December 23, 2008

• Reach Out and Touch

  FUN WITH TELEMPATHY

  This one requires a little background info, I guess.

  Alaska has a special exemption from FCC rules about personal messages on radio and TV.  When I moved here 35 years ago, even in the cities there were programs at least twice a day on most radio stations, where people could either walk or phone in with messages to be relayed, use CB radio, telegrams, or could send letters, any means at their disposal to get a message to a radio station, where it would be broadcast to people off the grid.  The shows had names like Mukluk Telegraph, Tundra Drums, North Wind, Bush Pipeline, etc.

  In homesteaders’ cabins and hunters’ camps all over the state, battery-powered radios would be turned on once or twice a day to check for messages.  Messages could be anything:  reminders to feed the dog, notification of weddings, funerals, etc., proposals of marriage, declarations of love, pleas for someone to meet a plane at the airport or send supplies.  I heard one from a climber who had just summited McKinley, and listened in to personal and family business of some strangers, some people I knew, and others I’d remember from those messages, later on when I met them.   Those programs are gone now from the city stations, but are still going strong out here around Talkeetna and beyond, where relatively few people have phones or Internet connections.

  Today was the annual “holiday greetings” show on Talk of Alaska, a public radio show that goes all over the state through APRN.  I listened to a few minutes of the calls, people from remote places saying hi and wishing a merry and a happy to their widely scattered friends and family.  After I heard greetings go out to several people I know (Alaska is really just one big spread-out small town.) and a familiar voice or two sending greetings, I picked up my phone.

  While I waited for my turn to talk, I made a list so I could get in a big bunch of greetings without taking up more than my share of air.  I got on, and said hi to half a dozen individuals who had moved away to Fairbanks, Delta Junction or some other part of Alaska and lost touch, then I mentioned “all my old friends from the Girdwood Forest Fair and Talkeetna Bluegrass Festival,” and finished up with “to my SCA friends in Wintersgate, Eskalya, and Selveirgaard, a Merrie Yule from Faianna.”

  Then I got up to turn up the radio which had been turned down to prevent feedback.   Before I got over to the radio, I was giggling from the warm fuzzies, the psychic feedback from all the people who recognized my voice and remembered me, not just my old friends and acquaintances, but people who had gotten readings from me at Girdwood, where I did my first professional gig, and Talkeetna Bluegrass where I set up the booth for several years after I’d cut out the grueling far-and-wide summer festival trail.

  Yeah….

   
  

  

  • 3:24 pm
  • 5 Comments