KNOM: The Nome Static, March 2009

SQUIGGLES: (left) The jagged lines on the right hand Studio C monitor represent a short bit of audio. Volunteer Danielle Sylvester is editing the piece for a February call-in program discussing ways in which western Alaskans can economize.

The show had an enthusiastic response.

The economic woes of remote Alaskan villages have made national news recently. In the villages which KNOM serves, the majority of people are unemployed, and eke out a living by fishing, gathering and hunting, and by arts and crafts, such as ivory and bone carving, skin sewing, and basket weaving using local grasses. Many receive public assistance.

This year, their poverty was compounded by a disastrous fishing season. Additionally, the winter’s supply of heating oil and gasoline were delivered in late summer, during the peak of oil prices. In some places, people are paying up to $10 a gallon. To heat a home can cost up to $1,000 a month.

Thank you for helping people throughout 100,000 square miles share concrete ideas on how to weather this crisis.

OTHER RECENT TOPICS of call-in programs include education, winter safety, the difficulties of law enforcement in the Alaska bush, prenatal care, self-improvement, mining and employment. Again, thank you very much!

WHERE THERE’S A WILL: Please consider adding KNOM to your will. We prayerfully place all bequests into funds that will provide for future major improvements, and protect the mission from unforeseen emergencies.

INSPIRATIONAL SPOT: He alone has a right to despair whose sins are as great as the mercy of God.

— St. Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D.

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ANSWERING THE CALL: (left) In Studio B, news director Paul Korchin answers the phone for Danielle’s call-in program.

At many stations these days, telephone screeners signal program hosts by computer, but at KNOM, we still communicate by taping notes on the glass window that separates the screener from the studio in which the show is being produced.

OUR PROMISE TO YOU: We honor your privacy, and we pledge, as we have for more than 40 years, that we will never provide your name and address to anyone for any reason.

EXPLOSIVE STUFF: Alaska is home to 130 volcanoes, more than fifty of which have erupted in historic times.

As this is written, we are still awaiting the eruption of Mount Redoubt, a 10,000 foot volcano in the Alaska Range. Its seismic activity has been elevated since January 25th.

Nome is 460 miles upwind of Mount Redoubt. (The map, left, shows Redoubt's location as a red star.) Its eruption will probably shut down air travel to our isolated town from the outside world.

When the mountain last blew, starting December 14, 1989, volcanic ash canceled flights out of Anchorage. Nome’s post office boxes were empty, Christmas presents were absent and grocery shelves lay bare for a week.

EDUCATIONAL SPOTS this month deal with subjects including sunlight, traditional Alaska Native thoughts, emphysema, Arctic birds, Nigeria, earth science, job opportunities, drinking water, child abuse, cancer, dog bites, nutrition, reading, and recovery from alcohol abuse. Thank you for making these possible.

KNOM is the oldest Catholic radio station in the United States, and by a long shot. It is you who keeps our mission alive and well, beaming education and inspiration 24 hours a day. Thank you!

INSPIRATIONAL SPOT: Life is a journey, not a home; a road, not a city of habitation. The enjoyments and blessings we have are but little inns on the roadside of life, where we may be refreshed for a moment, that we may with new strength pass on to the end.

And…we know that we never travel alone.

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20 YEARS AGO: March 15, 1989, for the first and only time, the Associated Press Radio Network carries KNOM’s live broadcast of the Iditarod win.

Joe Runyan’s first place finish is heard live around the country, including Los Angeles and Chicago, and around the world via Armed Forces Radio.

Listeners praise the broadcast, but it causes a great fuss, as anchor Tom Busch is not a union member. AP and its unions are still scrapping about it years later.

(Left) Tom calls in a team at the Iditarod finish line in 2001. Tom estimates that he has interviewed about 800 dog mushers during the 32 Iditarods he covered.

40 YEARS AGO: It’s a monumental day for the mission.

March 14, 1969, attorney Joseph Hennessey files an application with the FCC to establish a Catholic AM radio station in Nome, operating with 10 kilowatts during the day and 5 kW at night, at 780 kHz. (Hennessey continues to serve the Catholic effort, and then the station, at no cost, for 22 years.)

Hennessey also requests a waiver of a freeze that the FCC had recently imposed to block AM applications, pending a detailed study of AM interference problems in the Lower 48 states.

he application optimistically lists the estimated construction cost as $69,433, including $5,000 to renovate the James Walsh house on 3rd Avenue into a radio station.

It promises a format “pleasing and attractive, namely music, with ‘down to earth’ 3-syllable educational material, interspersed….”

“There is a need,” it continues, “of reawakening in the morals and character formation as evident in the growing crime rate, rise in family breakups, and disastrous misconception of the proper use of alcohol. We hope to approach these in a ‘non-preaching’ manner.”

Among proposed programs is “Alaskans A-Go-Go,” which would portray the accomplishments of western Alaskans who had achieved their goals.

Another is “Villages in the Spotlight. With this program, “we hope to present to the people a better understanding of their own villages.”

It is a wildly ambitious proposal for differently themed programs every hour that, with the arrival of professional broadcasters a couple of years later, is molded into a consistent feasible format aimed at accomplishing the stated goals.

WHETHER YOU’VE BEEN WITH US for forty years or just a month, you know that it’s been a long, usually difficult, sometimes painful, journey for this mission. What sustains us is the knowledge that we are helping educate and inspire impoverished people 24 hours a day, every day.

As always, we thank you and we honor you for your role in this important work. May God shower you with blessings for your kind help and your prayers!