With your help we’ll get there; you’re top players.

I look forward to hearing from you in the coming days.